HYDE
CAGiversary!
This is my 8th E3 visit and aside from the first E3 ever (which was also my first E3 trip), this was my favorite show. Why? Well, there's just a ton of great games coming out! Here's what I saw and impressions of each:
Nintendo
Nintendo DS - Several DS' were available for play so my friend and I had a go at Metroid Hunters. I'll talk about that later. Anyway, the DS is actually pretty damn nice. It's a little bigger than you'd want and as such, it's not as portable as the SP obviously. It doesn't even look like it would comfortably fit in your pocket. When folded, the DS isn't as 'clean' looking as the SP - that's something I hope they fix (I think the SP is sexy
- the top flap is about half as thin as the bottom flap (side profile) and is also smaller in size in width and height than the bottom flap. So when it's folded, the top half doesn't line up squarely with the bottom. The DS is also very rounded. It's more comfortable this way, but takes away from the look IMO. The shoulder buttons are currently small round buttons, not length triggers like the GBA or PSP. They're recessed too so they are flush with the curve of the corners (no protrusions like the SP, etc). This keeps it's shape profile tighter and they felt pretty good too. Not very stiff. You'd rock them under your second knuckle -sort of like the SP triggers. The screens are very nice though I wish they were closer together so they would require less eye travel between them. That's the largest flaw I saw in the system. The face buttons and d-pad all felt good and were positioned well. The charge input looked to be the same as the current SP and there was no headphone jack this time either. The mic is in the upper flap on the right indent (that fold on top of the face buttons). I couldn't see the cartridge slots, but the guy told me they were both on the bottom, side by side. Didn't seem right to me? I thought the primary was on the top center, and the GBA was bottom center. Anyway, the system felt well built and the screens looked vibrant and clear. Battery life was stated at 10 hours. I asked if a stylus insert was going to happen and the guy said he didn't know. Seems silly to require a stylus for games and not have a place to store it... Colors are still being worked on as is the color of the center inserts that surround the screens. Anyway, on to some game impressions...
Metroid Hunters - Getting back to the proximaty of the screens... while we were playing Metroid Hunters, the map was on the top, but in a FPS, and at least in the demo, looking up at the map, then looking down and getting oreinted again with the game wasn't as easy as it should of been. I simply stopped looking at the map as it felt like a hinderance. If they were closer and through peripheral vision I could 'see' the top screen somewhat so I didn't have to focus on it, then back on the main screen constantly, then I think it would feel much better. Also, the control scheme was wonky. You had to use the Stylus to move AND shoot. I did not like this, but it was obvious this was to show the touch screens potential. The problem was, your hand covers part of the screen. Not good in a FPS! The full screen positional shooting available to you with the stylus is awesome, but needing to turn with it was no fun. See - you needed to hold down the stylus to turn (so hold and drag left and right to turn), but this also means your charging your main beam (since you're holding down the stylus). Well, to turn a 360, you would need to lift, drop and redrag the stylus to turn some more but when you lift, you fire your shot! So in a battle as you are chasing, you are charging and firing when you don't want to just so you can follow your opponent. Tapping the screen to shoot was cool, but combined with needing to move swiftly, it just didn't work. The d-pad was strafe left/right and move forward/back btw. I was told that they are still working on the scheme so hopefully they'll figure out a better method, or drop the need for a stylus altogether. There was no way to turn or fire without the stylus in the demo version.
Chat program thing game - This was a simple notepad, email type program setup between two DS system. My friend would write on one, hit send, and I would see what he would write. It worked well. The touch pad was good at catching our scribbles though I thought you had to press a little too hard to get it to recognize strokes. Hopefully whatever this program is, it's built into the DS (I didn't ask) - even better, it would be cool to 'pause' whatever game you are playing and enter this program to fire off a note to your friend, or whatever.
