Hey all... man it's been a rough couple of days... well, here's my 'day 2 review'.
Well first I will just say this... my first impressions from the first day were pretty bad, but as I stated, it was also a rough day because I was going on 30 hours or so of not sleeping, got there very late and had to wait outside in a very hot sun for over an hour in line just to get my badge holder to get in... went in and just blasted thru in a rush and really missed a lot.
Well for the second day I was very well rested and got there pretty early and was there for about 7 hours to try and really thoroughly check things out.
So I will say, it wasn't as bad as I thought the first day... Here is the rundown of my combined experience with all the additional stuff I saw on the 2nd day.
First off... Nintendo. The BIGGEST dissapointment regarding the Revolution. I had mentioned there was a huge line of 2 hours wait to see the Revolution... well I was wrong... that line was for the new GC Zelda. There was actually NOT ONE SINGLE SHRED OF INFO on the Revolution to be seen anywhere in Nintendo's area. Their press conference was IT. And no, I didn't brave the line for Zelda... on the second day the wait had grown to over FOUR HOURS... I wasn't going to waste the time... I think we all know what to expect... I mean come on... it's Zelda.
The Nintendo area in general was just the most crowded by far. This has been the case ever since I started going to E3... so unfortunately I still didn't get to try many of the games I'd hoped to try.
I will say to all DS owners... things are really looking good for the future... mario kart, the new super mario bros., metroid, animal crossing, and castlevania are all shaping up VERY nicely. Other games I tried that looked really good outside of the Nintendo area were Nanostray and believe it or not a VERY GOOD looking port of PC classic Black & White! I'm glad I decided to keep my DS.
Sony - honestly my oppinion on them didn't change much on the second day. As I said, all their was of PS3 was an 8 minute video... nothing more.
I DID see quite a few games for PSP that I hadn't seen the first day. Games like Death Jr., Socom, The Con, Coded Arms, Burnout, Medievil, Ghost in the Shell, and Y's Ark of Naphistim... all looked very good.
And no, I didn't happen to notice if Coded Arms was online or if it even had multiplaer, sorry.
PS2 wise there wasn't a lot of interest... there's a revamped version of MGS 3 coming out, with tons of new features like multiplayer. The new PS2 Castlevania game looked pretty good. Shadow of the Colossus was freakin amazing. Katamari Damacy 2 was great. Mostly... otherwise was a lot of sequels... nothing that really interested me
M$ - Hmmm well I'm still so-so on what was shown of the 360... I mean there was just so little and that just really surprised me. I did see a bit more though, including a video running in a back corner showing bits of some more launch games other than the 5 that were playable... some of the stuff on the video looked really promising... there were at least 10 games on that demo reel showing. Also, I hadn't noticed before but they had Kameo as a playable game and man THAT game looked awesome! 10x more interesting than any of the other games they had playable, and graphically it was very impressive.
Xbox 1 - now that had some stuff for me to get excited about. Half Life 2 and FarCry both playable and coming along VERY nicely. Good news for FPS fans I think
Both due out before Xmas I guess. Conkers looks done... that game is classic. Best news I guess is that there is still a lot of support there and there will be plenty of games leading up to and apparently past this holiday season. Still... a lot of sequels and a lot of FPS's... but hey at least the well isn't going to run dry overnight with the release of the 360.
Here's the part some of you guys will get a real kick out of... the real surprise of the show for me... try not to laugh... the f'ing GIZMONDO!!!
First off... they had a HUGE booth this year... quite unexpected from a small company who's not considered to be real competition to anyone in the game market. The whole area was made up to look like a small seedy alley in Chinatown or something.. it was VERY well done and very atmospheric. They also put on a huge breakdancing show as well as having a trio of hot models taking photographs in front of Porsche's GT supercar... you could tell they really put a lot of money into their area's presentation to make a point... something like "we will not be ignored".
Secondly... the hardware... I know most of you don't care, but let me tell you, it has advanced a LOT since last year's E3. Graphically it is VERY impressive. Much better than the DS... I had seen the videos and Gizmondo's website but so many people had convinced me those videos were fake, that it's graphics weren't nearly that good but rather were near PS1/DS quality. Well I have played it myself this time, SEVERAL games and let me tell you those videos were not fake. The Rally game looks very nice, and the third person action/shooter game "Colors" looked fantastic as well. It's not quite PSP level graphically but it's very close. The games played well with the familiar button layout, though I feel total lack of any analog control will possibly hurt it.
And NO, the screen is NOT that f'ing SMALL!! It's almost exactly the same size as the GBA (the REGULAR GBA not that piece of crap GBA Micro with it's smaller-than-Ngage sized screen!!). Anyone who thinks the Gizmondo/GBA screen is too small is just spoiled from the GP and PSP.
If it weren't for the outrageous price, I'd be ordering one of these right now. And it DOES look like there will be considerable third party support for the thing... not to PSP levels, but to the levels that you see for cell phone games... for all that that implies. I can only say... don't write this system off just yet.....
Some other small highlights of the show for me were getting my picture taken with comedy fruit-smashing legend Gallagher, and getting both my and my wife's copies of Lumines signed by Tetsuya Mizguchi, the designer/creator/main driving force behind Rez and Lumines, whom I luckily recognized from an interview I saw him in at Gamespot... he was very surprised that I knew who he was! There was also a teaser trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4 for the PS3... though it didn't SHOW any PS3 graphics it was a very funny trailer and of course a big tease with odd cryptic hints as to what to expect, and a funny bit with Snake and our favorite everyone-loves-to-hate-him hero Raiden. I suggest looking around on the internet to see if you can find this video and watch it yourself.
Well I don't know what else to write about... I guess if there's anything specific you guys want to know about go ahead and ask... otherwise I mean it was a lot of information to process... really I could type another couple pages if I really wanted to.... bottom line was... no it wasn't as bad as I first thought, but I still say, it was the weakest E3 I've ever been to. It was bad enough that I saw no point in going back on the third day (today).
I saw someone else had posted a 'who was the 'winner' of E3' thread... well IMO, Nintendo was the winner, even though they were the biggest dissapointment of the show. IMO they win only because, they had the most stuff at the show that I actually wanted to PLAY.... it's a slim win for them anyways... after seeing the entirety of the Xbox 360 display I am a bit more excited for the release this X-mas as well... I do think it will clean up well over the next few months as the games are optimised and will run great on the final hardware, and I am very anxious to see the finished product. I only wish there was more of the Revolution and PS3 on display.
