Van Persie

Its that time of year again, the transfer window has opened and many players are looking at their next big move in order to get a bigger paycheck, win trophies and look for a new challenge, and as with the last couple of years, Arsenal are in the headlines for the wrong reason again. Another "superstar" player wants to join the list of departing Arsenal players citing a lack of ambition shown by the club. First it was Fabregas and Nasri is the same summer, and now this summer it is the turn of the captain, Robin Van Persie. The two time footballer of the year has decided that the club is not looking to move in the same path which he believes that they should in order to fulfill his ambition of winning trophies. Many Arsenal fans will agree with him and believe that the policy of youth has not worked. 7 years without a trophy is evidence and Wenger still persists that they will grow and win the title finishing ahead of the financial giants Chelsea and Man City. Van Persie does not have 3/4 years to help guide these youngsters to a trophy. He is 29 soon and will want to win as many trophies as he can before he retires. Will he get these trophies here at the Emirates? As an Arsenal fan i would love to say yes, but deep down, the team is not strong enough to compete with the likes of City and United and a new look Chelsea.

Do i blame Van Persie for leaving? Yes and No, yes for the way he has declared that he wanted to leave the club, A very strongly worded statement on his own personal website came as a shock to all fans and even the club itself. It showed a lack of respect for the club, even Samir Nasri had the decency to speak out about the club after he left and not while he was still an Arsenal player and for speaking out against the club who have stuck by him for many years while he was best friends with the treatment table.  I don't blame him because he is a top class player who deserves to enjoy success, to go down as a great player you need to have medals to show off. Thierry Henry has countless Premier League and FA Cup winners medals to show for his time at Arsenal. If Van Persie does stay here for the rest of his career will he?  Who knows.


I personally would like for him to go abroad if he does leave, to show some respect to the club, for all those years where he spent injured and Wenger still keeping faith in him and letting players like Eduardo leave so Van Persie could flourish. After one good season, should he be able to demand this much from the club? Van Persie is a top class player and i hope he does perform a Wayne Rooney-esque U-turn and stay with the club because with him in the team there will always be a better chance of winning a trophy than without.

E3 Overview - Nintendo

Last up was Nintendo and there were many questions which gamers wanted answered, how much was the Wii U going to cost? What were the launch titles?

It was a great start, with Shigeru Miyamoto came out and delighted us all with Pikmin 3. Making great use of the extra screen on the Wii U gamepad this seemed like a great path which Nintendo were taking, were there going to be any more delights for us? Unfortunately not much jumped out.

Nintendo promised to concentrate on games and would not take the "entertainment" route taken by their two competitors. There were plenty of games on show, but none which stood out from the rest. There was a new Super Mario Bros 2D side scrolling game, Super Mario Bros U, and showed off the great new feature of being able to transfer gameplay from the TV onto the extra screen. As well as a Wii U version, a 3DS version entitled New Super Mario Bros 2 places great emphasis on collecting as many coins as you can. Not content with showing offjust two Mario games, Luigi's Mansion 2 and a new Paper Mario were both announced for the 3DS.

But many of the other games Nintendo showed were third party titles which have been released on other consoles. Mass Effect 3, Ninja Gaiden 3 and Alien Colonial Marines are all games which are/will be on competitor consoles. A title which falls in to that category is Batman Arkham City, but the Wii U has been given a subtitle; Armoured Edition. The addition to the Armoured Edition sees Batman with a new suit which has unique abilities like new combat moves. It seems a neat addition but would it appeal to you enough for you to spend at least £40 on a game which you played a year ago?


Not just appealing to the core gamers, Wii U Fit with new ways of using the gamepad and a working title called Sing were shown to the crowd.

One of the stand out games from the conference was Ubisoft's ZombiU. From the trailer shown, ZombiU looks like a first person action adventure game with the sole aim of surviving the zombie hordes. With many uses for the gamepad including as a sniper scope, an inventory and a scanner, ZombiU seems to be one of the few games which use the gamepad screen in a truly innovative way.


While many were expecting a new Zelda or even Metroid game to end the conference, that was not the case. Much emphasis was placed on NintendoLand. Nintendo have said that this will be the Wii Sports equivalent for the Wii U as it will get the player familiarised with the Wii U console and will launch with the console in the Winter.  NintendoLand is essentially a massive virtual theme park with many different nintendo themed areas. An example shown was the Luigi's Mansion area where the person with the gamepad would act as the ghost and would be against 3/4 other players with wiimotes who are all trying to survive by working together. The GamePad players sees all the other players on the game screen, but the players can't see the ghost who the GamePad player is controlling. The Wii Remotes rumble when the invsible ghost is near – players will need to co-operate telling each other when they're rumbling to get the ghost. They then use their torches to 'burn' the ghost. When the ghost attacks a human, the human faint, but humans can revive the downed player.

It was great that Nintendo focused on the games as opposed to their competitors, but were there any games on show at the conference which you would say would persuade you to buy a Wii U on launch??


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