What Makes a Portable Game Portable?

With Animal Crossing:  New Leaf on the near horizon and twenty-five of my dollars ensuring that I will have a 3DS XL bundle at the GameStop I frequent on the 9th, I have found myself rather oddly excited to jump back into the world of Animal Crossing, as well as get to know the 3DS properly.  Getting to know a 3DS properly, if you listen to a lot of detractors for the Vita, will allow me to get properly introduced to -actual- portable games, and not just 'watered-down console scraps'.  That part is interesting to me for many reasons, all of which should probably be obvious, but without getting too snarky, it did get me thinking.  Why is there a notion that the 3DS' offerings are so much more 'portable-focused' than the Vita's?

Let's take the example'd Animal Crossing:  New Leaf since it is literally the game I'm getting a 3DS XL for since Rune Factory 4 still has a tentative release date.  I legitimately have to question the portability of a game that originated on a console, and has seen only two more releases til now - another one that was just on a console, and a portable one that was literally just like the console one, but missing a few things.  Surely, if Uncharted:  Golden Abyss = Uncharted on consoles and thus isn't a portable title, Animal Crossing checks the exact same boxes, yes?  Unless, I suppose, there was something in the gameplay that would differentiate it as such.

Animal Crossing is a full-out simulation game, complete with town management (not even counting the new Mayor stuff, just tidying up and collecting things), networking between residents and time-specific events - not only things that only happen at certain times a day, but random events where people want to show up at your place at a specific time, or give you something to give to someone else before a timer counts down.  Moreso because of that last point, I'd say that it doesn't really qualify there either, as that is not a 'pick-up-and-play-put-down-whenever' aspect, as I assume we're judging by here.  Not only is that something that'll make you continue to play the game far beyond when you actually mean to, thus not allowing you to put it down whenever, it works off of the system clock, not the game clock (because there is no game clock, it's -just- the system clock) meaning that you can't even just shut it to put it to sleep.  It'll still run, it'll still trigger that event and if you miss it, that's it.

My point is not that the Vita's titles are not guilty of being console series, but rather that, well, the biggest 3DS titles are as well.  Mario Kart 7, Castlevania:  Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate (Castlevania games on the DS have been big deals in the past, though they were Igavania affairs), Fire Emblem:  Awakening, Kingdom Hearts 3D:  Dream Drop Distance, The Legend of Zelda:  Ocarina of Time 3D, Luigi's Mansion:  Dark Moon, Metal Gear Solid:  Snake Eater 3D, New Super Mario Bros. 2, Resident Evil:  Revelations, Shin Megami Tensei IV and Super Mario 3D Land are all likely some of the biggest titles on the system, yet every single one comes from a console series or franchise.  The only one that I more or less -know- works as a portable title is Fire Emblem:  Awakening, with the others being possible, but I don't really know.  OoT3D is a friggin' N64 game.  So I'm really missing where the 'true portability' comes in that makes these -not- 'watered-down console ports'.  I mean, I guess in the case of OoT3D, it's an -enhanced- port, but you know what I'm getting at.

Then you have a game like Soul Sacrifice which was built specifically around the theory of portability.  Small maps with very direct encounters that are meant to last anywhere from a minute to ten/fifteen minutes if you get really unlucky.  Obviously the longer things inhibit your ability to call it portable, as well as the multiplayer aspect, but with those, if you're planning on playing it online, you're -likely- not doing it from a place where you need to be able to immediately put it down and leave.  Everything screams "this is a title for a portable console" and it's on the Vita.  Perhaps it's because it's a recent release that it doesn't count?  I don't know, it's all a bit silly and it's silly that I've gone on this long about it.

Really, the point is that both systems have portable games that are actually portable, and games that kind of aren't but are on a portable system anyway.  Both of them generally have a manner to -make- them more portable anyway, with the 3DS' sleep and the Vita's out to LiveArea.  So all I'm getting at is that if you hear someone telling you one system has more 'actual portable games' or 'no lame console ports', punch them in the back of the head.  Or do something less violent, I guess.

god, that kind of went nowhere

Nvidia Announces 'Shield' Confuses Literally Everybody

So, there is honestly a little bit of an inordinate amount of news going on these days, and a big contributor to that is the International Consumer Electronics Show which has an inherent skew into gaming, though not a whole lot tends to come out of it if memory serves.  However, at least two big pieces of news, in a sense, have come out and the one that came out first was the announcement of Project Shield from Nvidia, you know, the graphic processor guys.  When you make graphics processors for PCs, the clear and obvious next step is Handheld Mobile Gaming and that is exactly what Nvidia has thrown down into.  I mean, it's so obvious.  Nvidia and I are truly of a like mind in this, a matter that makes absolutely every bit of sense as you would expect a big decision like this to have.

