Intro - Willy105
The month after E3, and the second half of 2008 now begins. Although this month is kinda short in big releases, other than Soul Calibur IV and Final Fantasy IV DS remake, that doesn't mean there aren't things to talk about in System Wars.
We got news from the battlefield that a few rules have been changed on System Wars, which of course leads to wide anger and complaints. Talking about wide, Gamespot has introduced a brand new update to the website, the first one in three years, this time now taking a wider format. Talking about new updates, our long infamous friend Jeff Gerstmann has launched his long hyped website, did it meet the hype, or is it just Jeff Gerstmann being a clown?
We have all that on our 8th issue! Where moderation equals re-education....this is...SYSTEM WARS MONTHLY!
Weather Report - Tsug_Ze_Wind
Hello SW! I'm Tsug_Ze_Wind, and I'll be your weathersheep this evening.
So...how about that E3? Yeah...it was...pretty bad.
That's all I have to say.
...
...
....
Wait! The actual event may have been like watching paint dry, but in SW, it was like watching a bunch of people go nuts over watching paint dry. SW is never short of drama, and apparently, we can harvest outrage from even drying paint. So I'll start with the paint that was the source of the most outrage.
Itr all started with the Regginator's comment about all the amazing things they had planned for E3. Non-gamers and hardcore would be excited, etc. The sheep took that and started the E3 hype train that soon swelled into hope for a revived E3 that would actually be exciting to watch. Little did we know that it was actually the comment of Reggie's evil twin...Reggievil, who was now twirling his two-foot long moustache as all nothing was about to break loose.
Long story short, Nintendo conference was damned boring and very much un-hypeworthy. Cue the explosions.
Real-time 1:1 sword fighting! But on Wii Sports Resort.
The sheep are now in trouble unless they get something to end this drought. Some relief came in the form of Miyamoto's comment that E3 was not where the core games would be shown anymore. Miyamoto's not the type to grow a two-foot long moustache, so I believe him. Hopefully, wherever they will be shown is close.
On to the cows! Sony's E3 started with the right intentions. The moofolk got some pretty pictures of GoW3, LittleBigPlanet playing sales, and a reminder that the PS2 exists. It was pretty entertaining, which is more than what can be said for the other two, but by the end, we realized it had just as little substance as the others. Sony didn't save E3, but they didn't lose it either. The cows are pretty set for the rest of the year, so they're fine with that.
Massive Action Game was the big megaton for Sony's E3.
MS started the trend of boring shows this year, with a very...casual...E3, showing the Mii ripoff that -GhostMLD- and no one else was excited for, and games that no one at all wanted to play. It looked like MS was going to sink this E3, and lemmings could have definitely used a good show. Oh well....
What's this about another announcement, Square Enix guy?
OMG OMG OMG
And with that, the lemmings won this E3. FF13 had slipped a bit in relevance, but it was still a nice pickup, and the only newsworthy event of the entire damn show. Enjoy, lemmings.
So, who's excited for the next E3? *crickets*
First Impressions: Giantbomb.com - Willy105
If you even payed attention during November last year, you would have heard the unfortunate event now known by the press as "Gerstmanngate". In November of last year, Gamespot fired their longest emplyed reviewer, Jeff Gerstmann, their editor-in-chief. He has been on Gamespot since it's launch in 1996. Why would he be fired? The actual answer was never confirmed to the public, but popular belief is that it was from preassure from a publisher, in this case Eidos.
Eidos payed a lot of money to advertise their latest blockbuster big budget game, Kane and Lynch, on Gamespot. Banners and ads were all over the front page, and it had special coding so that that you could choose which Gamespot background you wanted to see, from Kane, or Lynch. Ironically, the game turned out to be not so good. As a proffesional game reviewer, Jeff Gertmann had to write what he thought of the game, and he score it accordingly. This created a series of events that led to the firing of Jeff Gerstmann. Here's Gamespot's official response to the event.
Whatever did happened, Jeff Gerstmann was out of a job, and he didn't see anything else to do than to do what he does best, and that's tell everyone what he thinks of stuff. He and some of his friends from Gamespot have started up a new website, Giantbomb.com, and it has now been officially launched (before it was just a small blog going over the development of the website). The main selling point of the website is obviously Jeff, but is the website itself something to get excited about? I ventured there to find out myself.
So violent.
Giantbomb is taking things differently from Gamespot, deciding to be both a place for game reviews and a full blown Wiki. Users can edit the game pages and add more info on the game that the staff might have missed. The more edits you make, the more points you have, similiar to Gamespot's leveling-up system. You might think this will be abused easily, since gamers aren't exactly the most credible source for un-biased facts, but everythinghas to be approved by the staff, so it's balanced out.
Now on the part most of you are excited about, the community. There are good stuff and bad stuff about these forums from my short experience there. First, the good things, and that is the community engine themselves. They have far more features than the humble Gamespot forums have. In your user profile alone, there are tons of useful things to take advantage off, inculding a user wall where you could leave comical messages to a user's wall for everyone to see. A feed is there, showing every single thing you have been doing, from uploading a picture, to forum posts or comments, when you add a user review or a Wiki edit, or when you are now friends with someone.
