E3 Impressions

Now that E3 is over, I want to give my impressions of the show including the Big Three's press conferences and some other thoughts. I'll start with Microsoft's presser. Generally, it was okay, though much of their content didn't appeal to me. They opened with demos of some big games which confirmed rumors of RE5's co-op in a pretty good demo and great look at Gears of War 2. I wasn't real impressed with Fallout 3's demo, but that's mostly because they made it look like a shooter and didn't really show off more of it's depth though the game seems quite promising. Fable 2 looked pretty good, but it doesn't really interest me. A large part of their conference was spent on the new Xbox Live interface, party system, and some casual oriented stuff. This included their new avatars, some movie games, Lips, and and their deal with Netflix. The Netflix deal seems big, but the rest felt kind of like copycats of Miis, Singstar, and Eyetoy games. If this helps expand their market then good for them, but I'm not sure it will and this portion of the conference was just not doing it for me. Microsoft did impress me with their upcoming line-up on XBLA though. New content like Geometry Wars 2, Galaga Legions, and Portal: Still Alive along with the fact that the original Banjo is coming to XBLA has me excited. I've never gotten to play the N64 Banjos and was hoping to before getting the upcoming 360 Banjo which also looked like a lot of fun at the show. They ended the presser by showing off their trio of Square Enix RPG's and announcing that Final Fantasy XIII would come out on 360 as well as PS3. I'm not a big RPG guy, but it's becoming apparent that the 360 is the system to have with the above RPG's on the system as well as games like Mass Effect, Fable 2, and even Too Human (though that one seems not quite as promising). This was accentuated by the fact that Sony hasn't had much in the RPG area on the PS3. I was a bit let down that Microsoft didn't announce any big new games or tease anything for 2009. I would have loved to know that Alan Wake still exists or have actually seen what Bungie was supposed to show, but Microsoft seems content to just talk about this year. They do have an upcoming line-up including Gears 2, Fable 2, Banjo, and some other great mutli-platform games coming this year, so, the 360 seems to be in good shape.

Gears of War 2 looks to be the 360's biggest game this fall.

Nintendo's conference and general E3 performance was easily the worst of the Big Three. Their presser was focused on three big Wii games in Animal Crossing: City Folk, Wii Sports: Resort, and Wii Music. I'm a big Animal Crossing fan, but the new one isn't the jump I was expecting. It looks really similar to the previous games. I'll get it anyway, but I hope there is a lot more new stuff to do than it appeared. Wii Sports Resort looked fun and the Wii Motion Plus looks like a neat new add-on, but I'm kind of tired of the amount of peripherals I've bought for the Wii. I'm likely going to have buy three extra ones to go with the one I'm assuming comes with the game so me and my friends can play it together. While those games look pretty good, Wii Music did nothing for me. It looks like you just kind of randomly hit buttons and move the controllers to play music. It just doesn't appeal to me at all, but I guess it's not supposed to appeal to me. They also featured some third-party games like Shaun White's Snowboarding and Call of Duty, but they didn't interest me either. I was just hoping that Nintendo would give me some traditional games to look forward to, but all they basically did was tell us that the Zelda and Mario teams were working on new games and they were making a new Pikmin (which didn't even happen at the presser). A teaser for the new Zelda Wii or Pikmin and at least I'd have something to look forward to. Heck, at least show some of the new Fatal Frame or WarioLand at the conference. Nintendo failed to impress me with any new first-party DS games as well. The GTA announcement was surprising, but I'm not sure how it will turn out. At least, give me news on bringing the next Prof. Layton game over here. Overall, the Wii and DS software at the show didn't impress me much outside of a few standout titles like the Madworld for Wii, Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for DS, and a few others.

It seems while this guy was sleeping in the corner, three hooligans broke into his house to mess with his stuff.

I came away more impressed with Sony's presser than the other two. Mostly I liked that they showed off their PS3 line-up for this year as well as some for next year, they showed a bunch of promising new titles for PSN, and gave me some games to look forward to on the PSP. They had some demos of games like Resistance 2 and LittleBigPlanet (this one was neatly worked in to replace the typical boring powerpoint stuff). They also showed off games for 2009 like inFamous as well as teasing God of War III and Zipper's M.A.G. Killzone 2 and Motorstorm: Pacific Rift were also featured in a sizzle trailer that had some other multi-platform games coming to the system in it (though I thought that KZ2 and MS:PR would be more prominent in the conference though they had a bigger presence at the show itself). They also showed off a great line-up of new PSN games like Fat Princess, Flower, Rag Doll Kung Fu: Fists of Plastic, Pixeljunk Eden and some others. The star of this portion (in my opinion) was Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty. It's a small, $15 downloadable Ratchet adventure that will hold us over until the next full release. One of my biggest gaming worries recently has been what the PSP had coming up software-wise in the future, but I've got a few games to be excited about now. LocoRoco 2 and Patapon 2 were really announced last week, but both sound great. But they also surpised me with the announcement of Resistance: Retribution, a promising entry in the series by Sony Bend for PSP, and Super Stardust Portable. They announced a new video store that went up the night of the presser, too. The conference was a bit longwinded maybe and I'm not sure why they talked about the PS2 as much as they did, but I enjoyed it overall. They've given me games to be excited for on PS3, PSN, and PSP as well as some games to look forward to in 2009 which made for a good conference I think.

We'll finally be able to get LittleBigPlanet this fall.

E3 as a whole was pretty good. It was severely lacking in big announcements, but it had a bunch of really promising games that we either saw some more of or gameplay of for the first time. I'll talk about my games of the show later, but there were a lot of great third-party games to go along with the first-party stuff I mentioned above. EA had Mirror's Edge and Dead Space. Ubisoft had Prince of Persia and FarCry 2. Capcom had Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV. And that's just to name a few. But I have to wonder what will become of E3 in the future. People generally seem unhappy about its current set-up. Moving it back to May may help to bring the big announcements back which would seem to be a good idea. Some have suggested that opening it to the public over the weekend might help, too. But I'm merely a guy who watches from home and I'm not sure what the best solution is, but it will be interesting to see what shape the show takes on next year.

I enjoyed watching all the media and news trickle in from E3 this year and think it was much better than last year. I'll be posting my Games of the Show and maybe some other awards soon, so, keep an eye out for them.