I didn't check out the other games since we needed to leave. Overall, I'm impressed with the DS' potential, but wish a few things would get a bit more thought. The 3d capabilities were a non issue. It looked good, but had that playstation one look (no filtering on the textures) but on the tiny screens, it didn't really matter. Besides, I see handhelds as the saviours of 2D Leave 3D for the PCs and consoles!! The feel was good despite being bolted down, and the potential for some really cool ideas using both screens is there. I wonder if you can turn the top screen off when it's not in use to get more battery life... heh - I wonder why I didn't think of this question while I was there
Paper Mario 2 - I loved the first paper mario, and I finally played it perhaps only 4 months ago. This sequel looked to be more of the same, which isn't bad. Hope it's as comical as the first was!
Metroid Prime 2 - Looked great. The dark world stuff was suprisingly not that... dark. The enemies were, but I expected the world to be a bit more twisted so to speak. The enemies and how they exploded into black goo that crawled and seaped away was very cool. The concept is cool too (it's got a bit of Ikaruga flair it seems). Multiplayer doesn't interest me, but getting that euphoric feeling I got from Metroid Prime all over again does.
Advance Wars GameCube - Sorry, couldn't remember the actual name. Anyway, I don't know much about the game, but the battle sequences where you were running around fps style and shooting looked cool. I didn't play long enough to see if the strategy element was there from the GBA games, but I'm hoping it is, or there's little reason to want to get this imo.
Donkey Konga Jungle Beat - hahahaha - I don't know what to think! A platformer controlled by drums and clapping looked cool and interesting. The drums were very good at picking up claps despite the environment it was in. If the drums don't jack up the cost of the game too much, I might have to get this
Sony
Sony PSP - Can't report on any games as I only really cared about feeling it and checking out the screen quality. First off, it's bigger than you might expect as well. Think Atari Lynx. It's pretty thick (almost an inch) but that makes it nicer to grip. The screen is absolutely awesome. I was watching a movie on the screen and was looking at the screen from as many angles as I could and it stayed sharp and bright the whole time. Very impressed with it technically... however, I'm not at all impressed with the gaming feel of it - namely the positioning of the d-pad, analog nub and buttons. I have fairly small hands and I couldn't comfortably manage the d-pad AND shoulder buttons at once while resting the PSP in my palms. If the PSP is resting as your SP might (ball of your palm and thumb), the D-pad will be mid-thumb in position. Terrible. If you float the system so you can use the d-pad with your thumbpad, then it's not as comfortable and the shoulder buttons can't be rocked by your fingers. The same concept applies to the buttons. Depending on how you hold it, you give up comfort for better finger placement. It didn't feel right. It felt like the layout was more based on aesthetics than comfort and gaming. The little analog nub was hard to use as well. Without regripping the side of the PSP, you could not easily use the nub as nimbly as you'd want to. The d-pad felt good in terms of smoothness, etc as did the other buttons, but the positioning of them all could use work. The other thing I worry about is the portability factor. See, the GBA was durable despite having exposed buttons. The PSP has a very big screen, a small nub that feels like it can get caught on things and a size that prevents it as well from being a true 'gaming on the go' device. It feels as though after every gaming session, you will need to return it to some soft case to avoid damage. It has a motor, and that factor alone means it will require MUCH more TLC than any other portable. Don't get me wrong, what I saw on it was BEAUTIFUL, but it felt like it was trying to be everything else, THEN a gaming machine. It wants to appeal to everyone, not just the gamer. Battery life was an issue. They said 2.5 hours to 10 or so depending on how often the drive is used. That means 5 hours to me. Maybe a bit more. I don't know about you, but having the battery last AT LEAST 10 hours on a charge for a portable gaming device is extremely important no matter how or what I'm playing. After all, it's supposed to be portable. The more it's wired to an outlet, the less portable it becomes. Same goes for the DS. I like the fact I can take my SP to work, or on a road trip and not worry about it needing to be charged or trying to remember if I charged it recently. Odds are I have plenty of gaming time left on it. With the PSP, it seems as though you'll need to bring your charger with you on even relatively short road trips or maybe even to the office because you could run out of juice sooner than you expect. I hope this is something they address. They've basically rested the battery life issue in the hands of developers but I think having a "worst case" life of more than 2.5 hours would be smart no matter what. All in all, I've got to say I wish the DS had the screen of the PSP or the PSP had the feel of the DS. That would make for the ultimate system Aesthetically, the system is a beauty. Clear shoulder buttons and a plethora of colors seem to be lined up. Black was sexiest of all The media (UMD) was also nice to look at and seemed well protected. I'm looking forward the PSP as well. It reads as the 'adults portable'. I definitely would let my 14yr old brother handle one though and it seems Sony doesn't have that audience in mind either.
