E3 2009

[IG-64]

So yeah, all of the press conferences are done now, and there were a lot of interesting announcements and showings. Just to go over some of the bigger press conference stuff:

 

Microsoft:

Rock Band: Beatles - Cool... if you like the Beatles

Crackdown 2 - I never played Crackdown 1, but this looked interesting. The ice stuff looked cool.

Splinter Cell: Conviction - Haven't really played Splinter Cell either, but this look like a nice evolution for the game series. Looks pretty dark.

Left 4 Dead 2 - This totally came out of left field. November 17th release. Valve usually isn't nearly this fast with content, but I'm not complaining. I'm a little attached to the old characters, but oh well, the new ones don't look too bad. It has some really nice additions so far. Buying multiple copies of the game again is gonna hurt...

Forza Motorsport 3 - This looks really nice. Maybe not a GT5, but still pretty impressive (and also not PS3 exclusive, so that's a plus). Environments look really good.

Halo: ODST and Halo Reach - Some interesting Halo additions. Good that they're exploring more of the story. I'm not really a Halo fan, but I got the feeling Bongo is pretty excited.

Alan Wake - Nice to see vaporware with some good progress made on it. Looks like this has a definite release date now, and it's looking pretty sweet. I'm sure my sister will love this, as she's a big Silent Hill fan and likes the survival horror genre in general.

Live Party - Kinda neat. I could do without the little seated avatars, but the idea of watching stuff synched up with other people online is pretty cool.

Live Facebook and Twitter integration - This seems pointless to me. It's much easier to just hop on the computer for this stuff than have to boot up your xbox and enter into a separate interface

Metal Gear Solid Rising - Weee, Metal Gear on xbox. Apparently some pretty big news. I really kinda missed the boat with the whole Metal Gear series, and I have yet to play one.

Milo - I found this sad in a "you've resorted to talking to virtual people" kind of way. Ultimately it's probably an advanced graphical equivalent of an AIMbot, and something I probably wouldn't have much interest in. I don't see it passing the Turing test any time soon.

 

Nintendo:

New Super Mario Wii - Pretty cool looking. Interesting that they're going back to side scrolling for Mario on the big(ger) screen. I'm not sure I like the 4-player thing. Looks a little too hectic to be any fun. Hopefully it plays just as well no matter what the number of players is.

Wii Fit Plus - Nothing I care too much about. I do want to say that it looks kind of like you could achieve the same thing by just patching the game and having DLC. That is, if the Wii online component was at all capable.

Wii Sports Resort - Pretty cool, but basically a tech demo for Wii Motion Plus.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers - Looks neat.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 days, Mario and luigi, Golden Sun, C.O.P. Recruit, Mario vs. DK, WarioWare DIY, and Ledgend of Zelda: Spirit Tactics -Tons of DS games that I don't care about because I don't use portable game consoles. Wish they would put this much effort into making new Wii games.

Wii Vitality Sensor - WTF Nintendo? One of those pulse things hospitals put on your finger? That's all you can come up with? Utterly worthless.

Mario Galaxy 2 - I would have liked to have seen something a little more... different. But this is still pretty sweet I guess.

Resident Evil - Darkside Chronicles - Nice to see some old-school coming back to RE. Looks good.

Dead Space - Extraction - My brother liked the first one, so he looked pretty interested in this. Does look pretty good (for a Wii game).

The Conduit - New IP. Not much to say about it before it's actually released. Looks pretty cut-and-dry to me.

Metroid: Other M - That was unexpected. The Prime series was good, but it's nice to finally see a different take on 3D Metroid. The God of War-esque combat system looked pretty good.

 

Sony:

Uncharted 2 - Looks really nice. Not having a PS3, I never played the first one, but this series looks very nice.

Mag - Impressive. It basically looks like Battlefield, but with the server size multiplied by 4.

PSP Go - Not something I'd be interested in personally, but I will say that this looks more like a trendy redesign than an upgrade. Lack of UMD is interesting, but the smaller screen size and probably harder to hold buttons is not a good thing if you ask me.

