After 11 years of attending E3 and bitching and whining about how poorly run the old version of E3 was, I'm now wishing they bring it back or kill this stupid show altogether. It's completely unsalvageable, well, I'll take that back if it's held in a nice big SINGLE Vegas Hotel next year that would solve all problems. What idiot at the ESA thought "Hey, everyone complained about the LA Convention center, so we'll show those whiny bitches in the Press - let's spread it out and put it in 10 different locations!"
This year's event has been an absolute nightmare I didn't even get a chance to pick up my badge until Thursday afternoon. My plan for the day was to get some sleep and then get to the Barker Hangar at 12:30 pm (it opened at 1pm) to spend four or five hours doing nothing but playing games, no more hotel hoping, spending hours on the shuttle buses, just playing games. But it wasn't meant to be. I arrived at the hangar and surprise, no onsite registration. I had to catch a shuttle over to the Fairmont to pick up a badge. By the time I did that it was 2pm, most of the day completely wasted.
Since Lucas Arts was in the same hotel, I decided to go check out their line-up of titles, and they had some pretty interesting stuff top lined by next year's release of the Force Unleashed. But before we talk about that, we got a look at three titles coming out this year including
Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron
This game was built from the ground up to be a PSP Exclusive and will be featured in a Special Edition Star Wars PSP Pack. The one comment that everyone in the private session agreed on was how beautiful the game looked projected onto a big screen television. Usually PSP games - if you can get it to play on a television looks pixilated and doesn't scale well, but on the newly redesigned PSPs this doesn't seem to be a problem. The major change in this year's version is the fact that the Class System from the previous PC version is not included.
Thrillville - Off The Rails
Is the unofficial sequel to LucasArt's Thrillville game. This game will be more of a "sandbox," style title that will let you build full amusement parks, create custom roller coasters, bumper car tracks, race tracks, water log rides, and more. If it contains tracks you'll be able to create it and ride it. The game will feature a single player quest that you can (and most likely will skip) and 30 different mini-games. It will be available on all platforms this fall. It looks really colorful, and I played one of the Mini-Games on the Wii which was a Rock-Em Sock-Em robot style game. And yes, I was flailing my arms about.
Lego Star Wars - 30th Anniversary Edition
The top line story here is that for the first time all 6 Star Wars games will be available on a single disk with extra content. All vehicles on the PS3 version will use the Six Axis controls, while the Wii version will feature gesture based light saber controls. The game will have online multiplayer on all major consoles.
The Force Unleashed
Described by the game's producer as a title that's "All about kicking ass with the force." Say no more, I'm there! The story will be an official part of the Star Wars mythos and centers on Darth Vader taking on a Jedi apprentice. It'll bridge the gap between Episode III and IV. The game's A.I. was developed using Natural Motion's euphoria engine. LucasArts promised that the A.I. will be so intelligent that you will not encounter the same thing twice. The game will have drop in and out multiplayer action and will be available on the PS3 and 360. The game still looked early with graphics that are clearly a work in progress, but the game play reminds me of the Episode III game. We only saw a 1 minute clip, but based on the premise it made no sense since the Vader's apprentice was fighting against the Empire.
Fracture
After the Force Unleashed we got an extended look at LucasArt's very beautiful looking FPS for the 360 and PS3. Does the Xbox need another "beautiful" looking FPS? The hook on this game is that you can actually control the terrain by throwing specially designed bombs. When these things hit the ground you'll be able to change the height, width, texture, and use these changes against your enemies, as protection or use these changes to get to different levels. Like I said the game's graphics blew away The Force Unleashed and was gorgeous, but again I ask does the Xbox 360 need yet another FPS? I say enough with the pretty first person shooters, let's see a new genre.
After my hour with LucasArts, I was feeling pretty good about the day, it was already 4pm, but I thought I'd give the Loews hotel a try. My buddies at Activision were supposedly there so I wanted to check them out, no love. Their games were at the Barker hangar, but hey Nintendo was there, and I always get and have mad love for Nintendo. But they had some new people working at the front desk and they refused to let me in. I was a little pissed, I was going to pull rank and demand to see one of the "people that matter" that have always been good to me. But I didn't feel like forcing my way in.
I decided to head across the street and check out Microsoft, but there was no need as they had a nice little set-up down the hall from Nintendo and M$ couldn't have been cooler, they saw how frustrated I was with how my day was going and rolled out the red carpet. I got some hands on time with -
Virtua Fighter 5
Visually it was disappointing as it looks the same as it always has, but then VF was always "cutting edge" back in the day so there's not much need for improvement. The game play was just as smooth as you would think it would be, the best thing of all is, it will support online multiplayer matches. The game will come out this Fall.
Gears of War PC
Not much to say about this other than it's prettier and sharper than the Xbox 360 version and with the Xbox controller plugged in, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference. The game will have 5 additional missions, a detailed level editor, and will support both XP and Vista, with the Vista version using Windows Live and having an additional 1,000 unlockable achievement points.
Madden NFL 08
I love football games, but have never been a Madden Fan. I was a 2k fan girl and last year's Madden was a buggy piece of garbage that I gave up on after a week of it constantly crashing. This year's Madden finally lives up to the promise of next-gen gaming. It runs incredibly smooth, the graphics are detailed and the uniforms and player models look amazing.
Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock
My favorite game of the past two years is back and the track listing is amazing. I rocked out to some Pearl Jam's Even Flow, then switched to the Stones "Paint It Black," and wrapped it up with a little ditty called Welcome To The Jungle. I haven't picked up my 360 version of GHII because I've been waiting for the Wireless Controller to come out, but after today, I can't wait any longer, I'm running to Best Buy tomorrow to pick it up - I've been playing with my PS2 version, but I want some of the new GH2 downloadable tracks. And I need to bone up and stop playing on the easy level. I was being schooled today by some real players. If they can play that good, they might as well pick up a real guitar. These people were smoking it!
Call of Duty 4
Oh for C.O.D... I tear up because C.O.D. 2 on the 360 was the first FPS that I could play that didn't give me a bad case of sea sickness or a bad case of Vertigo. Ever since then, I've been enjoying next-gen multiplayer combat. C.O.D. 3 was a major disappointment and the online play was so severely broken that I rarely found a match. But C.O.D. 4 returns the gameplay we loved in C.O.D. 2. I'm still not entirely sure if I like the idea that it's no longer a WWII based title, but the game play is rock solid.
In this little auxiliary room, MS didn't have their other big guns on display - Halo 3, Mass Effect, Bioshock, etc. But since I've been seeing and playing bits and pieces of those titles for the last year, I didn't miss much. It's 5pm and I have to catch the shuttle back over to the Barker Hangar to pick up my car but before I call it quits for this year's horrid adventure known as the E3 Media Briefing I felt like I had to at least take a peek inside the Barker Hangar before I jet. I had about 15 minutes to spare before I had to get downtown for another meeting.
This was a really nice atmosphere to spend a day just playing games in, it was quiet, intimate, didn't have a lot of PR folks around to pester you, hardly anyone was there. It was exactly what this year's E3 experience was supposed to be but wasn't because they had me running around 10 different hotels all day instead of playing games.
I have one more report to go and that's to talk about some of the companies and games that I played on Wednesday - including visits with THQ, Stranglehold, some Sony hands on time and more. I'll hit you all with that piece sometime this weekend and will give you a wrap up of what I think some of the hot titles will be.