Lack of sense aside, this is still a rather big deal, ill-fated from the beginning or not.  This is being billed as a Handheld Gaming Device, meaning it is stepping directly in line with the 3DS, the Vita and the other "wow, why are you even..." handheld devices that have cropped up.  Much like those, this is going to be running Android, which seems to be on everything that doesn't come from Apple, Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo, and also much like those, it doesn't seem to realize that the Android market is apparently undersized compared to iOS despite it being on every mobile thing (and the Ouya, remember that?  No?) that isn't an iDevice, Windows Phone, 3DS or Vita.  Still, perhaps devices like this will change that in the whole run of things, since, well, it's apparently an increasingly bright idea out there.

As for what this Shield is exactly, it's basically a big little controller that also happens to have a Five-inch screen that I am guessing is intended to clamshell on the controller bit itself, but I don't see that being a good idea.  The controller itself is styled after a regular controller, a little more 360 controller than anything (which makes sense, since the Microsoft 'official' PC controller is a 360 one) and has all the usual buttons you might expect, two sticks, plus a handful of strange other buttons (and Start/Select) where the clamshell screen is supposed to fold down at.  Again, perhaps not the greatest idea one could hope to have.  Whether this screen is going to be a touch screen or not is surprisingly up-in-the-air from what I can tell, as it certainly doesn't look like one and isn't in a great place to be one, but at the same time, running Android, you would think it -would- be, right?  Aside from that, it has all the other bells and whistles you could assume, and while it seems based on streaming, I assume it also has storage, but numbers aren't mentioned.

Streaming, as I said, seems to be a big deal with this device, tapping into the Remote Play technology that's been around for a while to allow you to play PC games on this, presumably in much the same way as the PSP/Vita allows as well as the Wii U, though hopefully from a further distance than the Wii U allows.  That much is fairly impressive if it works as flawlessly as one could hope - being able to take advantage of a PC's full power in visuals and such for a PC game on a handheld is something that we're not quite at yet, so even though this is sort of a 'mock' version of it, it's close enough to be a little excited about I think.  Though, I'm not sure just how much streaming will actually hamper what you get on the Shield, so it might be a bit early to consider the possibilities.  Still, mobile Far Cry 3, mobile Assassin's Creed (if you're not into Assassin's Creed 3:  Liberation for some stupid reason that is also dumb) and so on and so forth is a tantalizing prospect, provided the streaming works with -all- PC games, ones that are on Steam, Origin or otherwise, and not just some.

The big issues here are pretty simple:  reliability and price.  Make no mistake about it - this is going to be a powerful handheld, but powerful things, especially electronics and especially especially when related to things of a PC nature have a propensity towards unreliability, and this certainly tips the scales more than that I would say.  Still, maybe that's not so much an issue as the actual form factor of the device seems like it might be built to accommodate power at the expense of comfort.  Price is the sticking point, however as I doubt "being able to play your PC games for 5 hours* on a handheld" is going to translate directly into a rather high price point, though from everything you see here, that's precisely what you would expect.  What I expect, at least, as I just can't come up with a figure in my head that makes this cheap.  It's scheduled to release in the latter half of this year, so I imagine we'll get details before then, but by the time we do, I'm also imagining we'll have completely forgotten about this.  I will, most certainly.

Earth Defense Force 3 Portable is a Thing...for Vita

So, while not quite being a hidden gem of E3, it is, nonetheless, something from around E3-time that you might not have heard of, which is unfortunate, since the news of this seemed to make a lot of folks happy.  I'm happy because people are happy, as I don't have any experience with the Earth Defense Force series whatsoever, but that happiness signifies a reason for it, and upon watching the video, I think I can sort of glean just what that is.  It is, also, quite possibly the only thing I can think of to write about right now since I am still fighting off some sort of cold or bad allergies or something.  So if this is not as involved or wordy or informative a post as you might be used to, I apologize, but it's about all I can put out at the moment.  But I -want- to write something at least, and pointing out a game that might've been overlooked seems a good a cause as any.

