Let me preface this piece by saying I love BioWare, they are one of my favorite developers and I support them by buying their games and even their merchandise, I have done so for many years. I’m however upset with the FemShep debacle. Firstly it being touted as a ‘beauty contest’ (by some) demeans what the female Commander Shepard (FemShep) is all about, it belittles her as nothing but an object of beauty, a woman to be judged on her appearance rather than action and that angers me. Somehow this “vote for your preferred FemShep” thing went from “cool they’re finally using FemShep on some marketing” to “oh shit FemShep was voted on and now she’s a young blond bimbo”. I don’t understand why BioWare put it to the vote. I don’t understand why BioWare didn’t take control and make a decision to make the marketing material feature the base model FemShep, with her bobbed hair and non-pouting lips.

Turning FemShep into this young looking blond Samus Aran type just irks and it irks a lot. This isn’t a ‘lesbian thing’, though I’m sure there will be those closed minded fools who assume as a lesbian of course I would prefer the short-haired ‘more-masculine’ female Commander Shepard. To them I say, give me a break, I just prefer the female Shepard who looks like you’d listen to her if the galaxy were in peril and frankly if some jumped up 18 year old blond pouting kid needed me on the front lines, I’d be questioning things big time.

The standard female Shepard looks like she can tote a gun, she looks like she’s a leader and most importantly she looks severe and old enough to have lived through battle. The new FemShep we’re now stuck with for marketing and merchandise just doesn’t cut it. I was so excited to purchase a “Mass Effect” game with female Shepard I’ve ranted it to all my gamer friends, now I’ll be buying the male version because frankly I just can’t take blonde kiddy Shepard seriously.

I realize the result of this ‘beauty contest’ was never going to please everyone, after all, we all have our own FemShep versions and the chance of seeing your exact version on packaging or as an action-figure was never going to happen, but come on BioWare, Seriously?!!! Shepard number 5 is bland, bland, bland, bland and worse than bland, she panders to an audience that don’t and possibly never will ‘get’ what FemShep is all about. Thanks for that Bioware, thanks for placing the decision of iconic female leader in the realm of what statistics suggest is the mostly male voting audience, rather than clasping your testicles and saying fuck it let’s make her the Shep most people know from the game. To those male gamers who did vote for a different FemShep (and judging from the comments I’ve read and received since the announcement), thank you, clearly all our votes just didn’t amount to enough. Sadly the “Gentlemen Prefer Blonds” thing is already doing the rounds on the various male run gaming sites, along with ‘Miss Universe’, ‘Pageant Queen’ and other demeaning headlines. It just makes me want to shed a tear because it feels like gaming has once more taken one step forward, two steps back.

Oh and for the record, none of the choices were all that great.

We lesbian geek types do love a little Apple love, so intrepid reporter Jayde (no not THAT Jade, but an awesome intrepid reporter none the less) has taken the time to check out this years World Wide Developers Conference, paying particular interest to the all important Apple Keynote. So if you’re an Apple fan, you probably want to check this out.

WWDC 2011 Apple Keynote – A Lesbian Geek Guide

This year at the world wide developers conference 2011 Apple rocked the stage as their keynote showed us their up and coming releases.

So what will we be getting, when and how much will it set us back? These are the main questions we want answers to.

OS X Lion
Lion is Apple’s new addition for Mac OS X but will it roar like a lion or just cough up
fur-balls like a pussy. With a staggering 250 new features lets have a look at the top 10 key features.

Multi touch gestures
With Apple incorporating multi touch track pads in all their latest notebooks this really is a cool feature. Although there are some multi touch gestures already in Snow leopard they always seemed temperamental and some a bit unnatural. With this new feature promising to be fluid and effortless as you just swipe through your photos in iPhoto and pinch to zoom. It also makes web browsing a treat as you no longer have to bother with scroll bars, you simply have to push through the web pages.

Full Screen Applications
Most of Apple’s applications will now have the full screen control in the upper right of the application window and you can run more than one application in full screen mode without ever having to leave full screen mode, just swipe gesture to get back to the desktop and then swipe back to your full screen application.

Mission Control
Combining dashboard, expose and spaces all working together and accessed by a three finger swipe up gesture. This feature – if your anything like me – will be the most useful, giving you an overall view of everything that is going on. It helps you organise your applications and documents into different spaces with ease and to be able to see the over all view of the desktop at the same time and don’t forget your widgets.

Mac App Store
No big whoop on this one, but the mac app store comes built in and ready to go with OS X Lion. Application updates will be delta updates so it will be quicker to download which is good if you don’t have a fast internet connection.

Launch pad
A quick gesture gets you into launch pad where you can see all your applications on your mac no matter where they are installed and you can organise your apps into iOS 4 looking containers which you can of course custom label. All new installed apps will populate automatically to the launch pad.

Resume
Pretty self explanatory, but resume gets you back to your work environment as you left it so you can get to back into your work quicker, not too sure if that’s a good thing or not but non the less still a very nifty little feature. No more having to arrange your windows again or setting up your spaces again just RESUME.

Auto Save
As I’m writing this I am constantly having to press cmd + s which = pain in my cute ass.
well no more as auto save takes away that burden and trauma when something goes wrong and you realised you have lost your work cause you didn’t save! So now at the title bar of a pages document there will be a drop down arrow with the option to lock the document, duplicate or revert to last opened.