Gettin' late - I'll rattle off quickly about some games I saw that I'm looking forward too.
Sly Cooper 2 - Beautiful! Can't wait. Loved the first and the second looks to be even better (and much less linear).
Ratchet and Clank 3 - The multiplayer looked cool, but I'm more interested in the single player. I thoroughly enjoyed the last 2 and it looks like the 3rd will be just as good.
Jak 3 - Didn't play it, but it looked great again. Hope they ease up on the frustration factor this time around.
God of War - hehehe. Awesome. Very cinematic in presentation. The button sequence moves were very cool - but they better have TONS of them! The fighting looked great, so let's hope the basic game is just as polished. Decapitating your opponent as a finisher to a sequence is oh so gratifying.
FF XXII - Wow. I was very impressed both visually and gameplay wise. The pseudo real time fighting was awesome. Something about it felt very old school while looking very new school. The environments were great. I felt no draw towards the main character (blonde guy) however. He seemed shallow and uninteresting. Can't wait for this one. I didn't hear any voice work so I can't comment on that.
DarkWatch - Looks great. Reminded me of Painkiller. Gameplay looked shallow (standard shooter), but some little touches really impressed me (like throwing tnt into a building and watching the inside blow out the windows. If the shooting was more stylistic instead of shoot/reload fare, then I'd be more interested.
GG Asuka - 2D fighter graphics at it's finest. Gameplay with 2 players per side didn't feel that much different, but I didn't get a tutorial on using my bg character in conjunction with my active so I'm sure it's much deeper than I had a chance to feel.
Xbox
Fable - BEAUTIFUL!!! It's very well done in terms of style. Very impressive. It seemed to chug a bit and I did see a lot of linear paths, but this was a small portion of the game I'm sure. I saw a few ages of characters (and perhaps alliances). It doesn't seem like it will dissapoint.
Doom 3 - Now, I'm a huge fan of Doom but I simply wasn't that impressed by what I saw and I've been looking forward to this game for a while. All I saw were a lot of dark rooms that were gray, lots of muddy textures and a mood set entirely by how dimly lit everything was. Control was good, movement was purposefully slow and everything I was walking in was tight (to give that clausterphobic feel?) - It's Doom alright, but with an almost 'too clean' look. It's too stiff. I hungered for the hell level atmospheres and other otherworldy locals. I'll rest final judgement for when I pick up the PC version, but the Xbox content I saw left me a little sad.
Kameo - Colorful and typical Rare visual quality. It looks a lot different than I remember when I saw it 2 years ago in Nintendo's booth. I remember thinking 'eh' when I saw it. Now I'm thinking 'oh' as I'm actually some what more interested now. It doesn't seem as childish as it was then.
Conker - WOW. It looked great! I only wish they were demoing the single player stuff too. All I got to see was multiplayer. I'm bummed by the fact the single player is a port of the N64 goodness, but it was so fun to play through that when this title comes down in price, I'd buy it just for the single player experience
Street Fighter Anniversary - Yeah. I'm on this like white on rice. SF graphics, in it's fine primitive looking graphicalness, still brings me great joy and this title looks to make me giggle all over again. Sure it's rehash 142, but I can finally prove that Hyper Fighting Ken was the ultimate supreme warrior when it came to all things SF2 The inclusion of SF3 and Live play makes me happy as well. Long time friends in other states will once again get a call for a little SF goodness. It's times like this that make me glad I purchased an X-arcade controller!
