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Holy crap there was a lot of free booze. I consider Nokia partially responsible for what I’ll affectionately refer to as “the most drunk driving I’ve ever done in one night.” People needed picking up from airports and bus terminals, there was little I could do about it.
And the sushi was excellent. They had, in true Nokia form, a vegetarian option available. Tim and myself are vegetarians, as you may have known, so this was a pleasant bit of news for us. After harassing the platter-wielding waitresses enough times, we were informed that we were pretty much the only people eating the stuff. So when they got a new plate, they just came straight to us and waited until we finished the plate. This was good for them – the plate was clean, and they could rest a bit and chat before returning to the kitchen. Good for us because the food followed us wherever we went.
The same could be said of the N-Gage units themselves. The demo QDs were all tethered to lovely lads and lasses for playing. It felt a bit odd at first, to be playing the games while they were attached to somebody designed to spit PR at you. But if I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that Nokia’s PR guys are generally really personable across the board, if you let them go through their spiel first. After that, they’re just like you and me.
Doesn’t seem like a hard thing to figure out, but it was for me.
One young lady seemed particularly keen on not working, so she came over to have a talk with the odd looking folks hogging the vegetarian food. She informed us that if we were going to talk, one of us had to hold the N-Gage. Great stuff.
The games themselves were still largely disappointing. The vertically aligned screen will never take off. You just can’t see things that you *need* to see on a chopped screen like that.
Pocket kingdom was nice-ish. It had some great animation, nice 1337 dialogue, but it didn’t feel like a 300 simultaneous player game. It’s kind of a stat manager more than anything…there’s no direct input during battles, and no menus to fuddle with there. That’s nice in many ways, I could see myself enjoying that on the level of ‘drug war’ for my TI-83 during calculus (ok, pre-calculus. Shut up, I’m a writer not a mathemagician). But it needs to feel less constrained for me to grab ahold of that massive multiplayer thing.
Then there’s the King of Fighters aspect. Looked like a 2000 port, if I looked at Kyo’s costume properly. Hudson’s bringing it out, so there’s an off chance that it won’t be terrible. Off-off. If Xanadu Next is bad, I’ll be shocked though. Falcom has been making great cellphone games for some time. They sell really well, they actually animate properly, so there’s no reason to think that they can’t bring out some more great titles. If Ys comes here on the N-Gage, it might be a reason to buy for some. Plus Hudson’s bringing Bomberman. Perfect for multiplayer, this is undeniable. Assuming you like Bomberman, and you should.
Capcom’s also partnered on. There are no specifics yet, but Josh submits that they might go for a Megaman Battle Network game on the thing. Sounds like solid thinking to me.
All in all, they didn’t really have that much to show. What I’m talking about here are the games they flashed for a few seconds at the tail end of their rash of game trailers. Vince already mentioned Gliteratti. That’s the most breasts I’ve ever seen in a press conference, even if they were silhouettes. The women in the silhouettes in the trailer were really quite naked too. Or had some cameltoe going on. Either way, it was really…kind of odd. Not want I wanted to see at a preshow event, somehow.
Their hardware had already been announced, most of the titles had already been screened (Hudson and Capcom excluded), so their shindig was rather low on the bomb dropping. Luckily, the more liquor you’ve got in you the better everything sounds, right? Right.
On the plus side though – Eurobeat in the Gliteratti trailer. At least someone is learning!
brandon sheffield
has a one-track mind.
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