Versions
Tied in with the auto save feature versions is constantly saving your work as your doing it with all the changes your making to it, all of these are saved as versions of a document you can also take a manual snap shot. If you’re thinking this is gonna take up a lot of disk space like I was, well don’t get the prozac out just yet as this feature is very efficient at using space, as only the differences between them are saved not the whole document. All these versions can be accessed through the drop down in the title bar under the option browse all version. When sharing a document only the current version is shared so they wont get all the previous stuff, happy days!

Air Drop
A peer to peer (Wi-Fi based network) file sharing feature. It’s easy to use as it is auto discoverable and setup with a nice graphical user interface which can be found in finder under air drop. Documents have to be confirmed at both ends by sender and recipient so no receiving pictures of strangers asses, unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case all documents are fully encrypted during transfer.

Mail
Not only will mail be more beautiful than Angelina Jolie’s breasts resting in two golden chalices, it also packs some really great new features such as the search functionality where you can create unlimited search filters called tokens to let you narrow it down to a single email. No more colour coded replies as this is replaced by conversation view individual sections, in one message view, containing all original clips and attachments.

So there you have it 10 top features briefly outlined for your general pleasure.

When is it out: Sometime in July unless you’re a developer. Apple’s website has a cool notify me service if you’re an eager beaver.

Where: Mac OS X Lion will only be available to download from the App Store.

How much: UK £20.99 U.S $29.99 Aus $31.99

How Big: Around 4 Gig in size

TTFN
Jayde Draeger

Music and a Zelda trailer, what better way to kick things off eh? The trailer recaps the Zelda franchise (well mostly). Skyward Sword clips follow and the logo for the 25th Anniversary edition of the Zelda game appears. Shigeru Miyamoto takes to the stage along with his translator. He talks about how important music is, referring to the orchestra and the orchestra join him in making his point, clever.

New Zelda games are coming for each system with “The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening” going live in the eShop today. Next weekend “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” will also launch in revamped fashion. “The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords” will release in September as a free DSiWare download. “The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword” will release this holiday season on Wii. There will also be a limited gold Wii remote on launch. Finally a series of Nintendo concerts around the world will also be held in honor of the anniversary.

Satoru Iwata takes to the stage after a brief shout out to the Zelda developers who join Miyamoto on stage. Iwata talks changes in the gaming landscape since the launch of the DS and Wii. He’s trying to reach out to the ‘hardcore’ camera, saying Nintendo’s goal is to satisfy ALL players with its new system. More details to come he says. He leaves and a montage trailer begins.

The huge screens show various gameplay, was that a final flash of what appears to be Luigi’s Mansion, ohh I hope so!

Reggie Fils-Aime takes to the stage and talks in that staggered way that he does. Imagine dinner party conversation with this guy, it would take ALL night. He talks making ‘something for everyone’ and moves onto the Nintendo 3DS. What matters to gamers: Headline titles for 3DS. On the show floor in full 3D, Mario Kart “a tricked out version you haven’t driven before”, trailer ensues and it looks very nice, with some great new additions. Release ‘holiday 2011′.

Next up, “Starfox”, yes Fox McCloud is back baby! You can use the regular control system, or the tilt on the 3DS. The 3DS camera records you in play, so in multiplayer you can see your fellow players reactions. Out in stores in the US in September.

Mario is also coming to Nintendo 3DS. “The first 3D Mario adventure created from scratch”. A trailer follows and again looks very nice. It strikes me at this juncture that no one makes games like Nintendo, so far, no gunfire, no real explosions.

Next up it’s “Kid Icarus: Uprising” and another trailer begins. After the trailer a clip of AR cards, sweet. Features 3on3 gaming and uses the Augmented Reality cards, out later this year.

“The first brother of videogames is back and he’s got his vacuum” YES!!! it’s “Luigi’s Mansion 2″ people! Man it looks nice. Can’t wait for this one. It’s “an entirely new game” – “featuring not just one but several new mansions”.

Now onto the third part developers for the Nintendo 3DS. Another trailer. Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, Mario and Sonic Olympics, Tetris, Cave Story 3D, Resident Evil Revelations, Driver Renegade, Pac-Man and Galaga, Tekken 3D, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D.

Reggie talks the internet browser and e-shop. That system update goes live this week. 3D game videos available this week, downloadable game demos later this year. Gameboy and Gameboy Color games and other older games will also be available. A free 3D version of Excitebike (27 years old) will be made available. Pokemon is another big announcement, Enhanced Pokedex is coming, essentially a collecting game for Pokemon fans. Superimpose the Pokemon with real life backdrops. “Pokedex 3D’ is available through the eShop, it’s complimentary with the system update.

Nintendo 3DS means social, connection, interaction. All delivered in a full 3D display.

Wow not messing around, straight onto the introduction of the new console. He’s talking about the “Wii” name and the name of the new console, wait for it…. “WiiU”… meh. It’s all to do with “we” and “you” enjoying the system together.

A video follows and shows the game being played on the TV, only to move to the controller when the channel is changed. It works as a drawing tablet, has touch controls and tilt controls. All in all it’s very clever and works with other Wii accessories, like Wii Fit and the nunchuck and WiiMote. You can make video calls with the controller, share the controller to the TV. “Coming to your living room 2012″.

The new controller looks sweet, check out the full video below.

Time for to take to the stage for talk about the new controller. Backward compatible, with present peripherals.

Wii U controller Specs:

Not designed to be a portable videogame machine. So you can’t take it outside basically. It all works via streaming. The actual WiiU console isn’t really shown, other than on one of the slides for the quick of eye, it looks like a streamlined Wii.

A video of Shigeru Miyamoto starts, he’s talking up the uses of the WiiU. New styles of play and all the possibilities the new controller entails.

