The demo shows off a small bit of the variety, with goos with different abilities, like those that can be removed and reattached to whatever you build, as well as different obstacles that can make a mess or tear apart your work.   And one can only hope that the worlds following the first one continue to bring new and fresh challenges to the player.  I was reminded the whole game of Fantastic Contraption, by being able to build and try and reach some end point, but Goo is that on a whole new level.

I also found myself enjoying the cute, cartoony aesthetic, with the crude people and animated eyes of the goos, and the levels all have a somewhat crude, dirty design, probably half due to the goos, and the other half being the shady corporation that has you collecting them.

Anyone interested in the Fantastic Contraption sort of building should at least grab the demo and try out the more complex World of Goo.

Now, while I would like my resident Florida team to eke out victory, my pity for Philadelphia is willing to concede defeat as that fair city burns in a victory riot.  Just kidding, you’re not Detroit, but you need a championship much much more.  Being teased by the Eagles year after year, that would leave all but a Buffalo Bills fan blustered, so I hope that the city that the Liberty Bell, Rocky, and Cheesesteaks built will never lose hope.  And thanks to Cole Hamels, it just might happen.

Here are (in my opinion) the biggest highlights which would have made me feel alot better a few months ago.
1. Wii SD Storage: I know this isn’t a hard drive, but based on the 360 HD prices, I’ll gladly pick up another SD card to store some N64 games.  This should have been in since the beginning, better late than never.  The VC and WiiWare games aren’t terribly large anyway, and at the price of 1 or 2 GB SD cards, I think this is easily worth it.  Now if I can bring my copy of Mega Man 9 to my friend’s Wii…
2. Club Nintendo: One thing the rest of the gaming world has lorded over North America was Club Nintendo.  Basically you buy Nintendo stuff, you get redeemable points for free Nintendo goodies.  And you can placate many unsatisfied Nintendo fans by giving them a free Yoshi plush.
3. The DSi: I’m still on the fence about this, and it doesn’t matter because we won’t see it outside of Japanese imports for a year.  And that’s really the point, DS sales are slipping in Japan to the PSP, and they want to get back to the top while they can.  It’s neat, but my heart still yearns for the iPhone for camera and surfing goodness.  I plan on keeping my current DS Lite, I get my GBA slot and don’t have to go spending cash in the DS store.  Although if they offered WPA support I’d find that useful.
4. Some ‘core’ titles: They offered some good hardcore games in the next year.  The new Punch-Out is a nice reminder of the SNES classic.  A remake of the original NES Fire Emblem is welcome by those who are fans of the series.  A new Mario & Luigi RPG for the DS sounds great, as does releasing Sin & Punishment 2 outside of Japan!  And in a surprising move, Nintendo is publishing the hardcore shooter The Conduit, the small FPS-that-could that has been looking for a publisher since it surprised everyone earlier this year.

Here are the other 2 major announcements from the conference.
Wii Speak: Coming free with the microphone next month, I’m not excited about just sitting around chatting about games we could be playing.  There needs to be something more interactive for me to care.  Also it’s “free” with their $30 mic, what about another microphone, how much does it cost then?  It is nice to have some microphone support, if only they could put it in Mario Kart.
Play For Wii: This was announced only in Japan, so we’ll see if they bring it elsewhere.  These are just remakes of Gamecube games with Wii waggle controls.  While it’s not the complete ultimate of rehashing, I just don’t see myself caring enough to play Pikmin with Wii controls, unless the price is right.

So while E3 2008 was seen as a disappointment by most Nintendo fans, their Media Summit has shown some promise that Nintendo still cares about them.

Portal: Prelude, as its name states it, is an unofficial prequel to the game Portal. Its story revolves around the pre-GlaDOS epoch, even before she was plugged in. At this time, test subjects were monitored by real Aperture Science employees whose work was tedious, lengthy and repetitive. This is why they decided to build a great artificial intelligence that could both replace them in these difficult tasks, but also take responsibility for many other tasks within the complex and compete with Black Mesa’s superiority. All employees of the Aperture Science complex are now eagerly awaiting GlaDOS. Maybe even a little too eagerly, as the upcoming events will tell…

Since Valve is expanding the Portal franchise on their own, they are working extra hard to launch this free mod.  We expect Portal: Prelude to be released by the early October.

Piqued by my interest in the new site design I logged back into the old ‘book and also tried the new *OFFICIAL* Scrabble app.  It was terrible, sucked, no fun.  Yes you play with friends, but you can’t play right away, you’re stuck with long-term matches, like playing chess by mail.  And this in turn inspired me to try and find the missing Scrabulous.  Which I did, at scrabulous.com, and it is really cool.  You log into the website and jump into a lobby, which seem to always have plenty of players, and can get started quickly and easily.

There are a couple of notes for those who have only lived with the board game version.  First off, all matches are automatically timed, if you run out of time you lose, which is fair considering it is an online game.  Second they have two different dictionaries and they have numerous options when it comes to bogus words.  Most of the early matches I’ve played used the easiest option where the dictionary automatically bumps bad words, no penalty minus wasted time.  The others allow opponents to challenge with varying penalties, and it’s much easier than flipping thru a thick Scrabble dictionary.  It is a fast, efficient version of the game.  If those reinforced gameplay rules are a massive turn-off, then stick to the board game, otherwise I would say that scrabulous is so easy to get in and play it’s worth it for anyone who cares even a modicum for the Scrabble (c).