Thoughts on pre-owned gaming and the whole mercenaries 3D save file thing....

If any of you haven't heard about it yet, resident evil mercenaries 3D will limit users to one game save, limiting users to one playthrough and the inability to trade the game in.

Capcom are a great game company, I love everything they usually produce, but one thing has to be said is that they are becoming a very greedy company....again.
First with the whole street fighter thing, bringing out super street fighter 4, then the arcade edition..What's next super street fighter 3D the new contenders champion edition 3D alpha beta omega flubber?


Originally I was excited for mercenaries 3D, fast paced gaming on the best extra mode of any game ever.Hell yeah. Then the problems started flowing in. First there was a problem with content, a major lack of characters (namely leon) and a horrible lack of maps. Since this is a full priced game I was hoping for a lot more than what is essentially the add on to resident evil 5 (Which I already have the gold edition of).
Secondly, Gameplay footage. Seeing the jerkiness and oddness of the animations, it looks terrible and it's not something easilly overlooked.
Last but not least, the fact that save files are not erasable.

The latter is the cherry on the top. After seeing the lackluster offering of mercenaries 3D my thoughts where to buy it used, something I do with games that I don't like too much. (I'm 17, a student and don't have that much money to spend on  games, plus OoT came out two weeks ago.)
Mercenaries 3D is actually one game I thought would benefit from used sales. Why because it includes the demo for resident evil revelations, the upcoming title which I hope is nothing like this game.

So what about used sales, why are they good in my oppinion.
Firstly, from the creators point of view it is obviously not making them any money at all. They have tried everything, the whole buy idea of buying certain part of the games if you buy it used (I.e online modes),
Capcom have chose the complete wrong solution here as by eyes, I can see people not buying this brand new and then the brand new price being driven right down, which will lose profits for everyone. Capcom won't ell as many, and the few they do sell will be way cheaper, game retailers will lose money as they will end up selling the game for a lot less than they bought them in the first place. Obviously used sales won't be made to make up for it.

There are a lot of reasons used game sales help developers.

First, the obvious one, in most cases the game is part of a series. One that I can say for myself is uncharted, I bought the first game used since I didn't have high hopes for the game, I then ended up liking it and buying the second game new. Another example is metro 2033, I bought it last week off ebay and i'm loving it, so when the sequel last light comes out i will buy it at launch.

The second reason. Games when they come out are usually £30-£45, that's quite a lot of money for say something short like bioshock. A lot of people trade the game in straight after they complete it and get a decent fraction of the game's price back in credit or cash. So it's an incentive for people to buy things new, the developer get's paid for the new price and the person get's a bit of their money back to do the same thing all over again.

The third reason, Games go out of print. Think right now, if you were to go buy resident evil 4 on the gamecube right now, would it be easy to get it used? Hell no, if it was sealed it would cost about £60 and all of the money would go to the person they bought it off and not the developer, and since shops don't stock it anymore they won't get any money either.Think about how annoying it will be for people who want to play Mercenaries 3D in a few years time, finding a new copy will be impossible and used copies won't be playable. Even people's own copies won't be usable since they can't play the game through again.

I am probably not going to buy mercenaries 3D at full price for many reasons, I'll wait a week or two until I see this game in the bargain bin for about £5.

Retro Review : Turok for Nintendo64

Turok

N64

FPS

Back in the begging of the N64's life I was about 6, I only had three games for the N64 : Zelda, Mario and TUROK!

Turok was a unique experience to me, I had never experienced a first person game before and I also had never played a game with guns in. However, there was always one thing that made me love this game, Dinosaurs. 

Dinosaurs freak me out more than anything, they just scared me, even still I think jurassic park is scarier than the ring (Although anything was scarier than the ring).

Basically the aim of the game is to find the chronosceptre, which is a special device. You play as Tal set who is the current Turok, which is a dinosaur hunter. Turok, Unlike his 2006 counterpart, is an actual bad ass. He runs around and beats the crap out of anything that gets in his way, be it raptor, man or deer. Even when he dies he respawns and shouts 'I AM TUROK' that's pretty cool.

A great thing about the game was that it allowed you to use a crap ton of weapons, such as the bow, a knife and my favourite: the Pulse rifle (The real pulse rifle).

Even still now I enjoy running through the linear, yet somehow expansive world just gunning down whatever I want with a nuke or a missiile launcher. This is a major factor to what made the game fun, it isn't like today's FPS'; there is no health regeneration or zooming. No just you, a gun and a whole load of enemies.