Smash Brothers for 3DS and WiiU gets some good applause. Iwata calls Reggie back and he returns to the stage to talk about new WiiU games. There’s 8 on show in the showfloor, not games “just interactive demonstrations”. Another video ensues that seems to have little to do with anything other than showing off the graphics of the WiiU console, which is obviously the point.

Reggie is now talking “how the new controller can change things”. Your Mii can appear in game (Super Mario Bros is the game used as an example). He shows some other games using the WiiU controller. He says he’s just described prototypes, not actual games. A real game is “LEGO City Stories”, people seem underwhelmed. Seriously LEGO? “LEGO City Stories” is coming out on WiiU and Nintendo 3DS.

Video now of developers talking up the WiiU controller. They’re all talking it up like it’s the most amazing thing in the world. Most of the big names are there. A few of the games get a cheer, most notably “Batman: Arkham Asylum”.

This video leads straight into another showing “Darksiders II”, “Dirt”, Aliens: Colonial Marines” (okay that’s cool), “Ghost Recon Online”, “Metro Last Light”, “Tekken”, “Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge” (gets a cheer).

Iwata and Reggie both on stage together. Both talking up the WiiU. EA is invited on stage and John Riccitiello enters to do his spiel. Says he’s never appeared with Nintendo and talks up how the new ‘console’ will be great for EA content. It’s all about EA games. “Changing games from a thing that you buy, to a place that you go”. Blah blah blah blah. “We can’t wait to see EA games on this new system”.

Reggie returns to close.
“Consider 4 platforms, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Wii and WiiU. He’s talking up the innovation of each device. He’s talking about how WiiU will change gaming. Zelda 25th Anniversary finally gets a mention, though it’s only in passing.

That’s all folks.

Special Thanks to ThumbBandits for this succinct rundown on the EA event at E3 2011.

After putting on 3D specs and watching a brief intro video displaying the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Move, PlayStation Vita (minus the Vita) and a multitude of games, things finally get underway. Jack Tretton takes to the stage and comments on how busy it is and thanks everyone for joining them. Talks about the PlayStation Network outage and makes a joke, but seems fairly humbled by the event overall and thanks the third party partners and retailers. Consumers “are the lifeblood of the company” and he apologizes for any anxiety it caused. Wow.. hold up.. Sony are owning something.. this must be a first surely? He talks up the PSN and how they’re adding CinemaNow later in the year.

Beauty, perfection and the power of the PlayStation… it’s time for some “Uncharted”. Co-presidents of Naughty Dog Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra. take to the stage to show us “Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception”. Rather than me talking you through it, check it out below. It seems both Nathan and Lara find themselves in similar circumstance at one point (again).

Wow, pretty neat right? Those set pieces, can’t beat them. June 28 multiplayer beta begins. Then a full 3D trailer is shown (below in none 3D for you). Yes people that was Chloe and Elena wasn’t it. YES!!! The date: 11.1.11 that’s November 1st 2011 for non US folk who didn’t already know that. Can’t wait.

Insomniac Games is next up with Marcus Smith, talking “Resistance 3″. Things are grim in game, given the chimera have essentially won. The game is in 3D and the demo ensues. It “takes advantage of PlayStation Move” and there’s a “Resistance 3″ pack for the Move.

Tretton announces “God of War: Origins Collection”, it will be remastered in 3D HD. Also “ICO” which is amazing. Both launch September and will both be playable in 3D.

Hardware:
A PlayStation branded 3D display. Allows two players to see two different screens, without the use of Splitscreen! It will be available this holiday season along with a pair of PlayStation 3D glasses ($69.99 each), a 6′ HDMI cable, and a copy of “Resistance 3″ all for $499.99.

PlayStation Move time, talking about what a success it’s been. Mine is gathering dust, so I’ll not go into that. 2K Sports hit the stage to talk NBA. NBA2K12 will support PlayStation Move ‘NBA on the Move’. Seems pointless to me, but hey, you might like it. Time for a celebrity endorsement, Kobe Bryant takes to the stage. I love how he refers to the PlayStation Move as “the remote” classic. NBA2K12 releases October 4.

Next up time for something new: “Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest”, a new PlayStation Move title. A fantasy-action game that has “a very unique set of moves”. Another 3D title. The bow and arrow works with one controller, which seems odd. Graphics look a little like “Death Jr.” or “Grabbed by the Ghoulies”. Check it out below if you can cope with the dev saying “Jeremy” over and over again. It releases in the fall.

Jack Tretton is back again reeling off loads of games in the catalogue. Trailer for “inFAMOUS 2″ plays. Check it below. A couple of female characters which is cool. It launches tomorrow in the US. In the fall new PlayStation Move additions will become available.

Tretton talks “Little Big Planet 2″ and PlayStation Move update. They’re really plugging the Move at this E3, can’t say I’ve used mine since I purchased it. Next up it’s a trailer for “Starhawk”. This is a sort of space western, which is interesting… but overall I thought meh.

Tretton talks up “Sly Cooper”, then it’s time for a rather stylish trailer. “Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time” coming 2012.

CEO of CCP Hilmar Petursson takes to the stage to talk up “Dust 514″, I just love listening to him because he’s from Iceland. “Dust 514″ will feature Move support and it will link into the “EVE Online” universe. Trailer plays. Closed beta for “Dust 514″ will be at the end of the year.

More Tretton, the dude is on fire today. Now it’s time for “BioShock: Infinite” featuring what seems to be a damsel in distress situation, ho hum and I was looking forward to this game almost more than anything else.

