Watching the Iwata asks now. Very interesting. I love the art style, it's like a mix of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.

I'm excited for the way it controls, but I'm waiting to hear more hands on impressions since the on-stage demo was so sketchy it was hard to tell how well anything really worked. I hope in the future Nintendo thinks ahead and records the gameplay before hand. Yeah, it's not as cool when it's not live--but it'll leave people with a better impression.

I think it's less that Nintendo needs to make a phone, and more that they need to partner with a wireless carrier as Amazon did with the Kindle. There would be no need for a subscription, the cost could simply be built into the price of the system. This might result in a higher price point, but if Nintendo was smart they could make it work.

Ah, but 'good' graphics are about much more than horsepower. Art design can easily make a game on the Wii look absolutely fantastic. Look at some of the screenshots from Fragile Dreams. The game may not be setting the world on fire, but it looks absolutely beautiful.

I think the games industry is to obsessed with technology. Technology doesn't make games look good, art does. I like to think of it kind of like, technology = tools. Maybe you could think of an NES game as being something drawn using only a pencil. The Wii might be an analog of a painting done with only a few colors and just one brush. Finally a 360/PS3 game is done on a canvas twice the size with a full palette of colors.

An artist who understands the medium and restraints they are working with could create a piece of art with any of the above. I've seen pencil sketches more beautiful than full paintings, just as there are NES games more attractive and pleasing to the eye than some 360 games.

It's true that the artist with the larger canvas, full palette, and variety of brush sizes might seem to have the advantage. But the reality is that having more options doesn't always equal out to better art. In fact all those options are in some ways a distraction. Or even worse they make the dull blandness of bad art stand out all the more.

An artist who focuses only on pencil sketches doesn't have to worry about superfluous details. All they have to do is focus on the lines.

Video games, being based on technology, are hypersensitive to it, but given time it begins to become clear how important art really is. A simple example that I like to look at is Wind Waker vs. Twilight Princess. Both from the same series, by the same basic team, on the same console. And yet one continues to look gorgeous to this day and the other looked dated almost from the day it came out.

Another good example is Halo 3 vs Metroid Prime 3. Halo, again, looked dated almost as soon as it released. It tried to fill that larger canvas, but it filled it with art that doesn't really stand out. Prime 3 on the other hand is filled with gorgeously designed and designed environments. On a technical level Halo wins in every category. And yet somehow from a visual standpoint Metroid is the more attractive game.

I guess my point is that a Final Fantasy on Wii could look as good from an art point of view as the PS3/360 game IF square choose to spend the time on art design. Sadly many Wii games are designed with little thought towards art, almost as if developers can't even be bothered to create art with fewer tools.

It's a sad state of affairs that even the games that do focus on art, games like Zach and Wiki, De Blob, Mad World, No More Heroes, Murumassa, etc seem to fail.

I think you nailed it here. Especially when you take into account other sources that have confirmed the exploration element is still intact. IGN mentioned both in podcasts and in the written previews and hands-on that the end of the demo opened up and showed off classic Metroid exploration elements.

I always hate when people take translations too seriously. Sound-clips are bad enough when they're in their original language. They're down right useless (or close to it) when translated. Heck, even the clarification you're talking about is confusing....

Lol, I just hope your thoughts are more insightful than the 'it's just a gimmick' shtick that all the other major games journalists seem to be parroting. I just want one person, just one, to realize that depth perception does ADD something to games. Predators have binocular vision for a reason, and that reason isn't just that 3D images are teh cool. It's that seeing in true 3D allows for better judgment of distances and where things are in space.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binocular_vision

If video games can't benefit from that then I'm a crazy person...

I'm going to take a stand and say this is cool. A game I love getting played by a larger audience? Sounds good to me. I sometimes think we get way too caught up in the "console wars" and forget what it's all about: the games.

De Blob was a cool little game that did something a little different and it makes me happy that it succeeded.

I agree waggling to jump was a mistake in De Blob, but I will defend the overall quality of that game to the death. TO THE DEATH I SAY! It sounds like you just never got that good at the game, as there's no reason you should have been riding the walls where you didn't want to go. Properly controlled De Blob goes exactly where you want when you want him to go there.

As for it being repetitive, I'd like to know what you're comparing it to. Most games revolve around repetitive tasks. The true test of a game is not avoiding repetition (no game truly manages this) but in finding a way to make what you're doing consistently fun and interesting.

De Blob's clever use of sound and color more than managed this for me (and many other players). There are a variety of challenges to be found in the game ranging from speed-runs to fantastic platforming to clever and unique color challenges.

Obviously it's all in the eye of the beholder. Different people like different things and it sounds like De Blob just isn't your scene. All the same you do it a disservice to not recognize that it IS a good game.

Instant preorder. I love these quirky off-beat games. Nice break from the usual video game grind.

Owch...well, now I know and knowing is half the battle. The other half apparently involves finding every copy of this game and destroying them in a massive fire. On second thought the fumes would probably turn people into zomibes so maybe that's not such a good idea...

WHO AM I KIDDING. I was born to be a major part of the Zombieocolypse!!! Time to gather my supplies...machine gun. Check. Grenades? Check. Shot-gun? Check. Completely disposable 'friend' to distract the zombies with? Check. Hot babe who will inevitably fall madly in love with me?

Er...that one might take a while.

Ahh! I've gotta go out and get this game pronto. It fell through the cracks for me, even though I've been looking forward to it for a while. CURSE YOU SMALL WALLET...grow bigger and add some more money while you're at it.

Just don't grow too big. I don't want people thinking I've got one butt cheek that's bigger than the other.

Is that TMI? Sorry. I'll refrain from mentioning my butt cheeks from now on.