You Should Be Playing Knights in the Nightmare.

One of the biggest gripes people seem to have with the RPG genre is that they're not too exciting to actually play. Sure, there's a strategic element of choosing what to do when, and there's absolutely a satisfaction that comes from knowing you made the right decisions throughout the battle, but while more recent games have done a good job of making your actions look more cinematic, there isn't really a lot of "playing" going on. For those people, there are games like Knights in the Nightmare.

You could call it a Strategy RPG, but it does so many interesting things with the genre that it's almost, almost, a misnomer. For starters, its main hook is that it combines tactical combat with the rapid-fire action of shmups, of all things. The characters on the board can't take damage from enemies; instead, enemies shoot out fireballs and the like on-screen, and you must dodge them using the wisp (which essentially acts as your cursor), to avoid taking damage. At first this seemed a bit gimmicky, a way to keep you busy between actions, but the second boss proved me wrong by making sure that if I ignored its huge laser and its star-exploding attacks, that I would lose large chunks of damage, and then lose.

And damage, too, is done differently here. For any given scene (mission), you have a set turn limit, and each turn has about 60 seconds of game time, which you use up by commanding your characters (there isn't a clock ticking down constantly), but you also lose time if you're struck by bullets, which makes it imperative that you be careful with how you manage your time. Additionally, characters have a vitality gauge that decreases every time they're used, and when that runs out, they're gone for good.

But if you do lose a character during battle, it's usually not that big a deal, since you can recruit about 2 or 3 per scene (of which there are over 40), and really, a lot of the game seems to focus on a theme of impermanence. Getting so many characters means that they're easily disposable, and you can do so in a number of ways. You can exile them to get items, or you can transoul them to other characters to make them stronger. Items also have a set number of uses, and you also get a lot of those, and you can fuse duplicates to increase their uses, and can also break them down, and then use them to make other items stronger.

And what items and characters you take in battle will affect how you'll play the game. there are seven classes, and each of them has two different attack ranges, and only two of them can move, so who you place where is important. You can only take four items into battle per turn, and having items that will do that most damage to a given enemy can really help you pull through. Like most RPG's, both weapons and enemies have elemental attributes, and you'll do twice as much damage if you match a monster to its weakness. On top of that, there are two "phases", law and chaos, which affect which items you can use, what attack range your characters will use, and how many crystals enemies will drop when hit (which, in turn, lets you use items to attack in the first place).

As you can a imagine, playing this game is pretty hectic. Any given battle is a process of equipping your characters to attack, charging up your attack, waiting until an enemy moves into your attack range to strike, and dodging enemy attacks. On top of that, if you hit enemies you can sometimes commit a follow-up attack, which involves swiping the cursor over them, and you can also stop enemies from attacking by "jamming their gears", which involves spinning the cursor over an enemy a set number of times. It's a lot to do in battle, but once you get the hang of it, it's easier done than said.

But as intense as battles can get, Sting (the developer) has really put some thought into making this game portable-friendly. The battles usually won't give you more than ten turns, so you can usually beat an entire mission during your lunch break. Your setup between scenes usually won't take too long, either.

The story is also told in short bursts (hence the name "scenes"), and it does a nice job of giving short segments of the story in between rounds. Basically, you are your cursor (the wisp), and you're heading towards a castle, recruiting and reviving dead knights along the way. After a battle, you're usually shown what happened leading up to the death of those characters, and then a scene that advances the larger story arc. It's a pretty standard fantasy setting, but it becomes somewhat more interesting when you're not always being told the same story over and over, and being kept in the dark about what's happening, turns out, makes you want to keep playing the game.

That said, there are a few key issues that I've had with the game. The biggest problem is that, because of the exclusive use of the touch screen, the interface suffers from some pretty large cluttering issues. In times when I needed to quickly and continuously attack, I'd find my self hovering over a character and having them attack without weapons instead of selecting a weapon, and all because said character and said weapon were too close to each other for me to be able to choose between them effectively.