PC
Dungeon Siege 2 - I liked the first one despite not playing it more than perhaps 15 hours. A friend was demoing the sequel and he showed me some of the more interesting things this time around. For instance, there was a 'pet' in the group. You could feed this pet your loot you couldnt immediately sell and by feeding him spare loot, he would mature - literally. He would go from Baby to Mature (there was about 4 levels of maturity in between). I thought this was an awesome way to make loot you would otherwise sell a commodity that you wanted to keep. The better the loot, the more it raised his level towards the next maturity stage. He would also grow in size physically to match his maturity. Other things I saw were better spell combo-ing and AI that didn't look like it was fodder. Enemies would run past you and into bushes, let their buddies attack, then jump out and help at inoportune times. Enemies would also guard their pack leader as he attacked from afar. Combat was also faster and the world seemed more alive and interesting.
SNK - Portalicious! I think they would find better success by compiling more than one Metal Slug game on a SKU. Give me MSG 1-2-3 then X-4-5 and price them at $29 or maybe $34 and I'm sold but the sad truth is, the games don't have long term depth on consoles where credits are now free. The feeling that you can play as much as you want takes away a lot of the skillful maneuvering you'd do in the arcades when your hard earned allowance was at stake. KOF Maximum Impact didn't look that great for their first trip into 3D since SS64 I believe. The game that made me the happiest however was Samura Shodown 5 Special. I loved the arcade version (well, just 5, not Special)- in fact, I played quite a bit of it at the show as they had a few cabinets going. If anyone here was playing and played a white guy who was using Haohmaru who was eeking out wins, that was me. If they'd only release SS5V with previous SS titles bundled on the disk, I'd make it an absolute purchase. I'm so glad the control scheme is closer to SS1/2 than SS3/4.
N-Gage - Skipped the booth entirely. Don't mean to hate, but it's too late Nokia. Besides, I hate playing games on my cell phone as it is. Except for while I wait for movies to start... then it's kind of cool.
Phantom - Not even a free t-shirt could pull me in. I didn't see many others walk in either. Granted it's history is marred already, and their original prototype was extremely hideous, but I simply don't see why a gamer would buy a PC for his TV to download games? Who is this thing catered too? Who would play Unreal on their TV versus their monitor? If you have a PC already, why buy this? I simply can't pin down a reason for it to exist except to play bejeweled while on the couch. Their set-top box redesign is nice, but c'mon - that logo? hehehehe. It's like a bunch of older adults thought that horns and a helmet with evil looking eyelets was the epitomy of 'cool'.
Goodies - Ah the goodies. The first few E3s were absolutely RIPE with them. Now it's pretty hard to get cool trinkets as most companies aren't handing them out anymore - not to mention there are A LOT of greedy show-goers who were pilfering multiple items whenever possible. It's because of you that I was stuck with a generic laniard for my badge!!! The badge crew said people were taking multiple laniards :/ This is the first year I didn't get one But I did manage to get a Capcom and Sammy Studios Darkwatch laniard so it's ok... I guess. Anyway, aside from the occasional laniard, there were plenty of t-shirts going out. I managed to score a Nintendo DS shirt and the extremely cool light up Stylus they were giving out. I also netted an Xbox badge holder courtesy of my friend working the Windows booth as well as another shirt. There were more bags this year than any other and I saw people with foaming mouths whenever they would restock the bags at their booths. Some people were double bagging! And some of the bags were nice enough I didn't blame them There was a unique clear ball that most everyone seemed to have - inside the ball was the name of the game. "UM" was the name I believe. I saw a few posters and other light up neckalce type things as well, but I think hands down the Nintendo Stylus was the item of the show.
Well, that's pretty much it. There are TONS of games I didn't mention and I'm more than happy to comment on any title listed above or other titles if anyone has questions. I didn't hands on as many games as I would of liked, but I did try and see as many games as possible during my visit on Friday. Hope you guys enjoy the info!
