The Electronic Entertainment Expo has concluded for yet another year and we’ve seen everything from great announcements to great hardware to great games. In many ways 2010 was the year of motion control and 3D gaming but what really interests me is the games themselves and while not every game at the show looked like a winner there have certainly been some amazing titles shown at E3. In an effort to try and evaluate this pandemonium of video game presentations I’ve broken down and analysed the Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo and Sony press conferences. I hope you enjoy this summary of E3 2010.

While I’m not a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid games I must admit I was rather enthralled by the trailer for the latest Kojima-produced work, Metal Gear Solid: Rising. What was shown would suggest a more action-centric MGS game and the dynamic slicing in the game looks like a big part of the fun.

Gears of War 3 is looking like a deserving conclusion for the series and premiered with a live demo being given by Epic Game’s Cliff Bleszinski. I’m aware that the Gears of War universe has a rich backstory and while it seems that is something that Bleszinski is really trying to let shine through in this third foray into the Gears universe I found it hard to take an interest in any of that. The things that really caught my eye were the improved visuals, the battles taking place in even more open spaces and the great enemy design. I wasn’t wowed by Gears of War 2 but maybe I’ll find something special in 3.

Peter Molyneux made a surprisingly brief appearance on stage to introduce a new trailer for Fable III but it seemed he had far more presence on the show floor post-conference and everything I’ve heard about Fable III is sounding very good. A short trailer for a new Crytek title Codename: Kingdoms was shown which was rather vague and didn’t actually tell us a whole lot about the game apart from that it’s seemingly a fantasy game with an unusual title.

As a big fan of all things Halo one of the major highlights of the conference for me was Bungie’s Marcus Lehto presenting Halo: Reach. I very much enjoyed the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta earlier this year but the campaign mode looks even more amazing. The short gameplay trailer not only featured a beautiful landscape, classic Halo gameplay and strong level design but also gave everyone a big of the surprise when what had started as a cutscene ascended into a full-on space combat sequence. On the show floor Bungie also unveiled their new firefight mode for Reach with vastly more customisation features than ODST’s firefight and a matchmaking system attached. Halo: Reach looks like it’s shaping up to be an awesome experience.

After the big games were out of the way though the conference started to go rather downhill as Microsoft devoted almost all of the remaining time to demoing the Kinect (or Project Natal as it used to be known). Molyneux’s old Milo and Kate tech demo had obviously gone out the window and in the time since we saw it last year it quickly became obvious that the technology advanced a long way in twelve months. The menu navigation capabilities of the Kinect looked very sleek although I can’t say I care for the current equivalents of Photo Party or the ability to watch movies while in video chat. The technology didn’t quite show direct one-to-one control as it was made apparent that there is slight delay between your movement and the Kinect registering it but none the less it came across as a very impressive piece of technology and something far, far more than just a fancy Eye Toy.

I wish I could have felt like the games library was there to back up the Kinect because it obviously has great potential. Granted a lot of games were not aimed at the core

market but that is somewhat of my issue, I saw them replicating a lot of titles that already exist for the Wii in Kinect form but even with the Wii there were motion control experiences that appealed to core gamers such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy, and I’m just not seeing similar titles on the Kinect. If Microsoft is not making an outright attempt to only cater to casual gamers with the Kinect then they are at least not encouraging developers to produce core titles for the device at this point. I sincerely hope that games like Kinectimals and Joy Ride aren’t Microsoft’s attempts to hoard away the Kinect for only the casual gamers because I feel like there’s so much more it could do.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Kinect line-up though. Although sceptical at first I eventually warmed to Harmonix’s Kinect title Dance Central as it seems like a genuinely well-made rhythm game, and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t dance and doesn’t listen to pop music. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved also looks like a surprisingly fun game, it may not have any great longevity but it does look like the kind of game that could provide the kind of entrancing gimmicky fun that the existed in the early days of the Wii. Despite them even providing a release date for the Kinect it was a bit of a throw-off to see a complete lack of pricing for the peripheral and with the Playstation Move and Wii at the prices they are Microsoft will have to be very smart about their pricing if they want this to sell.

Even after the lengthy Kinect presentations Microsoft did manage to end the conference on a high note though. With built-in wi-fi, a more polished design and a lower fail rate all at the price of the current 360 it was a real shocker when they announced a new Xbox 360 model that launched that day.