Additionally, where most games would suffer from some RPG trifles, Sting does a good job of not making the game too hard. You can go back and play any scene you want with stock characters, so you can grind for experience and items. Also, if you lose a mission by running out of turns, you can just keep going by hitting the retry button, which means if you really need to, you can go into as much overtime as you want. These things might break the difficulty for more dedicated players, but it's always nice to have an easy button at the ready. So in difficulty, too, Knights does some things to make the game more active.

Just like The World Ends With You last year, Knights throws several new concepts at once into a genre, and at first it can seem a bit intimidating to manage everything you're doing in combat at once. Once you know what you're doing, though, it's extremely rewarding to actually play. There's really a fantastic mental workout to be had here. I've actually been going back to scenes not because of any need to grind, but because I have fun just playing the game, which is something that's rare in the RPG and SRPG genre.

If you're having a hard time trying to wrap your head around this game, though, here's a tutorial that shows off some combat:

Lastly, the game, like most of Atlus' offerings, comes with a soundtrack, if you're into that sort of thing. Order now?

Five Cities Not named New York to Set Your Game In.

I've never been to NYC, but from all of the photos, videos, games, movies, coffee mugs, etc., I think I have a pretty good idea of what it looks like. It's a metropolis, filled with lots of great cultures and ideas. And with so many producers of media hailing from there or having lived there and grown to love its expansive urban jungle environment, it's understandable that many of our cultural influences come from there. Both Batman and Superman come from cities that are essentially two versions it, and Spider-man is actually from there. It's the most prolific city in the world as far as media goes, and the image of the Statue of Liberty watching over the sprawling landscape of concrete and metal was one of the most iconic images of America in my head before I moved here at the age of four (Ironically, the first city I arrived was Anaheim, CA).

That said, I think it's about time we take a break from it.

When an open-world game doesn't take place somewhere made up, it takes place in New York. Prototype takes place their, and Infamous takes place somewhere that's pretty much a fictional version of it, as does GTA IV. And I see why; NYC offers not only one of the biggest, most fleshed out cities to wreak havoc upon, but it's also one that many people are familiar with. However, I think it's safe to say that New York's been done. If you're a developer looking for somewhere else to set your fantastic new sandbox game in, here are some wonderful new places to take into account. Also, would you like to buy a timeshare?

Tokyo: Pretty much your runner up as far as familiar locations go. Most people think they know what Tokyo's like, and really, it's not too much different from that, but having all of its districts, all of its lights, and Japanese culture and all those weird walkways would make from a pretty cool place to break some shit. There's a lot of exciting places to explore in Japan, and there's also some pretty scenic stuff farther out to take advantage of. Not only that, but Tokyo inhabitants should be pretty used to the idea of having their city destroyed. Plus, there's totally a giant robot there now.

Hong Kong: You might not think that Hong Kong is too different from Tokyo, but you'd be wrong. There's a cool cross-culture of Eastern and Western culture. It's very much a business district, but all that does is make it more tempting to destroy. And if a developer can actually get interactions with water in these kinds of games, there's a lot of it here to explore. Plus, it's apparently where lots of seedy business deals go down, so if you're going to destroy a place, why not stop rotten business at the same time?

Berlin: Now, for this suggestion, think post-WWII Berlin. Assuming your character has powers like those in Infamous or Prototype, the game would involve you fighting a communist regime by hopping back and forth between the East and West, completing spy missions to help try to feed and free the citizens of the East. You could also disregard the powers altogether; an open-world stealth game sounds interesting itself. Do it late enough, and maybe you could help Reagan make his speech to tear down that wall. Using the Motion Plus to write it word for word, of course.

Mumbai: Something a little less western, but that's no less fun to roam in. A city with such fantastic architecture definitely deserves someone to roam around in. There's also a chance here to have us Westerners learn a thing or two about another culture, and learn that maybe all foreign cultures aren't out to get us. If you have the entire story take on and Indian influence (as in, having the character be Indian rather than American), you can maybe shy away from the ethnocentrism that Eastern cultures so pointedly remind us of.