Ken Levine from Irrational Games is on stage after the “BioShock Infinite” trailer. He talks some “uncharitable” things he may have said about the PlayStation Move. Of course he came around to the idea of how the Move would work with “BioShock: Infinite” and there will be Move support. A pet project of Irrational Games is a PlayStation Portable game, handheld “BioShock” sweet.

Tratton is back to talk about the PlayStation Move. The PS3 version of “BioShock Infinite” will have the original “BioShock” on the same blu-ray disc. “Saints Row 3″ will feature Move support. A new “Star Trek” game will feature PlayStation Move support and there will be a peripheral device based on the Star Trek phaser, gotta love that. Trailer below.

Tretton again, 3 exclusive titles with extras for PS3 owners only (I hate this exclusive add-on crap!). First there’s “SSX” featuring an exclusive level on mount Fuji, next up “Need for Speed: The Run” will feature seven additional cars for the game. Bit lame for non PS3 owners. “Battlefield 3″ will also come with “Battlefield 1943″ bundled on the disc.

President and group CEO Kaz Hirai takes to the stage as charismatic as ever. He talks Sony’s 10 year business plan. He talks about consumer loyalty after the PSN issues, saying they’ve been humbled and overwhelmed by the support of their customers. He talks up the network experience and how important it is for the mobile platform.

PlayStation Suite will bring PlayStation content to Android smartphones and tablets. More info on PlayStation Suite in the near future. Now it’s time for some NGP goodness, The official title – as rumored – is the PlayStation Vita (vita meaning life). Dual thumbtacks, two cameras OLED screen and I quote an “augmented reality experience”. He talks it up a bit too much, come on Kaz, we’ve seen most of this before in some form, he talks it up like they invented it all. There will be wifi and 3G wifi models. They’re partnering with AT&T as the exclusive carrier (US) and the crowd don’t seem to take too well to that announcement.

PlayStation Vita “Party” can see users voice-chat live with the built in mic or headset. Social connection tool “near” is a friends list essentially. More specifics unveiled “in the near future”.

Time for Scott Rohde to take to the stage. He talks it up like it’s the god of all handheld gaming devices. A brief demo of “Uncharted: Golden Abyss” is introduced by two of the devs. “Uncharted: Golden Abyss” on the PlayStation Vita looks amazing. I had zero interest in the PlayStation Vita prior to seeing this trailer, but then I am a HUGE fan of the “Uncharted” franchise, so placing it on the PlayStation Vita was a smart move by Sony. The multi-control system is great, with touchscreen or regular controls available to the player is a sweet addition.

More chat about the PlayStation Vita follows and it’s onto a game called “Ruin”. An action-based role-playing game. The most amusing part of this section is just how out of breath the dev is whilst talking about the game… poor thing, I guess he rushed to the stage. “Ruin” links seamlessly to the PS3 also, which makes it slightly more interesting using ‘cloud’.

Next up it’s Mod Nation Racers on PlayStation Vita. A quick demo of how the track editor works is impressive.

Scott Rohde from Sony is back on stage to talk up the PlayStation Vita. Time for some “Little Big Planet” on the PlayStation Vita. This is some more good stuff right here. Needless to say, given the PlayStation Vita’s rear and front touch and controls, there’s loads of ways to play.

Capcom are doing “Street Fighter” and “Tekken”, yeah you read it right people. “Street Fighter X Tekken”, we heard about this a little while ago, but this is some updated stuff about the PlayStation Vita version of “Streetfighter X Tekken”. The character Cole from “inFAMOUS” will also feature in the game. A ‘realtime’ demo follows.

Rohde returns saying there are more than 80 titles in development for the PlayStation Vita and a video is shown of upcoming content.

Now an announcement from Kaz Hirai (who doesn’t love this guy). The Sony PlayStation Vita is out this holiday season at a cost of 29,980 Yen (including tax), $299, and euro 299 for the 3G version. A cheaper Wi-Fi-only edition will cost 24,980 Yen (including tax), $249, and euro 249.

Jack Tretton SCEA does his spiel to cap things off, followed by a closing movie of what to expect from PlayStation, all set to drummers with giant drums.. err.. drumming and a DJ playing some ‘music’, That’s all folks.

Special Thanks to ThumbBandits for this succinct rundown on the EA event at E3 2011.

The Xbox conference for E3 2011 starts with a fairly lengthy ingame gameplay footage for “Call of Duty: MW3″ which looks awesome, check it out below. There’s the usual man chat to follow the trailer which ends with “we can’t wait for November 8″. The “reconnect the controller” bit…. yeah staged much. Still it’s a nice look at the game.

Don Mattrick takes to the stage to thank everyone for supporting Xbox, next up it’s Crystal Dynamics to talk the new “Tomb Raider” game. Lara is 20 in the game. A stunning level follows and a release window of Fall 2012. Can’t wait.

Peter Moore takes to the stage to talk EA Sports. Then it’s time for some Mass Effect 3 love. A “brand new adventure” where “earth has been taken”. “Mass Effect 3″ will support Kinect voice recognition… oh dear. You choose what dialogue is used by saying it essentially and can also deliver strategic commands to your team, like “move up”.

Next up is Tom Clancys “Ghost Recon: Future Soldier” which as expected looks amazing. Yves Guillemot takes to the stage for a short introduction. The new “Gunsmith” system let’s you do weapon optimization, with gesture or voice using Kinect. Guillemot carries on talking about how “Gunsmith will pave the way on Kinect” and that all future Tom Clancy games will use Kinect. Whether this is good or bad news remains to be seen.

