*brush brush brush brush brush*

!

Wuh duh heb ar u...

*spits*

What the heck are you doing here? Me? Well yes I was thinking of settling down for the night but I'll probably get through a couple of movies before I actually get to sleep. What? Well yes most people know that I have a fairly heavy home movie watching shed-yule. Other than constantly watching the TCM channel I'm really looking forward to Tom Tykwer's International and Henrik Ruben Genz's Terribly Happy as well as the upcoming DVD releases by the great French director Abel Gance and...what? Oh something different? Well there are some a handful of not that well known films coming out sometime in the future that fit somewhat squarely in the horror and trash cinema circle. Hmmm...squarely in the circle eh? I'll have to remember that.

First up is Quarantine and it might actually be well known amongst a handful of horror films fans out there. It's actually a remake of a film from Spain entitled simply [REC]. While it's generally not in my nature to recommend a remake, I'm hoping that this turns out well enough that [REC] might find a larger audience -- the way that the Japanese version of Ring did before that whole aspect of horror got out of control. The film is shot in cinema verite fashion similar to Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project.

The Plot - "Television reporter Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter) and her cameraman (Steve Harris) are assigned to spend the night shift with a Los Angeles Fire Station. After a routine 911 call takes them to a small apartment building, they find police officers already on the scene in response to blood curdling screams coming from one of the apartment units. They soon learn that a woman living in the building has been infected by something unknown. After a few of the residents are viciously attacked, they try to escape with the news crew in tow, only to find that the CDC has quarantined the building. Phones, internet, televisions and cell phone access have been cut-off, and officials are not relaying information to those locked inside. When the quarantine is finally lifted, the only evidence of what took place is the news crews videotape."

Trailer

Next up is Beyond the Grave from Brazilian film maker Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro. I haven't seen anything by this director before but he cites Jodorowsky and Sergio Leone as his big influences so that sounds promising. The effects crew is the same that worked on the legendary Coffin Joe pictures so that's another decent sign that this could be...interesting.

The Plot - A detective has been tracking a notorious serial killer for untold years. As he slowly gathers more and more clues he begins to suspect that this killer may be something...more. Something more evil. Perhaps something more than merely, human.

Although this doesn't inherently sound like the most original of plots did I neglect to mention that this is all going on as the world decends into hell falling victim to an ongoing zombie apocalypse? No? Interested now perhaps?

Trailer

From the far flung mystical world of er...Sweden comes a very interesting take on the coming of age story. The movie is Let The Right One In and yes it is indeed named after a Morrissey song if you were wondering. You weren't? Ah well. This film has been making quite a stir lately in the various film festivals held around the world and looks to be truly touching in a slightly unusual fashion.

The Plot - "Twelve-year-old Oskar lives in a drab village outside Stockholm, where by day he's the victim of relentless bullying, and by night he dreams of revenge. Slipping out of sight of his single mother, Oskar fills a notebook with news on the gruesome killings that have set neighborhood nerves on edge-someone is tying people up, breaking their necks, and draining their blood-and rehearses knife moves in the icy courtyard of his apartment complex. One night, an apparition appears on the decaying jungle gym behind him: Eli, the new girl next door. The two misfits befriend each other, Eli coaching Oskar in bravery, Oskar awakening Eli's hunger for love. But Eli, alas, needs something more-blood."

You see, Eli is a vampire. She tries to warn Oskar away knowing it's a dangerous situation but somehow they end up forming a tight bond despite her reservations.

Trailer

Now we turn to the seedier side of cinema and look at a couple trash cinema interests of mine.

Ah yes a movie called ***** Slap with a trio of sexy women brandishing weaponry really sounds like a night of true cinema magic doesn't it? There's tons of movies like this aren't there? You've seen one you've probably seen them all. Why does this one rate any different than the others? Well first of all this film is basically an homage to the legendary Faster ******** Kill! Kill! movie by Russ Meyer. The funny part is that Tarantino is actually doing a remake of that film but these guys beat him out of the gate by at least a year or more. Who are these people?

Well if you look past the main trio of characters you might notice a few recognizable names, Kevin Sorbo, Lucy Lawless, Renee O'Connor & Michael Hurst being the standouts. Yes indeed, the team that brought you Xena - Princess Warrior and The Legendary Tales of Hercules are the force behind this film! That's either a big drawing point for you or an equally effective repellent, but to me at least it kind of made me sit up and take notice as I rather enjoyed the tongue and cheek nature of both TV series.

