I'm trying to compile all of the information regarding the event and stuff it in to one single post so pardon me if everything seems thrown together right now. Good news already flowing from the event so lets get started shall we?

1. Parasite Eve 3 announced for PSP - Hell yes. That's all I can really say about this one. I was totally bummed when I heard that PE3 was going to be a mobile game, but when news was hitting that the mobile game had hit a snag it looks like they shifted to PSP development. Either way my PSP just had its socks rocked.

2. Final Fantasy XIII demo coming with Advent Children Complete - Awesome. I was expecting a demo, but to see it being packaged in with the FFVIIAC BD release is just icing on the cake.

3. New FFXIII Versus trailer - Can't watch it because it's closed doors, but I'll post up a link later if I can find anyone that has ripped it from the event.

4. Kingdom Hearts Coded expected for 2008 winter release (Japan) - Meh, wasn't picking this up but for people looking forward to it this is good news.

5. Final Fantasy Agito XIII confirmed for PSP release - Turns out the once mobile exclusive has been set up for PSP release. Apparently the handheld is a hell of a viable platform for SE considering it's still got some damned impressive sales in Japan. Either way this is good news for me since I haven't had a good RPG in my PSP since Brave Story and Crisis Core.

6. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 and Birth by Sleep get release dates:
- Birth By Sleep = 2009
- 358/2 = Winter 2008
I think we already knew this but they are announcing it again anyways.

7. Final Fantasy Dissidia has confirmed release date: December 2008 in Japan. For the rest of us in the states and in Europe we have to wait until 2009 for out FF fighting game. :(

8. Final Fantasy XIII finally gets a release window!!! - Square-Enix has just confirmed that 2009 will be the magic year that FFXIII gets released.....in Japan. Hopefully everyone else wont have to wait too long. Also it appears that Versus XIII is expected to get a planned simultaneous worldwide release....for now anyways.

9. Japanese blogs are claiming to have seen Kefka in the Dissidia trailer. No confirmation just yet, but that bit of information is circling. If it's true I just hope they keep a similar laugh for him.

10. 14th Member of "Organization 13" is revealed and named Shion and apparently looks like Kairi or something like that.

11. Real time footage for both FFXIII and FFXIII Versus have been shown at the event. Forever-Fantasy is trying to find the trailer and will be posting that sweet awesome goodness up as soon as possible. They claim it looks like a "highly evolved FFXII" field.

12. Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete PS3 bundle announced. Expected to be released in March 2009. So, yes, Cloud does make his way back to the playstation but it looks like it's in the form of a film and not a game.

Via Final Fantasy XIII Net and Forever-Fantasy

Well, that's it for the news from the conference today. There is still one more day of the conference so I'll make another post tomorrow to include that stuff as well.

No, he isn't made of thousands of polygons, but in the realm of gaming he is far more unique to me than most of the high-res avatars I control upon my television screen. As I told all of you last month the "Start of my Affair" with serious gaming began with a 16-bit RPG game, so it should come to no surprise when I say that one of my favorite (if not my most favorite) characters also comes from the 16-bit era.

He was the first character to appear as the "Silent Protagonist" in any RPG game that I had played at the time and at first I found the idea apalling. Most of the RPG's I had purchased and rented all featured characters who spilled out their lives in wall o' text after wall o' text, but this new character never uttered a word. No, aside from the random response choices and silent emotes he never spoke a word, so his inner most thoughts were never displayed until I realized that his inner most thoughts were left up to me, the player, to experience.

I am, of course, referring to Crono from Chrono Trigger



Because I had been so accustomed to lead characters prattling off about how their lives I was seriously agitated at first by the fact that Crono was appearing as if he would never speak a single word. However, it was because of his silence and the games complete dependance upon me, the player, to decide each and every choice for him I became far more attached to his story more than any other character in an RPG. Not to mention his humble start that led to a series of unfortunate events that dragged him from one end of the time stream to the other.