Marc Whitten from Xbox Live next. He talks about making the technology invisible. Introducing voice recognition for Xbox, this time on the new Xbox experience. The big news though is YouTube partnering with Xbox Live. Then there’s Bing on Xbox which searches netflix and other content providers to find what you’re looking for. Needless to say it works well in the demo, saying “Bing X-Men” brings up all X-Men content including the games and movies in one place.

As was rumored, Xbox Live TV is coming to Xbox. The new experience launches in the Fall. They’re REALLY pushing the voice recognition which is slightly concerning given how dodgy it can be for those of us sans US accent. I used mine for all of an hour before wanting to put my foot through the screen and my Aussie accent isn’t even that strong.

Ultimate Fighting Championship president takes to the stage to talk about UFC on Xbox. Phil Spencer from MS Studios takes the stage to further talk UFC on Xbox and how Xbox is also about games and everything covered is an exclusive.

A “Gears of War 3″ trailer follows. Cliffy B takes to the stage to talk “Gears of War 3″, he intros Ice-T to the stage to play some. The most interesting thing here for the female gamer is of course the inclusion finally of a female COG. Booyah!

Next up Crytech and “Ryse” where “you are the controller” in ancient Rome, looks lovely, but “you are the controller”. For a second there I was very excited this was going to be a sort of Rome set “Assassin’s Creed”…. oh well.

Next Halo, which is essentially a rehash so they could include some additional “Halo” loving. This is a remastered campaign etc. “Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary” will no doubt keep fans of “Halo” happy and keep the cash flowing into Microsoft. November 15 is the date for your diaries.

“Fable: The Journey” looks great as usual, even borrowing from “Lost” with regards to the smoke monster. The use of Kinect seemed to work well, though these things usually do when demoed. The release window given is 2012.

“Minecraft” is coming to Xbox Live this winter. Yeah, I said “Minecraft” is coming to Xbox.

Time for more Kinect spiel, they’re really pushing it again this year.
“Kinect: Disneyland Adventures” essentially sees you visiting the Disney theme park. This is one for the kids and it’s kids who demo it onstage. So cheesy it was painful. More cheesy kids saying more cheesy lines as they play and lots of fake laughing “this is soooo cool”, really? No. For those interested it’s available this holiday season.

“Kinect: Star Wars” and the crowd seem a bit more excited. The footage shown doesn’t instill the greatest of confidence, even in a die-hard “Star Wars” fan such as I. The live demo too kind of makes it look a little rubbish… shame.

Tim Schaffer from Double Fine takes to the stage and I love this guy, but sadly not this particular game. “Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster” is another Kinect title for kids. The demo shows “father and son” playing together, it’s a sweet idea, though again, full of cheese.

Kudo Tsunoda (Kinect creative director) talks Kinect, doesn’t mention the sheer lack of new Kinect games we’ve seen since it launched of course. He announces “Kinect Fun Labs” a permanent dash edition. There’s a demo of Kinect making an avatar of a person, I’m dubious, but it’s a nice idea. Kinect finger tracking is up next, yes “Kinect Fun Labs” will also do finger tracking and again the demo is cool, but whether it will work as well in reality is anyone’s guess (gees can you tell how cynical I am, sorry about that). Next ‘innovation’ is Kinect object capture, another demo, “scanning in ‘the things you love”, essentially makes a digital version of real life ‘stuff’. There’s barely applause for this section and that may be because it all seems a little shallow and ‘tech demo’ at its heart. “Kinect Fun Labs” is live NOW.

“Kinect Sports Season Two” featuring 6 new sports: skiing, golf, baseball, darts, tennis and football (NFL). A demo of golf ensues and it looks nice, but again it’s hard to tell how well it plays since this is essentially a set piece. “Kinect Sports Season Two” also features more voice recognition. The demo is yet another rehearsed mess and the football is painful to watch.

Harmonix Kasson Crooker takes to the stage (last year he danced remember) he’s to talk “Dance Central 2″ and is no doubt thrilled he isn’t one of the dancers. There’s voice control and multiplayer dancing in “Dance Central 2″. A demo featuring dancers follows, more of the same really, but with two onscreen at once.

Don Mattrick enters looking as smug as ever (doesn’t he always though?), he’s talking more Kinect and Bing and how it will ‘change things forever’.

That’s it other than a first look at the “dawn of a new trilogy” …. it’s Halo… “Halo 4″ holiday 2012 and what a way to end things.

That’s it folks your E3 2011 Xbox press conference live blog.
Hope you enjoyed it.

Special Thanks to ThumbBandits for this succinct rundown on the EA event at E3 2011.

Welcome to your Thumb Bandits EA E3 2011 Press Conference coverage (handed gracefully over to us here at Lesbian Gamers), I’ll try and leave out all the crap and get to the goods: A trailer starts with what looks like “Cloverfield”, this turns out to be “Mass Effect: 3″, one of the most highly anticipated games of the year (now come on, I know I’m not alone here). Casey Hudson takes to the stage. March 6, 2012 is the date for your diary. Time for a demo. Looks amazing as expected and a gameplay trailer “Fall of Earth” is shown.

Time to look at a few new games, after a plug for Origin.com, EA’s new hub of the universe, then it’s “Need for Speed: The Run” from Blackbox. A race from San Francisco to New York. The big news here is the on-foot sections, yes, you get out of the car. The character is male, so it will be interesting to see if they include a female option in the end game.

Next up the long awaited “Star Wars” game “Star Wars: The Old Republic”. Again you get to “choose your side” and it looks amazing and includes some kick ass female characters. There’s not much else to say KOTOR is always a hit, check out the trailer shown below.