The Plot - ***** Slap" follows three bad girls as they arrive at a remote desert hideaway to extort massive booty from a ruthless underworld kingpin. Things quickly spin out of control as allegiances change, truths are revealed, other criminals arrive for the score, the fate of the world hangs in the balance and they are forced to confront a villain much worse than they ever expected… themselves. It's the ultimate morality tale as, one by one, they realize the whole "she-bang" was a set-up and one of the film's characters may not even be human…

Trailer

Lastly we have the movie Pig Hunt. This film fully embraces its trash cinema leanings and goes after it will an amazing amount of gusto. Definitely not one for the film snobs but it could be one hell of a lot of fun if all the crazy elements jam-packed into this film come together in some kind of darkly cohesive manner.

The Plot - "When John takes his San Francisco friends to his deceased uncle's remote ranch to hunt wild pigs, it seems like a typical guys weekend with guns - despite the presence of John's sexy girlfriend Brooks. But as John and his crew trek deeper into the forest, they begin tracking the awful truth about his uncle's demise and the legend of The Ripper -- a murderous three-thousand-pound black boar! Their pursuit leads them through fields of marijuana and into the muddy landscape of Big Wallow, involving high-powered weaponry, the violent and unpredictable Tibbs Brothers, massacred emus, a machete-toting Hippie Stranger, vengeful rednecks, and throat-slitting Cult Girls who grow dope by day and worship a Giant Killer Pig by night. By the time the pig hunt is done, no one is innocent - or unscathed."

Again...sounds fun but cult films are always walking that tightrope of just plain awful and bloody glorious fun. I guess I'll have to wait and see. I can't provide the trailer as it has all kinds of nudity in it which I believe violates that TOS dealie here. So I'll just provide a link to the official site and you can navigate your way towards the trailer and see if it looks like fun to you. It's on YouTube as well but you have to navigate around vids of actual pig hunts.

Official Site

Now...if you will excuse me I'm a tad undressed and I would like to get some film watching in. Good day to you sirs and madams and...others. >_>

Awesome! The San Diego Comic-con! The world's largest gathering of all things once used to be considered nerdy! Comic books! Graphic Novels! Video Games! Anime! Manga! Star Trek! Fantasy! Cosplay! Well...okay cosplay is generally still considered fairly nerdy but if you've seen some of the costumes that I've seen then you certainly wouldn't say that anymore.

W...wait a tick! Didn't the convention start yesterday? Why are you blogging about it already? Aren't you busy enough with the convention's goings on that you wouldn't have the time nor the presence of mind to bother writing about it now? Normally that would be true except this year, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I am not attending.

Ahhhh, I see that puzzled look on your collective faces! I suppose I should be happy to know that I haven't geeked it up enough for those who know me online to fully understand the magnitude of what I have just stated -- or should I be concerned that I don't define myself well enough? Regardless let me see if I can sum it up in once sentence.

I have been attending the San Diego Comic-con every year since 1982.

That's right, every year since I graduated from High School I have somehow gotten my nerdy little butt down to San Diego in order to do some major shopping. Of course it was much, much, smaller then and I had so much less to shop with but in those days (insert old man voice here) conventions were pretty much the only way to find the anime/comic book kinds of things that bring people like myself a decent amount of happiness; or a least a distraction from the lack thereof.

So here I sit, uneasy and somewhat despondent. Everything I move seems to uncover reminders of conventions past and all the great people I've met and all the strange encounters I've experienced. The convention has gotten so big and out of control that many channels that I watch as well as online sites that I frequent, continously remind me of the exciting times happening down at the giant con in San Diego. Come on down it's great! We're having a special event at such and such location! Stop on by! Look how much fun we're having!!!

*sigh*

So to prevent this from devolving into a rather unseemly maudlin affair let me attempt to reinvigorate myself by helping to dispel two of the biggest misconceptions that exist about the San Diego Comic-con. These are iron clad guarantees as there is quite obviously no bigger expert on the San Diego Comic-con than myself. That's goes without saying right?

Nerds - It's almost impossible not to hear this word liberally tossed around when a writer is attempting to encapsulate the San Diego Comic-con going experience. Even more amusing, stations that supposedly cater to what are ostensibly nerd-oriented interests such as G4 will quite often use the word in the most derogatory manner almost as if they feel oppressed by their supposed presence and that they are just an unesscessary evil to avoid at all costs.