Gran Turismo PSP and Gran Turismo 5 - Pretty impressive. 800 cars on PSP? Pretty good, if a little pointless. The idea of GT is to have a racing game that is really realistic, but if the screen is 4 inches across, that sounds a little counterintuitive. If the GT5 trailer was not pre-rendered, then it officially looks awesome.

MGS: Peace Walker - once again, haven't played the series, but what's with the clones?

Heavy Rain - just a mention, but at least it still exists.

Agent - No news on L.A. Noire? That game looked pretty awesome. This game sounds similar, but there's not much info about it.

Assassins Creed II - Pretty much just a continuation of the first one. New setting is interesting. The da Vinci inventions are a bit of a stretch, but pretty cool nonetheless.

FFXIV Online - This was exciting until they revealed that it was another online one.

Mod Nation Racers - Good concept, good technology, but style could be better. They obviously went for a LittleBigPlanet look, since the concept is similar, but that style just doesn't fit this like it does LBP. Same thing with a better style could be a lot cooler.

The Last Guardian - Just the fact that this is by Team ICO and Fumito Ueda means that this will be of exceptional quality. It looks a little unfinished, and there's probably a lot more to show, but what they did show looks as intuitive and refreshingly different as Shadow of the Colossus was. I also liked that they ended it with text that looked a lot like the end of a movie trailer. It certainly did have that kind of vibe to it. Almost like a Miyazaki film.

God of War III - I haven't played the God of War series either, but this looked pretty crazy. All kinds of things were flying around.

And last but not least...

 

 

Motion Control: Wii MotionPlus vs. Project Natal vs. Playstation Motion Controller

The war continues. So far, in terms of pure technology I think Sony's was the most impressive, followed by Wii MotionpPlus, then Project Natal.

Sony has simply shown the best demo. The video overlay with the models mapped over the controller was a very effective way of showing just how accurate it is. It's essentially a Wiimote killer. The Wii MotionPlus was pretty impressive in itself - what the Wiimote should have been in the first place - but it's a bit of a mystery how accurate it is. It would be nice to have a better demo than Wii Sports Resort to show this. Sony's controller seems to have pinpoint accuracy, and has the added bonus of being able to keep track of exactly where the controller is in 3D space, instead of just relative to itself like the Wiimote.

Project Natal is an interesting concept, but the demos were not exactly reassuring. A contorted avatar and a pre-school quality "painting" did not leave me impressed. For basic controls that can be conveyed by wide swinging of your arms and body, this could be good, but that seems a little restrictive to me. Plus, I don't exactly feel like waving at my TV every time I want to navigate a menu.

I actually thought when Project Natal was released yesterday that what was missing was some motion capture nodes for accuracy, and a simple controller to provide the buttons would be perfect, and it seems like that's exactly what Sony has shown us today. The fact that they were using two controllers at once shows that it can support more than one node at once, so theoretically you could turn it into a fully-fledged motion capture system by putting a node on all of your joints and put all of your movements into a game. I doubt the company would go to such an extreme, but the possibility is there.

Of course, this is all in terms of pure technology. The real test comes in the software support, and Nintendo probably has the edge on that right now, seeing as MotionPlus is coming out in a few weeks. Sony still hasn't even given me a reason to spend the money required to buy a PS3 in the first place. I haven't seen anything yet that's made me really excited about the Wii MotionPlus yet either at this point though. If either company can't deliver on the games, then it really doesn't matter how good the technology is.

Microsoft could surprise me and have some ground-breaking stuff for project Natal, but right now I see the least amount of potential in it.

 

Honorable mention - The Old Republic trailer was one of the coolest things to come out of the Star Wars universe in a long time. It's pre-rendered and probably doesn't say much in terms of actual gameplay, but the animation in itself is something to behold.

 

^Huge post.

