E3. Is. Over.
Personally I think it's been pretty interesting. :)
The new format hasn't excited everyone, and many have said this is the death of E3... Maybe, but I have a feeling we'll see it again, in some form.
Anyway. I'm sure most of you have been tuning in, like I have, to the masses of live coverage. Here are some of my impressions... What I liked, what I didn't, what was cool, and what I discovered.
Ok, so. Microsoft kicked off proceedings with their press conference. A lot of people hated it but I sure enjoyed watching it. Peter Moore playing Rock Band was one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. I can't help but laugh every time I think about it. CoD4 was looking mighy impressive (And did again later on Gamespot's stage) and we got to see some Halo 3.
Most are underwhelmed but I enjoyed the trailer. Graphically it seemed to lack polish and as trailers go it wasn't very well put together... But the gameplay on display certainely looked fun to me. There was also "Halo: Arms Race"... A beautiful short from Neil Blomkamp, and apparently there's going to be more of those, like a series. Good stuff.
Microsoft also delivered the goods to our Xbawks three sixties in the way of demo's for Blue Dragon, Ace Combat 6 and Stuntman Ignition, and trailers of just about every 360 game under the sun. I found Stuntman to be difficult but kinda cool, Ace Combat to be... Well. Ace Combat. Pretty fun. And Blue Dragon really surprised me. I usually hate JRPG's but it was pretty fun going around and just making my dragons kick people's *** all over the shop. Especially the big dude at the end of the fortress level.
Nintendo went up next with their press conference. Holy hell, was the first 15 minutes boring. It took them 20 minutes before they started SHOWING GAMES. Having said that, the Res Evil and Ghost Squad games looked nice. Mario Kart Wii is a cool addition to the Wii library I believe. I'm not really into the direction they're going with Wii Fit and the like but... If that sells their consoles.... Good for them.
Sony rounded out the press cons with their press conference, which many hailed as the "best" of the three. I dunno. It didn't do anything for me personally, but I guess I'm not into what the PS3 has going anyways. Killzone 2 looks better graphically than I expected, but I don't think it lives up to the CGI trailer. And I think gameplay wise it looks relatively lackluster. Aside from that, we saw more of Home... Didn't do much for me either, and I've spoken on my feelings about Home in the past. On the plus side they referenced the Riiiiidge Racer joke. That was good. When Chewbacca came out it was all a bit too crazy and strange. MGS4 showed another good looking trailer, though that game personally isn't for me either. It was certainely a better E3 for Sony than last year. At least it was until they announced no price cut for any PAL territories and the 60gb is being discontinued in America. That sorta destroyed all their hard work getting back on their feet.
We saw a TONNE of games on Gamespot's Live coverage, with some truly awesome stage demos.
Mass Effect was just incredible to me.
"Wow that's huge...
... Oh they zoomed out. That's REALLY huge.
.... THEY ZOOMED OUT AGAIN!? HOW BIG IS THIS GAME FFS!?"
And from then on it was pretty much drooling at the prospects of the game and the pretty graphics. Story confirmed to be penned by the guy who did the story for KOTOR 1 so it should be a good'un with plenty of memorable characters.
I'm more psyched for the game than I've ever been.
Other stage demo's were impressive too. I thought Fracture was looking good... World in Conflict made a good showing, CoD4, as mentioned earlier, was impressive, though I'm not entirely sold on it. I mean, I don't like the idea of stealth in a CoD game. Or the idea of "Capturing people alive" in a CoD game (Noted from the trailer). Also... 16 player online with no controllable vehicles seems a step backwards to me. Even Treyarch managed 24 player online with controllable vehicles.
Warhawk looked pretty good on stage I think, Crysis was beautiful as ever, and Hellgate: London was intriguing. Assassin's Creed, Mercenaries 2 and Burnout Paradise all shaping up nicely. Stranglehold was looking fun as ever. God of War on PSP really impressed me. For a portable game, fantastic graphics. Bioshock and Rock Band stood out on final day, I believe. Rock Band is something I'll probably never buy but it's fun to watch and makes for interesting E3 coverage.
Aaron Thomas has been video bloggin' it up. Good stuff to watch. And also we've seen some stuff only in the blogs that hasn't been reported as news. One of the hardware guys got the new 360 controller colours and "chatpad" in the E3 blog. The Chatpad has a date of September the somethingth and a price tag of $29 attatched to it. That seems to spell well for how much it's going to cost over here, and I can't wait for it.
So. Yeah. Overall, I'm fairly satisfied with this E3. I've said it before and I'll say it again. This E3 has been unsurprising in terms of new announcements, but still, somehow, fulfilling.