The truth? There are actually very few serious nerds at the San Diego Comic-con. They are out there, sure, sure. But this convention is quite a bit different from most conventions in that it's not focused on one main interest and as a result you have major percentage of average folks just wandering around looking for their particular interest. You'd actually be hard pressed to find a hardcore stereotypical comic book nerd amongst the throng but when you do, they do truly stand out as quite the anomaly.

Cosplayers - Yes you know...those people that you always read about and see on the internet. If you seen any report on the nightly news or from G4 you'll no doubt see quite a lot of these people. G4 in particular has this proclivity for rounding up large groups of cosplayers and has them fill the area behind their talent as they segue from report to report about various comic book movies on the horizon. Wow! There must be tons of them down there! It's the biggest convention after all! Right?

The truth? No. There's really not that many of them there percentage-wise. I'll admit that If you distilled all the non-constumed folks away from the mighty throng in attendance then indeed you could probably get quite a few buses full of cosplayers. But for a convention so large there just really aren't that many of them there and they tend to really stand out. Honest! If you ever see pictures of mine of lines involving hundreds of people that I stand in waiting for an event to start you'd be hard pressed to find anybody in a costume at all. I would say there's a costume bedecked person for every 200 people and that's being really, really generous.

Exceptions to the rule - On Saturday night there's the big costume award show so there are a bit more of them around although they are fairly concentrated in the specific areas that it's happening in (usually the Ballroom) so they're easy to completely miss. Also there are a couple of convention standards involving Star Wars stormtroopers and Klingons. The stormtroopers are very well organized and have very professional outfits as well as a rather smashing hierarchy. They make regular sweeps all over the convention site and are rather impressive sight. Then there's the Klingons...

The Klingons, not to be confused with any silly prat that puts on a rubber furrowed brow and pointy ears, but the serious Klingons are in full force at the SD con although they are a tight knit bunch so you may easily miss them. They hold Klingon rituals and rites of passage in various rooms as part of a scheduled performance. They are serious about what they do but they are not weird about it if that makes sense. They have been attending the SD for almost as long as I have and they have my utmost respect as, like the now organized and unionized Storm Troopers (no I'm not kidding), they are complete professionals. Also on a side note many of the Klingons are in reality really big beefy guys that could really, really, hurt you if you tried to get cute so just...don't.

Don't mess with the Klingons at the San Diego Comic-con. I can't stress that enough.

Oh man! That San Diego Comic-con really sounds like a lot of fun!

Did I ever tell you that I used to go to the San Diego Comic-con every year?

No really!

It was fun.

A lot of fun.

I'll tell you about it some day.

*sigh*

...is Billie Piper otherwise known as Rose Tyler in the BBC series Dr. Who!

Wait! Wait! Don't run!

I'm not a big Dr. Who fanatic who will talk at you ad infinitum over which actor was the best Doctor and why (although the answer is pretty obvious). Sure, I grew up with the character and greatly enjoyed the series, but I was much more a fantasy reading type of fellow so I never became particularly fanatical about any sci-fi series.

The new series has however had a great hold over me since its inception. I'm still not that fanatical, but I am keenly interested in the show and the characters which in my opinion have been very well fleshed out. I am however, a bit enamoured with Billie Piper who played the good Doctor's 1st companion in the new series. Although it was slow to build, there really seemed to be a deep connection between The Doctor and Rose and it was heavily alluded to that the two have actually spent a lot more time together than the series on the surface lets on. Though I suppose absorbing all the power of the Tardis and being able to see everything that exists in time at once will probably bring you rather close to a Time Lord.

But eventually the need for apocalyptic drama reared its ugly, but quite necessary, head and the good Doctor and Rose were separated by a dimensional rift that neither could cross. In one of the arguably most heart-wrenching scenes (pictured above) of the series they share a quiet moment in which to say goodbye knowing that neither one has the ability to hold the other although the desire to do so is quite intently palpable. In other words...

Holy crap it was amazingly sad and touching and just a great moment!

So her stinct with the series had ended and off went Miss Piper! Doing some modeling, doing voiceovers for commercials, and filming more series for the BBC for which she is contracted to do a series of Pullman novel adaptations. She's keeping busy and getting good jobs so good for her!

