The Serious E3 thread

[jp]

OK, the breakdown in my opinion:


Microsoft:
Best of show. FFXIII, while I don't care, is pretty huge for them. Fable 2 and Gears of War 2 looked amazing. And... then some of the features they're adding the Live are nice, but the Avatars are teh lame. As is the new GUI IMO.

Nintendo:
Dropped. the. ball. Oh. my. God. that was lame. So lame. So very very lame. Like... wow.

Sony:
Same ole' same ole'. I don't think they really had any surprises. But I didn't watch all of it, so who knows.

[The Skies]

OK, the breakdown in my opinion:


Microsoft:
Best of show. FFXIII, while I don't care, is pretty huge for them. Fable 2 and Gears of War 2 looked amazing. And... then some of the features they're adding the Live are nice, but the Avatars are teh lame. As is the new GUI IMO.

Nintendo:
Dropped. the. ball. Oh. my. God. that was lame. So lame. So very very lame. Like... wow.

Sony:
Same ole' same ole'. I don't think they really had any surprises. But I didn't watch all of it, so who knows.

Microsoft, heck yeah it was the best! FFXIII was great to see that its coming, but im also extremely happy about the other Square Enix games on the way, especially Star Ocean.

Nintendo'h! Nuff said.

Sony, blah, nothing great at all, and would agree with the same old crap assessment, lol.

[DarthArcturus]

I need to watch more from all conferences and I'll just be watching the actual gaming stuff on gametrailer.com sometime later

[jp]

Portal Still Alive with Microsoft and Rock Band 2 being timed exclusive were also pretty big.

Microsoft did some pretty major stuff actually. Nothing I'm personally a huge fan of, but I can acknowledge they made some big plays this year.
____________
[post updated]
Though to be honest, if Nintendo's motion control stuff hadn't leaked out earlier, it would've probably been a bigger deal.

[Conjoshus]

Microsoft:

New dashboard features = big
Fable 2 online co-op = big
FFXIII = big
Fallout 3 DLC exclusive = big
Rockband 2 timed exclusive = big
Portal 2 = big
then they round it out with some nice in-game footage of Gears 2, RE5, and more.

Nintendo:

1:1 controller attachment = big
WiiMusic = Fucking lame!

Sony:

God of War 3 announced = big
The 256-player game = big (sorta)
DC Online = big
Video store = big
Some great in-game footage from titles like Resistance 2, Killzone 2, Infamous, Little Big Planet, PSP titles, etc.

Yeah... I think Microsoft won, Sony came in second, and Nintendo shouldn't have even had a conference... for FOUR GAMES!!!!

[Basil]

Microsoft did awesomely. I like the avatar/new dash actually and am pretty hyper about Fable 2, to run around and coop if nothing else.

As far as Nintendo goes, Wii Sports Resort looks like fun... But Wii Music
made me die a little inside. And it was a game I've been hoping for since the Wii was shown. Oh well!

Sony had... Stardust HD fo PSP? That sounds cool... and uh, Patapon 2. MAG sounds stupid. 256? Yeah good luck with that. Maybe if you had the membership of Live to work with...

[Wildcat]

Nintendo did not surprise me at all. Wii Fit was their big push last year, so I expected a similar result this year. Still, makes me sad in a way.

Still chuckling at the FFXIII annoucement, though.

[Advocate]

Two things I like from Nintendo ..

Animal Crossing and the WiiSpeak ... a community mic? Now enable a Live clone fpor your online shit and maybe more developers will make SERIOUS games for it.

And Animal Crossing while expected looked damn nice.

MS: LIPS is getting my approval. Able to upload songs from your MP3 lists? HELL YES. Also, more details are coming ... no need for DRM ... iPod use maybe ... but more like a yes.

Rock Band 2 and the ability to upload all your songs from RB 1.

FF13 and GoW2.

[Hunter]

Yeah, Im actually interested is LIPS, looks like it could be great at parties.

[Frogacuda]

Nintendo's press conference was criminally bad. Here's the notes I took while I was there:
http://www.the-nextlevel.com/blog/why-am-i-here/

The show is very very different this year. It's not as big or exciting, and it's no longer they hype orgy that it was, and some companies try to fucking hard to maintain the flow of information (Namco wouldn't let me see their wares without an appointment), but on the up side, you actually get to spend a lot more quality time actually playing games and talking to developers. The lines that choked down the old show and made it hard to be productive don't exist now, so I've gotten to spend plenty of time playing high-profile games for as long as I need.

I played Fable 2, Dark Void, Mirror's Edge, RE5, Mega Man 9, SF4, Banjo, Infinite Undiscovery... tons of good stuff.

And EA's showing here is sickeningly good. I'm forced to give them props. Mirror's Edge is the best 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game yet.

[Hunter]

Impressions on Fable 2?

[The Skies]

I played Fable 2, Dark Void, Mirror's Edge, RE5, Mega Man 9, SF4, Banjo, Infinite Undiscovery... tons of good stuff.


Im going next year.