Omaha, Nebraska: I have to make an argument for my current residence! Really, though, I think open-world games could use a setting that's a little less urban. For those of you who are worried about not being able to run/climb up buildings, we do have a business district here, and the buildings are made from metal and glass, just like yours. GTA San Andreas had a pretty big non-urban area, and even though people harped on it for not having anything to do there there, I think if someone tried to get the combination of huge urban areas and some more grass-infested areas, it could make for some pretty interesting stuff. For example, if you wanted to snuff a certain target without destroying half a city, why not do it where no one will see you?

Again, I don't hate New York or anything, but I think that so far they've been getting a pretty big piece of the pie (like they usually do). So if you're looking for some scenic, interesting areas to set your Triple-A title in, why not give these a shot? Or maybe you have a suggestion of your own?

We've Got Star Power?

Games have always had the stigma of being for nerds and losers. If you had a gaming console in 70's and 80's, you weren't exactly the alpha male of your school (unless you could both manage playing games and being on the varsity football team, in which case you were a better person than I), and well, you didn't really care. As much as TV shows of that era made it seems like nerds hated being nerds, and that we were pent up in our basements playing games because we were shunned by society and had no other choice, we know different, and we enjoyed our games, and our outcast status, and sometimes we also brought people over, defying all stereotypes brought forth!

Look around you (and by that I mean the internet, television, etc.), and you'll see that that stigma is much less prevalent. It's still not gone, but I like to believe that the notion is still only held today by baby-boomers and my parents (who were born in Mexico, and therefore do not qualify as "baby-boomers). Games now are one of if not the biggest part of the entertainment industry, in both terms of income and influence. And when something becomes as big as games are, people usually start to take notice. Whether it's because they stand to make a lot of money from it, or they just want to be in on the latest trend (I'd argue that to mainstream consumers now, "the video games" look like a fad), people want in, and famous people are no different.

Sure, celebrities have been a part of gaming as early as Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, and maybe even earlier, and there are a few famous examples, but I think we can all assume that these early examples didn't really mean much to the celebrities who were providing their likeness; they were no different than putting your face on the front of a cereal box. They weren't trying to make the best game out there featuring them (even though it turned out that way for Tyson, and not so much for Shaq), they were trying to sell these things to kids.

And even when the stars did start taking interest in games, they weren't too excited about sitting down with a team and maybe getting one together that would or would have their likeness in it. We've seen lots of videos where celebrities profess their love of Halo, but they always seem to do it with an inflection that says that they're ashamed to do so. As if a person as highly regarded in society as themselves shouldn't be caught dead playing anything other than a Wii. Either that, or they're to the type of person so expertly portrayed in Mountain Dew commercials and sometimes in movies.

But, recent years have seen some exceptions. If you don't count movie tie-in games (which do feature celebrities, but are different from celebrity tie-in in that they're usually bound creatively to a licence), both the amount and status of actors and stars partaking in games has gotten better. Just last year we had Liam Neeson in Fallout 3, and Keifer Sutherland in Call of Duty: World at War (having trouble catching his voice? He's the guy yelling at you when you play as the Americans. And almost constantly cursing), and while these appearances are well-known, they're not exactly promoted as huge selling points. Neither appearance is promoted on the box, so most people who aren't up on these sorts of things probably won't realize until later, when they'll most likely think it's cool as something that was thrown in instead saying it was a shameless marketing ploy...

And then we have Vin Diesel. Research shows that he's played his way around a D&D board quite a lot, which is more than I can claim. He doesn't think it's embarrasing, either; and people who know better don't think he's a loser. Better yet, when he's not making blockbuster films, he's actually helping out making games, using his company, Taigon Studios, to develop games using his likeness. Sure, funding a company with the purpose of creating as many games with your likeness as possible sounds a little egotistical, but it's hard to argue with the results so far, and let's face it, Vin's not exactly a bad choice for a lead role in game.

What I'm hoping to see is actors and other celebrities taking games more seriously, and I don't mean the same way we do. I mean using video games as another outlet to expand their horizons, the same way they would use film. Not every game using someone famous has to bear their likeness, but just voice acting in a game might not only let people know they're more open to new ideas, but might also continue chipping away at both their stereotypes and ours.

Backlog trackback #3 - Dealing with the Occult.