The game starts quite abruptly, you just spawn at a spawn place and are basically told 'go forward', on the way a main objective is to find 'keys' to unlock a bunch of levels at the end of the first part. the first part ends after walking through the linear part of it, then it opens up into a further amount of missions through portals. This game really opens up and allows the player to really explore and kill dinosaurs. I even still remember the unlock all cheat RBNSMTH which I think stands for robin smith. 

There are a lot of hidden areas in this game, right at the there is a small cave with a gun located in it, this is what I loved about turok looking back. Despite it's linearity, it can really be quite expansive whilst giving a medium feel that suits the game. Blue portals open up with small trials inside that involve traps and pitfalls, hard to get through in order to get the health bonus and extra ammo but even harder to find in the first place.

In terms of controls, it opts for the classic N64 FPS' style, I.e C buttons move, analogue stick looks around and R fires. This also reverses for left handed players. It's solid, but the controls now feel a little bit awkquard. 

I love turok, that's obvious if you read this review. However, it isn't nostalgia speaking it's just the game. This isn't all to hard to find and doesn't sell for more than a few pounds on ebay. It's a great game that anybody who loves classic games, classic FPS' and just fun games should get....NOW!

This is definitely a buy. 

I'm giving this 8/10

Wii-U My thoughts

So after the Wii-U was unveiled a few things went through my head.

1) WTF
2) Is this a controller or a console
3) What about games?
4) OMGWTF is that zelda.....Oh it's a tech demo
5) WOW


Not everyone loves the wii, that's for sure, with it's inferior graphics and really bad online capabilities. I do personally prefer it to my ps3 and 360, and I also think it has done some major good for the gaming industry.
So what about the Wii-U? It promises to please everyone, from casual players to hardcore gamers alike.
I was really sceptical hearing this, I had no clue how he was going to do it, but honestly I think they may actually have done the impossible. Firstly, with the wii they have built up a massive fan base with non-gamers, siminlar to back in the day when we would say 'wanna play nintendo?', older people are now saying 'wanna play some wii?'
So this new fan base will definitely bring in new people to buy what seems like gateway gaming, i.e starting off with wii sports or something then ending up playing zelda skyward sword to completion.

The other thing that excites me about this console is the power, Ok I'm not a graphics whore or anything but I can see this really benefiting the console by far.
Firstly, We will be getting all the first rate nintendo exclusives that we would never see anywhere else, that's awesome.
Secondly, developers won't be as scared to bring out hardcore games onto the console. Unfortunately the wii suffered this problem as developers didn't want to lose out on money.
Lastly, Developers can really make pieces of art on this console. On the wii there was hardly any room to make a truly stunning game in the same vein as final fantasy 13, which in turn cost the wii some really good games. It's the same with a painter, they wouldn't use inferior paints on the wrong canvas to make their finest work.

Next, The controller. The controller in my eyes actually looks like a really clever idea. Obviously the main attraction of this is the screen in the middle, which could be implemented fantastically. You only have to watch the ghost recon online trailer to see that.

Despite the terrible and cringy acting, we can easilly see an already amazing way to implement the device into more than a gimick.
I can see lots of games really using this well, especially RPG's and even sports games.

The controller itself looked very awquard at first (Awkward enough to make nintendo's stock drop), apparantly though it is a very comfortable controller and is surprisingly light. (If you haven't seen a picture of the controller, check out my previous post or google it)
The only problem I really have with this controller is where the analogue sticks are. Firstly, They aren't actually analogue sticks, they slider pads similar to those on the 3DS. Secondly, the sliders are above the face buttons as opposed to being below them, this could make things difficult when playing games in my oppinion.


So am I going to buy it when it comes out?
No, not at launch. Reason being that when I bought the 3DS on launch day I was very upset with the game selection and there was nothing really to tickle my fancy (Well not untill zelda comes out on friday).
I don't want to see this happen with nintendo's new love child. Also the thought of Ubisoft providing a 'killer' amount of launch titles sends cold chills down my spine. Sorry, but ubisoft have really annoyed me with the amount of crap they provided at launch for the wii and 3DS, I don't hate the company but I think they are shameless. (Lest not forget GT PRO for the wii and the terrible ports they released for the 3DS.

However, saying all this, I believe the wiiU will be an amazing console, if there are good games out at launch I will buy it. Apparently it's coming out in summer 2012, so that should be a good way to shift units.

Oh and by the way, SMASH BROS IS GOING TO COME OUT FOR THIS.......(Although production hasn't even started yet)