One Dimension Too Many - PAX East 2011 3DS Impressions

This past weekend the second PAX East was held at the Boston Convention Center. The venue was noticeably larger than that of the inaugural PAX East, and this was most obvious was on the expo floor. The floor seemed roomier, with wider aisles, larger booths and more games to see and play. The idea of queuing up just to SEE a game like Battlefield 3 or Portal 2 was obviously appealing to some considering the length of the lines, even if that video would eventually be on the internet anyway. There were also a lot of playable demos for upcoming titles, including the now destined for the bargain bin Homefront, the hotly anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic, and Gears of War 3 which from appearances might as well be called Gears of War 2: Green Sleeveless Edition. The expo floor was also a first chance for many attendees to see the soon to be released Nintendo 3DS in action. Given Nintendo's incredible success with the DS, one would expect the next iteration to advance the brand's dominance exponentially. However, after spending some time with it, it's hard not to think of the Virtual Boy. Obviously it won't be such a grotesque failure, but it's possible that Nintendo may have put too much into the gimmick of this device.

Closely resembling the later model DSi, the 3DS adds a number of features including more graphical power, an analog stick, a gyroscopic sensor, fancier cameras and of course glasses free 3D. Nintendo's last two major hardware releases, the DS and the Wii, managed to really push stylus (touch) and waggle (motion) controls and make those things that everybody understands. Both pieces of hardware seemed crazy at the time they were released, but now touch only devices like the iPad/iPhone are sometimes seriously referred to as gaming platforms and both Microsoft and Sony have taken their first steps into the motion control arena. With 3D becoming a staple of modern blockbuster movie releases and 3D televisions making their way into homes and finding support in some games, it seems like putting such a small and relatively inexpensive device into the hands of consumers might just be Nintendo being ahead of the trend curve again. After spending a few moments with the unit in Nintendo's little demo corral though, how far ahead they are seems questionable.

Available to demo were a number of games, including the AR game Archery, Dead or Alive: Dimensions, Super Street Figher IV, Steel Diver, Nintendogs and Cats, Kid Icarus:Uprising, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and Pilotwings Resort. Playing these games was interesting, but revealed some pretty deep rooted flaws in the fundamental premise of the platform. The 3D effect works, but the actual amount of depth seems inconsistent between titles and it generates a pretty noticeable amount of eye strain. Steel Diver, for example, looks very flat even though the field of vision is very similar to that of Pilotwings which looked noticeably more 3D, though neither title was helped by incredibly bland artistic designs. Certainly the raw graphical output of the device is more than that of the DS, but it was not head and shoulders above recent PSP games, which is disappointing considering the PSP was released more than 6 years ago. Kid Icarus looked the best out of all the games on display, resembling sort of a Space Harrier meets Panzer Dragoon with some Virtual-On thrown in for ground-based action, but with so much on-screen activity the difficult to focus on 3D effect makes it impossible to clearly see more than any one thing at a time. The gyroscopic sensor and camera work nicely for Archery when you're aiming at targets that appear around an actual card that is sitting on the table in front of you (the game utilizes the 3DS camera), and AR games are admittedly awesome conceptually, but when the fidelity of the 3D is based completely on your viewing angle, moving the device is not an option unless you move your entire body to maintain direct line of sight. The real problem though, was that the thing just felt like a chore to look at after about 20 minutes. You can use the slider on the device to turn down the 3D effect and mitigate some of the eye strain, but if you're going to have to turn off the main feature of the device what's the point?