The Occult is a popular topic in video games. Fighting demons, summoning them, and plots that revolve around bringing things back from the dead or apocalyptic scenarios headline so many games that it's become a cliche to make the stakes of a game be the "End of the WORLD!", and it's ironic that when your plot does affect the whole world it ends up having no sense of meaning. We let those things go, though, because sometimes the games are just fun to play, even though you're stopping the world from getting blown up for the millionth time (it's a hyperbole, but I feel like I'm getting closer to that milestone everyday...). That said, if you are looking for a scenario where the fate of the world rests in your hands, and you like seeing crazy dudes and weird monsters you might want to look at these games:

Indigo Prophecy: You won't see too many demons in Indigo Prophecy, but you will be seeing some weird stuff, no doubt about it. Its hook relies on it not being so much a game as much as interactive fiction. The game has two modes: adventure game puzzles of clicking on certain things in a certain order to advance the story (it's better than it sounds, really!), and cutscenes with lots of quick-time events (also better than they sound!). The trick with those this time, though, is instead of pushing buttons that they show you on screen, you're pushing the analog sticks in the indicated directions, and you don't fail the whole sequence if you mess up just once (but if you don't do any of them, then you'll end up restarting a lot of them).

The Most interesting thing about Indigo Prophecy, though, is the way it flips common game design on its head. Most game stories are essentially the context under which you're doing the actions in a game. They're hardly ever much more than a framework. Here, it's the other way around; what you're doing in the game is based around the happenings of the story. The story drives what you're doing, not the other way around.

The story itself is a pretty good story to tie a game around. You play the role of multiple characters, on opposing sides. One is a alleged killer who's trying to prove his innocence, and the other characters are the detectives in charge of tracking him down. How your actions as one party are going to affect the other is certainly a unique game twist, and using the game medium to play you against yourself is something only games can do.

That said, there are some problems that I cam across. For one, the story gets seriously crazy towards the end of the game (I mean some real Jumping the Shark stuff), and for people looking for value, the game is a bit on the short end. There are multiple ways to end the game, but most of them feel more like game over screens then real endings, and the real "multiple endings" are decided during the last game sequence, somewhat defacing the value of the choices you've made throughout the game. Additionally, most the puzzles in the game are pretty basic adventure game fare (find object A, connect it to object B to find a clue).

That said, working with the narrative as the primary focus of the game is something I'd like to see more of, which is why I'm looking forward to Heavy Rain.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia: There's an abundance of the occult to be found here, if you're looking for it. If you're doubtful, the story involves nothing short of the resurrection of Dracula, who surely can't be up to anything less than the destruction/enslavement of the world. You're enemies are pretty much every occult thing you could think of, from skeletons to devils to harpies to sentient swords. You'll also be using a lot of the occult against them (as in, dark magic), from thunder to beams of energy so summoning some of your own monsters.

And really, it's this variety that makes the game so fun to play. At first, I was a bit wary to play it when I found out that every attack you execute depletes your magic bar (and, of course, if that bar is all gone, you're left unable to do anything but jump for a bit), but that fear was quickly put to rest after seeing that the bar refills itself pretty quickly, and most attacks don't drain the bar as much as you'd think. From that point on, it was a Ten-hour love affair with the game.

I've played every one of the metroidvania games on the DS, and I have to say this is by far the best one. The story is much the same as the others, but storytelling really hasn't ever been Castlevania's strong point. What makes this game so good is really the creative level design. You have a lot of powers at your disposal, and the game makes good effort in trying to get you to use them all. Some enemies are weak against certain attacks, and resistant to others, so that alone encourages you to try out different glyphs (the way you use spells) to see what the best way of dealing with them is. If you're having trouble against an enemy and you're noticing that you're not doing much damage, try another glyph.

The bosses are also design with care. With one or two exceptions, every fight against a boss will challenge you to do new things, from climbing a tower while escaping from a giant crab boss that you can't defeat until you reach the top (with a surprise ending!), to destroying all of the crystalline joints of a centaur-knight Shadow of the Colossus style, you won't be able to rely on the same strategy to defeat any two bosses.

