Kirby's Epic Yarn
After the uncomfortable and underwhelming Zelda demo, and the Wii Party and Mario Sports Mix announcements that seemed designed to underline Nintendo's laziest tendencies, I was checking my phone and completely ready to bail early on Nintendo's press conference to beat traffic. But it bounced back big from a weak opening by announcing just a whole slew of new, interesting-looking games. Among them was Kirby's Epic Yarn, which piqued my interest the most with its homespun art style. Playing a few levels of Kirby on the show floor supported my suspicions: this isn't going to be a challenging or high-impact experience, but the very fabric of this subtly inventive platformer will charm your pants off.Face Ace
So these faces are flying at you in the foreground, and the background is being generated by the two 3D cameras on the front of the 3DS, so you're seeing whatever is right in front of you, on the top screen, in 3D. I had the pleasure of watching these marauding little me-demons shoot out of the nearby crotch of Gunnar Johansson from Fatshark. Again, uncomfortable. Making the whole augmented reality angle that much more weirdly immersive is the fact that you're using the motion sensors to actually move the 3DS around in order to target incoming faces.
If that all doesn't sound totally insane and at least a little bit clever in its use of the 3DS technology, then I have done a very poor job describing the actual experience to you, and for that I apologize. I don't know if this could ever survive as a standalone game, but it gave me a weird-ass sense of hope for the future of Nintendo's new handheld.
Dance Central
The interface and presentation are what make Dance Central work. Smartly, it doesn't rely on your movement data to generate your on-screen avatar's animation. This avoids the whole marionette issue that plagues many of the Kinect games I saw, and makes it easy for the game to both show you how to do the dance move correctly and highlight the parts of your body that aren't in the correct position. I also found the cue cards that show you the name and the starting position for the next dance move helpful when transitioning, but it's all these factors, plus a very, very generous learning curve, that softens the inherently intimidating premise of getting up in front of your TV and trying to dance "correctly."
I was a nervous wreck walking up to Dance Central for the first time, but I wasn't even through my first routine to Lady Gaga's "Pokerface," on easy, before I started feeling all cocky. Playing Dance Central at E3 was the first time since, let's say Dance Dance Revolution 2nd Mix, that I really enjoyed a dancing game. Even two weeks later, this is the game from E3 that I most wish I was playing right now.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
Super Scribblenauts
Scribblenauts was a game I adored in concept, but could barely be bothered to play once it actually came out. This was due in part to a few design and control missteps, both of which appeared to be high on the to-do list of developer 5th Cell for its sequel, Super Scribbelnauts. Apparently also on that list was the decision to add adjectives to the game's dictionary, which exponentially increases the number of objects that you can conjure up to help solve the game's puzzles. Super Scribblenauts is a simply awful game to try and play in the middle of all the sound and fury of the E3 show floor, though I got just enough of a taste of its silly, puzzle offerings to know that I want more.Looking back on my list here, I'm personally kind of surprised at the complete absence of more traditional, core games. It's not that those games weren't being well represented, I guess it's just that they were known quantities. In a weird way, this was a hardware year for E3, just not in the same generational way it's been in years past, and the most exciting games for me were the ones that really showed off the potential of that new hardware.
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