But the void she left in the show was quite noticeable. Sure the other actors who portrayed later companions were all very good in their own way, but Billie seemed to have brought something very special and fans longed to have her back. There were quite a bit of ye olde rumouring but nothing ever came of it. She was always busy and the writers didn't seem to think it would ever happen and so I, and others, had somewhat given up hope.

The it happened last episode. Rose Tyler was back! She was still caught up in another dimension but she found a way to use an older victimized companion to bridge the gap and deliver the good Doctor a chilling message of ultimate annihilation! When the Doctor realized that somebody in the other dimension had knowledge to convey he stiffened at the description of the bearer of the news and was thunderstruck by the words she spoke -- end part 1.

To say I was excited and had chills running down my spine would be something of an understatement. Actually I suppose that would be a quite apt description but it sounds more dramatic when I type it out that way you understand.

So this coming Friday comes the second part and the romantic in me desperately hopes those two crazy kids somehow end up sharing some kind of intimate moment for once. The BBC America channel has hinted that a death will be in the offering so perhaps Rose will meet her end but as long as it's done right I wouldn't mind -- as long as they share that moment that is.

Kiss her dammit!

*ahem*

But life goes on and Billie Piper's acting career goes forward. She has a series in the States on the Showtime network called Secret Diary of a Call Girl for which I thank telvisnostic for turning me on to as I had erroneously thought that she had joined the cast of the Showtime series WEEDS due to the way the show was being advertised. I have yet to see an episode yet but I'm keen to watch it because as you might have deciphered by my subtle clues, I'm somewhat keen on her.

I thank the very few of you who read this for enduring my Dr. Who rant and yes I realize that probably a decent amount of the handful of my viewers won't really understand or care what I'm talking about but I needed to vent.

I'm not sure how I did it. I didn't get paid for it. I didn't get accolades for it. I didn't even get free food for it. Yet somehow, for some unknown reason, I managed to get up early each and every day and immerse myself fully in the world of the latest E3 Media and Business summit.

I watched every feed I could find. I kept detailed notes of my likes and dislikes of every conference. I furiously scribbled names and titles on any handy piece of paper for further reference fearful, always fearful, that my brain would become easily distracted by all the swirling colors and shiny pulsating lights and ever so easily unburden my mind of a precious shred of knowledge.

I even doubled-up my coverage by leaving a feed open on G4 playing in the backround so that the second a piece of information was uncovered I would be there. I could turn from feed to feed and...um, feed upon the knowledge being spewed forth like a technicolor display of dancing waters -- so bright and shiny, so dark and gritty, I could reach out and touch it but it would only run through my fingers as if it never existed. No, the games aren't ready for release just yet. But I was ready, very ready, to find out everything. No stone would be left unturned.

Did I mention that I consider myself a casual gamer?

Obviously if you watched what I watched and you are a gamer of diverse tastes then you are fully aware of the onslaught of gaming goodness coming our way. I could go and on about my favorites, or games that really disappointed me, or perhaps games that completely confounded me. But after that intense barrage of gaming glory I thought I'd just concentrate on a few games from a few questionably named categories that I created, that I had little to no interest in before E3. That's the whole purpose of the E3 coverage after all right?

THE EPIC

Resistance 2 for the Playstation 3

This is really the only game that just took me completely by surprise and just floored me. You see...I'm just not really much of a FPS or Covert OPS gaming type of guy. I do like to play FPS games here and there, but usually just WWII or fantasy types of FPS games. I'm really just generally bored with Sci-fi oriented FPS games and I think that the death match modes just killed the growth of the games. I'm just old school -- give me a machine gun, a pistol, and a shotgun and I'm good. I'll kill that monster for you ma'am don't you worry.

But this game just blew me away. Going into a city overrun with aliens monsters and fighting off monsters quite literally as large as a skyscraper?! I have to knock a building on it to kill it?! So I have to play a cat and mouse game with the monster from Cloverfield in order to put it down?! Awesome! I'm down!

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for multiple platforms

Okay sure, sure -- I'm a nerd. I was there in 1977, a very diminutive lad who always had to sit in the front row so that the towering adults wouldn't obscure my vision, watching Star Wars and happy as a pig in mud. But my joy for the Star Wars universe has diminished quite a bit since those days. Those prequel films really did a lot of harm to my psyche.