The theme of variety also carries into the game's environments. This time, you're not stuck in Drac's castle the whole time (though you do eventually go there), and for the first half of the game you're exploring different areas on a map, all of which are different from each other. You have your ice level, but there's also some pretty cool stuff involving man-made buildings and the like.

Order of Ecclesia is probably one the best Castlevanias to date, and also one of the best DS games period. There aren't too many things wrong with it, and even the secondary modes unlocked after beating the game can squeeze an extra couple of hours of fun (Albus mode especially), so if you're jonesing for the dark and demonic on the go, you can't do much better.

E3 2009: Five Games that Surprised Me, Five Games that Disappointed.

Doing lists is always fun, and with E3 over now the “Game of Show” lists and the like will soon be popping up on websites everywhere, but it can be hard to judge the quality of a game just playing a small portion of it (or watching, for those of us who were at home). Most of us do that anyway, but instead of judging the quality of the games, this list is based primarily on the impression that the games made on me, be it good or bad.

Five Games that surprised me:

The Beatles: Rock Band: Since the wonderful cinematic trailer was shown at Microsoft's press conference on Monday, I've been tracking this game, looking at all of the songs being performed, watching demonstrations of the game, and look at a digital version of Paul McCartney more than I should have any right to. It's funny, really, because I thought of myself as someone who was past all of this rhythm game nonsense, and maybe I still am, because I'm not excited for most other musical offerings, and I didn't get Rock Band 2 or anything past Guitar Hero 3. Something about the Beatles as a band speaks to me, perhaps. I've never considered myself a fan of them before, and even so I'm liking what I'm hearing.

DJ Hero: Again brining to light the fact that I am a hypocrite. The most interesting thing about it is how the game is played, because it's much different from most anything else we've seen hit such a large audience, and the mash-up style, along with the ability to play some songs with the guitar, as well as the Mic, bring the game a semi-band feel to the game already. I'm not too impressed with the song offerings so far, but the Beastie Boys/Foo Fighters song was pretty interesting. The game plays so differently from every other music game out there, and I'm happy to see something new in the music game genre.

Scribblenauts: The amount of databasing needed to take on a game like this must be staggering, but I'm glad someone is doing it. Sure, the no copyrighted material/nothing vulgar rules apply, but still, that leaves a whole lot of room for creativity. You're given puzzles to solve, and you can do it anyway you want, and not just some predetermined way that the developers thought of. All of the objects you can create have properties, too. Beavers eat wood (helpful when trying to chop down a tree), and bulldozers can push whales into the ocean (helpful for...pushing whales into the ocean). People have stressed tested the game, and it seems like few of them have been able to come up with something that the game can't make under the given conditions. It definitely looks to be something interesting.

Metroid: Other M: I don't think there was a single person outside of Nintendo that wasn't surprised when this trailer hit Nintendo's press conference. This kind of collaboration between developers (especially between ones as reserved as Nintendo) just doesn't happen that often, and the fact that it's a combination between Team Ninja and Metroid sounds like a fan's wild speculation (“DUDE! What if Team Ninja made a Metroid game!?”), but it's great to see Nintendo working with someone outside their internal and second party teams. If nothing else, it's looking to be a great experiment.

Splinter Cell: Conviction: This is really a story that's echoing all throughout E3, but I haven't been a fan of previous Splinter Cell games, and this game sure is looking to change that. A lot of what the game does as far as changing the Splinter Cell game up is doing it for the better. Objectives are stylishly displayed on buildings instead of someone telling you where to go, and when you're in hiding, the last spot you were seen displays as a silhouette, telling you not to go back there. There's a lot of information displayed in the environment, as opposed to cutscenes. There's definitely a lot of new stuff being done here, and I'm ready to be a fan of this series.

Five Games That Disappointed Me:

Alan Wake: With as much hype as people around the internet were putting into how great this game looked and played, I guess I was expecting more from this game. Sure, it's likely to have a unique story that plays out like a novel (with narration), and sure, some of the things it does with light and enemies looks cool, but aside from that, it just looked...generic. There wasn't much about how it played that made it seem like it was anything special. But, when looked at as a survival horror game, and not an action game, the game might have more merit, and maybe there's more here that I'm seeing, but as of right now I don't have much of a reason to believe that this is anything more than an average third-person shooter.

