Begun, The Console Wars Have

So the PlayStation 4 got announced, that happened. Normally the hardware manufacturers announce new consoles at E3, which takes place in June, but apparently Sony just couldn't wait. In the long run, this early announcement will probably work out in their favor, since they are planning to launch this new console by the end of this year. If they had waited until June, it would have been too late to properly generate hype for this holiday season. Also, this standalone event was widely advertised, and saw viewership in the millions during the live press conference. These independent press releases may become the way of the future for hardware announcements, since Microsoft is allegedly planning one for April.

While the system itself was not shown during the conference, (it's likely still in the development stage, so the machine itself would look more like a PC at the moment) we did get a sneak peek at the PS4's internal architecture, and what we saw was both surprising and not. Unsurprisingly, the internal hardware is being compared to a PC at every turn. As this new generation continues to press forward into the realms of gaming that were previously unavailable to consoles, such as modding and streaming, the comparisons to PC's become more and more apparent. In the past, consoles existed separately from PC's on the gaming front, because they filled different roles, and offered different advantages, but as we face the dawn of a new generation, this line continues to become more and more blurry. The PS4 is tailor made for this style of crossover, offering an x86 8 core AMD processor, a “next generation” AMD Radeon based GPU, and an impressive 8 Gigs of GDDR5 RAM.

What is surprising however, is the degree to which these features are being implemented. The PS4 features specifications that are far beyond anything the current generation of consoles has to offer, which isn't too surprising since the PS3 came out in 2006, but still impressive nonetheless. Sony plans to make use of these features with their “Share” button, a new button on every controller that will allow real time screenshots, video recording, and even streaming of anything you are playing. The PS4 will also feature cloud based storage and streaming, features which will supposedly allow you to access your games and media anywhere through your phone, tablet, or PS Vita.

The new controller isn't anything special, it deviates very little from the established design of the PlayStation brand controller. The biggest change, aside from the aforementioned “Share” button, is the introduction of a touch-pad, and an LED light bar, that will be detected by a new 3D camera for motion detection.

From this angle it looks like a Dwebble

Sony claims that this motion detection is not a replacement for the PlayStation Move platform, but rather an addition to it, however nothing shows off how lazy a peripheral design is like when it is remade correctly, and actually integrates quite nicely.

There are still quite a few mysteries about the PlayStation 4 that have not been answered yet, most notably the price. By my estimate, it would cost in the ballpark of $600 to build a PC with the kind of numbers they are talking about, but that is definitely on the high end. After the press disaster that was the PS3 launch, I doubt Sony will charge any more than they absolutely have to, but I could still see it hovering around the $450 to $500 range. Another question involves the maximum capabilities of the system. If Sony wants these features like streaming and cloud downloading to be operational for every title, then games will have to be designed with an artificial cap in mind, since the system will need to keep resources reserved for those features. We’ll probably have to wait till E3 to get more information, but if Sony can live up to all of these promises, then you can bet I’ll be getting one.

Travelogue: Katsucon 2013

Anime conventions are an interesting beast. All of the subsets of nerd conventions feature some crossover between fandoms. There are strictly video game based conventions like PAX, but you’ll still see anime cosplayers and comic book elements there. Similarly, at comic book conventions like Comic-con there will be crossovers with anime, video games, and big franchises like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, even really specific conventions like Star Trek ones will see some crossover. Anime conventions however are by far the most homogenized, featuring near equal parts of a wide variety of different cultures, and Katsucon was no 

exception. 

Additional pictures provided by Norse Dance Party Cosplay

Katsucon featured a wide variety of events and activities that would appeal to many different people. It featured everything from voice actor autograph signings to AMV contests to a video game room. The convention definitely offered something for everyone, even if you aren't a fan of anime. The costumes that people wore to the event also featured lots of variety, continuing the mixing of cultures and fandoms.


The most likely cause for the mixing of cultures is that anime conventions encourage cosplay, and have the highest rate of people who dress up to attend. Many different people choose to dress up, and for many different reasons, but the most common reason would be that the person likes the outfit or character. When you have several hundred different people all dressing up as things they like, there will be very little overlap, and lots of variety.


