Microsoft - Xbox 360
Microsoft's press conference was one of the strongest this year. They announced ripoffs of both Home and the Mii. They announced a bunch of multiplatform games that they don't have much right to brag about. They showed off Gears of War 2 along with other muddy, grey shooters. They showed off a new Netflix deal for streaming movies which seems like it'll be very good for business. And, oh yeah, they forgot to mention, Square decided to release Final Fantasy XIII on the 360, instead of JUST the PS3. This move hurt some Sony fans as they've lost yet another big, system-selling exclusive. They're down to just a couple now: Metal Gear Solid 4, and God of War 3. Not that the 360 has any except the upcoming Ketsui port. Every big Xbox release comes out for the PC (see: Gears of War, Halo, Mass Effect, Bioshock, Geometry Wars...).
I was surprised at how many RTSes were shown off on the show floor for the 360. Why the heck do developers suddenly think that RTSes will work on a console without a mouse and keyboard? It never has in the past. It never will in the future. Even so, we got multiplatform Supreme Commander, Command & Conquer 3, Battle for Middle Earth, and Universe at War. And upcoming, shown off at E3, we have Halo Wars, EndWar, and Stormrise, all console RTSes that are doomed to failure. Well, Halo Wars will inevitably sell well and probably get praised by idiot press who've never played an RTS on a PC and have absolutely no concept of micro. The only interesting looking of these RTSes is EndWar because it seems to be entirely voice controlled. We'll see how that works out, but I have a hard time believing it will turn out that good. The games will inevitably be a lot slower than if you used a mouse because microing by saying "group 1 attack enemy tanks" is a helluva lot slower than clicking 1 and right clicking the tanks.
Among the (limited) PC gaming news was a KOTOR MMO. I'll pause so you can read that again and finish wiping the drool from your mouth. Done? Ok. There isn't anything else known at this time, but it has to be better than Star Wars Galaxies, right? It will be hard convincing myself to put down the monthly payment to play this, but I just might force myself to try. I just don't know though.
Another announcement is that the new WoW expansion, which believe me I do not care about, is getting achievements. Can I just ask, as I did after Valve introduced them to Steam, WHY?!?! Achievements are the most useless things I have ever heard of. Unless you actually get something for "unlocking" an achievement, what's the point? Some sort of goal to keep the game replayable? Well if your game isn't replayable without some sort of artificial achievements, then I think you have some problems with the game design. Then we have games like CoD4 and TF2 where prolonged play, or better play, or in the case of TF2 very strange play involving posing for freezecam shots (Autopsy Report) or killing spies after healing them (Hypocritical Oath), will result in getting better weapons or abilities. I HATE unlocking things in multiplayer games. Everyone ought to be on equal footing, right from the get-go, with only skill to separate players in the leaderboards. Giving any player an advantage over another, for any reason, seems unfair to me. What if I don't want to sit there grinding for achievements for an hour to get the Backburner? This isn't World of Warcraft! Oh wait...
Next on the PC we have Mirror's Edge. Holy Spaghetti does this one look amazing. It's a first-person free-running simulator. It also has some wicked cool krav-maga style gun disarms, but the game is really about running fluidly and keeping up momentum. It looks like a far more detailed version of Assassin's Creed's free running, along with a modern setting. Being first-person, they of course just had to add weapons to turn it into an FPS at times, but I know that I personally am never going to fire a shot. Gun disarm, melee, drop gun, keep running. It looks like the game will be entirely playable, and possibly more challenging, this way. I just can't wait. I sort of wish they had chosen to keep first-person shooting out of this game, though. It feels like they're pandering to an established genre/market when they could have something more unique on their hands. Portal, for instance, had no shooting whatsoever, and I feel it was the better for it. Maybe I'm just getting sick of all the generic grey FPSes coming out every week.
There was also a showing of Postal 3, which will come out for virtually every platform under the sun (including Linux!). This series has always been extremely offensive, but often in a wacky way. My favorite feature of the upcoming game is the weapon called "badger on a harness." It's literally a badger, with a harness, that you aim at stuff which will subsequently be destroyed by a badger. Pretty awesome.