Nintendo
Nintendo DS - Several DS' were available for play so my friend and I had a go at Metroid Hunters. I'll talk about that later. Anyway, the DS is actually pretty damn nice. It's a little bigger than you'd want and as such, it's not as portable as the SP obviously. It doesn't even look like it would comfortably fit in your pocket. When folded, the DS isn't as 'clean' looking as the SP - that's something I hope they fix (I think the SP is sexy
- the top flap is about half as thin as the bottom flap (side profile) and is also smaller in size in width and height than the bottom flap. So when it's folded, the top half doesn't line up squarely with the bottom. The DS is also very rounded. It's more comfortable this way, but takes away from the look IMO. The shoulder buttons are currently small round buttons, not length triggers like the GBA or PSP. They're recessed too so they are flush with the curve of the corners (no protrusions like the SP, etc). This keeps it's shape profile tighter and they felt pretty good too. Not very stiff. You'd rock them under your second knuckle -sort of like the SP triggers. The screens are very nice though I wish they were closer together so they would require less eye travel between them. That's the largest flaw I saw in the system. The face buttons and d-pad all felt good and were positioned well. The charge input looked to be the same as the current SP and there was no headphone jack this time either. The mic is in the upper flap on the right indent (that fold on top of the face buttons). I couldn't see the cartridge slots, but the guy told me they were both on the bottom, side by side. Didn't seem right to me? I thought the primary was on the top center, and the GBA was bottom center. Anyway, the system felt well built and the screens looked vibrant and clear. Battery life was stated at 10 hours. I asked if a stylus insert was going to happen and the guy said he didn't know. Seems silly to require a stylus for games and not have a place to store it... Colors are still being worked on as is the color of the center inserts that surround the screens. Anyway, on to some game impressions...Metroid Hunters - Getting back to the proximaty of the screens... while we were playing Metroid Hunters, the map was on the top, but in a FPS, and at least in the demo, looking up at the map, then looking down and getting oreinted again with the game wasn't as easy as it should of been. I simply stopped looking at the map as it felt like a hinderance. If they were closer and through peripheral vision I could 'see' the top screen somewhat so I didn't have to focus on it, then back on the main screen constantly, then I think it would feel much better. Also, the control scheme was wonky. You had to use the Stylus to move AND shoot. I did not like this, but it was obvious this was to show the touch screens potential. The problem was, your hand covers part of the screen. Not good in a FPS! The full screen positional shooting available to you with the stylus is awesome, but needing to turn with it was no fun. See - you needed to hold down the stylus to turn (so hold and drag left and right to turn), but this also means your charging your main beam (since you're holding down the stylus). Well, to turn a 360, you would need to lift, drop and redrag the stylus to turn some more but when you lift, you fire your shot! So in a battle as you are chasing, you are charging and firing when you don't want to just so you can follow your opponent. Tapping the screen to shoot was cool, but combined with needing to move swiftly, it just didn't work. The d-pad was strafe left/right and move forward/back btw. I was told that they are still working on the scheme so hopefully they'll figure out a better method, or drop the need for a stylus altogether. There was no way to turn or fire without the stylus in the demo version.
Chat program thing game - This was a simple notepad, email type program setup between two DS system. My friend would write on one, hit send, and I would see what he would write. It worked well. The touch pad was good at catching our scribbles though I thought you had to press a little too hard to get it to recognize strokes. Hopefully whatever this program is, it's built into the DS (I didn't ask) - even better, it would be cool to 'pause' whatever game you are playing and enter this program to fire off a note to your friend, or whatever.