If I had any complaints about the convention, it would be the large crowds making high traffic areas difficult to move in, and the limited food options in the convention center. Most other conventions are connected to a mall or food court, or they provide their own food vendors to offer those services. These issues though are largely out of the control of the convention staff, and fall to the hotel that houses the convention center.


Despite the long drive, Katsucon was a lot of fun, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who lives in or is visiting the D.C. area. It is similar in a lot of ways to more local conventions (for me) like Anime Boston, so I don’t know if you would consider it worth the trip, but I suppose it depends on where you live.

About Me: The Blog Post

When I made this blog, I decided that was going to try to avoid making posts about myself. I mean, every post is technically about me, but all of them are just posts about my opinions on things. I created this blog for multiple reasons, but mainly just to get my opinions on various matters written down for all to see. However, necessity dictates that I do a post about my adventures, since next week is going to be quite busy for me.

This upcoming weekend, February 15^th – 17^th, I’ll be at Katsu-Con, in National Harbor, Maryland. One of the original reasons I started this blog was to have a place to recount my convention-going adventures (hence the name Wandering Gamer), however this is the first convention I will actually be going to since the blog was created. I've never been to Katsu-Con before, so I'm not exactly sure what to expect, but I have a basic idea. I'll be going with some friends, however I'm the one who get to drive across 4 states to get there, so that'll be fun. If you are going to Katsu-Con, keep an eye out for me, I'll be in my trademark Pikmin shirt:

The other piece of big news is that I'll be starting my new job after getting back from Katsu-Con. It only took nearly two years of job hunting to find a job in my field, but what can you do. This new job will be taking up a lot more of my time than my old job did, so I may have to change to a bi-weekly update schedule. I hope I don’t have to do that, especially with several conventions coming up that I’ll want to post about, so believe that I'm going to do everything in my power to keep making posts every Tuesday.

So next week expect a “Reflections from Katsu-Con” post about what I saw there. I'll include any games I got to play, anything interesting I saw, and pictures, lots of pictures. There will also be several more of the convention reflection posts coming, with PAX East, Anime Boston, and Boston Comic-Con all within a few weeks of each other. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to Fire Emblem: Awakening, which I’m pretty sure has eaten my soul.

This Post is Whack, Yo

You know, I never thought I’d have to do a racism post on this blog, but here we are. People get so defensive whenever racism is brought up as a part of an argument. This probably stems from the virtual flogging that celebrities and other famous people receive whenever that say something that could even be misinterpreted as racist. As a result, many people (erroneously) believe that simply throwing up the racism card is an easy way to win arguments, or at least gain sympathy and supporters.

This leads me to our racism debacle de jour for the week: Mike Sacco, a contractor for Cryptozoic Entertainment, made a tweet about how he feels that the character Tiny Tina from Borderlands 2 is a racial stereotype, and should be removed from the game. This led to a number of other tweets from fans in agreement of the accusation, and finally a response from the CEO of Gearbox, stating that “tina is not racist”.

This is Tiny Tina:

She’s a wacky, mildly insane 13 year old with a capacity for violence and a twisted sense of humor. Her dialogue ranges from delightful childlike rants, to impromptu rap songs, to ADD fueled randomness, but it’s her propensity toward “urban slang” that has earned her so much ire from fans. According to Sacco, she is a “white girl talkin’ like them urban folk!!” and has even been referred to as “verbal blackface”. The problem here is that these people don’t really understand racism, so I’m going to try to put this as simply as I can:

If you think that the character of Tiny Tina is racist, than you are a racist. Here’s why:

These people are claiming that “urban slang” is the domain of low class black people, and to have a white character saying those lines is insensitive. Insensitive to whom!? Black people don’t own that way of speaking, just like how white people don’t own speaking in a British accent. Manners of speaking cannot be owned by anyone, racially or otherwise, and to believe that black people should all sound like other black people and all white people should sound like other white people is the epitome of racism. There are plenty of people living in low class areas of all races that speak that way, just like how there are eloquent and well-mannered people of all races. The circumstances of your birth are effectively random, and should never be a source of pride or shame, and to believe that people should sound the way they look means that you assign values to people based on their race, and expect them to act accordingly.

