E3 2010 Notes
Personal Notes
This was intensely massive. I had no idea going in how big
this would be. I got off the bus at the convention center, where I picked up an
E3 bag, which was fortuitous, because not three minutes before, I picked up a
copy of every trade magazine available to me. In the lobby, they were running
the Star Wars Force Unleashed 2
trailer on a loop, and it looked pretty badass.
Walking into the conference itself was just daunting,
incredible, but daunting. The scale of everything was massive. They had bigger
than lifesize replicas for every military game, as well as Slaughter House with some of the biggest ‘booths’ I have ever seen.
When I hear booth, I expect someone sitting behind a table with a little
amateur tri fold poster, and maybe a demo playing on a tv behind him/her. These
things were effing huge.
I wandered over to
ubisoft one first…with a look of sheer joy on my face evidently. I say
evidently because the cute girl working the Shaun
White Skateboarding game told me that’s how I looked. The single player was
pretty sweet, it was focused on ‘transforming’ dingy cityscapes into
beautifully graffiti’d cityscapes. It looked amazing, even on Wii and the
controls were surprisingly fluid and easy for never having played it. Even
though there was only one race available for multiplayer, I believe that’s
where this game will shine. Sure its any standard multiplayer racer, but the
tricks you can (and should) pull off give it an extra level of challenge and
fun, and you can pick up ‘bombs’ which appear as skaters striking badass poses
and knock your opponent over. Maybe it was just playing and flirting with a
cute gamer chick who was perfectly content going best two out of three whenever
she beat me (which was a lot) that made it so fun…but it was fun. It’s also nice
having a standing challenge with said cute gamer chick. I was able to see some
footage of Assassins Creed: Brotherhood,
which looks really good. I was initially worried that the classes would feel
inadequate for anyone not picking the assassin class, but they all looked like
they played well and were not at a distinct disadvantage.
From there, I made my way over to the Square Enix ‘booth’
which encompassed about half a football field. They had a huge screen running a
few trailers in a loop, all of which looked awesome. They led with Deus Ex which I was never a big fan of,
but looked really fascinating. Next up was the new Parasite Eve game, Third Birthday, which I had no idea
would be a game, since the last one was on PSX I believe. It’s hard adequately describing
something solely watched for maybe 6 minutes, but now Eve can do some matrix
type moves and ‘become’ anyone around the monster she is fighting. It was
really interesting. Next, I’ll ask if anyone remembers the character Strider
Hiryu from Marvel vs Capcom 2, as
well as his own game on PS2. Well, if you do, the next game, Necromachina, should look familiar since
the creator of that did this one as well. It’s a crazy side scrolling hack n
slash, much in the style of Strider (obviously)
and Contra. Around this time, the
appointment I had scheduled was starting. After a quick rundown of what was
going on around the Squeenix booth, I was treated to many a demo. Starting off
was a new Final Fantasy title for the DS, The
Four Heroes of Light, which is just as quirky and fun as you would expect
from both Squeenix and Final Fantasy. Next I stepped to a bigger title, Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days, which had a
very low budget look to it. This was done on purpose, to give a grittier feel
to the game, since most of what people want to see these days are viral videos
and things of the like which are not overly produced. It was also done to
provide a more visceral and intense experience. This was very well achieved I
felt, the first (of many) time I was gunned down, I did actually jump. Luckily
I made it to cover to heal and went back to shooting anyone that wasn’t my
buddy, Kane. After the duo split at the end of the first game, Lynch moved to
Shanghai and continued his criminal ways and called Kane to help out on a gun
running job. Needless to say, everything went to hell and the game takes place
in the 48 hours following everything getting bollocks’d up. This demo was
intense, and should lead to a great game. I was not able to play many other
games (like FFXIV), due to scheduling constraints, but I will be demoing
Dungeon Siege 3 tomorrow. The only other one at Squeenixville I tried was a
title for the Wii called The Tales of
Bearsworth Manner. The game takes place in a picture book where the
residents are fighting. Your role is to toss paper bears in to help bust these
fights up in the cutest way possible.
After leaving the
town of Squeenix, I went to some of the Xbox demos in another monolithic booth.
On a side note, the booths will be referred to as towns and other large things,
since I feel that is a more accurate depiction. Anyways, at the Xbox monolith,
I was first treated to a humorous action/rpg called Deathsbane. (I believe) This is another rare game that has
incorporated humor into a video game fairly well. The exhibitor likened this to
WOW, except that instead of World of Warcraft, its World of Jerks. The quest in
the demo was hilarious. I was tasked with rescuing dragon hatchlings from
vicious chickens. Think about that for a sec.
After that, I moved over to trying Marvel vs Capcom 3 at the monolith. I like to think of myself as
decent at fighters, but I got beat like I owed someone child support. That
being said, it was a blast playing with the new fighters. I chose Deadpool,
Chris Redfield, and Felicia (from Darkstalkers)
and I was not disappointed, even though I lost badly. I was only able to watch
the new Castlevania game as well as Fable 3, Crackdown 2, and Dead Space 2, oversights
which will be remedied tomorrow.
Then I wandered over to the Namco/Bandai booth, Pacman
station. Shortly after arriving, I was treated to a demo of the sequel to ‘the
best selling naruto game ever’ (according to the exhibitor), Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2!!, and
yes the exclamation points were a part of it. It was much as expected, crazy
DBZ-esque fighting, a nigh-incomprehensible story, and addictively fun.
Next, I went to the second show room floor, because one was
not enough for such an event. The only part of the West show room I ventured
into was the Sony 737. Once there, I was able to try the Playstation Move, or
whatever their motion control thing is called now. It felt very similar to a
Wiimote, except that it was black, circular, and had a glowing ball on the end.
The game I was fortunate enough to try was the forthcoming Time Crisis title, also to be released with Move. I have always
been a big fan of these games, they make for an enjoyable time at Dave &
Busters or the Boneyard. This iteration was very well done and looked gorgeous,
the only problem I had with it was the control scheme, which I’m reasonably
sure could be changed in the menu. I was not able to try much there since the
day was almost over, but that will be changed tomorrow.
Finally, I briefly checked out the Disney Colossus, only
having enough time to demo Epic Mickey.
I was also lucky enough to get a detailed rundown from the Assistant Producer of
the game, which was fascinating. They had over 80 years of history to play with
when creating the game, in addition to this font, they also included ‘bizarro’
versions of a lot of them. It takes place on a world called ‘Wasteland’ where
Disney toons who were never brought to production or abandoned without much on
screen time live. The gameplay was really interesting, allowing Mickey to
either spray paint or thinner on anything you please, but there will be
consequences of your actions later in the game. Maybe Peter Molyneiux should
take a page from Disney before releasing the next Fable.
A good part of the day was taken up drinking everything in,
since E3 is a lot like being inside of a pinball machine.
No comments:
Post a Comment