[Hunter]

No you're not.

[The Skies]

Yes I am.

[Hunter]

No, YOU'RE NOT!!

[The Skies]

Uh, Yes, I AM!!

[Hunter]

NO YOU ARE NOT!!!!

[The Skies]

YES I AM DAMMIT! YES I AM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Hunter]

NO DAMN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Advocate]

Not unless you make a frontpage with news you aren't going.

I'd love to go with a press pass, but I'd rather have Comic-Con press pass. Since, I am a comic and movie buff.

[jp]

Not unless you make a frontpage with news you aren't going.

I'd love to go with a press pass, but I'd rather have Comic-Con press pass. Since, I am a comic and movie buff.

OK Hunter, now we have to make a front page with random news tidbits so we can just go to E3. :p

Maybe we can just make a parody site, and just make fun of everything. That would be awesome.

[Hunter]

Thats not a bad idea. The Onion of gaming sites. :O

[Frogacuda]

Impressions on Fable 2?
You know, there are actually 4 or 5 Fable demos here and I only played the combat one so far, been really busy, but the combat is very sexy, well organized, intutive controls, some depth to it and.... SAME CONSOLE SINGLE SCREEN CO-OP MOTHERFUCKERS.

[Hunter]

Cool, but why don't you tell us what you REALLY think? :p

[The Skies]

Not unless you make a frontpage with news you aren't going.

I'd love to go with a press pass, but I'd rather have Comic-Con press pass. Since, I am a comic and movie buff.

I will, I very much will! :O

[Advocate]

You know, there are actually 4 or 5 Fable demos here and I only played the combat one so far, been really busy, but the combat is very sexy, well organized, intutive controls, some depth to it and.... SAME CONSOLE SINGLE SCREEN CO-OP MOTHERFUCKERS.
Like Hunter said ...

tell us how you REALLY feel?

jesus did you just shoot a load on sestren or what ... LOL!

[Frogacuda]

Heh, I was just really glad to see single cosole co-op, it's been sorely lacking from many games.

Mirror's Edge=Game of the Show so far though.

[Advocate]

wow. Hey Trav ... did you happen to see any Mistwalker stuff?

JP and myself are curious.

Oh and ask Bahn to come on TNL and here and give some impressions of SF4.

[Conjoshus]

@ hunter... here's a hands-on by a Fable fan..


I should come right out and say that I'm probably not going to be giving you the most objective view on Fable 2. I know, exactly what you wanted to hear, right? I'm sorry in advance, but I'm a big fan of Fable, and that's the viewpoint I'm coming from.

To that end, I should open by saying this: If you too are a fan of Fable, you need read no further, though I know you will. Judging from the build I played, it's more of the stuff you love with richer combat and ... well, you're just going to adore it. Promise. But not everybody played Fable. In fact, there are a sad few that played it and didn't even like it. It's for them that I'm soldiering on.

I started playing as a child, my sister in tow, with only a wooden sword to defend us as we traveled around a village and ran a few odd jobs. I should mention that there was quite the cacophony of activity at Microsoft's party and without headphones I normally only had a vague idea of what was going on from a narrative perspective.

As a result, the first thing I noticed about the game was how much was communicated by the animations of the NPCs. At the end of my childhood demo I met a character who I could tell was a villain just from the sinister way he lurched around the room. Crowd scenes looked great too, with enough animation variety to make the city's denizens seem quite lifelike.

What wasn't so great was the technical quality of the graphics themselves. Though really pleasing from an artistic point-of-view, buildings and characters were often harshly jaggy in spots and some of the particle effects are just plain ugly. My hope is that these issues will be fixed before release, but with just a few months to go I'm a little unsure.

What players will likely notice first though is the sparkling bread crumb trail that leads you from objective to objective. In the demo, the brightness on the trail was cranked to full, and it was constantly drawing my eye away from the action. I was comforted to learn that the trail's relative brightness would be dynamic, glowing when it was followed and fading when you are off the trail.

After my all-too-brief childhood came to an end I jumped ship for an adjacent seat in the demo area and got into some adult combat.

When it was first presented to us, Fable 2's one-button battling seemed like a way to pull off really complicated maneuvers with simple inputs. Using one button for attacks (tap), blocking (hold) and flourishes (hold with a direction) is smart, but in practice in the chunk I saw it simply made sword fighting feel simplistic. I'm hoping that things will change in indoor environments, but what I saw was pretty far from a revolutionary step forward. It felt like a brawler.

What was surprisingly good was the firearm combat. Tapping the Y button shot from the hip, while holding it in allowed you to target, which I understand is a skill you have to procure. Guns feel powerfully satisfying, especially against some of the stringy zombies we were battling. Swordplay is functional, but I'd bet you'll spend a surprising amount of time using guns.

Magic has also been retooled from the original game. Tapping a button allows you to use an area of effect spell of your choice, while pressing it with a direction fires a projectile. You can also charge the button, which fills a meter through five levels of intensity as you hold it in. What spell is at which level is entirely up to you, so you could quick tap to use a fire bolt, hold it in for a second to use a level 2 ice spell, for two seconds to use a level 3 force push and so on. It's a really smart way of making you feel like you have a wide variety of different abilities at your disposal.