You said it kid.

The sooner we all get over our racial guilt that happier we’ll all be, because let’s face it, Tiny Tina is hilarious. 

I Think I’m in Love with Platinum Games

As a development studio, Platinum Games is actually fairly young. The group started as Clover Studios, a development team owned by Capcom that produced Okami, God Hand, and the Viewtiful Joe series. You may notice that all of those games got outstanding Metacritic scores, and are considered cult classics of the last generation of gaming. After some drama with Capcom however, Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil, Viewtiful Joe), Atsushi Inaba (Phoenix Wright, God Hand) and Hideki Kamiya (Devil May Cry, Okami) decided to leave, and start their own development studio, the rest is history.

Since forming Platinum Games, the dream team of Mikami, Inaba, and Kamiya have produced hit game after hit game. They remind me of a 90’s era Rare Software, being able to make games for nearly any genre, and produce a masterpiece time after time. Let’s look at their short but amazing history:

Madworld: An arena-style spectacle fighter for the Wii, which featured a unique visual style, similar to Sin City, and witty characters. It received excellent reviews, and was a boon for Wii owners at the time who were looking for hardcore titles.

Infinite Space: A space exploration point-and-click RPG for the Nintendo DS that offered a crazy amount of customization and multiple storylines. Some critics felt the controls were cumbersome, while others said the story was “easily on par with anything you’ll find in Xenosaga or Mass Effect”.

Bayonetta: A fantastic game that set the new bar of quality for spectacle fighters. Following in the footsteps of Devil May Cry, Bayonetta featured tight combat, fantastic characters, stylish action, and tongue-in-cheek comedy. If you haven’t played Bayonetta, you are doing yourself a disservice.

Vanquish: A third-person cover-based shooter set in the future, where you fight space Russians. The gameplay is basically Gears of War with a rocket pack strapped to it. Between the lightning-fast pacing and the fantastic areas and bosses, Vanquish’s gameplay is top notch.

Anarchy Reigns: The unofficial sequel to Madworld, Anarchy Reigns offers a robust competitive online multiplayer. Massive arenas allow for multiple gametypes in 16 player battles, with combat similar to God Hand or Custom Robo.

Every game on that list brings something unique to the table, and the future looks even brighter. Metal Gear Rising has a demo available, and looks and feels amazing. In addition to pushing what the current generation of consoles are capable of to the limit, the gameplay is fluid and the story just oozes Metal Gear. Also in development is Bayonetta 2, and The Wonderful 101, which seems to be some kind of superhero game using the Viewtiful Joe art style where you control 100 superheroes like Pikmin?

Yeah, I don't know either, but it looks awesome.

Add to the pile of praise that Platinum games has stated that they are interested in buying the rights to the Darksiders franchise, which could be amazing. Platinum Games has been doing a fantastic job so far, and it looks like the hype train is slowing down anytime soon, so go buy some of Platinum’s games, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

DLC Blues

You know, I wasn't born a cynic. There was a time when I was still optimistic about the release of new games, and developing trends in the gaming industry. It's hard to stay positive after being burned so many times though. Year after year developers and publishers prove that despite amazing advances in technology, connectivity, and infrastructure, they will still continue to get the simplest elements of the development process wrong. Now maybe I'm not being fair, maybe these developers and publishers are just human. Maybe they put their hearts and souls into creating these games and for one reason or another things fall short. Time constraints, money constraints, and more can cause a game that would otherwise be full of originality and potential, to falter.

The latest example of this trend of disappointments is DLC season passes. A number of games over the last couple of years have offered a season pass for their DLC, where if you buy all of the DLC up front, you get a discount and maybe some bonus items. On the surface it seems like a great deal for everybody. You get the DLC at a discounted price, and maybe a bonus, the developer gets money in advance to put toward the DLC development costs, and the publisher gets to see the level of interest ahead of time, so they can set future DLC schedules and pricing, everybody wins.

This is the part where you realize that this looks too good to be true, because it is.

