Archive for January, 2011

Reasons why the Nintendo 3DS is a regression

Posted by: on: January 19 2011 • Categorized in: Games

Just a quick rant. I’ve generally enjoyed Nintendo’s handheld offerings, especially since they evolved from time wasters to serious gaming platforms. Some of my best gaming moments ever (i.e. the Castlevania series) were on the Nintendo DS. Sadly the 3DS has failed to capture any interest from me. I thought I’d share my quick rant on why that is:

  1. 3D is the new motion touch gimmick. Nintendo loves their gimmicks. The gimmicks bring in the casual gamers, and Nintendo is wildly profitable as a result. However I find because these things really are gimmicks for the marketing department, developers seem to treat them as such too. How many Nintendo DS games were hindered by thrown in usage of the second screen or pen controls? Far too many. For every game that really used the touch well, much to many used it for nothing but distracting motions that required breaking the flow of the game. (Compare this to the iPhone where most games use the touch well, with very few falling back to shitty on screen joypad buttons). It ruins the immersion to constantly switch control schemes between buttons and stylus, and frankly the stylus is a shitty way to play games. Game developers will use the 3D in gimmicky ways, ruining the immersion. While I generally find his movies to be awful, Michael Bay hits the nail on the head when it comes to the gimmicky use of 3D in *every* movie nowadays:“Right now, it looks like fake 3D, with layers that are very apparent. You go to the screening room, you are hoping to be thrilled, and you’re thinking, huh, this kind of sucks. People can say whatever they want about my movies, but they are technically precise, and if this isn’t going to be excellent, I don’t want to do it. And it is my choice.”Milk the 3D fad dry Nintendo…
  2. The price is too high. Sure lots of people will argue that it has a camera, and storage, and a buncha other crap to explain the $100 jump over the DS, but at $249 USD its $20 more than an 8GB iPod Touch, which features more storage, a far richer software echo system (minus the AAA titles that Nintendo themselves always develop, really the only thing keeping serious gamers on their platforms), two cameras, and a gorgeous 960×640 IPS panel which is far better than the silly 3D + second panel which will surely look jaundice over time like every previous DS…
  3. The battery lifeThis is a big one. One of my favourite things about the DS lite is that it has superb battery life, literally a week of my commuting and casual play. The official Nintendo rating on it is 15-19 hours. Superb. It’s a big reason why I enjoy the experience over the PSP which always had maybe 6 hours at the most (though thankfully you could easily carry two batteries for those overseas flights).  Iwata himself dismissed the PSP for having ‘sub 10 hour’ battery life at one point (I can’t find the quote). Here we are and the 3DS is quoted at 3-5 hours while playing 3DS titles. Yikes. That becomes a hindrance guys. My *laptop* pulls 12 hours of normal workload, my iPad pulls like 10 hours of HD video. This reminds me of the GameGear. I was so excited about it, until I realized it had like two hours of battery life, then you had to dump the six AAs… good thing most games didn’t have SRAM. With the 3DS reportedly taking 3.5 hours to charge… its all together possible you’ll have to spend more time charging it than playing it…
  4. The 3D tech isn’t well suited to a casual handheld. So I really was excited about this since I hate 3D glasses, but sadly the Nintendo tech has its draw backs. First of all, the 3D effect depth slider is a bit weird. This itself ruins immersion. The reason they need this though, is to ] different hand holding positions. Yep, this means as you adjust yourself you will need to fiddle with the slider to get the 3D effect looking good again. Maybe its just me? but I am pretty fidgety when playing handheld games. Many people have reportedly complained of eyestrain, Nintendo has suggested you need to keep the unit steady while playing. Well if I was supposed to be sitting at a desk while playing, I should probably not be playing a handheld game. Nintendo has issued the usual eye-strain warnings and provided a way for parents to disable (and lock out) the effect for children under 6... sounds like the VirtualBoy all over again (I did have one of those when it was new, it was awful, and gimmicky)
  5. Region locking is back. Really Nintendo? I thought you and I were passed this. One of the main reasons I loved this latest generation was that the DS, the PSP and the PS3 were completely region free. The Xbox360 has region protection but its up to individual publishers if they want to enforce it, and the Wii was shittily region locked. Some people like to play imported games. I am one of those people. My game library is pretty huge (near 1000 titles) and is about 50% is NTSC-J content. On the DS and PSP I was never forced to buy a second console just to play import games. Frankly I’m not nearly as hard core as I used to be, and probably wouldn’t double buy a console to play titles that don’t get localized, as sad as that is. Nintendo has decided the 3DS will once again be region locked, this is a regression.

Thats my rant. I’ll probably end up buying one when the next Dragon Quest title is out, the price has dropped, and it’ll sit in the 2D mode 90% of the time. Just slightly disappointed.