So when this game was announced my feeling was slight interest tempered with vague apathy. Sure I liked the Jedi Outcast and Jedi Knight games for the Xbox but I really wasn't that excited for another game treading the same ground. Boy was I wrong. This game looks and seems to play exactly how I hoped it would. The fighting is fast and furious and it really put me in the mind of the sorely underrated game Psi-Ops for the PS2.

Tomb Raider - Underworld for multiple platforms

Much like Star Wars the Tomb Raider license just seemed really played out to me. They did make some improvements in making a decent game in the last iteration, just not enough to interest me. From the footage that I saw of this game they have definitely piqued my interest once again. The action looked really good and responsive, the sense of exploring the unknown without being forcibly led seemed intact, and Lara's curves - I mean environments look really...um, inviting.

The Interesting

inFAMOUS for the Playstation 3

A sandbox superhero game in which your decisions and actions will decide whether you are considered a hero, a villain, or perhaps somewhere in between. You control and can summon and shoot electricity and the city is overrun with criminals. Now go! I really like the simple but fun mechanic of this game. You can jump on vehicles, crawl and scale any building and have a duck and cover firefight with villians trying to shoot them while you fry them!

...or do you? You could just create electrical handcuffs and knock them out. Some citizens got caught up in the firefight and were struck down. Will you use your electrical powers to revive them? Did I mention that your electrical powers just arc like crazy all over the place? Cool game that I never heard of until now.

Dark Void for multiple platforms

Do you remember the awesome Crimson Skies game for the XBox? Well this is made by most of the people from that team! That alone was almost enough to win me over but then I calmed down and watched the gameplay footage. The designers have decided to make a fully 3D environment but they included the ceiling. You have a future-retro jetpack and you can fly. Sure you can run around like normal just shooting up the bad guys, but then you can just jump off the cliff and scale your way to victory.

They created a nice camera technique so that when you come across a cliff face the camera will flip underneath you so that you engage in a duck and cover firefight utilizing the rocky projections as protection. Nice stuff and the mechanical designs are really nice.

Valkyria Chronicles for the PS3

This was shown ever so briefly at the Sony conference and the graphics really caught my eye. The character designs are similar to the fantasy WWII anime designs used in Operation Darkness but in this game they give them an odd watercolor look. The game's mechanics are strategy RPG and it looks to be a real hidden gem! I'm not much of a strategy gamer but this game might just make me change my mind.

The Downright Odd

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom for unknown platforms

An independent game that is being shopped around in an attempt to get it published. Things look good for a XBL and Sony online entry and I certainly hope it does as I really want to play this game. Obstensibly a puzzle platform game but you create time paradoxes in order to obtain delicious pie! My descriptions really won't do this game justice so just stop the creator's website and enjoy!

Official Site

Deadly Creatures for the Wii

An action/adventure fighting game in which you play a tarantula and a scorpion? Sounds like and odd idea and so immediately I'm very interested in it. The developers are really pushing the power of the Wii engine and it's nice seeing somebody actually really trying to make a different but interesting game without resorting to shovelware tactics. The lizard boss fights look epic!

Onechanbara Revolution for the Wii

This is basically a port of a game that was released on the XBox 360 in Japan but it never came out in the States. I always hoped it would especially after they released another game from this company, Earth Defense Force 2017, but they never did and every day I cried and cried in despair. Let's get one thing straight -- D3 doesn't make good games. They quickly make rough games with funny themes that are slightly above the Burger King games in terms of quality. Sometimes they're kind of fun and other times...not so much.

The games are part of a series called simple games and that's what they are. Simple, sometimes fun, but simple. On the upside the simplistic nature of the controls should actually transfer well to the Wii which isn't really generally tooled for lightning quick moves. Oh yeah the game! You basically play a bikini clad warrior (along with some other various sexy girl types) and you shoot and chop up zombies like there's no tomorrow. That's it! Have fun warrior!

Oh yeah, one more thing...

The Lost

Where the hell is Tekken 6?! It was suppose to be the game that was going to make me have to buy a PS3! A year ago they had a teaser trailer and now a whole year later -- NOTHING?! WTH Namco?

