Final Fantasy, Batman, and the 3DS

Quite a bit has happened since my last post.

A few days ago was Square Enix's press conference where they showed off all of their new games. Showed at the conference was Final Fantasy XIII-2, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Final Fantasy Type-0 (originally Agito) and Final Fantasy Dissidia 012. There were tons of new trailers for all these games. The Type-0 trailer was pretty good, I'm definitely curious to check out the game. It comes out for the PSP but no release date has been announced.
  
Final Fantasy XIII-2 had a trailer as well. It wasn't very long, roughly a minute and a half. It details the end of the first game (so spoilers if you plan on watching it) and then shows ten seconds of new footage. It only involves Lightning and some new character that's more than likely an antagonist. Despite what most people say, I'm rather excited for the game. I actually enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII, the lack of dungeons or side quests didn't really bother me. Sure the story was a bit hokey, but I still had a good time playing it. Hopefully the sequel will at least be better than X-2.

Versus had the best trailer though. It was six minutes long and from what I can remember, is all new footage. It's still in Japanese, but the feel and style is very different than XIII proper. I'm not too sure on story details. People have been theorizing that it's about Noctis (the main character) being denied his throne, but that's all we can tell so far. Either way, I'm excited for it. I just wish that SquareEnix would tell us when the game is going to release. Hopefully it's going to be sometime this year.

There was also some Batman news this week. Anne Hathaway was cast as Selina Kyle (or Catwoman) and Tom Hardy was cast as Bane. Both are definitely interesting choices. Many assumed Nolan would use the Riddler as the villain of the film, and I personally had hoped for Hush as the villain. While I was originally unsure of what to think about all this, now I'm not feeling so bad.

I seriously doubt that Selina Kyle is a villain of the film. I believe she'll be more of a supporting character for Batman. Bane on the other hand, will probably be just a supporting villain. Nolan's Batman movies always have two villains, so there's still room for him to cast another villain. I - among others - think it's going to be Talia Al Ghul, which opens up the story to some great possibilities.

Nintendo held their own press conference this week as well. The price - which everyone had guessed - and the launch date - which everyone already knew - were announced. The "launch window" games were announced as well and... it's rather underwhelming. What I had originally thought to be a day one purchase is now something I will wait for, until there are better games set for release. While I enjoy Super Street Fighter IV quite a bit on my PS3, I have no will to play it on a handheld system. What I am looking forward to though, is Ocarina of Time (since I've never finished it) and Metal Gear Solid 3 (one of my favorites) to be released. Then the system will be worth picking up.

The interesting thing here, is the lack of hate for the price. Remember what everyone thought of the PSPGo's price? Some people argued that the reason for that was because the PSPGo was a redesign of the PSP with new features... Isn't that what the 3DS is? Sure the features are "newer" than what the PSPGo was offering, but in the end, it's just a DS with a new control stick and a new screen. So... why the difference?