The Last Guardian: My main disappointment here is how little we were shown. An extended, hi-res version of the leaked trailer was nice, but with as much time as Team Ico has had to work on this game, you'd think they'd be farther along. Maybe this sort of game just doesn't demo well in a loud environment, but a press demo would've been nice. I think it has to do with the fact that people want to keep this game under wraps as long as possible, but as of right now I can't get excited about this game.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising: Sure, it's a new Metal Gear game, but something about this feels like a backhanded compliment to Xbox fans. Almost everyone expected an MGS4 port, but the fact that all that Xbox players are going to get is a spin-off seems like Kojima is telling everyone that he doesn't really want MGS on the 360. Meanwhile, the PSP is getting Peace Walker, which they touted as the “true sequel” to the franchise. For all intents and purposes, the announcement of this game feels more like a hollow victory than anything else.

Left 4 Dead 2: No, I'm not going to boycott the game, but something here just doesn't feel right. Valve just isn't the type of developer to crank out a sequel only a year after, especially to a game that felt a bit short on content. Even after reading their argument as to why they felt they had to do it, I'm not convinced that it was the right thing to do. It seems, well, a bit impatient for them to release the game a year after, when they could've let us enjoy the first one for a bit longer while polishing the next. I don't doubt Valve's ability to make a great game, and I will buy this new one, but I just feel they could've held off a bit longer, no?

Final Fantasy XIII: Aside from the English voicework and one or two new summons, there was nothing new shown this year. It's understandable for Mircosoft to show off the game, touting how it got the game to not be exclusive, but they could've shown more, or at least something different. Also, even though there's clearly a demo you could've used, and that most of it was translated at the press conferences, you couldn't bother to put something playable on the show floor? Seems like someone over at Square didn't want anyone to play the game at all.

Keep in mind, I'm reflecting on the showings these games made at the show, not the actual quality of the games.

E3 2009: Changing the way you play games...or not...but really!

I think it's almost a guarantee that anyone you ask will tell you that this year's E3 was one of the "good ones". The '09-10 forecast, before a mostly barren horizon that only a few could see clearly has become much more vivid, with the titles coming at the end of the year and next year really looking like an industry role call. This E3 was presented as being all about the games, and the press conferences varied in quality depending on who you're talking to, but most will agree that it was definitely a high point in the industry (whether it's the games industry in general or the E3 industry I can't decide).

The other big talking point, was, of course, all the motion controllers and how they're going to change how we play games and who we play them with. At first, I was skeptical of Microsoft's Project Natal, or any new motion controller at that point, really, and was ready to dismiss it as an attempt to grab onto the Wii's market share. However, they did manage to show it off in a way that got everyone talking, predicting this and that about how it could change games, and it was impressive that it was more than just a tech demo at this point. They were demoing the technology with Burnout, or so I've heard. It isn't some pie in the sky concept that will never see release; Microsoft probably won't let you forget it exists for a while.

Sony also showed off its motion controller attempt, and reactions were mixed. Personally, it's my favorite of the three, a halfway point between Natal and the Wii. The wands' articulation to hold objects (as superimposed as they were) and strike with accuracy really gets me excited, and it was probably the best of the demos, between Kudo Tsunoda's almost irritating arrogance and Nintendo's boredom with its own product.

It's hard to argue that these new ways to interact with games aren't an attempt by companies to syphon the success of the company that made a technology big, and that these products will eventually lead to something interesting down the line (who it'll be from is anyone's guess at this point), and that soon we'll be off our couches and moving about and become more engaged with playing games, and that this will in turn lead to more immersive games.

Which raises the obvious question: Is something wrong with our current input method?

All three press conferences seem to be saying yes, then saying no, or "not yet". Microsoft showed off Natal, saying it was the future of games, and how it was going to change the way we play games, right after we'd been shown ten or so games that showed the exact opposite sentiment. Sony's was much the same, cramming a tech demo for their motion controller and saying how it was going to change the way we play games in the middle of Metal Gear and Assassin's Creed demonstrations.