The bee-yooo-tee-ful Kodak Theatre is now quiet and empty, a condition brought about by the obvious lack of programming on this fair night and the simple fact that long ago the Kodak theatre employees would have surely called the police on you if you insisted on staying long after all the conferences had ended. Honestly! I can't take you blog readers anywhere! As purty as it is you can't stay here and play DS games all night long! So what happened here? In an excercise to sorely test my self-editorial skills I shall attempt to write a brief impression of each conference. I'll surely fail so if you're bored and just want to humor me you can flip down to the bottom to get my final concise word.

Microsoft seems to have turned into the what everyone wants to force Nintendo to be, a company with a solid insight into the future of gaming and plenty of games for every genre and gaming sensibility. They attacked from almost every side of the gaming community. They immediately launched into Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5 and Gears of War 2 -- all just awesome looking titles that demand your attention when they are being demonstrated.

Hardcore gamers - check

They hit upon new XBox Live games and content like Galaga Legions, Geometry Wars 2, Portal: Still Alive (!) and new content in the form of GTAIV stuff as well as community developed games for download. They announced an agreement with Netflix in response to their weak movie presence which could be huge in the near future. This further solidifies their online dominance to a vast audience of gamers of all types.

Online gamers - check

They announced a new Banjo and Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and a proper sequel to their suprise smash hit Viva Pinata. They also included an odd You're in the Movies game in which you splice yourself and your friends into films as well as an update to the Scene It! game.

Kids and casual fun gamers - check

Then they went on to hit on every level with announcements of sequels to Guitar Hero and Rock Band as well as a new singing game called Lips which allows you to sing along to any song on your iPod or Zune.

Massive trendy games and popular technology tie-ins - check

Then suddenly it happened! The next Final Fantasy would be on the XBox 360! This was an actually stunning announcement and drew a lot of positive reaction from the crowd.

End on a bang and to leave them mumbling excitedly all the way out the door - check

Oh wait! There was one more thing...

...the hell? This was the one moment in the presentation in which there was much confused mumbling which was quickly followed by polite and erratic applause. You know...the kind of accolade you give to a drunk person attempting to tell you a joke in the hopes that they will just go away? Yeah. Everyone is a tad iffy about the whole change. Most think it's a Wii-ification and others think it's MS's attempt to make the online XBL look more like the much maligned Vista OS.

Overall though I was very happy with the presentation and it seemed to have a little something for everyone. Even though it was long-ish, the whole affair seemed to move along fairly well but that may be due to my heavier interest in the 360. In fact I'm pretty sure it was...DON'T TRUST ME!

Whoof! This seemed like the longest presentation in the world even though it wasn't any longer than MS's. Again, it might due to my lack of PS3 goodness in my house but it also might be because I was very ill whilst watching the whole affair. At any rate let's forge ahead and try to hit this quick and dirty as to be brief.

The Good - Resistance 2 is crazy beautiful. I'm not a big sci-fi oriented FPS type of guy but immediately I wanted to stop everything and playt his game once I saw the showdown with that giant monster. You don't understand! It's you, a super soldier, against the monster from Cloverfield!!! My God it looked awesome! Nice job! Star Wars - The Force Unleashed is great! God of War 3 holy crap! Loco Roco and Patapon sequels for the PSP! Great PSP support! Online DC game could be cool! A montage of awesome games coming out that I had to go back and quickly figure out what was what. In that montage I saw something interesting.

Well this looks interesting. It puts me in the mind of Operation Darkness. Silly me and my proclivity for grabbing on to odd little side games that nobody plays.

The Bad - Yakuza 2 (AKA Ryu Ga Gotoku 2)? While it's nice to finally see this game come out it's been a loooooooong time and they would have been better served to immediately try to get Ryu Ga Gotoku - Kenzan! out right on its heels. Throwing in the announcement that Sony is offering a new exciting bundle...for the PS2. Dude I've heard of hedging your bets to get money from every port but seriously, do this stuff away from the crowds. This kind of stuff just makes me worry about you Sony. Speaking of which...

The Ugly - Sony aired various testimonials from programmers insisting that the PS3 was not hard to program for and that they love programming for it because you can just keep getting more and more power from it. Now if you know any programmers that indeed work on games for the PS3 then you know that this is completely untrue. I constantly have to hear from my friends on how painfully awful it is and exactly why in ways that I don't fully understand as I'm not a programmer. Oh Sony...if somebody insists over and over again that they don't have a problem without anybody prompting them to do so then they probably do.

Overall though - just tons of games that are very exciting even though I don't have a PS3 which speaks volumes. Hmmm...no Tekken 6 though.