Next up it’s time for some snowboarding in the form of “SSX” which releases January 2012. Again, not much to say, other than I’m really looking forward to this one, in the hopes it recaptures some of that “SSX: Tricky” gameplay I’ve missed.

Lots of spiel about “FIFA” before a look at “FIFA 12″ and a promo video featuring lots of actual footballers, who apparently learn more about the actual game through playing the “FIFA” videogame… doubtful. FIFA Football Club connects to all the FIFA games you might be playing (on whatever format) and brings them all together in FIFA Football Club, nice idea. There’s also some real world game updates week by week, nice.

From “FIFA 12″ to the NFL, it’s time for some “Madden NFL 12″ and some real life NFL heroes, so much for not rolling out the celebrities. EA Sports do bring it with these franchises, so there’s really not much else to say other than “Madden 12″ releases August 30 and it’s on my purchase list (as it has been every year since the dawn of time).

Next up “The Sims Social”, a social Facebook game you play with your friends…. literally. Pretty cool idea and a nice one for Sims addicts. Prior to this trailer there was a dig at “Farmville”, seriously, the gaming bitchery just never ends does it, concentrate on making good games people, rather than worrying about what other people are doing.

Curt Schilling takes to the stage to talk “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning”, a trailer follows and it looks very nice indeed.

Time for some Insomniac as Ted Price takes to the stage. Their new multi-platform franchise means they’re coming to Xbox with “Overstrike”.The awesome thing about this is 2 of the four characters are female in the Overstrke 9 team. Naya Deveraux who is a little like Kate Archer, which is awesome and there’s Isabelle St Clair, who bares more than a little resemblance to Claudia from “Warehouse 13″. This looks like a great game and bravo for breaking the one in four female character rule Insomniac. This has been duly added to my must buy list, love Insomniac and this looks sweet.

Time for a “Battlefield 3″ trailer followed by some more spiel. Powered by “Frostbyte 2″ it does indeed look amazing. The Multi-platform beta kicks off in September. The tank gameplay footage goes on for way too long and kind of brings the EA conference to a close in boring fashion which is a shame. Release date is October 25.

Special Thanks to ThumbBandits for this succinct rundown on the EA event at E3 2011.

Nintendo, the word rings in the brain and dings childhood, games, fun and of course Mario. To a fairly large extent Nintendo have helped define video games. Unlike the other video games companies, Nintendo specialize in gaming, it’s their forte and always has been, all the way back to when they released playing cards, before the digital revolution.

The downside of Nintendo over the last 20 or so years has been its ability to rehash the same device. Who else had a Game Boy grey, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Game Boy Advance SP? I dodged the Game Boy Micro (2005), purchasing a Nintendo DS that year instead (the original ‘fat’ Nintendo DS). I then purchased a DS Lite on release, but had no interest in the DSi and DSXL. Ahh Nintendo, your ability to repackage the same thing, maybe adding one or two new features, thus making people want it, is only bettered by Apple.

Enter the Nintendo 3DS
The Nintendo 3DS is Nintendo’s new bad girl on the block. This isn’t just another incarnation in the Nintendo DS lineup, this is actually a genuine step-up technically and perhaps even philosophically.

What is the 3DS?
The 3DS is the next-generation of the Nintendo DS handheld gaming unit. It is presently available in black and blue (expect loads more colors in the future, this is Nintendo after all). It weighs around 230 grams (8.1 oz) and features a 2GB SD Card (comes with it), camera, 3D display, accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, wi-fi, D-Pad and a sweet flat analogue-stick. The camera features one 2D front facing and 2 x 3D rear facing sensors, of fairly dubious quality at 0.3mp. Again, this being Nintendo, we may expect a better camera at some point.

The controls and display are where things really crank up. The display is now Autosteroscopic or “glasses-free 3D”. With this function turned on (you can disable it) it is like looking into a little box, that is to say the action takes place behind the screen and not above (holographic displays are some way off). Now you might be thinking ‘GIMMICK!’, which is what I initially thought, but no. The 3D is a significant step-up and I can’t wait to see what this means for the future of gaming.

Inbuilt 3DS Games
The 3DS also comes with built in titles for you to play, just to give you a peek at what the device can do. “Face Raiders” is a 3D augmented reality ‘game’ that sees you taking a photo of yourself with the camera and shooting the floating heads in whatever room you happen to be in. You can also snap 3D photos and mess about with the augmented reality cards that come packaged with the device. The AR game cards essentially see you placing one (or more) of the cards on a flat surface (in these images it is my kitchen counter with various paraphernalia left in for effect), aim the 3DS camera at the card and it springs to life on screen (the first time you do this, you may even *squee a little). You then do whatever is asked of you, shooting a dragon that appears from within your table / counter top / desk, or just drawing things of your own design and scooting them over the surface. These don’t have a lot of depth (game wise, graphically they’re full on 3D, it’s a shame the image you’re seeing isn’t doing it justice), they’re more about instant gratification and ‘wow factor’ than they are about full on gaming. Still, they’re a great addition and let us assume Nintendo will release more of these AR cards in the future.

*a ‘squee’, not quite a full on squeal of delight, but almost.

Inbuilt non-games
As well as augmented-reality fun, the 3DS also comes with a built in voice recorder (fairly filmy with basic pitch changing software), Mii-maker (yes your Mii lives on your 3DS and can visit others via Street Pass and vice-versa). There’s an Activity Log (in case you want to check back at what you’ve been doing). Lastly there’s also a pedometer, parental controls and it plays music off the SD card, provided it’s AAC files with .m4a, .mp4, and .3gp extensions, or MP3 files with .mp3 extensions… oh and they can’t be copy protected.

