The Good 1. The trailer for Final Fantasy Versus XIII looked really, really good. It was all prerendered -- depsite a 15 or so second segment that was intentionally made to look like gameplay -- but it really looked good. In fact, I couldn't tell you the last time that prerendered footage got me this excited about a game. I probably won't play much of Final Fantasy XIII the RPG, but I'm definitely looking forward to more details about Versus. I just hope Square hasn't set the bar too high with this trailer. 2. Gameplay footage of Metal Gear Solid 4 was shown for the first time! To be honest, it was a little jarring seeing Snake move around as he will in-game when all we've seen of MGS4 so far are the excellent real-time cinematics. The disconnect is that his moves are all mo-capped and graceful in the cutscenes, and "game-like" and (I'm assuming) key-framed during the actual gameplay. But that's how it was with MGS1, Sons of Liberty, and Snake Eater. But seeing some of Snake's moves was great. The barrel maneuvers were a nice touch, and there was enough crawling around the dirt to earn his namesake. Though I'm not sure how I feel about Snake doing the worm near the end. And nor would I have sat their on my back while a Metal Gear was attempting to stomp me. I kept wanting to yell "run, fool!" at the screen. But I thought better of it, what with the being a guest in a foreign country and all. Oh, and the mechanics involving his camo suit look like they're going to be a lot of fun too. Oh, oh, and Young Snake! Yet another plot twist... 3. While I didn't get to play it, Devil May Cry 4 looked really good too. They had what appeared to be a real-time movie of the game at the Capcom booth, and the portions of the footage that actually showed in-game action looked really impressive. It's good to see Dante back to his old self again. I played a lot of the first DMC for the PlayStation 2, but hated DMC2 and got my ass handed to me by DMC3. The fourth installment looks like it's going back to its original roots. However, and this is probably nitpicking, but the character models, and specifically, the facial animations looked kind of mediocre. The lip-syncing was just off, and the cinematic sequences looked a bit stiff. However, I had just finished watching the Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer for like the third time in a row when I checked out DMC4, so I'm sure that skewed my take on it somewhat. 4. I have this Metal Gear Solid 4 press kit and you don't.  The Bad 1. Aside from Devil May Cry 4 and Ninja Gaiden (which I didn't see), the rest of the lineup on the show floor were the usual suspects. I played Ridge Racer 7, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, and Virtua Fighter 5, and I saw that Lair, Coded Arms Assault (which had HORRIBLE lag), and Heavenly Sword had all made an appearance as well, but there was nothing really new. 2. Gran Turismo HD, Ninja Gaiden, and flOw all looked the same as their original counterparts (though bravo to Jenova for getting flOw published by Sony). Sony needs to be mindful of having the PlayStation 3 be perceived as a port machine, like the PSP is. 3. There weren't any Wiis at the show at all. I know Nintendo just had its own event last week, and that it doesn't typically go to TGS, but I had hoped that some of the larger third-party publishers would have shown off their Wii wares on their own. Oh well -- at least I got to play a little of the Wii at Leipzig last month.  The Ugly By far, the worst thing that happened to me on this trip was attending Ken Kutaragi's keynote address at the show this morning. I'm sure that, in the long run, the PlayStation 3 will be a feature-rich heavyweight of a console that we'll all want to own and develop for. But I've not seen a company try so hard to bungle and rush a console launch like Sony is doing with the PS3. I was fully expecting Kutaragi to take the wraps off of the PlayStation 3's online component. What's Sony's answer to Live and Marketplace? What's the UI going to be like? How is it going to integrate with my PC and PSP specifically? What are the prices for downloadable games going to be? Instead, the keynote attendees got to listen to an hour and a half of Ken praising the Internet, and lamenting how it's improved all of our lives, as if this were the year 1996. At first it sounded like he was heading in that direction, setting himself up for a nice little segue to unveil the big PlayStation 3 network news. But he kept going and going, and only stopped 90 minutes later to run yet another video of Afrika, which at this point, I'm guessing is a glorified Pokemon Snap. No network news. No Killzone 2 footage. No nothing. I was really looking forward to this show. I came all the way over here on my own dime expecting Sony to finally show its hand. Instead, all I saw was a middle finger. But at least I have my swag.