There comes a time in the week when to reflect on what got into my reporter's notebook but didn't turn into Kotaku blog posts. Shall we?
New Professor Layton: I played Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box on Monday evening during those Nintendo demos I couldn't stop writing about in the middle of the week. But what can I write about a DS sequel that I played for all of four minutes? The mechanics were similar to those of the first Layton game. The art style was similar, the puzzles were of a familiar sort. I'm told there will be more animated scenes. But the Nintendo reps on hand wouldn't confirm or deny whether there will be puzzles involving filling the proper amount of fluid into a jug with the help of two other jugs.
iPhone Neglected: Oh, and on Monday Apple demoed the 3GS iPhone for me in a meeting that was so fancy that they had one Apple rep whose task was just to bring people up and down the elevator, to say nothing of three more hanging out to show the product. But they also sent Crecente one and put an Apple bigwig on the phone with him. Crecente's been doing a fine job so far on that, so I didn't post. Yet.
Shane Bettenhausen Chopped In Half: I played the new Samurai Showdown (actually this was two weeks ago, sorry) against former EGM editor-turned Ignition development man Shane Bettenhausen, but we all know I stink at fighting games. How can I judge the quality of this game in a preview? I can't just yet. Not when I was distracted by playing more Muramasa: The Demon Blade. And not when the only strategy I know is button-mashing. But I can confirm that I fought Shane in a level set at 5PM. I played as an old man and, true to Shane's word, the game has button combos that allow for sudden kills. The one I accidentally inputted sliced through Shane's guy's at the waist. One body became two halves with two limbs each. Shane squirmed. I won. I promise, I'll get better at covering these fighting games.
RE5 In 3D: On Tuesday night, I ran into Capcom marketing man Chris Kramer at a Microsoft event. He had special 3D glasses for me to put on so that I could see a demo of Resident Evil 5 PC running in 3D through Nvidia's Geforce 3D Vision. The tech requires a special monitor and graphics card. As it was programmed for the demo, there were lots of depth effects. That starter RE5 town we all played in demos had more space to it and ... distance. Nothing was programmed to jump out at me yet, though Kramer said that was possible. Maybe a knife might be thrown toward my face some day through the magic of RE5. But the effectiveness (in this case) or lack thereof is so hard to express in text. So I didn't do a post.
I think that's all that I didn't get to this week... other than the stuff I'm saving for next week. Have a good weekend, folks. Be nice to Owen and the Kotaku's Team Pacific.