From 11:00am to 6:00pm Thursday I cruised the halls of the LA convention center. This was my first trip to E3 and I hope to go again. Here is my long report that I wrote to justify skipping out of work for E3.
First the non game stuff:
The highlight of the show for me was meeting and taking a picture with the Xplay host Adam Sessler. Nice guy. Strangely no one there knew who he was or even noticed him - which leads me to..
I was amazed at how many non-gamers were there. I saw people try to play demo games who did not even know how to use a game controller!! The overall vibe from the game industry at E3 was more "Hollywood" than "gamer". Even though I am a programmer, after seeing how the industry is, I will never work in it. The one exception to the rule was the Blizzard booth. Those guys were into it.
Also, Sony and Valve suck :) With Sony you had to have a special invite to see Everquest2 or Starwars Galaxies. With Valve, there was a line 4+ hours long to see the trailer for Half life 2. These companies are full of themselves or something. They couldn't be bothered to even put a demo or trailer out of their special areas so that most E3 goers could see what they have.
Now for the games I was interested in:
At Nintendo, Crystal Chronicles was their big ticket item. A gamecube action rpg where each person uses a gameboy to control and view and manipulate their stats, inventory, etc. You need four players to really enjoy this game, but who has three friends with a gameboy each to play this?
Starfox was a big dissapointment. The graphics and gameplay didn't have much going for it from what I saw. It looked like they were still working on it as the collision detection on it was nonexistant. You could fly through walls and buildings.
The new Fzero looks pretty nice. It moves very fast - almost too fast, but I'm sure I would get used to the speed. It also looks more like wipeout now.
The new Rogue Squadron was fun to play, but it was nothing original. They did do a good job of making you feel like a small part in a big battle though.
Konami's big item was Castlevania for the PS2. They had 8 or so systems set up demonstrating this game. I managed to brave the lines and played the entire E3 demo. While it's fun, it is not Castlevania. It is Devil May Cry with a whip. I was very dissapointed. The music was also a letdown - instead of the great classical masterpieces like in SOTN, it has a generic action game rock/beat thing. Blah.
Next up at Konami was Gradius V. This was the game of the show for me. Needless to say it is a must buy. I posted a review of it in the Gradius V thread.
Viewtiful Joe took the prize for innovative graphics. This game had such a unique presentation that it was as fun to watch as it was to play.
Capcom was hyping up Megaman X7. They even had someone wearing a megaman costume cruising around. As for the game itself, it looked ok. I'm a huge megaman fan but I'm not yet sold on 3d. The graphics and gameplay reminded me of Ratchet and Clank, which was a fun game.
The new TMNT looked great. An old school beatemup with new school cell shaded graphics. Since I'm an old school gamer, I was sold on this.
Square-Enix had a decent showing. Their main entry was Final Fantasy online. It looked nice, but it was hard to get a feel for how this game really is in such a short time. While the demos attracted quite a crowd, no one knew how to do anything in the game other than run around and look at the many in game menus.
Other than Final Fantasy online, Square-Enix had a bunch of other RPGs on display. Of these the most interesting to me was the Final Fantasy Tactics for GBA. All the others were cutesy style RPGs which I tend to avoid. FFT looked good but they should really have kept the game on the gameboy screen. Blowing up a gameboy game onto a big monitor really shows you how primitive the graphics look.
Bungie was hyping their Halo for the PC and had a presentation of Halo 2. The gameplay shown of Halo 2 looked incredible, but the demo seemed way too scripted. It was almost like watching a shooter-on-rails type of game. I'd like to see more of its gameplay before I can make a decision on it. Halo on PC while fun was also unispired. They waited two years too long to release it. Games like BF1942, Doom3 and HL2 are where its at now in the PC FPS scene.
The Blizzard booth rocked. World of Warcraft looked incredible. Of the slew of MMORPGs at E3 this is the one that stands out. I actually felt sad for the other MMORPG makers there because I think they will fail as WOW will take all of the market share. I will definitely get into this game. As I watched the Blizzard staff show people how to play this game, I could tell that they were as hyped about it as everyone else. The Blizzard booth was very accessable. None of this "only special people can see our game" crap that certain other companies do :bang: .
The only downer at the Blizzard booth was the PS2 game Starcraft: Ghost. While the graphics were slick, it was very dark and had a lot of running around dark narrow corridors. For some reason games like that mess with my head and make me feel very nauseas. I couldn't even watch it for longer than a few minutes.
To wrap up. If you are a hardcore gamer, you owe it to yourself to find a way to get to E3. It was a great experience.
Q
