How was E3 this year? This was probably one of my favorite E3's in a long time. On the actual show floor there were a lot of great things to see. Microsoft Press Conference held some weight to it in the form of a fair introduction of demo's, a system update with Netflix, and ending it with Final Fantasy XIII on the Xbox 360. There was a void in the middle of their conference focusing more on casual gaming, and the lack of unannounced titles. Nintendo was a disappointment for me anyway, and the only thing that came out of it was Animal Crossing: City Folks. Everything else was questionable especially when 1/3 of your show is made up of graphs. Now Sony held some weight as well, but unlike Microsoft, I don't think they had a high wow factor unless you were an actual owner of a Playstation 3. Also they forfeited demonstrations for trailers. The best part about it is they focused on games, games, and more games. With Infamous, MAG, a cool PSP bundle, LittleBigPlanet, the video store, and the introduction(a poor one at that) of God of War III you can expect much in the future. Who won? I don't want to say. I currently do not own a Playstation 3, and since I own a Xbox 360 for myself Microsoft does catter to me more. Plus being a fan of Final Fantasy, and hearing the biggest noise of any announcement at E3(literally, the end of the Microsoft presentation exploded) I'm giving it to Microsoft.
Multi-platform gaming is in this year at E3. Almost every game available at the show was at minimal available on two platforms. Constantly I saw titles that were for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC. But I also noticed that some of the more smaller companies in Europe and North America were not supporting Sony with multiplatform gaming; often leaving their titles on the Xbox 360 and PC. There were some shocking announcements besides Final Fantasy XIII coming on to the Xbox 360. Someone at EA spilled the beans on Bioware's upcoming MMORPG that's based on Knights of the Old Republic. Also it was announced that Gran Turismo 5 wasn't going to be released until 2010! Bungie also had a big announcement until their publisher restricted them from saying anything.
What were some of the demonstrations I enjoyed over this week? Far Cry 2, Fable 2, and Fallout 3 are my top 3 games. I thought their developers did a great job at showing us drastic improvements over their previous games from gameplay, to simple technology, and unique gameplay mechanics. In Far Cry 2 the character system is remarkable, and the enivornment itself. Fallout 3 is Fallout 3; there's just so much to do. In all honesty Fable 2 is adding so much personality to the Fable series and still it's able to maintain the humor. One of my favorite moments at E3 is when Peter Molyneux is trying to show Gamespot how the player can form relationships with others in Fable 2 and he comes across a lesbian on accident. The reaction was priceless.
I didn't pay much attention to Killzone 2, Resistance 2, or Gears of War 2. First person-shooters like that often come with a large amount of tweaks to the gameplay, with just enough content to refresh the player. In general it doesn't steer away from their previous titles. For example Halo 2 was a definite improvement over Halo. But if you aren't a Halo fanboy life myself, you might not have seen a golden aura around Halo 3. Now I am sure Killzone 2 will show significant improvement over the original Killzone on the Playstation 2, but with a larger amount of FPS games on the market that's not going to matter much to some. I do think the games are remarkable, but at the sametime they still represent the re-occuring fragfest of recent memories. Then again with these "popular" franchises you can't distant gamers too much since their's a large market share for these titles. Understandable.
From what I understand the show floor was at a decent size, and easy to manuever around. Honestly I think some of the demonstrations we saw would have remained behind closed doors if E3 was any larger. Since things were more layed back this year and much more personal we were able to see more then we expected. Especially if you followed Gametrailers, IGN, or Gamespot which were just rifling off game after game. Even Far Cry 2 returned to Gamespot's E3 Show because the fans requested more. Thanks to them and many others I was able to get a great experience this year.
- Josh aka NeoGen85