[Pie™]

Kind of wish they would have stuck to adding more content to Left4Dead, as the game still feels unfinished in several ways (especially the horrible lobby-system). The sequel looks cool though, and the setting looks really interesting, fighting zombies in New Orleans while wielding a chainsaw will undoubtedly kick ass.

 

Any news from Blizzard, or are they holding out until Blizzcon? I'm too lazy to check myself.

[TiE23]

tldr; ITT E3 shenanigans. : P

 

 

Anyway, the only thing that comes to mind at the moment is that ODST looked really underwhelming to me. Poor graphics, shoddy presentation. It looked downright embarrassing to me.

Edit: the tldr bit was a joke, I actually read it :V

[IG-64]

tldr

Yeah I kind of figured. I really just wanted to talk about the motion controls. I thought I should list all of the big stuff to provide a base of discussion for whatever you're interested in. It is pretty extraneous though.

 

I do want to mention that Nintendo is really being disappointing lately. The so-called "casual" games have no graphics, no story, and minimal gameplay. They're simply little applications that give people who don't like video games something to do on their consoles. I suppose if that makes money, you can't blame them, but it's really a pretty unfortunate trend.

 

I also hate portable consoles, which I mentioned.

[jrrtoken]

I do want to mention that Nintendo is really being disappointing lately. The so-called "casual" games have no graphics, no story, and minimal gameplay.

I suppose motherfu**ing Metroid, two Marios, The Conduit, Cursed Mountain, and others don't count as hardcore games anymore, right?

[Samnmax221]

I suppose motherfu**ing Metroid, two Marios, The Conduit, Cursed Mountain, and others don't count as hardcore games anymore, right?

The wii is nothing more than gimmicky bullshit, that's pretty much been established.

 

Lucasarts caved into our constant bitching, that's all that matters to me.

[swphreak]

I fast forwarded through so much of the press conferences. I probably only watched half of the Microsoft conference, and probably only watched an hour total of Nintendo and Sony combined.

 

I'm pretty much done with Nintendo. I haven't touched my Wii in months. Going to give/sell it to a relative/friend. Nintendo is more interested in the casual gamer demographic, which isn't me. And Wii Motion Plus is bull****.

 

I don't much care for Sony (no PS3). I didn't get a PS2 until about 8 years after it was released. Most games announced for PS3 is also announced for 360, so no point in getting a $400 console for a handful of PS3 exclusives. Not to mention the removal of backwards compatibility was a terrible decision to make.

 

Microsoft:

Games I've heard/seen (that I'm interested in) so far:

Crackdown 2 - Crackdown 1 is awesome. It looks like Crackdown 2 will have 4 player co-op and 16 player multiplayer.

Splinter Cell: Conviction - I've only played one Splinter Cell game, and it was alright. I didn't like the stealth a whole lot. Conviction looks like it could be my kind of game. It also reminds me a lot of Hitman Blood Money.

Left 4 Dead 2 - Sounds interesting. I'll confess to not playing a lot of L4D after the first week or so I got it. Don't know if I'll pick this up or not. I am glad I got L4D during that sale.

Halo: ODST and Halo Reach - I'm done with Halo. I tried replaying Halo 3 recently, but I just couldn't do it. I'm used to Modern Warfare and other shooters.

 

Had to comment:

Live Party - Xbox Home? No thanks.

Live Facebook and Twitter integration - If I were to Facebook or Twit, I'd probably do it on a computer.

Milo - While this would be interesting in future game, I don't see it panning out.

Project Natal - Wii competition. I guess Microsoft wants to get in the new casual gamer demographic. Can't fault them for wanting a piece of the pie. Don't really see this being useful for real games.

 

Oh forgot:

Netflix - They're improving Netflix. Awesome.

 

Nintendo:

crap

 

Sony:

MAG - Looks cool. If it truly ends up being lag free, I'll be impressed. Not a game that would make me buy a PS3.

Assassins Creed II - Looks awesome. I'll be picking up the 360 version.

God of War III - Looks awesome. Still wouldn't buy a PS3 to just play it.

 

Probably the only thing that would really make me want to buy a PS3 is a new .hack game.