Speaking as a Fable fan, I left really pleased. It's not a quantum shift, but it's absolutely been refined for the better. My hope is that some of the graphical issues can be dealt with, and the game can become an experience that anyone, even non-Fable fans will be able to get on board with.

[Hunter]

Sounds great! Thx

[Wildcat]

Heh, a very good cynical approach to Nintendo's presser, Frog. Kudos.

New Resident Evil 5 footage makes Nintendo's crappy conference go away...

[shinjirod]

Heh, a very good cynical approach to Nintendo's presser, Frog. Kudos.

New Resident Evil 5 footage makes Nintendo's crappy conference go away...

RE5 is indeed looking awesome. i DLed the full HD video this morning and looks amazing.

[NeoZeedeater]

Mirror's Edge is the best 3D Sonic the Hedgehog game yet.
Awesome. I want this game badly.

[Bruhaha69]

I probably won't buy Mirror's Edge, to spite EA, but it looks like the coolest game there from all the videos I've been watching.

[Luminous]

Damn, now I am going to have to find a way to get Fable 2 on or very near release, but that is a good thing. :D

[DarthArcturus]

just watched RE 5 trailer man...that does look really sweet. Did anyone notice how real those boobs looked :happyhappy: I also like how the environments are nothing like past RE games (much the way RE 4 became too)

Killzone 2 some impressive stuff I saw but character models looked questionable in some quick shots (only watched the trailer)

fable 2 mmmm going to enjoy that a lot

and finally star ocean, a series I've never played, really has me excited. It sure does look like PSO :lol:

[The Skies]

Star Ocean FTW!

[Newport420]

I have been recording all the press conferences and daily footage from G4 to my DVR. So far I have watched the MS conference and the Nintendo one as well as Day one coverage.

So far I can say that the MS conference was great. I loved how for almost every presentation there was a very last "Oh wait I have one more big piece of news." There was also a build from the first game shown all the way to the last. Overall it was well done and had a ton of great games shown. Going into E3 I was not very excited for the second half of the year. Now I am very excited.

Nintendo's conference confirms to me they are leaving the core gamers behind to court their new love, grandmas and soccer Mom's. They made it clear both through presentations and through the presenters themselves that they are now a homogenous company going in a homogenous direction.

Honestly I don't like where Nintendo is going. I see its a new area of the market and one which much money can be made from. However with a few exceptions its nowhere I want to be. For me despite Reggies rant it will continue to be a fad and a nice distraction once in a while from my normal gaming. Nintendo forgets one important thing.... the immersion that does come from realistic graphics and huge worlds that only the bigger more powerful machines can produce. That Call of Duty game just looks assy like much of the rest of their software.

Give me GoW2, Fable2 and a host of other games that look to deliver an experience that Nintendo just can't pull off on their machine no matter how much hand waving they integrate.

[Luminous]

I have been recording all the press conferences and daily footage from G4 to my DVR. So far I have watched the MS conference and the Nintendo one as well as Day one coverage.

So far I can say that the MS conference was great. I loved how for almost every presentation there was a very last "Oh wait I have one more big piece of news." There was also a build from the first game shown all the way to the last. Overall it was well done and had a ton of great games shown. Going into E3 I was not very excited for the second half of the year. Now I am very excited.

Nintendo's conference confirms to me they are leaving the core gamers behind to court their new love, grandmas and soccer Mom's. They made it clear both through presentations and through the presenters themselves that they are now a homogenous company going in a homogenous direction.

Honestly I don't like where Nintendo is going. I see its a new area of the market and one which much money can be made from. However with a few exceptions its nowhere I want to be. For me despite Reggies rant it will continue to be a fad and a nice distraction once in a while from my normal gaming. Nintendo forgets one important thing.... the immersion that does come from realistic graphics and huge worlds that only the bigger more powerful machines can produce. That Call of Duty game just looks assy like much of the rest of their software.

Give me GoW2, Fable2 and a host of other games that look to deliver an experience that Nintendo just can't pull off on their machine no matter how much hand waving they integrate.

:goodpost:


That is exactly what I was thinking as I was watching the Nitendo conference. I realize they all need to make money to survive, but Nintendo is really going too far, IMO.

[Newport420]

This is my personal fav from my rant...

Give me GoW2, Fable2 and a host of other games that look to deliver an experience that Nintendo just can't pull off on their machine no matter how much hand waving they integrate.

:p

Oh and LOL at M2D's avatar. Sonic Raawwwwrrrrr FTW!!!!!!

[The Skies]

This is my personal fav from my rant...

Give me GoW2, Fable2 and a host of other games that look to deliver an experience that Nintendo just can't pull off on their machine no matter how much hand waving they integrate.

:p

Oh and LOL at M2D's avatar. Sonic Raawwwwrrrrr FTW!!!!!!

w00t! :D