Lessons for next year....

I had a ton of fun a PAX this year (There is truly nothing like watching The Wizard with at least 1000 other video game geeks). I came away with more free trials from NC Soft than I know what to do with. (City of Heroes, City of Villains, Lineage II, Auto Assault) The Meydenbauer Center was ridiculously packed, so hopefully it will be somewhere bigger next year (hint: Like The Washington State Convention center, which I happen to be only a few blocks from...). But after spending nearly 20 hours in 2 days at the convention (many of which was waiting in long lines) and then working a full shift at my job today, I am ridiculously tired. I'll definitely need to plan ahead a bit more next year. I do have to say that the exhibition hall was pretty disappointing. The only games worth checking out were Splinter Cell: Double Agent & Star Fox Command. Even though Nintendo was a major sponsor of the event, the Wii was nowhere to be seen, just a whole lot of fun, but underwhelming DS titles.

And speaking of Nintendo massively dropping the ball, HOW COULD YOU HAE NO ONLINE SUPPORT FOR 3RD PARTIES UNTIL'07?!? My launch budget literally dropped by about half for this. I'm not buying Madden, without the ability to play online. I'm not buying Red Steel without an online option, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance will be bought on another system that I can go online with. Simple fact: Madden playable in a whole new way against your friends online would sell a lot of systems, now all it has is a wacky control scheme. There is just really no excuse for this. I know Nintendo is obviously not putting the emphasis on online that MS & Sony are, but this is a big fucking plus in the competition's favor when they will be able to offer online play for just about every 3rd-party multi-player game that comes out in the next 6 months or possibly even more and the Wii can't match that. Mark my words, this will really bite Nintendo in the ass if they don't get it going within a few months of launch.

Thank you Conan O'Brien for actually making the Emmys tolerable. I did watch tonight, but aside from Jeremy Piven getting a well-deserved win for Entourage, it was crap. Seriously, at least half the shows nominated were cancelled cause they sucked or had ended in May after being run into the ground years ago.

All right, that's really all for today, but I fully plan to be back tomorrow, as there are several games coming out this week I want to touch on. In the meantime, here's your FREE GAME OF THE WEEK: SUPER SMASH FLASH