As far as handheld gaming goes I’ve got them all and the iPhone had truly damaged my DS usage. Now though the 3DS is such a significant step up I’ve even found myself wanting to revisit my old DS titles (there’s no difference, it was just a compunction). As for negatives against the 3DS, some people have allegedly reported severe headaches. I can’t say I’ve had ANY issues, headaches, blurred vision or otherwise. The main negative against the 3DS I’ve found is that you need to keep the device fairly still whilst playing to keep the 3D clear and visible. This can be difficult in some games and can make you lose track of where you are. Also having an accelerometer is cool and all, but coupled with having to view the screen from a fairly small ‘sweet spot’ to keep the 3D clear kind of negates just how useful this is. Oh let’s talk about the battery life, it’s not great. Mine has been running out with full use in about 4 hours, not even long enough for a short plane journey. I just sit mine in the charging dock (it comes with) whenever it’s not in my hands and for in-house play, the battery – though lame – hasn’t been a problem.

Overall I love my 3DS, sure it’s not perfect, but it’s great to see Nintendo once again innovating in ways the others have failed to do. Give it a few years and we’ll be seeing these displays all over the place. For now though this is a great introduction to handheld 3D gaming.

Price disparity woes for the Australian 3DS consumer
I just wanted to add this in as an Australian gamer and because it may be of interest to non-Aussie folk who moan about prices.

The RRP of the 3DS in Australia is $349 AUD which at present is $362 USD. In the U.S. it costs $250 USD. As you can see this means Australian consumers are being sporked by Nintendo an additional $112 USD for the same device.

Here’s a little breakdown for you as to why Australian gamers aren’t overly happy at the moment. These are based on present recommended retail prices for 3DS games in both the U.S. and Australia (both via EB Games):

This is essentially the pattern for ALL Nintendo 3DS titles at present, in the U.S. they’re $39.99 and in Australia the same title is either $68.00 or $78.00 dependent on if it is seen as a AAA release. As you can see that means Australian gamers are being charged $70-80 USD for a game that costs $40 in the U.S. It’s truly depressing (and yes I am aware the conversion rate at present is high, but even if it was what it usually is, it would still be extortion.

This Nintendo 3DS review and thoughts was originally written for girlygamer.com.au. It is used here in its entirety with permission, including original text and images.

So we first saw gaming take a whole new form when the Nintendo Wii hit the shelves back in late 2006 and if you’re anything like me, were blown away by this new piece of gaming technology and what it had to offer. Four years on and the hard working girls and boys of Microsoft showcased their latest most anticipated release of the year, Project natal later re-branded as Kinect.

Kinect is Microsoft’s answer to motion sensing based games without the need for any controllers, but what can you expect from Kinect? Is it just old hat and how does it match up to the Sony release of Playstation move?

Well you can expect a lot from Kinect bringing the active element into video games with the backing of the Xbox 360’s beefy 500MHz Custom ATI graphics processor. With titles lined up such as Your Shape, Dance Central and Sonic Free Riders there is a game for every type of gamer and mood providing you don’t mind moving. Kinect tracks up to 2 “active” players and six people and is compatible with the original Xbox 360 as well as the Kinect ready Slim Xbox 360.

The demonstrations for the Kinect at this year’s E3 expo were far from disappointing, boasting its brilliance and capabilities definitely delivered on all levels. With not only pin point accuracy, phenomenal games and graphics the Kinect has user and voice recognition that can be used to control film playback, Xbox Live profile selection and also video calling.

Microsoft’s Kinect over shadowed all the major players at the expo and left a bitter taste in Sony’s mouth, with there what can only be described as piss poor rip off Nintendo Wii controller with a ball stuck on the end of it and let’s face it I don’t like balls even the ones stuck on the end of a controller.

So all in all will I be purchasing Microsoft’s Kinect ?

“Do lesbians sh*t in the woods?” Er probably… don’t know. I don’t, promise ladies.
What I do know is that I already have my pre-order down for Kinect and I can’t wait!
Kinect goes on sale 10th November 2010 uk release date and comes with Kinect Adventures
Retail price £129.99

Article by
Jayde Draeger

Samus Aran is iconic enough that I doubt I really need to go into the back story of the bounty hunter who doesn’t actually do much bounty hunting or really explain too in depth the various events of the game. The most astonishing and wonderful thing about Samus was how she was originally conceived and not necessarily how she was presented.

Samus’s original design was not that of a sex symbol or even really a normal woman who kicked ass. By all means, the 6’3″ (1.9m) tall character had a very realistic weight about her at 198lbs (90kg). She was meant to be far beyond the average, and at weighing so much, it’s obvious she was at least thought of to be very muscular. This was probably most obvious in her Super Metroid ending where she clearly has well defined muscles…. And 80′s hair.

As for Samus’s original personality, not much can be said. She was apparently bad ass enough to be the Galactic Federation’s pick to infiltrate a heavily guarded planet to destroy their super computer and all the metroids. She operates in the same way as Link and Mario, with almost no dialogue and with the plot essentially going on around her. About all we know is that she was rather affected by her parents being killed when she was young, and that she bounty hunts not for fame or money but to kill Ridley and the rest of the Space Pirates.

It wasn’t until Metroid Fusion that we finally started to learn a bit more about Samus’s personality and back story. Until that point, Samus essentially just followed orders sent from the Galactic Federation, Fusion saw a departure from this when she disobeyed orders and destroyed a lot of valuable research, deeming it far too dangerous

Fusion also saw the first glimpse of how Samus deals with other people. The computer’s AI, named Adam by Samus, is revealed to be an uploaded version of an actual Adam, who once sacrificed himself to save Samus. (Anyone care to guess what’s going to be happening in Metroid: Other M?)