Left 4 Dead and Spore were shown off on the show floor and at EA's press conference. Both continue to look amazing. Spore now has more species than exist in real life. The characters for Left 4 Dead have been changed, too. Now you can play as a gay biker! Look at the comparison shots and decide if you like the new characters better, or the old ones:
OLD - Beards aplenty, these guys are guaranteed to be tough lumberjacks or something; I think even the woman has a beard:
NEW - no beards, one gay biker with a droopy mustache and a woman that looks like Mila Kunis from That 70's Show:
I wonder if the Director AI is programmed to follow the script of every horror movie ever and kill the black guy first while letting the woman be the sole survivor - provided her shirt gets ripped at the midriff? Only time will tell. I predict everybody will be playing as the vietnam vet since he logically has the best chance to survive a zombie apocalypse.
Finally, on the PC side of things, we have Fallout 3. It definitely looks to be a good game, but I can't help but feel bad for fans of the original RPGs. Bethesda took a series of purely D&D style RPGs for the PC, and turned it into a gray console FPS with some sort of freeze-camera so you can get automatic headshots. I like FPSes, although I'm starting to get sick of the market being flooded by Halo and Gears of War ripoffs with regenerating health and only a couple weapons that can be carried at any given time, all coming to consoles - where FPSes have absolutely no place (Goldeneye, Perfect Dark and the Metroid Prime series notwithstanding; they had the good sense to focus on autoaiming completely). The Fallout series is known for dark postapocalyptic humor and a wide open world full of side quests and possibilities, so I can definitely say I'm looking forward to this.
Sony - PS3
Sony actually had a solid showing. They showed off their sales numbers and announcements using a custom LittleBigPlanet level, which was really awesome. That is one game that really makes me want a PS3. Sony also showed off a concept trailer for M.A.G., or Massive Action Game. Yes, that's apparently the title. It's a (surprise surprise) FPS featuring 256 players on a single server, somehow. I don't know how they'll pull this off without lag, but if they do it'll be pretty unique. Finally, Sony officially announced God of War 3, but who didn't see that coming?
Capcom
They talked about the Lost Planet movie. That was the entire press conference. I kid you not, a movie about a crappy game was the entire focus of their conference.
Ubisoft
They showed off the new Prince of Persia which looks very sweet. I especially like the "throw woman into the enemy like a projectile" attack. The art style is fantastic too, it looks like a watercolor painting.
Konami
I have to mention this press conference. Konami is coming out with a game called Rock Revolution which is obviously trying to compete with Rock Band (and doomed to failure). They had a Ramones cover band on-stage, who played a song presumably from the Ramones. I don't know music. Then, Konami had the band play the same song in Rock Revolution. The band failed the song after like 15 seconds. The entire audience laughed at them. Konami immediately said "the press conference is over now" and made everyone leave. Wow.
Nintendo - Wii
*Sigh* There's a lot to talk about in relation to the Wii. Not all of it good.
I guess I'll start with Nintendo's press conference. This was quite possibly the worst press conference in the history of E3. First a little background info: in the weeks leading up to E3, Nintendo had promised that they had announcements for the "core gamer" so that we wouldn't feel left out. They want to assure us that they do, in fact, care about hardcore gamers with a Wii, and not just grandmothers and 10 year olds. Everyone thought Nintendo would announce a new Kid Icarus, Pikmin, Star Fox, or Zelda. I'll go ahead and categorize the announcements made during Nintendo's press conference according to demographic.
The casual audience:
Wii Motion+
Wii Music
Animal Crossing
Shaun White Snowboarding
The hardcore audience:
Wii Speak
Animal Crossing
Shaun White Snowboarding
GTA on the DS
I'm being really liberal with the "hardcore audience" category because I have no interest in anything Nintendo announced except for Wii Motion+. Even disregarding that, Nintendo just had seriously weak announcements all around. I'll go into each one in more detail.
Wii Motion+ - the most exciting part of Nintendo's press conference. It's an attachment that increases the range of motion detection that the Wiimote is capable of. It supposedly allows for true 1:1 motion; that is to say, motion in-game that fully mimics the motion you do to the Wiimote in 3D space, down to the last detail. The current Wiimote is incapable of this even though many people thought it was possible from day one. It certainly should have been. Regardless, I'm really glad this functionality is finally here so we can get rid of the "gesture-based" button replacements and get down to the really innovative gameplay. Coming with this attachment is Wii Sports Resort, a sequel of sorts to Wii Sports. Reggie says this is "literally a day at the beach" and if you can't figure out what's wrong with that sentence, shame on you. Assuming you're NOT playing the Wii on an actual beach somewhere, but instead in your living room or something, the game offers more great minigames. Things like jet skiing and throwing a frisbee to a dog are nice, but what really has me excited is the swordfighting game. Yes, this game has Kendo, and it works with true 1:1 motion. From the hands-on impressions I've read, including one from an actual fencer, it works really well. Lightsaber game, here we come!