Dead Space 2 looked just as atmospheric as the first and much like its predecessor seemed to carry a winning combination of enemy and environmental design. The 16-player Medal of Honor live demo was very entertaining; the game looks a lot like Modern Warfare 2 which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I was expecting it stand out a little more from the competition when it was shown on the show floor. I think it could be a great game if only it broke away a little more from the CoD formula.

Of course whenever EA makes a big presentation it should be expected that there will be a certain amount of EA Sports franchises involved. My brain had tuned out sometime around the announcement of EA’s rewards program for FPS fans and the new Battlefield: Bad Company 2 DLC and honestly I am not the sports guy but I struggled onwards through the conference. It seemed as though they had some decent titles to offer fans of the sports genres although there was one particular aspect of their new sports game social network that unsettled me a little and that was their service which will let sports games fans record themselves “talking smack” to their opponents and post it on the internet. I can see in some senses this might be perceived as a bit of harmless fun but there are already too many elitist gamers talking like douche bags into webcams and headsets, I don’t think it’s really good for this kind of behaviour to be encouraged.

The EA Sports line-up was succeeded by the EA Play Executive VP talking about nonsense psychology and some vaguely scientific tests about free will. EA may produce some great games but a psychological research group they are not and as someone who takes an interest in the world of psychology I was not impressed by this EA talk that seemed to carry the underlying concept of “Hey, maybe we’re all Sims”. After seeing The Sims and The Sims 2 on consoles be far out-stripped by their PC counterparts before now I also held no enthusiasm for The Sims 3 on consoles but none the less the trailer shown was somewhat enjoyable, even if as just a relief from all the preamble.

As the conference neared its end Crytek showed off Crysis 2 which looked as graphically outstanding as you’d expect and Cliff Bleszinski took to the stage to present Bulletstorm, the new FPS from Epic Game’s People Can Fly studio. Amazingly the game presented an even more meat-headed group of individuals than Gears of War and the hyper-macho dialogue became a bit too ridiculous a bit too fast but the critics seem very happy with the version of the demo playable at E3 and that gives me a little more faith in the game. EA wrapped things up with a trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic which while showing nothing of the game did function as a pleasing cinematic.

The Electronic Entertainment Expo has concluded for yet another year and we’ve seen everything from great announcements to great hardware to great games. In many ways 2010 was the year of motion control and 3D gaming but what really interests me is the games themselves and while not every game at the show looked like a winner there have certainly been some amazing titles shown at E3. In an effort to try and evaluate this pandemonium of video game presentations I’ve broken down and analysed the Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo and Sony press conferences. I hope you enjoy this summary of E3 2010.

While I’m not a big fan of the Metal Gear Solid games I must admit I was rather enthralled by the trailer for the latest Kojima-produced work, Metal Gear Solid: Rising. What was shown would suggest a more action-centric MGS game and the dynamic slicing in the game looks like a big part of the fun.

Gears of War 3 is looking like a deserving conclusion for the series and premiered with a live demo being given by Epic Game’s Cliff Bleszinski. I’m aware that the Gears of War universe has a rich backstory and while it seems that is something that Bleszinski is really trying to let shine through in this third foray into the Gears universe I found it hard to take an interest in any of that. The things that really caught my eye were the improved visuals, the battles taking place in even more open spaces and the great enemy design. I wasn’t wowed by Gears of War 2 but maybe I’ll find something special in 3.

Peter Molyneux made a surprisingly brief appearance on stage to introduce a new trailer for Fable III but it seemed he had far more presence on the show floor post-conference and everything I’ve heard about Fable III is sounding very good. A short trailer for a new Crytek title Codename: Kingdoms was shown which was rather vague and didn’t actually tell us a whole lot about the game apart from that it’s seemingly a fantasy game with an unusual title.

As a big fan of all things Halo one of the major highlights of the conference for me was Bungie’s Marcus Lehto presenting Halo: Reach. I very much enjoyed the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta earlier this year but the campaign mode looks even more amazing. The short gameplay trailer not only featured a beautiful landscape, classic Halo gameplay and strong level design but also gave everyone a big of the surprise when what had started as a cutscene ascended into a full-on space combat sequence. On the show floor Bungie also unveiled their new firefight mode for Reach with vastly more customisation features than ODST’s firefight and a matchmaking system attached. Halo: Reach looks like it’s shaping up to be an awesome experience.

