Café anyone?

Okay, I really need to address the newly announced "Wii 2". The name given to it is Café or, as some rumours says, Stream. I'm not sure if any of theses will be the real name, if we look at the history of Nintendo consoles but I do like the sound of Stream. Café is quite awful, as was Wii, but I digress. The name is more of a way to describe the console, as the Wii once was named Revolution, to describe that the Wii was nothing more than a revolution, as it was, for the whole gaming industry, in this case, Café suggests a pleasant way of interacting with others (Better online service *fingers crossed*). It also suggests us leaving our homes for this.

I'm not sure what to make of the name Stream. It could be a way to describe the rumoured controllers where you can "stream" the games to the controller and carry it with you. This really sounds amazing, but I do have some fears for the concept. The first is that it sounds awfully expensive. I think the controllers are expensive as they are, but this really sounds a bit much. My other concern is if it is as advanced as we think. A more logic choice would be for the controller to act as a "light" version of the game, where you do things with the controller to win better stuff for the game or maybe there are things you need to do on the controller screen to advance in the real game. I think of Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, where you played on a Gameboy advance, plugged in to your Gamecube, which gave some cool opportunities gameplaywise. Still, when have Nintento ever been logical? I do trust them to make the best decisions, enough to not worry too much.

There is a rumour saying that the Café will have better hardware than both the Ps3 and The Xbox360. Frankly, it has to be, not to be outdone by Microsoft and Sony when they release The 720 and Ps4. To at all appeal to the market, they need to have both support for HD, a HDD storage device and I think it needs to loose the DVD-format. There are rumours of a Blu-ray format to the Café, if so, great, but I think that both the Ps4 and the Xbox720 will come with technology much more advanced than that. This means, once again, that Nintendos console is one generation behind. If another rumour is true, that the Café will be more appealing to the hardcore players, it needs to have an edge that the other consoles won’t.

One of the things that went wrong with the Wii was the fact that it didn't have the support of many of the third-part developers. And then they did the developers couldn't make the games as they made them to the other consoles, meaning that the Wii often got a halfassed version of the game. With the new, more classical controller, I think that developers will have an easier time doing games on the console. Let's just hope that the support is bigger.

A lot of other rumours have been spread, like the console having a design similar to the SNES, which sounds great. Some say it's as big as the 360, which I think is a bit big, they should try making it small from the beginning, like they did with the Wii. Some rumours suggests that the Café will not have support for Wii, which may be a consequence to switching to blu-ray, but I hope that rumour is false, because there are many great games on the Wii that many players won't be able to experience.

If Nintendo actually releases the console as early as mars 2012, as they said themselves when the console was confirmed, they will have a huge advantage over Microsoft and Sony. I hope that Café is great, I hope that Nintendo learned from Wii, which still was a great console in my opinion, and created a monster console. We'll just have to wait until E3 and see what Nintendo has cooked up. Release the Kraken.

Review - Bayonetta

I love Devil May Cry. Not only because it's a fun game, but because of the cool characters and crazy style, without being too over the top. No, it's not! Okay, maybe some times. Anyway, when I heard that the creator of Devil May Cry would be releasing a new game in the same style I thought it would be amazing. And according to the press, Bayonetta was a great game. At that time I didn't buy it, I waited for it to go down in price. A friend of mine told me that he thought the game was ridiculous and stupid, not at all fun. I didn't believe him.

A while ago I finally bought the game. Bayonetta is a game about a witch with the same name. She lives and can move between the real world and some parallel universe where angels live, still being able to the humans but they can't see her. Here she hunts the angels of all sorts. The goal being to hunt some boss-angels so she can sacrifice them to the underworld? I'm not quite sure about the story, and frankly, I don't care. Bayonetta is stupid and ridiculous, the characters are bland and I really don't care for them at all, same goes for the story. My friend had been right...

Except, the game is fun. The fighting system is well balanced; the best thing is the so-called witch-time, which slow down time when you do a precise dodge. It's challenging, with good enemies and varied gameplay. This makes the game a game that you can play through and not give up on.

But the game has some problems. The camera is responsible for most of them. It moves as any other camera, using the right analogue stick, but it's slow, way too slow. You can't really see the enemies at all times because of this, meaning that it's not you're fault when you die, most of the time. The times it's not the cameras fault, it's the fighting system. It's great, yeah, but on some enemies you don't have time to think at all, so you're just mashing buttons and dodging hoping that you'll survive.

Why Hideki Kamiya didn't choose to walk away more from Devil May Cry also confuses me. It could just as well be a Devil May Cry spin-off. I just expect Dante to pop up at any time.

For these reasons, I don't think Bayonetta is a great game, it's a good game though, well worth to play. But I don't play it twice. I didn't play it over and over again on all the difficulties like I did with Devil May Cry. With too many problems, this game is still good because of the fighting system. But not great.

Duke Nukem is a chauvinistic pig

Duke Nukem is a chauvinistic pig and a bad example for our kids. The way he treats women are really early 50's and degrading to women everywhere. He makes sexist jokes and uses crude one-liners and language. When the game was delayed, Gearbox stated, Duke never comes early, another example of the immature humour used in the game.

The big question though is, who cares? Okay, many cares, but why though? Everything I've written is true, but why is there such a commotion about it?

First of all, it's a bad example for our kids. Not that a kid should play the game, it is actually rated as a game where you should be at least 18 to play it. So if your kids gets weird ideas from this, it's your fault for letting them play it.

The game itself is selfawaringly parodic. No sane man playing this game will take it seriously. It's not a serious game. When he sees a triple-breasted huge beast he says, "Hell, I'd still hit it". It's hilarious, because what man says that? Only Duke.

The thing about the critics of the game is that I don't see where their priorities are. Since then did sex become worse that blowing someone’s head up. It's the "Hot Coffee"-incident all over again. For you who doesn't know, Hot Coffee was a minigame in GTA:San Andreas where you have sex with your girlfriend. In a game where you can run over and blow the head of innocent people, you focus on pre-marital, meaningless sex. The game, again, is made for people of 18 year of age and above. I, myself, believe that meaningless sex is stupid, but I believe that killing someone is quite worse. Since when is it worse to degrade women that to kill?

Don't take Duke Nukem seriously, you're not meant to. He's a parody of all the men who actually think like this. There is so much self irony in the game. Duke Nukem is a chauvinistic pig, and we love it. Hail to the King, baby.