Can PlayStation Keep it's Momentum Going

It's time for the main event! Let's start and watch that traditional PlayStation sizzle reel.

Some sales figures about the Vita. Vita owners love their games. A list of Vita games are announce. In brief message. Including Batman Arkham Orignis, CounbterSpy, Destiny of Spirtis, Doki Doki Universe, Final Fantasy X / X-2, Walking Dead 400 days, Tearaway, God of War HD 1 & 2, Flower, Dead Nation, and Killzone Mercenarys, There are 85 vita games coming in this year. +1 point for continuing to support the Vita

PlayStation 3. The Last of Us is shown. This game releases on Friday and has been receiving rave reviews all around, and currently sits at a 96 MetaCritic. Puppeteer, A sidescroller whimsical 2-D platformer, Rain an interesting Indie title, Beyond Two Souls. A ssupernatural story about Judy Holmes played by Ellen Paige with excellent production values. Gran Turismo 6, a racing game and the next installment of one of the most popular PlayStation exclusive franchises. +1 for first party support on the current console. Microsoft only showed 3rd party support.

Batman: Arkaham origins is shown. The next installmen is a prequel in the award winning Batman Arkham series. Black Mask appears to be the main villain. DeathStroke, Bane, and The Joker are also shown as villains. Exclusive DLC is also shown +0.5 points extra Batman is exclusive to PlayStation platform

A Grand Theft Auto PlayStation with an exclusive headset is shown. No Price given.

PlayStation 4 reveal. It's a Black rectangle. Can people stop complaining? It looks like it also comes with a camera.

Sony Pictures CEO takes the stage. Cutting Edge programming delivered to PlayStation? 0 Points no details Music Unlimited , NetFlix, RedBox Instant, Crackle, Crunchy Roll, Amazon. Will be coming to as well. Flixter and Pay Per View including WWE will be coming to PlayStation. 0 points. We are here to talk games, but this needed to be touched on.

New IP Reveal from Ready at Dawn Studio. It is advertised as in gameplay engine. I'm getting a London SteamPunk vibe. Does WhiteChapel mean anything? The Order 1866 the characters fought off some sort of creature. +1 Point

Updates and new trailers for Killzone ShadowFall, Drive Club, Infamous Second Son, and Knack Knack, Drive Club, and Killzone are Launch titles, Infamous is Q1 2014 +0.5 points.

The Dark Sorcerer: A new IP from Quantic Dream. It appears to be more comedic and broke the 4th wall. A change of pace for Quantic Dream +1 Point

Super Giant Games, creator of Bastion shows Transistor, It looks a lot like Bastion which is a very good thing. Clay Entertaniment. Creators of Shank and Mark of the Ninja. bring Don't Starve. Tribute Games creator of the Scott Pilgram bring Merceary Kings, Young Horses a bring Octodad deadlist catch, Switchblade Monekeys bring Secret Ponchos, Rag Tag Studios, bring a stealth game where you control a zombie army , Red Barrels brings Outlast a first person horror game, A new game from Oddworld Inhabatints bring Oddworld remake New and Tasty coming to PS4, 17bit games creator of skulls of the Shogun, bring a side scroller space shooter Galaxy, Indie devlopers are flocking to PlayStation. This was a big discussion at the Game Devloper's Confernce this year. More of them than I can keep up with. From what I understand Inide devlopers have had difficulty working with Microsoft. +1 Point


Blizzard brings Diablo III to PS3 and PS4. With exclusive items +0.25 points. I will finally play it.

SquareEnix shows a trailer. A Sci-Fi / Fantasy hack and slash spectacle Final Fantasy Versus XIII has become Final Fantasy XV. A tease announcing another title. Kingdom Hearts 3 It's about damn time for this Disney love letter to get a proper sequel.! I can't wait, but we will be waiting, but we know it is finally worth the wait. Final Fantasy XIV will come to consoles. I heard they finally fixed that game +2 points

Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag Pirates. I want to love this series so badly, but it is an abusive relationship that I keep coming back to. It looks great, but I said the Same thing about part II & III +0.5 points, because I will come back for even if it is only a rental.

