My E3 2008 favorites!

Microsoft over-delivered at this year's E3 and there too much information to try a summarize it all. Instead, I want to share my favorite announcements in no particular order.

* Gears of War -- They will have bots! (games tend not to have bots these days). Also "Horde" mode
where you have 5player coop fighting off waves and waves of enemy hordes (who will be the last
to survive).

* Fable 2 online coop. We knew there was offline, but now online! Great!

* Red Alert 3 -- New faction "Rising Sun (Japan)". Looks beautiful. Canceled on PS3.

* Avatar system -- I welcome this new system. And I think this is just the first step
in a greater plan for social networking embodiment

* Dashboard update -- up to 8 people in a private chat room (you can all be doing different things like playing different games, doing nothing, watching a movie, and still be able to chat together). You can also share games, videos, and other stuff of on hard drive with other users. Truly the next step in social networking for consoles. Yes, blades are still there. ;)

* Netflix integration a no cost. Wow! If you have a netflix account and xbox live already, then
at no extra cost, you can queue up movies and get the downloaded straight to your XBox. Awesome strategic move by Microsoft and Netflix. Everyone wins.

* Portal: Still Alive (Portal 2). Exclusive sequel to the popular Portal coming to XBox Live Arcade this fall.

* Fallout 3 producer Todd Howard stands up and says that Fallout 3 will have substantial exclusive DLC for XBox 360

* Geometry Wars 2 with 4player online coop... That's right! Woohoo. The best $5 I've spent in my entire life

* Resident Evil 5 will have online coop so you don't have to be afraid alone

* id Software (John Carmack) partners with EA

* Final Fantasy XIII is coming to the XBox 360 and releases on the same day as the PS3 release. ZOMG!


I should note that bungie.net has yet to release any info regarding the Halo universe. Their countdown clock has about 24 hours left so be sure to see new udpates soon.

Sex and Video Games

Get a Virtual Haircut: Realistic 3D Sound enviornment

Wear headphones and click the "Play" button at this site: ( I know it's Portuguese, but you can find the play button under the number listing. )

http://www.gmoura.com/blog/2007/05/vai-um-corte-de-cabelo.html

There's also an option to download the mp3 fileby Right-clicking, Save As.

Back home (Zune, Wii Fit, Cam-Trax)

I just got back from a week trip to the U.S.A. I miss living in my country. But at least I brought some goodies back with me...

Zune
I finally got my long-awaited Zune 80 and I'm more than satisfied. I actually bought the Red Zune 80 for myself and my wife. After doing much research on it, having it in hand looks much better than all those YouTube videos I watched over and over again. And the Zune Marketplace, like the Xbox 360 Marketplace, is a fantastic and enjoyable software to work with all made with Flash (It has that flawless, bubbly feel). My wife has one because she loves to listen to music throughout the day, which means I also get a chance to experience many of Zune sharing features like transferring songs, video podcasts, etc. It worked flawlessly. I can even sync my Zune with my PC wirelessly, yep. I also downloaded several XNA Zune Games for free made with the XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP (community) release. Some of the games I downloaded are multiplayer, so my wife and I lay and bed and battle each other wirelessly using our Zunes all the while listening to our favorite tracks in the background and sounds effects of the game.

Wii Fit
I've also stocked up on some new Wii games (Boom Blox, Metroid, Mario Kart, Zelda, etc) and I was lucky enough to get a Wii Fit. Big thanks to my older brother for working his special channels to get me one which are still on a very limited bases. The kids just love to play on the Wii Fit. My top three games on the Wii Fit are hula-hoop, the marble madness looking balance game, and the soccer head-butt game. Definitely fun.

Cam-Trax
Speaking of fun peripherals like the Wii Fit and Wii Zapper (with Zelda), someone shared a great video of a team of folks who uses Image Recognition to turn almost any type of object into a game controller. Even a soda bottle. I've embedded the video below.

Human Computation for the Zune

Zune Social Program Manager Jessica is working on new social feature to add to Zune Social. This
new feature was decided to be a music trivia game where users try to guess what music people were talking about based on words, phrases, etc. provided by other people of the community.

Alarms in my head went off about a Human Computation Tech-Talk (see below) I watched last week by a recent Ph.D graduate from Carnegie Mellon.

I immediately signed up on Zune.net to add my input on this subject to the forum since the design of this feature is heavily operated based on community contribution. Here's what I posted...

--- BEGIN POST ---
You rock Jessica!

But Please, please, please if you want to design a better game that's fun and addicting which in turn improves music search quality using human brainpower for free (which is what this is really about)then watch the following video in
its entirety...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtFroEJN1nI

Designing atop Luis' principles of Asymmetric/Symmtretric games is the way to go in my opinion.

My $0.02,

~= Chris =~

P.S. I can't wait til I make my next visit to the U.S. so that I can buy a Zune 80 (red). I'm an American living in Brazil (oh the horror of electronics down here).
--- END POST ---

And here's the video:

Hacking the XBox 360 Controller for Military Use

Checkout this article on the military use of videogame controllers to help control their air and ground units. I think it's brilliant. To sum up the article, game controllers used to be highly influenced by military control interfaces spawning gamepads like the Atari game stick and the arcade controller, however, after years of evolution the military is learning a lesson or two from the videogame industry.

However, the real issue I want to talk about here is the difference between using a PC keyboard/mouse interface versus the use of thumbsticks which are widely used by almost all modern gaming consoles. More praise to console systems like XBox 360 and Playstation used outside of their original domain was surely to prompt a fanboy war between hardcore PC gamers (who thinks a mouse/keyboard configuration kicks everyone's ass) and console gamers (who argue that the thumbsticks are actually a better choice in some situations).

Here's my take on it (which I also posted to the website comments section). I'm in favor of thumbsticks (specifically the XBox 360 configuration)and here's why?

1) As stated by others, in real-life you won't be turning 180 degrees in one sec in the air or via a ground controlled vehicle. Less stress on your wrist. I can go for hours using thumbs.

2) If you have a keyboard and mouse (or just mouse) and you're in an airplane, what happens when you FLY UPSIDE DOWN???? How much control will you have then? With a gamepad, you can be upside down, on your side, whatever and still have full control! Ziiinnngg!

Robots! Robots! Robots!

I'm a big fan of American style football. But besides rest of the world is concerned, I see soccer as being an okay sport and I don't mind watching parts of the game here and there. One of my gripes about soccer is the lack of points making it (to me) seem a little boring. However, I find Robot Soccer much more entertaining. Check out the vid...





I still haven't gotten my Pleo, but it's still growing in popularity, etc. Perhaps I will also invest in a second robot too called Zeno -- despite people being afraid of its stare giving him names like Chucky :)



The three things I like about Zeno is its Speech Recognition, Facial Recognition, and Facial expressions. Plus, it should not be too expensive because all the hard-processing is done by your real computer while Zeno connects to your PC wirelessly via wifi.