Posts Tagged ‘Tokyo Game Show’

Strap yourself in. Here’s everything I haven’t mentioned that caught my eye.

Sony – Little Big Planet confirmed that I’ll soon buy a PS3. PSP’s line up is looking very health.

Square-Enix – The booth was black and dull unless you snagged a ticket into the Final Fantasy Theater. I didn’t.

Microsoft – Their space was sparsely populated which wasn’t helped by being next to Capcom and Square-Enix.

Capcom – SF4, Biohazard and Monster Hunter. Best at show?

SNK – King of the Fighters looked good, but will struggle against SF4.

Koei – A wall of blinding light and Dynasty Warriors.

Konami – Still living off Metal Gears success. Plus a little Silent Hill.

Sega – Yakuza was packed, but the trailer looked great. Let’s Tap provided (possibly limited) fun. Bayonetta looked stylish but focused a too much on her unmentionables…

Mobile gaming – Lots of retro games are being ported over because they can not because they’re good.

So I got talking to a guy called Joel. Not that exciting on the surface, but he was covering TGS for his newspaper and had seen a few things I hadn’t. Here is what I learned.

Resistance 2’s enemies impressed Joel not just by their scale but also their variety, the invisible ones being of particular note. They don’t sound like fun but Joel countered my doubts explaining how the visual and audio cues made it thrilling rather than frustrating.

He also talked about Saint’s Row 2. A GTA4 clone that he thinks is different enough in tone to be worth a look.

Joel also saw Biohazard Degeneration, the upcoming movie set to fill in gaps in the lore between Biohazard 4 and the main story. I’d seen clips; it looked like a hi-res PS2 cut-scene. My question to Joel, ‘Is it better than Lex?’ The long pause wasn’t reassuring.

Obviously games were the main focus of the event. It was a strange selection however. Perhaps because of the timing of TGS this year it seemed that the majority of playable titles on the show floor were mere weeks from release. So although I wanted to play Fallout, Mirrors Edge, Resistance and their ilk I felt loathed to queue for an hour for the privilege.

These games that were approaching release drew a line that could last an hour, but it was the Japanese developed games slated for 2009 that really drew a crowd. Street Fighter 4, which has been in arcades here for months had a ninety minute queue, Biohazard 5 reached over two hours and any event that required tickets (such as the Final Fantasy Theater) ran out within minutes.

Thus it was I spent most of my time walking the show floor enjoying games vicariously through others.

Coz-play has become synonymous with Japanese gaming culture. At TGS this was represented by what I lovingly nick-named ‘coz-play avenue’. The effort coz-players put into their outfits was incredible. They even arrived out of costume and then changed at the show, paying five hundred yen each for the privilege of changing-rooms.

Actually coz-play is something I understand. I get the desire to dress-up to pay homage to a game or manga. What I think is a little less wholesome is scores of photographers. They wait in line for a coz-player to pose for them with doe eyed innocence and proceed take twenty or so photos.

TGS’s demographic skewed some where between twenty and forty, the photographers however tended to skew towards their forties and fifties. This made what seemed like a bit of fun into something more perverse. Well that’s what it think so maybe I am the sordid one.