Oh man here we go! It's the program that seemingly everybody was whining about. Indeed I will admit that I really don't enjoy my Wii system. To top it off I thought last year's presentation was the worst I've ever seen as they spent most of it concentrating on the perplexingly awful Wii-Fit board. But that was last year so let's let bygones be bygones and move on.

I actually enjoyed Nintendo's presentation. It was incredibly brief which, although I'm not sure was the greatest idea, did make the whole affair move along quite smoothly. Although the presenters weren't great, they did juggle them around a bit so their presence didn't seem to wear as much as the other presenters.

There was much Nintendo fun-nessness to be had. Raving Rabbits, Star Wars - Jedi, Wii-Sports resorts, that scary Wii-music thing with all that electronic sax and flute noise, and then lots and lots of exciting DS goodness. Good lord lots of DS goodness! Also...GTA IV for the DS?!?! Good Lord! Although I was still very sleepy and not at all well, as soon as Animal Crossing came up I almost fell out of my chair in excitement. Jeez! What is it about that game? I love it so much!

But...what about the hardcore gamers Daemon? What about our needs?!

Here's the reality. Nintendo didn't abandon the hardcore gamers, the hardcore gamers abandoned Nintendo years ago. Remember that N64 that you didn't play as much of because the Dreamcast had shiny games with hot chicks and blood which you then quickly abandoned for the PS2 which had even more blood and more detailed hot chicks? Why didn't you buy any of that 3rd party software?

Remember that Gamecube system which was actually very solid and awesome but you didn't buy? In fact you spat on it and called it kiddy whilst beating hookers down and blowing up the heads of aliens. Guess what happens when you ignore and abuse somebody? They pick themselves up, get a haircut, buy some new clothes, and go out looking for new friends that will accept them for who they are. Guess what happened?

They found friends. Lots and lots of friends. Friends who thought nobody thought about them either. Guess what? These friends have lots of disposable cash -- and lots of kids. So now the folks in Wii-land are supposed to take you back and worry about your needs? Didn't we give you a Zelda and a Mario? You want one every year?! Have we ever done that?

So am I surprised that Nintendo didn't address the need of the "hardcore" gamers? No. Why should they? Hardcore gamers have demonstrated quite clearly that they don't care about them and Nintendo has always -- ALWAYS -- been about Nintendo. They are notorious for their lack of concern towards third party developers and that's that. So here's fun Nintendo stuff to play with. Shut up and have some fun you killing machine you.

The funny thing is that there are in fact serious gamer games coming out for the Wii. If you do something as simple as to look at the E3 listing of games and select it to filter all the Wii games you will see awesome things like Mad World, Megaman 9, Castlevania Judgement, and a new Tales of Symphonia among others. Sound like normal adult games for all gaming types doesn't it?

So overall, even though I didn't really like most of what Nintendo had to offer, I could clearly see why lots of people would and so I give them a big thumbs up and I reserve a different digit entirely for all the furious hardcore gamers that won't stop whining about the mother they abandoned long ago.

Awww crap I really typed a lot again didn't I? Well I'm feeling much better so I'm riding on a high of sorts I suppose so lets sum it up for those of you that skipped ahead.

Microsoft - The leaders of the core gamer crowd -tons of cool games - Something for everybody - all things to all people - Very exciting.

Sony - The foundation of the core game crowd - a decent amount of really cool games - not as many exclusives in order to differentiate themselves from the 360 lineup but they're getting there - they need to move ahead faster and get more stuff out before MS develops a new system.

Nintendo - In a world of their own making and boy it feels good - Nintendo just gleefully plays around and makes tons of dough laughing at the hardcore gamers that spurned them - The DS is a unstoppable juggernaut - some interesting Wii-sclusives (my word! I made it up!) from third parties coming up but buried under Nintendo's hype machine. Go play!

So who won Daemon? That's what everyone wants to know right? Isn't it obvious?

Everyone.

No that's not a cop out. You might not have noticed but we are in the middle of a gaming renaissance. If you stop and think about all the great games that you'll never have time to play because there are so damn many of them then you'll go crazy. No matter what system you have there's plenty of games to play and have a great time with. So get out of here and go play some games you crazy kids!

Now for that pesky cat that posted my last blog...

Awwww...I can't stay mad at you, you little ball of fur.