On Sunday I was out and about, and two of my stops were the Wii Sports Resort Carnival at Takashimaya and the Xbox Gaming Showdown at VivoCity.
Both were underwhelming, especially XGS. Maybe it was because I went at an off-hour, in the middle of the afternoon, so it wasn’t as exciting as it otherwise have been.
The Wii Sports Resort Carnival was organised by Maxsoft, the sole distributor of Nintendo products in SEA. I wandered through Takashimaya looking for it, but eventually I found out that it was actually outside. -_-
Kids trying out the cycling event
It wasn’t very interesting for me, likely because I already own a Wii and know what Wii Sports Resort is all about. Basically you joined a main queue and waited your turn to try any one of the Wii Sports Resort events. Most, if not all, the events were there to be tried: I saw cycling, swordfighting, canoeing, and basketball, among others.
Sword/stick fighting
They were also selling Wii consoles, MotionPlus and a few games, but I felt that the games were overpriced somewhat. Wii games generally don’t depreciate over time, but why would I pay $81 for Super Smash Bros Brawl there, when I can get it for $69 at Funan?
I don’t know. I think it’s a good way to demo the Wii to parents and younger kids, not so much to promote any games.
I hopped onto a train and headed down to VivoCity to see XGS. I was severely underwhelmed by the whole set up, since I expected it to be much larger. The XGS area was just in a corridor, with maybe a dozen Xboxes hooked up to game demos.
They had some really sweet setups though! Especially the one for Forza 3.
Forza 3's sweet, sweet set-up
Three 32-inch plasma TVs set up to give a semi-realistic view of the road, plus one of those nifty racing simulator chairs. The graphics are really awesome, and the AI seems to be up to scratch. It was pretty cool to see the car turning on the middle screen, NPCs on the left, and the background on the right.
I was, however, there to see the DJ Hero demo/preview. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that the DJ Hero is actually being physically shown here. I wanted to see how one’s fingers actually move on the turntable.
DJ Hero turntable (Renegade edition), buttons largely obscured by player's hands
I wasn’t disappointed. They were showing off the Renegade Edition, which is slightly different and more expensive than the normal DJ Hero. There’s a gold trim to the round bit that spins, and a carrying case that can be set up as a waist-height table to play standing up – you can see that in the picture above.
It looks simple enough. It’s remarkably similar to Guitar Hero’s gameplay, except at the higher difficulties you have to deal with two hands doing two different actions at the same time. For example, you have to hold a button and spin the turntable with your right hand while your left moves a dial.
I’m still undecided about getting DJ Hero, but at least now I know the controller is not the monster I was afraid it was.