E3 conferences

Nintendo's conference made me giggle like a little girl. Best one they've done in years. The new Kirby game looks, shall we say, FAB.

Microsoft's conference produced a facial expression in me I wasn't aware I was capable of. Just a twisted hybrid of despair, incredulity, horror and hysterical laughter. If you haven't seen it, you should, just to convince yourself that no matter what youtube says, corporate america is MILES ahead of japan in producing human-like robots.

Sony's conference was just boring. Not offensive, but.. Meh. Whatever.

Anyone else sick and tired of the endless stream of shooters? Nintendo's conference made me super happy, i think primarily because shit was FUN looking without looking forced. I'm so.. So.. Bored... With first person shooting.

The big three are really pushing peripherals this year, the kind of stuff I'm not really interested in. I don't really care about motion control gaming and the 3D craze is out of my budget currently to appreciate.

So with that said....I think Sony had the best conference of them. There was a definite emphasis on the Move and 3D gaming but they pulled it together with the actual games. The games! Killzone 3, Twisted Metal, Infamous 2, Portal 2, Sly Cooper HD collection (which we all know means there a possible Sly 4 on the way), Gran Turismo 5.....and the Kevin Butler appearance helped too.

Anyways, I'll be there tomorrow to take a look at all the goodies everyone's showing.

Irrational? I haven't heard whether they'll be at E3 this year, guess I'll find out tomorrow.

Nintendo totally showed up to play this year. This was the conference everyone had waiting for for years and years. Made me feel like a kid again with all the Kirby, Zelda, Goldeneye, and Donkey Kong love. Even the 3DS has me excited with Kid Icarus and (the recently announced) Ocarina of Time remake. The pacing was perfect and it really couldn't have been much better.

The other two were average and expectedly draggy. Especially Sony's. No I don't want to watch another fucking video montage, thank you. Though I guess they had the disadvantage of being last (and after Nintendo). Kevin Butler didn't disappointed, but come on Sony, we don't give a shit about how your new PSP advertising campaign is coming along. Leave it at the office.

But I'd give the most embarrassing award to Microsoft. The little child actor "playing" Kinectimals, and that dorky white guy showing off his newly acquired dance moves definitely stole the show. Holy. Crap.

Kevin Butler is my hero. That guy makes me laugh so hard.

I saw a great tweet by him. "I'm at In-N-Out and I ordered a burger Butler Style, and the VP brought it out to me." So funny!

Conference opinions:

Microsoft: Nothing new here really, Kinect hasn't sold me yet and overall it felt quite boring.

Ubisoft: I cringed so much during this... Not in the good Sony 06 way either...

EA: Pretty cool, lots of cool titles I'm looking forward to.

Sony: Very cool IMO. Killzone 3 looks cool, Gabe's appearance was cool and the fact that Steam is being intergrated into a console game is very interesting. Move is looking better than Natal too. Interesting news about Dead Space 2 too. Infamous 2 is also looking great.

Nintendo: Probably the best conference. 3DS looks great and has LOADS of good games with it. Zelda, DK and Kirby all look awesome and I'm really looking forward to Epic Mickey.

Not many surprises though so in that aspect I'm kinda sad.

I have to disagree that Sony's was boring.

Two words: Kevin. Butler.

I also enjoyed seeing Gabe Newell walk on stage, eat a little crow then announce a proper Valve release on a Sony system (i.e. not something handed over to another developer)

Nintendo's conference was pretty cool too... They have convinced me I need to seriously consider a Wii (Goldeneye 007, Epic Mickey) and a 3DS (Metal Gear Solid 3D? Hells yeah!)

Natal Kinect looks interesting (though about 3x more expensive than the PS Move), but I was most excited about the new XBOX shipping with built in Wifi and a hard drive.

EA: Meh.

Ubi: Double meh! All I care about from them is AC: Brotherhood.

Overall thoughts: 3D is the main thread running through E3 this year. And who cares? The 3DS looks cool, but I don't want to have to wear glasses to play my games. I don't know maybe this really is where entertainment is going (3D TV, movies, etc) but I just don't think it's going to be the game changer that all these companies (MS, Sony, LG, etc) are saying. But that's just me.