Animal Crossing - this is apparently a "hardcore" Nintendo game. Really? I thought you wandered around talking to animals and doing activities with no real goal or way to lose.
Wii Speak - finally, voice chat on the Wii! Actually I really don't care that much, I doubt I'd make a lot of use out of it, and Brawl will probably never support it. This is definitely useful for the hardcore gamers though, and the Conduit is already planning to use it.
Shaun White Snowboarding - I really don't care. It requires the Balance Board which I'll probably never get, and I don't like snowboarding. Seems kind of neat for people who are completely the opposite of me in both those aspects, though.
GTA DS - meh.
Wii Music - Oh boy, here we go. This game is without a doubt an absolute travesty that makes me almost lose all faith in Nintendo. This is a music game, obviously. Nintendo felt that it would be too difficult or complex to have players match on-screen note prompts, though. The result is that you have to move the wiimote as if you're pretending to play an instrument, and you can control the tempo and pitch of the on-screen music, but other than that the song will play itself. There is no way to hit a wrong note because the game always hits the right note. There is no way to lose. The only decent looking instrument might be the drums, but judging by the flailing awkward performance by Ravi Drums (that was his actual name), those will be really inaccurate and probably fail too.
This colorful display resulted in random beating of the drums on-screen with no rhythm or semblance of anything musical.
When asked if it was more of a "toy" than a "game", Shigeru Miyamoto could only say that, yes . . . it is more like a toy. That’s why it’s more fun than a video game. I guess Nintendo makes toys now and prefers that to video games. Ugh.
After the conference, Miyamoto offered a ray of sunshine in the developer roundtable by stating that the Mario and Zelda teams are working on projects. He also said "We are making Pikmin." So there will definitely be a new Pikmin!
However, he quickly dashed those hopes later at E3 by saying this:
"Frankly, some of the so-called 'franchise games' are quite difficult for nongamers to play, so making accessible games for these players is key. With Zelda, we have to consider how to make it accessible for new gamers to pick up and play and enjoy just as hardcore gamers have. For example, we’ve got the Touch Generations series. Now, we’re not necessarily going to make our 'franchise' games in that style, but we’ll take what we know and have learned — the philosophy behind those games — and incorporate it into franchise games. That’s a philosophy that’s very strong at Nintendo."
If that sounds good to you, you must be someone who's 70 years old, can't handle all the buttons of these newfangled video game machines, and yells at the "darn kids" to "get off the lawn."
At least the 3rd party showing for the Wii was irregularly strong. The Conduit looked really awesome for a pure Halo ripoff. It had a few cool and unique weapons and some of the best graphics I've seen on the Wii. It looks at least as good as Metroid Prime 3 or Mario Galaxy. I hope it has the gameplay to match.
Another big announcement this week was Gradius Rebirth for Wiiware. It's unknown whether this will be a remake or a new game, but it will feature 2D sprites and have Maoi Heads. I think that's enough to have me sold.
Madworld was also on display. This black and white game seems to focus exclusively on over the top violence and gore. The blood is the only bit of color in the whole game. I'm reserving judgment on this one, because blood, gore and violence don't make a good game. So far it seems like it's shaping up to be similar to No More Heroes, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
Oh yeah, guess what? Dead Rising is coming to the Wii. I can't wait! This zombie-killing simulator was one game I really wanted to play on the Xbox, and now I'll be able to!
Finally, we have the announcement of Onechanbara for the Wii. This was a Japanese PS2 game that's being localized and enhanced for U.S. Wiis and it should be all sorts of awesome. I think the subtitle, "Bikini Zombie Slayers" is enough to warrant interest, don't you?
Ok, that's pretty much all I have. There was lots more but this was all the stuff that interested me as a Wii owner and PC gamer. I think most of those PC games are coming to the Xbox too. Anyway that's it for me.
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