In the mail today, Netflix graciously delivered House of Wax. That 2006 piece of shit horror movie with Paris Hilton and a supporting actress. I'm not really sure how it snuck itself all the way to first place in my queue, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and sat through the entire thing. To be fair, I did have the things on 1.5x Play to make sure I only wasted an hour, rather than an hour and a half.
My expectations were pretty simple.. I knew this film was garbage. I expected garbage. But House of Wax still managed to disappoint me and fail my expectations.
Though it did not fail my expectations as badly as Nintendo and Sony had today. For this week is E3, the Electronics Entertainment Expo is Los Angeles. The event that has set itself as a milestone in game development and allows companies to show what they have accomplished and what big things they have in store for gamers in the coming fall and Christmas season.
Yesterday, Microsoft had some great announcements such as a new 60 gb Xbox 360 coming out in a couple of weeks to replace the 20gb. The harddrive expansion should help out a bit since another announcement was that you can install full Xbox 360 games onto your harddrive for far faster loading. EVEN bigger news was that Microsoft has teamed with Netflix to stream "Watch Instantly" titles directly to your Xbox 360 if you have a Netflix subscription and an xbox live gold subscription.
They also showed off some of there games namely Gears of War 2 (dumb) and Fable 2 (sweet!) and ended their conference announcing that Final Fantasy XIII will be coming to the Xbox 360 in America. This news literally broke some corners of the internet.. namely neogaf. Squaresoft held a Q&A session afterward where everyone wanted to know the details.
The Xbox is looking quite lucrative.. Even before the conference, Fable 2 was really the only next-gen game that interested me this Fall and with the Netflix integration and new 60gb models, I'll be in line that mid-August morning to pick one up. Hopefully there'll be some sort of sale..
That's fine for the Xbox though, but I'm MORE interested in the game consoles I own. I've owned a Wii for well over a year now, and in the last 3 months I haven't even touched it. There's nothing on the Wii I want to play right now, and nothing down the pipeline either.
Unfortunately, the same is with the Playstation 3. I bought that thing about a month ago, loved Metal Gear Solid 4 to death, and now all I do with it is play DVDs and Blurays. There's nothing on the Playstation 3 coming down the pipeline I want that I wouldn't have a better time with on the 360. Any multi-platform titles that has a smidgen of Online functionality, I will choose the Xbox version because I have MORE friends with Xboxes and it's MUCH easier to join games with them. Ghostbusters has Online co-op? Xbox purchase. Resident Evil 5 has Online Co-op? Most likely Xbox purchase.
SO, that made me quite excited for this morning when Nintendo and Sony had their E3 press conferences and I feverishly waited for a megaton announcement to rival the Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox announcement yesterday. In fact, I popped up the live video to listen to while I worked rather than just looking at the news pouring in from sites.
The first conference of the day was Nintendo. They showed off a snowboarding game with the Wii Balance Board, then Animal Crossing, then some DS games.. Then they showed off Wii Sports Resort (Wii Sports 2), which I thought was pretty damn important for them. It'll definitely sell a ton of copies since everyone knows and loves Wii Sports. I was somewhat excited for them, but for me.. who cares? It's just another collection of Wii mini-games to go along with all the other top-selling games on the Wii. Then they announced Wii Music, which was laughable.
And that was it... Iwata mentioned that the Zelda and Mario teams are hard at work on new Wii titles, but gave absolutely no hint as to what those titles are, nor when we know of them. All the games shown for Wii were more crappy mini-game compliations and Animal Crossing, which is an MMO chat room furniture collection game I've already played to death on the gamecube. Frakking bullshit.
I shrugged it off though.. my Wii is kinda broken now anyways, and my monitor only accepts digital signals, so the Wii looks like crap on it. I've been setting my sights on HiDef gaming more recently so bring on the good news Sony!
Nearly 2 hours later, the Sony conference began and I sat listening to Jack Trenton talk and talk and talk. Yakuza 2 (on PS2) got a little face time in the Playstation 2 trailer, which made me happy. That's another game coming out this fall that I've been waiting for. Trenton unveiled PSN movie rentals which was the biggest joke after Microsoft announced its Netflix partnership the day earlier.
He also announced that they have 130 titles coming to PS2 by the end of the year... That's a lot more than they have for the Playstation 3. Obviously the Playstation 2 has a huge attach rate, but it's time to move on. Focus on the Playstation 3 because the Xbox hit 5 or 6 home runs just yesterday, not to mention all the blockbuster releases last year. Metal Gear is all you have going for you and Microsoft has shown that it doesn't need it.
An hour into the conference and they finally get to showing off the upcoming games for Playstation 3. Sony officially announces God of War 3 (boring), they show off some other game, and unveil MAG, a 256 player war simulator. Another fucking war game... and that's the show.
Once again, absolutely nothing that appeals to me at all.. No immersive single player experience that will have me loving video games the way Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy and Metal Gear Solid 4 have. Resident Evil 5 will probably fill that bill, but Sony didn't give any face time to it. Microsoft showed off a demo and gave a March 13th, 2009 date AND announced online co-op.
The future is grim for my interest in these two consoles in the next year. There's still whatever game the Zelda and Mario teams are working on for the Wii (Kid Icarus). And there's Yakuza Kenzan and Yakuza 3 for Playstation 3, but haven't been announced for an American release.
The Xbox has Fable 2 coming out in October, and huge multi-million-dollar-deal DLC for Grand Theft Auto 4. Probably some Mass Effect DLC once Bioware finishes Dragon Age. There's also Galaga Legions from the creators of Pacman CE. AND Online Co-op for Ghostbusters with friends!
I really feel that once I actually get an Xbox, my other two consoles will just sit there, against the wall.. especially the Wii. The Playstation 3 I'll use for Blu-ray and upscaling Playstation 2 games.
There's not a whole lot of redeeming qualities.. much like House of Wax. For a horror movie, there's NO nudity.. what the crap?! The acting goes from bad to worse to slap-in-the-face horrible. However, in the end, the main characters set the House of Wax on fire and frantically escape as it turns into a boiling molten pit of fire and craziness. Also, Paris Hilton dies. House of Wax will always have that over the Nintendo and Sony conferences.