The 3ds does not require glasses. It sounds amazing and the graphics in that kid icarus game look great. Im really excited as I have held off from buying a new DS since the first. So many great franchises for it too, resident evil, metal gear, kingdom hearts, starfox 64, ocarina of time etc. Im super pumped.

I want a WII now. New Metroid, new DKC (YESSS), and new Golden Eye. Plus I really want Mario Galaxy 1 and 2.

I thought natal looked pretty dumb. How do I play a non "on rails" game on it. Show me a bioshock on it or something and ill be impressed. I don't really care about the motion controls.

Overall the games look great. So many to think about. I havent been this excited in a while.

I guess that came off as confusing. I meant to say that I like the idea of "glasses-free" 3D in the 3D - in contrast to console/TV 3D requiring glasses...

(Edit) So far Konami is really lame... Maybe they're saving the good games for the end?

Kevin Butler was AWESOME!

The one game I saw that was must have for me was Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. I never got into Ghost Recon in the past but this title looked INCREDIBLE.

Bulletstorm caught my attention a little more and although I was dissappointed with Bodycount, it's still early and I'm hoping they take their time and really polish it up.

I agree. I've played the last Ghost Recon game, and it was another military shooter... No big whoop. But this? Looks pretty awesome!

RAGE also looks effing incredible. I can't believe they were able to make a game look that good and run so well on a 360.

Kinect let me down. All of the things it claims it can do for gaming sort of leave me uninterested.

However, as an inexpensive form of video chatting or a space age way to wow your grandparents, "I can control the TV with my mind," I think it'll be fun to have--at a discount of course. Once enough people have them in their homes I'll pick one up, but I want to be able to do the non-game stuff with them like watch Netflix and video chat--so that'll be a bit I imagine.

Move, however, looks better than I expected, comes out sooner than I expected and is fairly reasonably priced. For the starter bundle and Nav controller you're dropping 130. Sony already includes battery packs with their controllers (as well as making the nav controller wireless out of the box unlike the nunchuk) and the "plus" feature of the wii controllers is 20 bucks extra while move already appears to have tighter control built in thanks to better sense of three axis movement and the use of the light/camera to keep things calibrated.

Nintendo didn't disappoint me--much. They're really smart guys who brought a non-blutooth wireless control into a room full of interference. (The lack of radio signal in the Move's Blutooth 2.0 gets another check mark at this point). Thankfully the new Zelda game ran better on the show floor than it did at the press event, but it was sad to watch and killed some of the momentum.

The rest of Nintendo's show was highlighted by Mickey (thanks Warren Spector) and not by Nintendo's shameless dredge of, "Remember when we had the SNES and N64 and innovated with games instead of tech," blitz. Goldeneye looks better than the original did--sure--but looks like droopy geriatric ball-sack compared to the types of shooters we get to play these days. Anyone who'd be excited over that title for more than nostalgia probably wouldn't post here on a forum run by people who ACTUALLY innovated the shooter.

The rest of the stuff interests me--Retro's Donkey Kong looks sweet--but unambitious. Kirby is the one piece of Nintendo past gold that made me go, "I have to f-ing play that!" Still, I can't help but think that Nintendo is in the business of putting out titles for a premium that PSN and XBox Live members would download as 15 dollar games.

However, if Nintendo had only shown me Epic Mickey, Kirby, and the 3DS I'd have said they had a perfect show.

For now? I'm just way more excited to play a 1080 Twisted Metal, get my hands on Playstation Move and Final Fantasy XIV and--strangely enough, Portal 2. We can't tip the scales without remembering two things: EA is offering the Dead Space Extraction title remastered for free with Dead Space 2 (complete with the move integration needed obviously) and that they're offering a remastered Metal of Honor game as well. Oh, and that whole Gabe shows up on stage and brings Steam to the PSN thing. I mean--that's a coup and it tips things for me.