The summer of arcade now official over with the latest release of Shadow Complex.  I managed to get a quick fix to see why this game was hogging all the spotlight from Trials HD.   After taking out the first boss, I knew that this game was something special yet familiar.  Everyone seems to draw the comparison to Metroid and Castlevania; with no other games being mentioned beyond those two.  However, it should draw a comparison to every old school action platformer that encouraged exploration as a way to become powerful and to move on to the next stage of the game and to reach places you couldn’t reach before.  Games like Mega Man, and Blaster Master could fit into these molds as inspiration to Shadow Complex as well.

Though this article is not about what makes Shadow Complex a great arcade game, it’s about a growing trend or a changing of the guard.  The first mark of this trend was Warhawk released on the PSN.  Warhawk don’t share any similar game mechanics as Shadow Complex but, they both fall into a new way to approach bite size gaming.  Most games that have fallen on to both the PSN and Xbox Live have been either smaller casual experiences such as Flower, Flow, Pixel Junk Series, or nostalgia laced experiences ranging from TMNT to Street Fighter.  Now the time has come for Battlefield 1943, Warhawk, Trails HD, and Shadow Complex to be viewed as a level above what an arcade game  is perceived to be.

To be quite honest I would like to see more of these enriched bigger game concepts scaled down for both of these services.  We already seen that these types of games can indeed become profitableand be a huge hit among gamers.  Now we need developers to really start opening up the flood gates with more genres.   Let’s start to get RPG’s designed by Square or Namco for PSN and XBLA, fighting games being built by Capcom, or Tecmo.  It’s time to stop with the nostalgia of the past and present to the audience a new form of classic games that one day in the future could be looked back on with fond memories.  Lets all hope that this is not a short live trend and look forward to a bright gaming future.

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Fresh from the twitter EA decided to show off a debut trailer of Rage.  I have to say that this game is looking pretty sweet, but I can’t help to immediately start the comparison to Fallout 3.   Then those thoughts were washed away as the trailer show off some impressive environments and some good gameplay segments.  Looks to be a winner. 

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OK, the big 2 (Microsoft, Sony) have announced their takes at motion control.  Now that the gauntlet has been thrown down by the 2 companies, who have said in so many words that the Wii is a fad, it is gonna be interesting to see what type of games will come from this motion madness.  Even yours truly, Kid Sidious, believes that while the idea of motion control can open up new ideas in gaming; it was and will continue to be hampered by the technical specs of the Wii.  Nintendo has been able to successfully sell last gen tech with a new control scheme to a lot of people that Microsoft and Sony want on their respective boxes. 

Maybe it’s just a pipe dream that Nintendo will eventually grow up and provide a  mature experience while still catering to their younger fan base, and now their expanded base of women and old people.  With both the PS3 and Xbox 360  set to give their fans a bit of motion sickness, maybe the dream of a mature motion controlled experience will become a reality.  The question is how will it all turn out?

A lot of noise has been made of Natal and it seem to have become the darling of the two motion control schemes coming out of E3.  I think this was only due to the fact that the PS3 Wand or Motion Controller Not Named The Six Axis was still quite early in it’s development cycle at the time of the showing.  Using a Wii-like controller plus the PS3 Eye it was able to convey a very impressive level of control. 

Natal is going for a very different approach, and that is to take away the controller completely.  I don’t have any idea how well this Minority Report style of interface will go over with gamers, or with the developers willing to take up the task to build games for the device.  Judging from the media blitz that MS created for Natal the possibilities seems endless.  Most impressive was the jerry-rigged tech demo of Burnout Paradise shown on the Jimmy Fallon show. 

It was good to see the possibility of Natal working within a racing game, but it’s not how I would implement this device at all.  There’s no need for Natal to be an all or nothing device.  Small implementation in AAA games could enrich the experience instead of hampering it.   Here’s a couple of ways that I would use it within a few games:

• Racing games: I would use the head tracking ability to have the in cockpit view fully viewable with the movement of my head.  This way it would imitate a real racing experience.  I tilt my head up and the view in the cockpit moves up and then pans out to give me a rear view to see cars coming up behind me. I turn my head slightly to the left and the right to eliminate the blind spot of cars approaching from the side.

• First Person Shooters: Much like the racing game example I would use it the same way.  Have the character take cover against the wall or behind a table/cabinet/rock.   Instead of a 3rd person view transition to see where the enemies are at you could lean slightly to the left or right to peek around the corners and take a shot or move your head up a little to glance above the cover that you’re behind

• Role Playing Games: I would go all voice recognition with this genre.  You could instead of chosing the response you want to say; simply say it.  Now if it can detect tone then you are giving a real reflection of what you want your response to be within a virtual world.

All of these ideas are quite possible and for all the talk about losing force feedback would be a none issue being that your using a controller in conjunction with Natal.  Let all the super grandmas and women worry about force feedback on their time.  Now that I’ve shared a few of my ideas, but I would really like to know what are some of yours.  And for the record, I don’t want no party mini games!!!  An HD Physics based World Of Goo would be a day one purchase.

What do you want out of Natal?

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