The forums are organized very nicely as well, my favorite part is now you can see every single board in the site put up in one place, where all the topics can be shown in one place, instead of browsing individual board. This is a great idea, because no matter what board you post a topic on, people can always see it and reply to it, and you don't have to worry about someone not seeing the topic because nobody goes to that particular board. The forums are full of activity, and you can expect a conversation to pop up instantly, and it's amazingly usually on topic.
But there are some bad things about it. Because it's a new site, there's a distinct lack of mods. There have been many imposters pretending to be other users (like Casey) and create flamebait on the forums. It can get annoying when you are used to the order that Gamespot is in. Also, there are no smilies on the forums, andthere are no sigs, but for some that may be a good thing. Also, you can only use WYSIWYG editors on the forums, so if you are using an incompatible browser, like Opera or the Wii browser, you will not be able to post on the forums or make Wiki edits.
And that's about it for now. The site is growing every day, but it's up to you if you want to stay here on Gamespot or make the move. You should only go there if everybody you know has gone there. There is now System Wars on Giantbomb, and people you have grown to like here on Gamespot may not be there, so there's plenty of reason to stay here on the homeland. Besides, we will miss you if you leave us here. We Gamespotters stick together.
System Wars: The Comic 16 - Willy105
System Wars: The Game - Willy105
If you haven't played System Wars: The Game, it's still not too late!
You can download the game over at Gamespot Games.
First Look: Gamespot Wide - Willy105
Welcome to the future of Gamespot, and it is coming soon!
The home page of Gamespot Wide.When was the last time Gamespot has gotten a major overhaul? The Gamespot we know as today has been around for a couple of years, and when it was introduced, it streamlined the old Gamespot a lot, making it simpler for users to navigate the current content. But there were still some things that could have been made better. The most common one was that the site was still based on the old 800 x 600 pixel resolution of old monitors. As time went on, other sites started adapting their site to newer higher resolution monitors that were capable of 1024 x 768 pixel resolution, like IGN. However, Gamespot still stayed by the old resolution, which resulted in the grey bars at the edges of the screen of Gamespot. 01100001
Gamespot has noticed this, and in August, they will launch the next big update to Gamespot, called for now as Gamespot Wide. Just as it's name suggest, it's wider than today's Gamespot, designed for a with 1024 pixel resolution. Thanks to the wider resolution,now more things can be shown on one page than ever before!
The new gamespaces, this one showing the review for Soul Calibur 4.
The pages have three columns now instead of the two of today. On the left column, all the navigation is located, where it was previously located at the top of the page. Here you can look for the Summary, Reviews, News, Previews and Features, Images, Videos, Cheats, and the Forum. By highlighting the boxart of the game, a small window will pop up showing the game's stats on Gamespot, it's ranking for each console, it's ESRB rating, and it's tags. The center column is where all the usual writing will be in, like reviews and previews. And on the right column, the game's review score and emblems will be shown, as well as user reviews, user submissions, and the related unions.
It's all nicely organized and easy to find what you are looking for, something that was a little harder to do under the current Gamespot, due to everything being hidden. The editorial spaces of Gamespot are not the only ones being improved by the new design. The community section will be getting a long awaited facelift, especially with the introducement of a new community hub, which will replace the current main forums page.
The community hub.
In the new Community hub, you can look at the recent community announcements and news, updates for the site, the community blog, a schedule for tournaments and game nights, featured unions, you can see links to your list of favorite unions, the user soapbox, and the new RSS feature where you can see your friend's activities in real-time. Unfortunately, I could not take a look at the forums, however the staff has announced that the forums will also be getting the facelift. Exactly how the new forums will look is still a mystery.
Of course, the user pages themselves will also be getting facelifted with more features and some changes.
The new user pages. Don't tell Subrosian that we took a screenshot!
It will also be getting the three column treatment in the same way the game spaces are. On the left column, the user icon is shown with their level right underneath it, along with the rank, post count, and when he was last online. Below that, the tags are shown, but now they are not shown all at once, and you have to rollover it to see all the tags. This at first may sound like an annoying, but it speaks better of someone that has enough tags that you can't even see them all. Below that, you can see the links of your profile that were usually below your banner.
The banner is still there, but now at the top of the other two columns, so the size of the banner stays the same. On the center column, the user's blog is shown. This time, only the first blog is shown in full, and the following two blogs are only shown as previews and you have to click on them to see them fully. Also, only three blogs are shown at a time, just to make less scrolling necessary on the pages. Below the blogs are your user reviews, below that are your user images, and below are your user videos. At the right column, a new feature has been introduced, a new RSS feed of your recent activity, so other users can see what you are doing in the site in real-time. Below that, there are your tracked blogs of your friends, your online ID's, your Now Playing list, your recent ratings, and your unions.
The new Gamespot is looking great, and although it's still a beta, the new Gamespot is scheduled to launch this August!
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