Watch Dogs again.It seems like Ubisoft presented the Trailers, and Sony gets the demos. It still looks outstanding, but for some reason I actually get less interested in this game the more I hear about it. An exclusive hour of gameplay for PlayStation +0.5 points.

2K games shows NBA 2K14 with a humorous clip featuring LeBron James +0.5 Points

Bethesda shows Elder Scrolls Online. I'm not an Elder Scrolls fan, but I think a lot of people just went ape shit for this game. +0.5 points

World Premier: Mad Max Not an IP that I am familiar with. PlayStation will have a piece of exclusive content. +0.25 games. It didn't look that interesting...

No Used Game Restrictions (A Sony Chant takes over the theater) +1 point
No Online DRM for disc based games. (Pot shot at Microsoft no 24 hour check in required) +1 point
Media Services will continue to not require additional subscription via PS Plus
PS Plus will be getting Drive Club as well as other free PS4 games

 A gameplay reveal for Destiny. At this point I could hardly care. The graphics look great. As long as headsets are easier and more affordable this time around I will be playing this +0.5 points

Cloud gaming via GaiKai will be making streaming games starting in 2014. There is our backwards compatibility problem dealt with 0 points. It is still a long way off, but if this works It will be amazing

$399 Price Point! Consumor ownership and trust is something Sony values in it's customers. And enjoy a outro sizzle reel +1 point

Final Score 14 points
+More Indie games than I could keep with
+No Used Game Restrictions!
+No online requirement for single player games.
+ $39 Price Point 
+Games, Games and Games!
-Not long enough to show all the Games
-No sign of The Last Guardian

Looking Behind...

The next generation of console games is just beyond the horizon, and it's time to reflect on my experience with this generation of games. I had been working my first job and been saving up money for a new game console. I played Halo 3 at several friends houses, but I didn't feel the game was different enough from Halo 2 to warrant an expensive investment. My brother was the only person I knew that had a Wii, but he lived several hours away and I couldn't get time off to visit him and try it.

Then I saw it. Metal Gear Solid 4. This game was an amazing technological display and a fitting conclusion to a story that I had fell in love with on the PS2. I still think the parts of the game that are playable are amazing, but the game is bogged down with it's massive amount of cut scenes. While Metal Gear may have perfected the cut scene new story telling techniques were just beginning to evolve.

Naughty Dog was expanding motion capture technology with Uncharted: Drake's Fortune on PS3. The improved technique of performance capture would

Uncharted Performance Capture

get more believable and life like characters in our games. Looking at games like LA Noire, The Last of Us, or Tomb Raider we can see the performances of the actors giving the characters so much more life and emotion then the characters of the previous generation.

Another exciting change of this generation has been narratives that react to player choice. Telltale's The Walking Dead, and Bioware's Mass Effect Trilogy and Dragon Age provided decision points that effect the story in a unique way. It created exciting discussions as no one's experience was exactly the same.I found that these games would fill the drought of JRPG's that took a long time to show up on the system.

I have always been a fan of Japanese games. I wasn't following the business as closely back then so I had not realized that many Japanese developers were struggling with the higher demand of HD visuals, and many had gone to handhelds to make these games. I would later find these on my PSP and pick up a Nintendo DS to play many of these creative titles.

No retrospective of  this generation of gaming would be complete with out plastic instruments. In 2007 I had fallen in love with with Harmonix's rhythm games Guitar Hero, Frequency, and Amplitude had become addictions as well as Sony's Singstar. When I found out about Rock Band a game that combined Guitar Hero, Singstar, and added drums it was love at first sight. This game would become the focus of almost

every party or group gathering for the next several years. It was unfortunate that by the time RockBand 3 added keyboard it would seem that the bright burn of the living room rock-star had faded into obscurity.