 

Motion Control: Wii MotionPlus vs. Project Natal vs. Playstation Motion Controller

 

Motion controls suck. When they come out with virtual reality brain implants, give me a call.

 

 

The Old Republic - The trailer certainly was awesome. Why they don't just make entire movies like that, I don't know. The announcement that the game would have speaking voices rather than a lot of texts is ambitious. I wonder how they'll pull that off technology-wise being an MMO.

 

 

 

I suppose motherfu**ing Metroid, two Marios, The Conduit, Cursed Mountain, and others don't count as hardcore games anymore, right?

 

When they're on the Wii, no they don't count.

[IG-64]

I suppose motherfu**ing Metroid, two Marios, The Conduit, Cursed Mountain, and others don't count as hardcore games anymore, right?

Metroid was the best announcement of the press conference. The two Marios are great (although not very new). The Conduit looks interesting, though I don't know much about it. I've never even heard of Cursed Mountain, so I'll give you that. All of that said, I can still be disappointed that Nintendo has put most of their effort into making casual and portable games that I don't care about. Microsoft and Sony both made very strong showings this year, so it's it's a little disheartening that I felt like I was falling asleep throughout most of Nintendo's press conference. I'm a long-time Nintendo fan, but I can tell that they're starting to slip. They say the same thing every year that they haven't forgotten the hardcore gamer, but I can't help but feel underwhelmed. I dunno, maybe it's because I have an exaggerated expectation of what Nintendo is capable of? After all Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros Brawl, and Metroid Prime were all awesome games. Why don't I feel like it's enough?

[Samnmax221]

The Old Republic - The trailer certainly was awesome. Why they don't just make entire movies like that, I don't know. The announcement that the game would have speaking voices rather than a lot of texts is ambitious. I wonder how they'll pull that off technology-wise being an MMO.

If they did pull off that kind of technology it'd be kind of a waste just so people could call each other noobs, spaz's, and retards.

[jrrtoken]

And Microsoft and Sony is any better? They too have motion controllers. Seen the Project Natal vids? Replace the apparatus, and you still have same demographic in mind: casual.

 

If Nintendo is doomed to eternal casualdom, as you say, then so is Microsoft and Sony. It's just another way to get more profit; target a wider demographic, and anything can sell, including heartbeat monitor peripherals, virtual little boys, and dildos with accelerameters.

[IG-64]

Motion controllers have potential to make good hardcore games depending on how accurate they are. So far it's been confined to basic gestures and waggles, but if you introduce some 1:1 controls that opens up definite possibilities. The introduction of the technology itself doesn't automatically mean all of the companies are doomed to casualdom. It's all up to the game developers. I think the whole casual gamer thing is probably a fad anyway.

[swphreak]

From majornelson.com

 

LIVE Activity for week of May 18th

 

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)

1 Halo 3

2 Call of Duty: WaW

3 Call of Duty 4

4 Gears of War 2

5 GTA IV

6 UFC 2009 Undisputed Demo

7 FIFA 09

8 UFC 2009 Undisputed

9 Left 4 Dead

10 Fallout 3

 

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)

1 Castle Crashers

2 Peggle

3 Hasbro Family Game Night**

4 Worms

5 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1989 Classic Arcade

6 UNO

7 Star Trek: D•A•C

8 The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai

9 Gel

10 Banjo-Tooie

 

The above arcade list is based on full versions purchased.

**Combined sales of all Hasbro Family Game Night titles

 

Original Xbox Top Live Titles (based on UU’s)

1 Halo 2

2 Star Wars: Battlfrnt 2

3 Fable

4 Counter-Strike

5 Conker: Live Reloaded

6 Splinter Cell Chaos

7 Doom 3

8 Star Wars: Battlefront

9 Guilty Gear XX #Reload

10 SW: Republic Commando

 

I'm not too worried about Microsoft entering the casual games market.