He didn't have dreams of becoming a [insert generic fantastic profession that all children idolize] and the story didn't involve him having to abandon his family to leave and go through some rite of passage to become a man either. He was just some normal teen (supposedly) who was just heading off to the fair to see one of his friends and everything else just fell upon him like a perpetual stream that consisted of one ton of bricks after another, and the fact that he continuously rolled with the punches (no matter how hard they were) was what made him so likeable to me.



But how, you ask, does a character who basically never utters a single piece of dialouge manage to gain so much love? Well, that's easy. It's the fact that the game does so well of putting the player in Crono's shoes that it almost forces a bond with the story. For example, Crono's Trial after the fair, while obviously only going to end in one certain way, can in fact play out in many different fashions if Crono (you) chose wrong during your stay at the fair.

IS he guilty? IS he Not guilty? Well, that's all up to YOU now isn't it? Your choices determine Crono's fate in many instances in the game and unlike any other game I have ever played your choices can actually take Crono away from you, forever. Yes, thats right, you can lose Crono for good unless you have taken care of him and made sure of his survival. It's that type of bond with the protagonist that made me think of Crono when I first sat down to write this monthly musings.

Yes, I know it's pretty late in the month, but I had to think pretty hard about who I wanted to write about. Then it came to me while I was sitting here writing one of my own stories (personal project) and I was thinking about how, sometimes, characters can display more emotion and more of a connection with readers without ever saying word one. Then it hit me and I knew who I was going to be writing about.

So, that's pretty much it. Crono became one of my most loved characters in gaming because he was the first character I had the opportunity to make an impact on his story. His silence meant that "I" was his ego and his conscience, and through his shoes gamers were able to travel through time, save the world, and have a heck of a time along the way.

Yes, I know it's late but I was on vacation that week and I'm also really lazy. thankfully Comic-Con hasn't been a suckfest so I don't expect to have to write up a scathing opinion on it.



See that video up there? It's filled with all types of bad ideas. Generally, all of life is filled with ideas that seem good at the time but in hindsight you usually realize that your plans of past genius end up being ends of pure future fail. That's kinda how I felt about E3 this year and by the looks of about 90% of the internets everyone else did too. Since I live to damn far away to have ever gone to an E3 event it didn't really bother me that they switched from a public event to a press event, but at the time that they announced it I couldn't help but feel that everything was going down hill.



This years E3 only served to prove my point and firmly place the impression upon me that any other E3 after it will just continue to exponentially suck. Which, in case you were wondering, means that each year following this one will just suck more than the year before it.....usually by 50% more suck than previously sucked. I'm going to break my impressions down a bit here:

Microsoft Conference - Final Fantasy XIII!!!!!!!111!1shiftone!11!!! That's pretty much it. All that money spent on a presentation and instead of showing people the things they were actually interested in (Alan Wake, Halo Wars, Splinter Cell, etc etc etc.) all they got was more info on Gears of War 2, Fable 2, and they revealed a hideous new dashboard with Mii--..ahem Avatars and then they coupled it off with a multi-platform announcement of FFXIII. Woo~

So, summing that up it equals: Stuff you already knew + stuff you had already seen - stuff you actually wanted to see + stuff you didn't want to see + "We yanked another PS3 exclusive" = Awesome? I think not.

It was a waste of time considering what all could have been shown.

Sony Conference - CG!! CG!! CG!! That was the name of the game unless you were one of the lucky few to have been invited behind closed doors to see some of the other games that were being shown off, but then again those games are SECRET so it doesn't matter that you were lucky and saw them because you can't even say shit about them! God of War 3? awesome! MAG? Awesome! Can we see real time? NO! Not awesome.

Pics or it didn't happen!

Yes, Little Big Planet is digital crack and I will no doubtedly be picking up that nugget of goodness on the MINUTE of its release, but like most of the other titles that we saw being showcased at E3 it's going to be another 3-4 months or so before those titles start trickling down the line towards the disc slot of my monolith. Sony promises more Gigantic, blockbuster, megaton announcements at Leipzig but then again they also told me that Home would be out 9 months ago and now they tell me that the release date doesn't matter.