In every case of the season pass that I have seen, the quality of the DLC has gone downhill over time, and as a result the DLC quality ends up worse than if each piece had been sold separately and had to stand on its own. After all, each of the four DLC missions that would normally be sold for $10, and would each have to feel like $10 worth of content, now are being sold as a bundle for $30. If one or two end up lower quality, there’s still lots of content in the “package”. Let me give you an example, and the source of why I’m writing this post.

Borderlands 2 offers a season pass. $30 for four $10 DLC packages. Before any of the DLC associated with the season pass was actually released, Gearbox Software CEO, Randy Pitchford said in an interview that the DLC would be: “four ‘big’ pieces of story content in the vein of the expansive and well-received Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC from Borderlands.” General Knoxx was the best received DLC of the original Borderlands, and the comparison was made in order to reassure fans that buying the season pass would be worth it, as each of the DLC missions would be of high quality.

The first mission was released in October, Captain Scarlett and her Pirate’s Booty, which offered a wide variety of story, side missions, new locations, and post-game content, it wasn't perfect but it had a little bit of something for everyone, IGN gave it a 7.5. In November the second piece of DLC was released, Mr. Torgue’s Campaign or Carnage. The Torgue DLC was definitely up to par with what this DLC package was supposed to contain. Excellent writing and fantastic pacing make it a blast to play through, although I found it to be a little on the short side. IGN gave it a 9.2. Finally, the third DLC mission was just released this past week, Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt, and it falls short in every way. Criminally short main story, limited side quests, less post-game content, and flat writing make it almost a chore to get through. The one thing Hammerlock gets right is a slew of new enemies, but most of them are annoying to fight either because of strange behaviors and tiny critical hit points, or just a variety of annoying abilities and way too much health. IGN gave this one a 6.9.

It remains to be seen if the fourth and final DLC mission in Borderlands 2 will cause the season pass to end on a high note, or if this downward trend will continue. The problem of course, is that if you already have the season pass, you already paid for it, so if it sucks, oh well. The season pass trend has been getting more and more popular over the last couple of years too, Gears of War 3, Saint’s Row the Third, Halo 4, and more all have DLC season passes that encourage you to buy early. The biggest problem is that, by buying the season pass, you are paying for something that you don’t know anything about, with no chance for a refund, which no one should ever do with anything. I know I will never be buying another season pass again, will you?

This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.

Nostalgia is an interesting thing isn't it? All it does is make you remember things from your past in a favorable light, but that little detail influences so much of our lives that it's astounding. Nearly all of human history is based on trying to recreate the positive nostalgic feeling of the past, in the present day. Everything from the conservative effort to return to the traditional values of the last century, to archaic video game design being tied to modern graphics in the “2.5D Game” genre.

The entire video game industry is based on exploiting nostalgia too. The very first video games were electronic adaptations of classic real life games like tennis and tic-tac-toe. Modern games follow this principle as well. Cliffy B has admitted that the inspiration for Gears of War was a series of games that he himself had personally played and enjoyed, and attempted to recreate the feel of.

The New Super Mario Bros. series exists solely because nostalgia is a real thing. People will sit around their homes and say things like, “Remember when we used to play Mario as kids? That was fun, we should do that again.” Nintendo is of course always ready to take your money, so they developed an entire subset of the Mario franchise based on being similar to the old games, in lieu of new gameplay or progress. These games then go on to sell quadrillions of copies and make a small fortune for Nintendo, when they offer very little in terms of new features or improved gameplay.

There's a reason this game is about collecting money.

So why do we do it? Human scientific progress is based on moving forward, to the future, but as a species we still have such an attachment to the past that it’s baffling. The scientific community has even classified nostalgia as a medical condition, which seems a little odd, it would be like declaring that shyness is a medical condition.

Oh. Wait.

As far as the why, it’s difficulty to say. Nostalgia affects different people in different ways, and to different degrees. I’m sure that some people are just, for whatever reason, unhappy with their current life situation, and wish that things could go back to the way they were when they last considered themselves “happy”, which is usually some degree of their childhood. Is that healthy though? To constantly wish that life was the way it is in your mind? Well, yes, that’s what dreams and goals are when you think about it. I guess even progress toward an ideal of the past is still progress.

That sure is a lot of words about video game psychology.