[Jae Onasi]

Motion controllers have potential to make good hardcore games depending on how accurate they are. So far it's been confined to basic gestures and waggles, but if you introduce some 1:1 controls that opens up definite possibilities.

We have to start somewhere. Magnavox started with Odyssey 30 years ago. Who knew that moving a cursor around on your TV would lead to what we have today in video games? The only way to improve is to see how thousands of people use the product and adapt and improve from there.

[Darth Avlectus]

So yeah, all of the press conferences are done now, and there were a lot of interesting announcements and showings. Just to go over some of the bigger press conference stuff:

 

Microsoft:

Live Party - Kinda neat. I could do without the little seated avatars, but the idea of watching stuff synched up with other people online is pretty cool.

Like a sort of live real time ebaum's world or youtube?

 

Metal Gear Solid Rising - Weee, Metal Gear on xbox. Apparently some pretty big news. I really kinda missed the boat with the whole Metal Gear series, and I have yet to play one.

Not too bad. Then again this is someone talking who has MG2:Snake's revenge for the NES and that's as recent as I go.

 

Nintendo:

<snip>

-Tons of DS games that I don't care about because I don't use portable game consoles.

Why's that?

(Don't have a wii, don't care)

 

Metroid: Other M - That was unexpected. The Prime series was good, but it's nice to finally see a different take on 3D Metroid. The God of War-esque combat system looked pretty good.

They saved the good stuff for rainy days. Yes, another longtime fan since the classic days on old NES, GameBoy, and SNES consoles. Anything metroid is cool with me so long as they do it right.

 

Sony:

God of War III - I haven't played the God of War series either, but this looked pretty crazy. All kinds of things were flying around.

And last but not least...[//quote]

Great first 2 installations for the PS2. Just...great... You would not regret it even for just a casual playthrough for the classics and always good if you're looking to come back to the PS2 for a little nostalgia. Definitely will be worth renting this. Tho I don't have a PS3. This makes me want one.

 

Motion Control: Wii MotionPlus vs. Project Natal vs. Playstation Motion Controller*brevity*

Meh, well, I won't flinch until I see it and actually interact with it. Maybe a lightsaber dueling game done proper justice? Perhaps? ........not counting on it. Wishful thinking. Else StarWarsPhreak pretty much had it head on.

 

Honorable mention - The Old Republic trailer was one of the coolest things to come out of the Star Wars universe in a long time. It's pre-rendered and probably doesn't say much in terms of actual gameplay, but the animation in itself is something to behold.

 

Translation: Moves fluidly, looks pretty. I would not expect anything less.

 

Coolest in a long time? Isn't that what they said about SW:TFU? Just curious.

 

<snip>

I do want to mention that Nintendo is really being disappointing lately. The so-called "casual" games have no graphics, no story, and minimal gameplay. They're simply little applications that give people who don't like video games something to do on their consoles. I suppose if that makes money, you can't blame them, but it's really a pretty unfortunate trend.

I think this is happening all around as games are losing their creative, innovative edge. Just like TV back in the 70's supposedly.

 

I also hate portable consoles, which I mentioned.

Again...why's that?

 

{hoping IG-64 won't mind such probing inquiry}

[Commander Obi-Wan]

So far, I'm impressed from what I've seen from Microsoft. Modern Warfare 2 looks ****ing sweet. That little demo they showed was pretty awesome.

 

The movie trailer for Assassin's Creed was damn wicked. Stoked for that.

 

I'm interested in Crackdown 2. I finished it recently and had a blast. The new one looks pretty sweet.

 

Nothing really new from Mass Effect 2 or BioShock 2, like I hoped so far.

 

SWTOR trailer was frickin' sweet, too.

[MysticSpade]

assassins creed definitely peeked my interest the gameplay footage was really well done for it to technically still be an early build.

 

L4D2 OMG i want this game now....LoL. i still own and play the original with friends now and again. I like the "director 2.0" feature that will actually move objects in the levels now as well as horde spawns.

 

Splinter Cell Conviction: I had to change my underwear on this one it looked astounding. Don't like the character design change too much but i'm sold on the gameplay undoubtedly. It reminds me of "Taken" in a sense.