I did debate between a Wii and X Box 360. Halo 4 looked amazing, and I had a lot of faith in Harmonix and couldn't wait to play Dance Central. Nostalgia won out though and I went with the Wii. I had not had a Nintendo console since the original NES. The virtual console. But it was The Legend of Zelda: Skyword Sword that drew me in. This game proved that motion control can work non casual games. Look forward to my top 10 game of the generation coming soon.

Pray for Japan but don't Forget to Play

Super Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter, Mega Man, Wii Sports, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Soul Calibur, Crazy Taxi, Castlevania, Devil May Cry, Silent Hill, Kirby, Pokemon, Gran Turismo, Contra Dead Rising, Kingdom Hearts, Ninja Gaiden,  Dragon Warrior, Pac-Mac, Tekken, Dead or Alive, Chrono Cross, Ridge Racer, Space Invaders and Metroid.

These are just a handful of the games that I could list off the top of my head. To really appriciate what Japan has done for video games, we need to look back to the video game crash of 1983. Shoddy ports of arcade games and an over-saturated console market led to the downfall of Atari, one of the leading home console manufacturer of the time. While this was happening a small Japanese playing card company, called Nintendo had been slowly venturing into the world of electronics. The company had released "Donkey Kong" just a few years prior, and "Mario Brothers" had just started to light up arcades.

Nintendo had tested the waters of the decaying industry with software in the arcades and hardware in the for of the "Game & Watch" series of handhelds that me with success. As The future looked grim for games on shore on the other side of the Pacific Nintendo released the Famicom which became an instant classic in Japan. The system was headed our way, but we wouldn't see it until October 18, 1985 almost two years after it was released in Japan.

No one would have ever guessed that a Italian plumber by the name of Mario would become more well known than Mickey Mouse by American children, but it happened. There was still some distrust from Americans when it came to Japanese products at this time, but at the time all we cared about were the games, and boy did we get games "The "Super Mario Brothers" trilogy alone sold over 68 million units worldwide other best sellers would include  "The Legend of Zelda" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" which was developed by Konami's Ultra Games label.

Nintendo fever had engulfed America and we were injected with our next dose in 1989 with the Game Boy which had the revolutionary idea of having interchangeable games. And then again in 1991 with the Super Nintendo. We got more of what we wanted and it looked and sounded better, or we could take it with us on the go. Business men could be seen pulling a game boy out of their briefcases and trying to get in a quick round of Tetris before meetings.

We were also given a choice from the Japanese Sega Corporation with the appealing Genesis that had it's fast hedgehog of a mascot, Sonic, and blast processing Sonic and Sega made the claim that they could do what Nintendont. These two Japanese companies now dominated an industry created by Americans. This trend would continue after a business deal between Nintendo and Sony turned sour Sony decided they wanted to get their own slice of the video game market and released the Playstation in 1994 and would create a brand that has become synonymous with video games. Other companies would try to compete, but no one still talks about the Atari Jaguar, Lynx, or Amiga CD32.

Without this series of events the video game industry may not exist as we know it today. I know some people prefer the X-Box these days and yes Microsoft is an American company. But without the foundation and the history of these Japanese company's Master Chief may not exist as  home console manufacturing was considered a failed business venture, and without Mario and Nintendo fever gripping the United States in the 80's and 90's gaming may have become a very niche hobby on the PC. Today console gaming is about 90% of the gaming market pie. I don't know about you but I do most of my gaming on PS3, and DS which I wouldn't have if it wasn't for Japan.

The recent Tohoku tsunami and earthquakes that have hit Japan have been tragedies with damage far exceeding with over twelve times as many casualties as Hurricane Katrina. And although we may not feel that this effects us as gamers, be glad that the 3DS was done and had already shipped Sony's NGP is looking like it will be delayed. So the next time you sit down to enjoy some games take a moment to think about where they came from.

There are many ways to donate to the Tsunami relief effort and I've provided the URL of an article that will link you to a variety of charities that are working on the relief effort. Japan you are in my prayers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_newsroom/20110311/wl_yblog_newsroom/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-how-to-help