Guides
Sony had the best press conference but all three were very lacking. The BS Nintendo had to say/show was pretty much what I expected and have more or less forgotten about that company as a whole. My Wii is official a Super Nintendo; lol, as if it were ever anything else right? While the Final Fantasy 13 announcement was surprising it was also inevitable. Good news for 360 fans, but at the rate SquareEnix is going the 360's successor is likely to show up before FF13 does. You know I'm right. Microsoft Wii-a-fying the 360 was disgusting, though I am very happy for 360 owners finally getting their own XMB. I guess Sony knew what they were doing after all. I know MS said their focus (like last year) was on games coming in 2008, which is cool and all, but if that's all we can expect in 2008 I'm a bit disappointed. Aren't you? Like I wrote at the beginning of my entry I think Sony had the best conference of the three, but it too was uneventful. In a trip to ass-backwards land the best part was the LittleBigPlanet number crunch demo. Who would have thought, right? It also seemed they were sick of Home, as nothing new since last year was shown; especially considering the length demonstration given at the 2007 conference. All these boring and wasteful pressers set a bad tone for myself in what to expect during the three days. Luckily the actual show was substantially better and Gamespot still have the best E3 coverage with their live stage demos. In my eyes the big three don't care about E3 anymore and I wouldn't be surprised to see it canned.
Even so, the number of surprises and big reveals were the leanest in memory, and I would normally feel disappointed by the lack of new games being displayed if it wasn't for all the game play footage and demos available. What I mean is, in the past E3 has been clogged with too many teasers and/or CGI videos and missing serious face time with the hottest titles. This year so many great games we already new about from last year were there in the pixel, on full display for anyone to check out and jabber about. When it was all said and done three games have been burned into my brain. Far Cry 2, inFamous and Dragon Age: Origins. Other notable games were Left 4 Dead (nice graphic update from the last build), Prince of Persia (love the design direction), Street Fighter 4 (sweet **** jesus), Postal 3, Resistance 2, and (as always) LittleBigPlanet. Of course there were other notable games present such as Bionic Command, Bionic Commando Rearmed, Resident Evil 5 and Killzone 2; they just didn't show enough new content to standout.
Then we have a game like Fallout 3, which for me was simply underwhelming. It did not at all look terrible, just very uninteresting. I'm going to continue fallowing its development and hopefully the game is a lot more fun than it looks. God of War 3 is the prime example of what I was writing earlier about a lack in surprises and CGI teasers. As far back as last fall, during the launch for Chains of Olympus, we knew Sony was working on God of War 3; so an announcement with a CGI teaser wasn't surprising or exciting. Quite frankly it felt like a waste of time and money. There was also a no show for Wipeout HD, which I recently read has a severe technical problem no one at Sony can figure out as of yet. A statement from SCEE hopes to have the game available by Xmas. Long delay eh? However the biggest disappointment was lack of information on the new Twisted Metal game for PS3, which David Jaffe acknowledge was in the works. Come to think of it, was he even there?
All in all E3 2008 was alright. I really appreciated all the demonstrations of very polished looking games we got to see. However, if E3 2007 was a shadow of its formal self then E3 2008 was a casket prep. Either bring it back in a meaningful way or kill the best so studios, journalist and gamers do not waste their time or money.