North American (Detroit) International Auto Show 2011 part 1 of 3

Posted by: on: January 17 2011 • Categorized in: Cars
Nestled in the heart of America’s motor city, the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) is often the home of big reveals in the automotive industry. This year saw very few big reveals when it came to concepts, but it did show off many of the next generation versions of everybodies favourite consumer models. I’m going to break this up into 3 posts, mostly because I’m pretty crunched for time today, and want to get stuff out there as I go.
Let’s start with my good friends over at BMW, this will likely be the longest section, be warned :P. If you wanted to see the the hideous 2009 5-series Gran Turismo hatchback or the rather bland 2009 7-series, they were there. The rather nice looking new M-sport package on the 550i (pictured right) was present. Definitely the focus was on the new F-platforms, instead of the meat and potatoes 3-series that makes up the bulk of BMW’s sales. The new 6-series convertible made its debut, and frankly of all the new platforms, its the best looking and probably the only one I say is an actual improvement. It’s a bit obscene that with a starting price of $90k it’s still a rag top, but BMW probably has a market for it…  Sadly the M3 was not present, most likely so not to overshadow their big ‘reveal’…
…the 1-series M (1M, 1-series M Coupe, depending on who / when you ask). Unlike the other 1-series coupes,  its a very good looking car in person, not quite as disporportionatly tall as pictures lead you to believe. Sitting inside it gave me mixed feelings, as an owner of the Z4-derived ‘M Coupe’. The interior is nice though features some lesser-quality materials, keep in mind it’s a 1-series at a 1-series price point. Clutch travel is improved (a bit shorter), shifting feel is lessened (less ‘oldschool’ but probably an improvement TBH) but overall it felt much less cockpitty. The seats are fairly standard sports sedan faire, not the racing buckets the Z4 M Coupe got, and the sitting position is rather pedesterian. Considering that many of these will become daily drivers, the car is quite practical thanks to the comfortable driving position and decent trunk space. Sadly the backseats, in my opinion, are a bit useless due to the lack of leg room and thus a waste of weight.  Overall it’s a different car than the previous ‘M Coupe’ tried to be, its far more comfortable and practical and at a very low price point (well the lowest an M car has seen at $47k USD), with similar performance.  Can’t really judge anything else enthusiast-wise until I drive one, probably mid to late 2011. Either way, it’s really an awesome offering, and from what I’m hearing now they won’t nearly be as limited as initially intended.

Next up is Ford, who was my favourite exhibiter at the show this year. The big focus for Ford was… the new Focus, which was not a new reveal, but will be going on sale shortly. Otherwise known as the ‘World Focus’, the Focus in Europe has been a very different car since 2004, in fact based on the Mazda 3 platform. Ford USA has been dragging on the 1998 Focus platform with facelift after facelift, finally merging the two products. The proper Focus will be available here in early 2011, with the newly revealed ST (seen right) model going on sale in 2012. The ST model looked fantastic, a seriously hot hatch. Ford’s big crowd draw however was the Mustang BOSS.

The Mustang BOSS is a bumped up Mustang GT with a whole smorgishboard of upgraded parts, producing 444HP out of its 5L V8. Ford had a dyno setup where they did continuous dyno runs all day with lucky participants in the passenger seat. One amusing thing Ford touted about the BOSS was that it had FOUR exhaust pipes, ok nothing really interesting there right. Well Ford has placed the additional pair of these exhaust pipes infront of the rear wheels, to increase the sound within the cabin. A bit corny but I’ll give it a pass… This package at $41k USD is exceptional. What was actually appealing to me was BOSS Laguna Seca addition, which was a stripped out track version, which loses the rear seats for a partial cage. Frankly, this would make a seriously good weekend track car, much cheaper than anything else on the market. I was a bit disapointed that the Laguna Seca version maintained the additional cabin-sound-producing tail pipes, and didn’t lose them for weight savings.

Onto Honda, who really didn’t have a huge presence. Their big feature was the CR-Z and their silly CR-Z Si concept. This car is a pig and is a good example of whats wrong with Honda’s looks-fast-goes-slow product lineup, in my humblest opinion. They had a bunch of kiosks setup with Gran Turismo 5, so you could try your hand at driving a CR-Z around the Ring. It’s a Honda Insight Hybrid with an “attractive” body guys… Of course the actually important thing from team Honda was the next-gen Civic concept. Sadly little was really revealed aside from a pair of very finalized looking concept cars. They look more revolutionary than evolutionary, and I’d say its definitely an improvement, allbeit nothing ground breaking. Good looking cars.

Last but not least for this post, we’ll talk about Porsche. This was Tom’s favourite display of the show. Sadly, Porsche had taken its 918 RSR Hybrid race car home after its big reveal, so even on the first day of the open show, it was gone. Because of that, Porsche had nothing really new to share. They had the Turbo S, an upgraded Turbo for those who really need even more car, but really, I think is just a bit steep north of $200k. They had the Cayman R, which is a fantastic package. Also on display was the Speedster (pictured right), a car that reminds me of the Porsches I lusted after in my childhood, but is both exceptionally over priced and completely sold out (356 units) as far as I know, on display for its gorgeousness alone. The real gem of the Porsche line up was the 911 GTS (pictured left). Wedged between the Carrera S and the GT3, it’s a car with the oomf of the Speedster, but at a much more reasonable $112k. My darling the GT3 and his evil older brother the GT2 were both not present, but they’re hardly consumer models.

In the next segment, I’ll post my thoughts on Mercedes, Hyundai, Chevy, Range Rover, Bently and Volkswagen, followed by a final post with Audi, Chysler, Toyota, Hyunadi, Tesla and everyone else.

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