I didn't check out the other games since we needed to leave. Overall, I'm impressed with the DS' potential, but wish a few things would get a bit more thought. The 3d capabilities were a non issue. It looked good, but had that playstation one look (no filtering on the textures) but on the tiny screens, it didn't really matter. Besides, I see handhelds as the saviours of 2D
Leave 3D for the PCs and consoles!! The feel was good despite being bolted down, and the potential for some really cool ideas using both screens is there. I wonder if you can turn the top screen off when it's not in use to get more battery life... heh - I wonder why I didn't think of this question while I was there Paper Mario 2 - I loved the first paper mario, and I finally played it perhaps only 4 months ago. This sequel looked to be more of the same, which isn't bad. Hope it's as comical as the first was!
Metroid Prime 2 - Looked great. The dark world stuff was suprisingly not that... dark. The enemies were, but I expected the world to be a bit more twisted so to speak. The enemies and how they exploded into black goo that crawled and seaped away was very cool. The concept is cool too (it's got a bit of Ikaruga flair it seems). Multiplayer doesn't interest me, but getting that euphoric feeling I got from Metroid Prime all over again does.
Advance Wars GameCube - Sorry, couldn't remember the actual name. Anyway, I don't know much about the game, but the battle sequences where you were running around fps style and shooting looked cool. I didn't play long enough to see if the strategy element was there from the GBA games, but I'm hoping it is, or there's little reason to want to get this imo.
Donkey Konga Jungle Beat - hahahaha - I don't know what to think! A platformer controlled by drums and clapping
looked cool and interesting. The drums were very good at picking up claps despite the environment it was in. If the drums don't jack up the cost of the game too much, I might have to get this Sony
Sony PSP - Can't report on any games as I only really cared about feeling it and checking out the screen quality. First off, it's bigger than you might expect as well. Think Atari Lynx. It's pretty thick (almost an inch) but that makes it nicer to grip. The screen is absolutely awesome. I was watching a movie on the screen and was looking at the screen from as many angles as I could and it stayed sharp and bright the whole time. Very impressed with it technically... however, I'm not at all impressed with the gaming feel of it - namely the positioning of the d-pad, analog nub and buttons. I have fairly small hands and I couldn't comfortably manage the d-pad AND shoulder buttons at once while resting the PSP in my palms. If the PSP is resting as your SP might (ball of your palm and thumb), the D-pad will be mid-thumb in position. Terrible. If you float the system so you can use the d-pad with your thumbpad, then it's not as comfortable and the shoulder buttons can't be rocked by your fingers. The same concept applies to the buttons. Depending on how you hold it, you give up comfort for better finger placement. It didn't feel right. It felt like the layout was more based on aesthetics than comfort and gaming. The little analog nub was hard to use as well. Without regripping the side of the PSP, you could not easily use the nub as nimbly as you'd want to. The d-pad felt good in terms of smoothness, etc as did the other buttons, but the positioning of them all could use work. The other thing I worry about is the portability factor. See, the GBA was durable despite having exposed buttons. The PSP has a very big screen, a small nub that feels like it can get caught on things and a size that prevents it as well from being a true 'gaming on the go' device. It feels as though after every gaming session, you will need to return it to some soft case to avoid damage. It has a motor, and that factor alone means it will require MUCH more TLC than any other portable. Don't get me wrong, what I saw on it was BEAUTIFUL, but it felt like it was trying to be everything else, THEN a gaming machine. It wants to appeal to everyone, not just the gamer. Battery life was an issue. They said 2.5 hours to 10 or so depending on how often the drive is used. That means 5 hours to me. Maybe a bit more. I don't know about you, but having the battery last AT LEAST 10 hours on a charge for a portable gaming device is extremely important no matter how or what I'm playing. After all, it's supposed to be portable. The more it's wired to an outlet, the less portable it becomes. Same goes for the DS. I like the fact I can take my SP to work, or on a road trip and not worry about it needing to be charged or trying to remember if I charged it recently. Odds are I have plenty of gaming time left on it. With the PSP, it seems as though you'll need to bring your charger with you on even relatively short road trips or maybe even to the office because you could run out of juice sooner than you expect. I hope this is something they address. They've basically rested the battery life issue in the hands of developers but I think having a "worst case" life of more than 2.5 hours would be smart no matter what. All in all, I've got to say I wish the DS had the screen of the PSP or the PSP had the feel of the DS. That would make for the ultimate system
Aesthetically, the system is a beauty. Clear shoulder buttons and a plethora of colors seem to be lined up. Black was sexiest of all The media (UMD) was also nice to look at and seemed well protected. I'm looking forward the PSP as well. It reads as the 'adults portable'. I definitely would let my 14yr old brother handle one though and it seems Sony doesn't have that audience in mind either.Gettin' late - I'll rattle off quickly about some games I saw that I'm looking forward too.