After the big games were out of the way though the conference started to go rather downhill as Microsoft devoted almost all of the remaining time to demoing the Kinect (or Project Natal as it used to be known). Molyneux’s old Milo and Kate tech demo had obviously gone out the window and in the time since we saw it last year it quickly became obvious that the technology advanced a long way in twelve months. The menu navigation capabilities of the Kinect looked very sleek although I can’t say I care for the current equivalents of Photo Party or the ability to watch movies while in video chat. The technology didn’t quite show direct one-to-one control as it was made apparent that there is slight delay between your movement and the Kinect registering it but none the less it came across as a very impressive piece of technology and something far, far more than just a fancy Eye Toy.

I wish I could have felt like the games library was there to back up the Kinect because it obviously has great potential. Granted a lot of games were not aimed at the core

market but that is somewhat of my issue, I saw them replicating a lot of titles that already exist for the Wii in Kinect form but even with the Wii there were motion control experiences that appealed to core gamers such as The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy, and I’m just not seeing similar titles on the Kinect. If Microsoft is not making an outright attempt to only cater to casual gamers with the Kinect then they are at least not encouraging developers to produce core titles for the device at this point. I sincerely hope that games like Kinectimals and Joy Ride aren’t Microsoft’s attempts to hoard away the Kinect for only the casual gamers because I feel like there’s so much more it could do.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Kinect line-up though. Although sceptical at first I eventually warmed to Harmonix’s Kinect title Dance Central as it seems like a genuinely well-made rhythm game, and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t dance and doesn’t listen to pop music. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved also looks like a surprisingly fun game, it may not have any great longevity but it does look like the kind of game that could provide the kind of entrancing gimmicky fun that the existed in the early days of the Wii. Despite them even providing a release date for the Kinect it was a bit of a throw-off to see a complete lack of pricing for the peripheral and with the Playstation Move and Wii at the prices they are Microsoft will have to be very smart about their pricing if they want this to sell.

Even after the lengthy Kinect presentations Microsoft did manage to end the conference on a high note though. With built-in wi-fi, a more polished design and a lower fail rate all at the price of the current 360 it was a real shocker when they announced a new Xbox 360 model that launched that day.

Dead Space 2 looked just as atmospheric as the first and much like its predecessor seemed to carry a winning combination of enemy and environmental design. The 16-player Medal of Honor live demo was very entertaining; the game looks a lot like Modern Warfare 2 which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I was expecting it stand out a little more from the competition when it was shown on the show floor. I think it could be a great game if only it broke away a little more from the CoD formula.

Of course whenever EA makes a big presentation it should be expected that there will be a certain amount of EA Sports franchises involved. My brain had tuned out sometime around the announcement of EA’s rewards program for FPS fans and the new Battlefield: Bad Company 2 DLC and honestly I am not the sports guy but I struggled onwards through the conference. It seemed as though they had some decent titles to offer fans of the sports genres although there was one particular aspect of their new sports game social network that unsettled me a little and that was their service which will let sports games fans record themselves “talking smack” to their opponents and post it on the internet. I can see in some senses this might be perceived as a bit of harmless fun but there are already too many elitist gamers talking like douche bags into webcams and headsets, I don’t think it’s really good for this kind of behaviour to be encouraged.

The EA Sports line-up was succeeded by the EA Play Executive VP talking about nonsense psychology and some vaguely scientific tests about free will. EA may produce some great games but a psychological research group they are not and as someone who takes an interest in the world of psychology I was not impressed by this EA talk that seemed to carry the underlying concept of “Hey, maybe we’re all Sims”. After seeing The Sims and The Sims 2 on consoles be far out-stripped by their PC counterparts before now I also held no enthusiasm for The Sims 3 on consoles but none the less the trailer shown was somewhat enjoyable, even if as just a relief from all the preamble.

As the conference neared its end Crytek showed off Crysis 2 which looked as graphically outstanding as you’d expect and Cliff Bleszinski took to the stage to present Bulletstorm, the new FPS from Epic Game’s People Can Fly studio. Amazingly the game presented an even more meat-headed group of individuals than Gears of War and the hyper-macho dialogue became a bit too ridiculous a bit too fast but the critics seem very happy with the version of the demo playable at E3 and that gives me a little more faith in the game. EA wrapped things up with a trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic which while showing nothing of the game did function as a pleasing cinematic.