Come on guys, I can only play MGS4 and Burnout for so long before I am resorted to digging in bargain bins for "Genji: Days of the Blade" (which I actually DID mind you but I have yet to inflict massive damage on any large crustaceans.).

Nintendo Conference - "Remember that awesome console we told you about that would bring you dreams of being a Ninja in your living room and fighting hoardes of baddies to the death? The one that would incorporate state of the art motion control to make you a virtual hero? Yeah, that thing doesn't fucking exist, but thanks for being a bunch of suckers anyways."

That's pretty much how I felt throughout the Nintendo presentation. Seriously, Wii Music was the biggest waste of technology that I have ever seen and if I see one more stupid cooking game or carnival time waster be released for the console then I am -DONE- with Nintendo. Oh, but don't worry! You'll get another Metriod, Zelda, Mario en masse within the next two years so don't you "hardcore" gamers fret because Nintendo is apparently totally not alienating you guys at all....



Be honest....you all know your going to buy that thing on the day it comes out. Then you'll forever be put off with playing music just like Wii Fit made you realize how crappy faux-exercise was.

Anyways, if this E3 impression seems a bit harsh or filled with nothing but rabid opinion well thats because it is. It's pretty much how I, a gamer since the 2600 days, saw the entire conference through my eyes. I watched the videos and read the stories and all I got was a big giant mound of suck. So, bringing this all back around to the first topic at hand I'd have to say that E3 has now become just a giant bad idea.

And how do we get rid of a bad idea? We stop doing it. That's how.

Yes, it appears so.

Atlus, who has been just shoveling out the SMT love lately, has dropped an ad in the latest Famitsu magazine with a rather enigmatic spin on it. It involves purple clouds and cats, but considering that a lot of SMT games involve cats in some form or fashion it isn't exactly new.

Still, Gamekyo has the scan up here.

Blogs who have picked up on this already are claiming that it is Shin Megami Tensei 4 (Not Persona 4) but, personally, I don't think it is. The cat looks an awful lot like Goto from SMT: Devil Summoner "Raidou Vs. The Soulless Army" so thats pretty much the direction I'm leaning right now. I loved the Raidou SMT game, so if it turns out to be Raidou 2 then I'm gonna pick it up.

What about you guys?

Still, new SMT RPG game inbound! Always good news, right?

Here's the link back to the site if you haven't already checked it out.

Now that the site has been updated a video is shown with three men from India speaking about the game (presumably) and every now and then one of them will say "The Last Guy! Playstation 3!!" It is obviously some joke video and, I have to be honest, regardless of me not being able to understand any of it I found it hilarious. To be honest, as weird as this lead up to the games ultimate reveal gets I have to say that I'm even more excited about now since I honestly no longer really know what its about. Yes, we have magazine scans claiming google earth and zombies, but this entire video just throws me way off.

Also, goats.

Once the video ends the site reverts back to it's former self and the red marching men assume their forward step towards whatever they are walking towards. Sad that they removed the upbeat song and replaced it with something that sounds sad.

Another update is slated to be revealed 7-18-2008.

Google Earth? Zombies? Is this already made of complete Win? I'm pretty sure from what little I've learned of this game that I'm going to buy this as soon as it hits the PSN, but I still need to see gameplay. The Teaser Site looks as if it promises me more than just techno music as of 7/11/2008.

Also, am I the only one addicted to that song? Maybe? hopefully not.

Kotaku has a scan of a preview of the game up which shows the detailed Google Earth maps that are involved in the game and, I gotta say, I'm pretty excited about this.

At first I was thinking this was going to be some "I Am Legend" type of deal, but considering the unique approach they are taking I'm no longer getting that vibe. I just really hope that the music from the teaser site is used in the game along with other musical scores of its type.

Is this the first any of you have heard of this game? anyone else excited now?