 

Modern Warfare 2: i would kill a kitten for this game right now....LoL (not really) the gameplay vid looked very nice and single player actually looked very interesting.

[PR-0927]

I hated CoD 4, but I'm hoping Modern Warfare 2 might be different enough to be interesting to me. I just found CoD 4 to be yet ANOTHER CoD game with typical FPS gameplay and nothing innovating/renovating.

 

I'm pumped for Crysis 2, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction, Halo 3: ODST, Halo: Reach, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

 

I'm curious about Natal.

 

- PR-0927

[IG-64]

{hoping IG-64 won't mind such probing inquiry}

No prob. I've tried to get into portable games, but I just don't like them. The screen is always way too small, my neck always ends up hurting, and the graphics (while catching up quite fast) is set back by years compared to home consoles. Every time I go out, or go on trips or something, I never get a chance to use them because I'm usually too distracted to get into it. I'm that way with MP3 players too: some of the only times I ever use mine are when I go for a walk or go on a trip in a car that's too bumpy for me to enjoy a game in. Plus, I'm rather OCD about battery life, so that's a constant worry for me as well (for some reason.)

 

Besides those admittedly selfish reasons for not liking portables, I just generally don't think the industry should go in that direction as much as it has. I want games to be an experience rather than just a quick fix (and maybe portables are an experience for other people, I don't know). On paper, it seems like portables would make games more like books, and therefore help the experience of it, but I just don't get that feeling. So it kind of frustrates me when I see so many good games being made for them, because I think I would enjoy them more if that effort was put into making games for regular consoles.

 

I did enjoy a few of the Pokemon games a lot, but every other portable game I've tried I just haven't been able to get into.

 

Coolest in a long time? Isn't that what they said about SW:TFU? Just curious.

I never really looked at TFU much, and I never played it. I guess it just didn't seem as cool to me as this does.

[Lynk Former]

I won't bother with the general opinions on Nintendo. If people don't like em, they don't like em and won't give em the time of day even if there is a good game there or not.

 

However, it is interesting reading the net about the motion controls. I've spotted many people who absolutely rip into Nintendo for their motion controls but then praise Sony and Microsoft for bringing the same or similar kind of technology to their systems.

 

Oh, and look forward to seeing more on Natal. Obviously since it has the potential to do a lot more than just motion controls it's the one to look out for in the future.

[Sabretooth]

heartbeat monitor peripherals, virtual little boys, and dildos with accelerameters.

 

PEDOBEAR ASCII IN 3... 2... 1...

[Lynk Former]

Someone hasn't played Rez... http://www.twilightlynk.com/forums/t321/#post5878

[BongoBob]

I hated CoD 4, but I'm hoping Modern Warfare 2 might be different enough to be interesting to me. I just found CoD 4 to be yet ANOTHER CoD game with typical FPS gameplay and nothing innovating/renovating.

 

I'm pumped for...Halo 3: ODST

 

 

Wait. Wait. Wait. You found CoD4 to be just another FPS with nothing innovating/renovating, and then turn right around and say you're pumped for Halo 3: ODST, which correct me if I'm wrong here, is a spinoff of a typical FPS with nothing innovating/renovating which is just as much of a typical FPS with nothing innovating/renovating.

 

Congratulations, my brain popped.

[MysticSpade]

i think CoD4 is still amazing today. World at War kinda dropped the ball something about it puts me off, like some maps are way to big for a 12 man max. but i play CoD4 every day and that probably wont change too much until Modern Warfare 2 comes out.

[TiE23]

Yeah, it's got ****ing ice climbing in it. ICE CLIMBING! IT'S GONNA SET YOUR WORLD ON FIRE!!!1

[jon_hill987]

well I am really ****ed off by the Left 4 Dead announcement. This will kill the original game in the same way UT2004 killed UT2003. So I bought a couple copies (one at release) only they find they have a lifespan of a year. Nice.