Bio pic! (just with out the pic and a lot of the bio)

Ok so I was thinking. And thinking. And thinking. I was Infinitely Undiscovering myself (shout out to a terrible game and IW!). Anyway I thought, "Hey I like story! Characters are in stories! How about video game bio pics?!". That's right as of this post I am going to start working on character bio's for video game characters. Now I could never do this without you guys so I'm gonna let you choose who the first bio pic character will be. There'll be a poll on the side of this page. Find it? Good. Now vote on which of those four characters you would like to see a bio on. Which ever character wins the poll will have the most extensive bio I can find made of them on this site. These will take some time to make. Especially on characters that span series. But I think it'll be something that separates DGRO from other sites. At least I hope so. So vote on that poll! (I have a feeling a certain MANLY MAN will be winning...)

-Smith

Nostalgia...

Well the thing that brought this one up is that I have recently been playing through the first Mass Effect (thanks for the suggestion Jorge) and I was surprised at how well it holds up. I mean sure it isn't a super old game or anything, being released in 2007 and all, but the industry evolves fast, and I was surprised that I might actually like it more this time. Well that brought up the question of how powerful nostalgia really is. I mean, how many games that you absolutely love are really old? Do you think they would be anywhere near as fun if you played them today? I think of Kingdom Hearts (which is eight on my top ten games list) as an example of something that probably wouldn't hold up as well as I would like it too. I loved that game when I played it around four or five years ago, but would I enjoy it as much today? The combat was very simple but fun, and the magic system was great but would it hold up in the day of high res graphics and incredible physics technology? Or would the fun and nostalgia of the game overshadow all of that? It's a hard question to answer. I will say that I have proof that sometimes old games hold up without the nostalgia factor though, as I played through MGS3: Snake Eater last week (having never played it before) and boy was that game good; it is easily my favorite Metal Gear game (I'm not the biggest fan of number four). So go back and play one of your favorite games, one of those games you remember as being the thing that got you into gaming. Everyone has that game, and for me it was Goldeneye. See if it holds up, and if it doesn't...well then remember the memories instead.

-Smith

Sony

Well Sony actually did impress me. The beginning of their press conference started with Killzone 3, which I gotta say looked awesome...even though it looked exactly like Killzone 2. Then they started talking, and talking, and talking, these guys easily talked the most of any of the big three. But then, Kevin Butler came out, and that was the turning point. After delivering a rousing speech on gaming itself, the conference picked up, with Dead Space 2 and Medal of Honor getting shown, both of which have exclusive content for the PS3 version. They showed off Infamous 2 (dang I do not like that new design for Cole) LBP2, and unveiled Twisted Metal, which looked like a blast to play. They also, like I predicted, pushed Move to the fullest, and showed off the incredibly generic looking Sorcery. However, Socom 4 looked pretty good, but the Tiger Woods stuff just looked like the Wii version. As with Kinect, I love the technology behind these, but can they grasp it like Nintendo has and move it past being an HD Wii? I don't know, but I hope they can. They also pushed 3D to no end, with the words 3D being said at least a hundred times, and truth be told it did get annoying with them acting like they owned 3D, when both the 360 and 3DS can push 3D too. One of the biggest disappointments for me at least was that they showed nothing of The Last Guardian, it wasn't at the show at all. After playing Shadow of the Colossus, I really want to see Team Ico's next project. Overall, Sony had an average showing, and the exclusive content from EA and the announcement that Portal 2 was coming to the Ps3 didn't hurt.
Final Score=B+

-Smith

Nintendo (WOW!)

My gosh, what a shocker. That press conference was absolutely incredible. It was better than Nintendo's past three conference combined. They showed soooo many awesome games. They also announced so many amazing looking games. Donkey Kong Country Returns, a Goldeneye 007 reboot (Yes the 7 year old kid in me just lit up), Kirby's Epic Yarn, Epic Mickey, Metroid Other M, Kid Icarus for the 3DS. Speaking of the 3DS, I truly expected it to be some gimmicky machine with terrible 3D effects and stupid glasses. Turns out, NO GLASSES! I have no idea how they did it, but plenty of high profile developers attested that it worked. Hideo Kojima, Capcom with Resident Evil, Kingdom Hearts, and plenty of other developers have announced that they are developing games for the 3DS. It was absolutely ridiculous the amount of games they showed, and I haven't even talked about the biggest of them all, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. There were some control issues on stage, but all the gameplay they showed looked cool, and the one-to-one sword control, and nunchuck as shield are all great ideas. Overall Nintendo blew me away with everything they showed, and the 3DS seems to be one of the most innovative products to come out in awhile
Final Score=A+

-Smith

Microsoft

Well Microsoft's press conference just wrapped up, and I'm am completely...indifferent. Nothing shown shocked or wowed me in any way. I mean it just listed no response from me. The coolest thing they showed was the Gears 3 demo, and they also unveiled a new mode, called Beast, but gave no details on the mode at all. The Reach demo was cool but short, Metal Gear Rising had a cool engine, and we got a new Fable 3 trailer, but in the end, none of it wowed me. After (what seemed to me) rushing through their game line up and announcing an exclusive game coming from Crytek, they moved on to all their Kinect stuff. I love the technology and potential that that little camera has, and all the dashboard and interface stuff they showed was all really cool, but the games just look...meh. It just looked like family games. The Star Wars thing was cool, and the new Forza stuff really impressed me, but besides that the rest just looked like it was trying to appease the casual market. That is their goal I guess though, they want Xbox to be the biggest gaming brand in the world. At the end though, they brought out the 360 slim, and that is what saved them. They finally included Wi-fi support, it has a 250 gb hardrive, and is going to be completely Kinect compatible. It also looks a good bit cooler too. In the end Microsoft pushed Natal to no end, and while that conference started out cool with all their exclusive games, the end result was a conference about Kinect. I have no doubt that Sony is going to do the same thing with Move, and like I said I like the technology behind both of them, but I'm not a fan of how they are using it.
Final Grade=C+

-Smith