Sly Cooper 2 - Beautiful! Can't wait. Loved the first and the second looks to be even better (and much less linear).
Ratchet and Clank 3 - The multiplayer looked cool, but I'm more interested in the single player. I thoroughly enjoyed the last 2 and it looks like the 3rd will be just as good.
Jak 3 - Didn't play it, but it looked great again. Hope they ease up on the frustration factor this time around.
God of War - hehehe. Awesome. Very cinematic in presentation. The button sequence moves were very cool - but they better have TONS of them! The fighting looked great, so let's hope the basic game is just as polished. Decapitating your opponent as a finisher to a sequence is oh so gratifying.
FF XXII - Wow. I was very impressed both visually and gameplay wise. The pseudo real time fighting was awesome. Something about it felt very old school while looking very new school. The environments were great. I felt no draw towards the main character (blonde guy) however. He seemed shallow and uninteresting. Can't wait for this one. I didn't hear any voice work so I can't comment on that.
DarkWatch - Looks great. Reminded me of Painkiller. Gameplay looked shallow (standard shooter), but some little touches really impressed me (like throwing tnt into a building and watching the inside blow out the windows
. If the shooting was more stylistic instead of shoot/reload fare, then I'd be more interested.GG Asuka - 2D fighter graphics at it's finest. Gameplay with 2 players per side didn't feel that much different, but I didn't get a tutorial on using my bg character in conjunction with my active so I'm sure it's much deeper than I had a chance to feel.
Xbox
Fable - BEAUTIFUL!!! It's very well done in terms of style. Very impressive. It seemed to chug a bit and I did see a lot of linear paths, but this was a small portion of the game I'm sure. I saw a few ages of characters (and perhaps alliances). It doesn't seem like it will dissapoint.
Doom 3 - Now, I'm a huge fan of Doom but I simply wasn't that impressed by what I saw and I've been looking forward to this game for a while. All I saw were a lot of dark rooms that were gray, lots of muddy textures and a mood set entirely by how dimly lit everything was. Control was good, movement was purposefully slow and everything I was walking in was tight (to give that clausterphobic feel?) - It's Doom alright, but with an almost 'too clean' look. It's too stiff. I hungered for the hell level atmospheres and other otherworldy locals. I'll rest final judgement for when I pick up the PC version, but the Xbox content I saw left me a little sad.
Kameo - Colorful and typical Rare visual quality. It looks a lot different than I remember when I saw it 2 years ago in Nintendo's booth. I remember thinking 'eh' when I saw it. Now I'm thinking 'oh' as I'm actually some what more interested now. It doesn't seem as childish as it was then.