Nintendo, at this point, is the only console entirely committed to their motion control, but at this point it doesn't seem like enough. Clearly, if you have to add another motion sensor to the one you already have, then you weren't too committed to the idea that moving around as a valid input method. The Motion Plus will add a certain amount of ingenuity to games that handle it, but introducing "true" motion control wasn't part of their plan until this late in the game. And Sony and Microsoft are only now banking on the idea of motion control, after it has proved to be successful.

What this is saying is that they weren't confident enough in motion control to begin with. At the time, it seemed like Nintendo was taking a bold stance on where games were going, while Sony and Microsoft were both fighting to see who could get the most polygons on-screen. They were both fine with using controllers to play games.

And so were we. We were doing just fine pressing A to jump and B to shoot. Even as controllers got more complicated and added more analog sticks we haven't been yearning for more creative controls. We can play games on most any controller they make, and will, no matter how horribly designed, adjust ourselves to the feel of button placements and trigger responsiveness.

The counterpoint here is that most people are intimidated by controllers. They see way too many buttons, too many things to do, as well as interfaces on games so complicated that they would never dare pick up something so obtuse and use it with any sort of grace. Controls have gotten so out of hand that regular people can't be bothered to learn how to use them, because it'd just be too hard.

I don't think this notion is right at all. If the average person is so intimidated by game controllers, why are they so prone to master cell phone interfaces, not to mention computers? A windows interface or a common Nokia phone menu and controls can be just as complex if not more so then a 15+ button setup. Computer are definitely more complicated, helped along by mouse controls, but dampened by a seemingly cluttered interface. But there they are, people as young and old as the Wii's target demographic, blogging, chatting, twittering, and checking news on their computers and phones.

So I don't think that the problem with controllers is necessarily with the our "intimidating" interface. So why don't these people play games? The amount of time and money that's being spent on trying to entice new people to play games certainly says that there are throngs of people just waiting to play games (Nintendo's "Maybe") and have some sort of barrier to entry. Like I said, I don't think it's a matter of people being afraid of picking up controllers and learning to use them. I think it's a matter of people not having a need to pick one up.

To the people who just don't want to play games at all (Nintendo's "NEVER"), the reason that they don't play games in general isn't because someone hasn't handed them some streamlined interface that is easy to use and intuitive, but because they don't feel the need to play games in the first place. They occupy the time that we'd normally use playing games with other things that aren't playing games. It may not be that they're condemning games (at least not all the time), it just isn't what they do. Playing games an interacting with environments just doesn't appeal to them.

Even if they are interested in playing games, they don't see the need to buy a dedicated game console. They may play games on their iphone or on their laptop, which they see as part of the deal of that product. They don't want to buy a $400 console to play their games when they can just as easily play Peggle on their phone or computer.

Just because there are people who will never play games or don't want to buy a console doesn't mean console makers shouldn't try something new, though. They just need to know who they're going to sell these things to. Games have done a pretty good job of immersing by just letting us press buttons to perform actions. There aren't too many people complaining that their experience was ruined by having to press buttons. What lets us as players get so engrossed in games isn't how we're interacting with our experience; it's that we're doing it.

And also, for people who've played games for a while, the imperfections of an interface that presents itself as a more realistic way to play will present themselves, as a sort of uncanny valley (the closer you get to the real thing, the easier it is to find flaws). We know that controllers aren't going to let us do everything we want, and we accept it and suspend our disbelief accordingly. When someone tells us that we can do anything with something new, and we find we can't, points are going to get docked not because of the technology itself, but because we've been set up much too high be anything more than let down.

With as much of a damper I've been putting on these new techs, I think I'll end on a high note. There's no doubt that new interfaces like this will attract a certain number of people to play, and that if these new technologies really catch on, that developers will try their best to exploit it and wring something great out of the whole thing. These things are, as they say, the future. People just shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the way we've been doing things up until now so easily (I'm looking at you, Spielberg).