Now, the first thing you might notice about the trailer is that it is in Japanese.  This is mostly because it is, at this moment, just a Japanese game.  That is worth mentioning since it didn't even get the "will it, won't it" treatment at E3 like the Hatsune Miku Vita game as far as I know, so the chances of it getting localized are completely up in the air.  From what I can tell, only two installments of the series have been released in North America, so perhaps have a little bit of caution until we hear some official word.  Still, that attempt at buzz-killing aside, localization could probably be done pretty cheaply I would imagine, and despite all the doom-saying of the Vita despite it not even being out for half a year which is a thing I have brought up about two dozen times, it's still early enough where something like this is definitely worth the investment since there are still people out there with a Vita that is shiny-new and looking for more and more things to play on it, which means they might connect to an audience outside of the niche they've carved.  I, for one, am interested despite having never playing (and barely hearing of) the series, and I imagine my case would not be an unheard of one.

Immediately apparent is that they game is certainly not one you're going to turn to for a deep, involved storyline with plenty of twists, turns and surprises.  Even in Japanese, the gist of "It's 2017, we're being invaded" is clear, and that is where the titular organization comes into play.  The Earth Defense Force, the nameless, faceless men and women in a giant army are the people you take control of to try and drive off the alien and/or giant bug and/or giant robot menace.  I say nameless, faceless men and women (maybe even just men?  I dunno) because that's kind of part of the 'thing' of the game, after I've looked into it.  The point is that you play as part of the 'fodder', so you're not a super soldier, nor are you technically 'supposed' to win, or are even expected to, and certainly not by yourself.  While I don't know quite how that mechanic works, it's reflected in the fact that the game's other draw is the Online Co-Op between up to four people which is touted in the trailer.  Along those same lines, but possibly not mentioned, is that the game will be sold in single and double-packs, with the latter meaning, quite literally, buying two copies of the game so that you can 'enlist' a friend into playing it with you.  Which I think is neat.

Something else that's neat about it is the nice little touch part-way through the video.  Take a good look at the...well, it's not a 'logo', but it's a name or whatever for the news station.  If you read it and don't get it right off, when I guess you haven't followed the Vita very long and/or simply forgot.  Or perhaps my ignorance of the series is shining through, but I think "NGP News" is a little bit too much of a coincidence.  NGP obviously coming from the 'codename' for the Vita as it was shorthand for Next Generation Portable is a pretty nice call-back/touch, so I sure hope it was intentional.  If not, then I suppose it's simply a little bit of 'fate' that the series finally made its way to the handheld if it has commonly featured "NGP News" in the cutscenes and/or as a plot point.  Regardless, that's sort of a little thing to go on about for a paragraph and I feel sort of silly about that.

What I should be talking about is the gameplay itself and how it looks in the trailer provided since it is literally my only resource here without looking elsewhere which I don't plan on doing.  The whole 'sick' thing and all.  Basically the game looks like a free-roam Third Person Shooter affair which is plenty nice, especially with the twin sticks of the Vita.  Of course, it's not your standard TPS game, considering there are all varieties of big and, by that metric, gigantic enemies to be found and destroyed while running for your life, so it does set itself apart in that.  The sheer scale of that alone is pretty impressive, moreso when you consider that four different Vitas can run such a scenario concurrently, and when you add in vehicles (or at least Helicopters as shown in the trailer), the game expands that much more in quite a pleasant way.  Of course, even with all that, I'm sure it's not just a matter of run around and shoot, and will require some actual tactics considering it's dependent on you playing as a redshirt essentially.

That's about all I know and can tell about the game, of course, what with the whole 'not speaking japanese' thing, which is something I should look into at some point apparently.  (Goddamnit, Sega)  The trailer puts a release somewhere within the remainder of 2012 but again, that's simply for the Japan release of the game since there could only -be- a Japan release of the game.  I'm somewhat hoping and betting against it, but it's a very real possibility considering the series seems to have 'low-budget' written all over it.  (Though, impressively, it's not -incredibly- apparent in the visuals)  Hopefully we'll get a yay or a nay soon, rather than have to think/worry/wonder about it for a while, but there are all sorts of hopefuls out there regardless.  We'll just have to see.