Conker - WOW. It looked great! I only wish they were demoing the single player stuff too. All I got to see was multiplayer. I'm bummed by the fact the single player is a port of the N64 goodness, but it was so fun to play through that when this title comes down in price, I'd buy it just for the single player experience
Street Fighter Anniversary - Yeah. I'm on this like white on rice. SF graphics, in it's fine primitive looking graphicalness, still brings me great joy and this title looks to make me giggle all over again. Sure it's rehash 142, but I can finally prove that Hyper Fighting Ken was the ultimate supreme warrior when it came to all things SF2
The inclusion of SF3 and Live play makes me happy as well. Long time friends in other states will once again get a call for a little SF goodness. It's times like this that make me glad I purchased an X-arcade controller!PC
Dungeon Siege 2 - I liked the first one despite not playing it more than perhaps 15 hours. A friend was demoing the sequel and he showed me some of the more interesting things this time around. For instance, there was a 'pet' in the group. You could feed this pet your loot you couldnt immediately sell and by feeding him spare loot, he would mature - literally. He would go from Baby to Mature (there was about 4 levels of maturity in between). I thought this was an awesome way to make loot you would otherwise sell a commodity that you wanted to keep. The better the loot, the more it raised his level towards the next maturity stage. He would also grow in size physically to match his maturity. Other things I saw were better spell combo-ing and AI that didn't look like it was fodder. Enemies would run past you and into bushes, let their buddies attack, then jump out and help at inoportune times. Enemies would also guard their pack leader as he attacked from afar. Combat was also faster and the world seemed more alive and interesting.
SNK - Portalicious! I think they would find better success by compiling more than one Metal Slug game on a SKU. Give me MSG 1-2-3 then X-4-5 and price them at $29 or maybe $34 and I'm sold but the sad truth is, the games don't have long term depth on consoles where credits are now free. The feeling that you can play as much as you want takes away a lot of the skillful maneuvering you'd do in the arcades when your hard earned allowance was at stake. KOF Maximum Impact didn't look that great for their first trip into 3D since SS64 I believe. The game that made me the happiest however was Samura Shodown 5 Special. I loved the arcade version (well, just 5, not Special)- in fact, I played quite a bit of it at the show as they had a few cabinets going. If anyone here was playing and played a white guy who was using Haohmaru who was eeking out wins, that was me. If they'd only release SS5V with previous SS titles bundled on the disk, I'd make it an absolute purchase. I'm so glad the control scheme is closer to SS1/2 than SS3/4.
N-Gage - Skipped the booth entirely. Don't mean to hate, but it's too late Nokia. Besides, I hate playing games on my cell phone as it is. Except for while I wait for movies to start... then it's kind of cool.
Phantom - Not even a free t-shirt could pull me in. I didn't see many others walk in either. Granted it's history is marred already, and their original prototype was extremely hideous, but I simply don't see why a gamer would buy a PC for his TV to download games? Who is this thing catered too? Who would play Unreal on their TV versus their monitor? If you have a PC already, why buy this? I simply can't pin down a reason for it to exist except to play bejeweled while on the couch. Their set-top box redesign is nice, but c'mon - that logo? hehehehe. It's like a bunch of older adults thought that horns and a helmet with evil looking eyelets was the epitomy of 'cool'.
Goodies - Ah the goodies. The first few E3s were absolutely RIPE with them. Now it's pretty hard to get cool trinkets as most companies aren't handing them out anymore - not to mention there are A LOT of greedy show-goers who were pilfering multiple items whenever possible. It's because of you that I was stuck with a generic laniard for my badge!!! The badge crew said people were taking multiple laniards :/ This is the first year I didn't get one
But I did manage to get a Capcom and Sammy Studios Darkwatch laniard so it's ok... I guess. Anyway, aside from the occasional laniard, there were plenty of t-shirts going out. I managed to score a Nintendo DS shirt and the extremely cool light up Stylus they were giving out. I also netted an Xbox badge holder courtesy of my friend working the Windows booth as well as another shirt. There were more bags this year than any other and I saw people with foaming mouths whenever they would restock the bags at their booths. Some people were double bagging! And some of the bags were nice enough I didn't blame them There was a unique clear ball that most everyone seemed to have - inside the ball was the name of the game. "UM" was the name I believe. I saw a few posters and other light up neckalce type things as well, but I think hands down the Nintendo Stylus was the item of the show.Well, that's pretty much it. There are TONS of games I didn't mention and I'm more than happy to comment on any title listed above or other titles if anyone has questions. I didn't hands on as many games as I would of liked, but I did try and see as many games as possible during my visit on Friday. Hope you guys enjoy the info!
(. 