Samus’s exploits are another matter entirely. We’ve seen a lot of what she’s done. It seems in every game she’s bad ass enough that she blows up an entire planet. Or, well, at least a fortress or a space station. She’s taken on the Space Pirates all be herself on most occasions, and she otherwise has proven herself to be amazingly competent.

Isolation is a big part of all the games, as in most of them, there isn’t even anyone to talk to. You’re by yourself on some planet or space station having to figure everything out. This atmosphere is rather nice, and though it leads away from learning more about Samus’s personality, it does strike me as almost a bit symbolic of the idea of independence. The fact is, Samus doesn’t seem to need anyone to help her out, and the times when she’s traveled with companions, it’s generally been to save them.

I wish I could stop here and pretend that Samus is a perfect example of women in video games, but she hasn’t escaped all bits of typical treatment of women in games. From the very first game, her body was treated like a sex object. Seeing her in just a bikini was a reward for doing well at the game. Metroid II had a similar victory screen with her in a small bikini posing for the gamer. Super Metroid departed from this just slightly with her in a more neutral pose and having a more muscular appearance. She was covered up a bit more and given broader shoulders in Metroid Fusion, but as soon as Zero Mission hit, we started seeing the Zero Suit, which has been used to show off her body without actually being risque since.

Of course, I making a bit of a big deal out of that when, really, there isn’t any big attempt to turn her into too much of a sex object by the game creators, as a still picture in clothes that usually do make a bit of sense isn’t as cheesecake filled as the vast majority of the other games.

They’re also proving to be rather conscious of this as all early scenes of Metroid: Other M seem to be straying away from any potential love interests and is treating Adam as a father figure. She doesn’t appear to spend much time in anything I’d consider skimpy which is somewhat surprising considering it’s Team Ninja and seems to be along mainly as the enforcer because the Galactic Federation’s squad can’t do it themselves.

Nintendo has managed to make and maintain a female character who, at least from a universalist perspective on gender, is kind of an ideal person when it comes to gender expression. The Metroid series doesn’t want to start a revolution of feminism in video games, but it portrays more of an end product, where a character’s gender simply doesn’t matter all that much besides how we let it.

And I’m always willing to forget about the cheesecake pictures if Nintendo were to send me a 6’3″ muscular woman who is enough of a contortionist to turn herself into a ball.

And let’s just hope Other M does a good job of keeping the feel of the Samus we know instead of recreating her.

Fire Emblem has a history of having many subtextual same-sex relationships. They’re all generally regulated entirely to reading in between the lines, and only if you have special conversations with just the right characters. The localizations by Nintendo of North America likes to take out these subtexts, though, they’re kind of lazy about it. It seems they might not be so gung-ho on censoring it, as they allowed a rather explicit character into Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn.

Heather is not a main character. She hardly qualifies as tertiary. She isn’t some super special elf or magic creature, and there is really nothing going on around her as far as the plot is concerned. She can die in any battle, like any other Fire Emblem character, and that’s it, she’s gone. No game over. She’s just gone forever. She also has to be recruited, so she doesn’t just join up automatically for plot reasons. Aside from being the most useful rogue in the game and there are only two, and the other, who is a main protagonist, has a delayed promotion and falls into obscurity because of it ñ she really serves no purpose aside to exist as a character.

However, I love her. Oh, do I love her. She is, at least as far as I know, Nintendo’s first lesbian. (Alright, fine, it’s Intelligent Systems, but they’re owned by Nintendo, so it’s totally Nintendo, right? Well, it’s a step up from censoring the gay bar in Dragon Quest III at least!) And not in the common maybe she is, maybe she isn’t kind of way. She is blatantly a lesbian, and a running theme throughout the story is that she likes a specific character, Nephenee. She has her flirty remarks to several other characters, including a Queen, and she seems to be the only person who will feed Ilyana, a mage girl who seems to have a bottomless stomach.

Now, not being a plot centric character, there isn’t a lot to really read from and discuss, but there is a lot they didn’t do with her. For instance, they didn’t hit a single stereotypical lesbian vibe. Heather is not a man hater. She’s not obsessed with sex. She’s not crazy. She’s not depressed. She suffers no social insecurity. She’s not even rejecting the role of the patriarchy while burning her bra.

She’s confident, lighthearted, whimsical, happy, and smart enough to dupe a duke into revealing some pertinent information. She’s a thief, sure, but she has a good reason. She’s stealing money so she can get treatment for her poor sick mother. A good daughter and a rogue? What’s not to love!

The very best part is that she’s not hidden or obscured. While she never outright says “I’m a lesbian!” it’s easy to pick up on and pretty much impossible not to see. From her first conversation with Nephenee and her motivations for joining the protagonists of the game, it’s damn obvious who she’s interested in. She joins to make money to help her mother out and to meet all the cute girls in the army. Given her lighthearted and flirty nature, I’m assuming the latter is only kind of a joke.

While a small character from a game not many people have played stateside, it’s a rather happy portrayal of a lesbian in games that doesn’t hit one of the many stereotypes and annoyances. A silly, youthful character that could have been written in many different ways was instead written as a pretty pleasing lesbian, a confident woman, an otherwise interesting person, and a rogue who managed to steal my heart.

Look forward to the next entry, where I’ll go from dipping my toes in an obscure character to diving into the deep end and tackling one of the most renowned: Samus Aran.

————————
This is the first post in our new column Lily’s Look at Female Characters
Thanks to our new writer Lily for this article.