E3 is pretty much wrapped up now. I think it goes through today, but all the big announcements were made by the end of Tuesday. I was able to see the Microsoft briefing on Monday and the Nintendo one late Tuesday, but had a lot of trouble catching the Sony one. I had to watch them online, so there was a lot of crashed sites, buffering, broken links and that sort of thing. I finally caught up when Sony posted the briefing on PSN. So anyway, here goes.
Microsoft - They were all about their "controller-free" motion control system which is now called Kinect. Looks very cool at first until I think about how I'm going to play games where I do something other than swatting or jumping over stuff. The big focus is to get gamers off their butts and interacting with their TV. My problem is that when I have time to game, I WANT to sit on my butt. If I had kids, I'd be much more excited about this but being a guy who's pushing 40, I got winded from watching the Kinect demos put on by all those athletes and "active people". There are some games that look awesome such as a Metal Gear sword-type game where you can run around and slice anything into pieces, including trucks and (of course) people. YES! I'm severely pumped for Gears of War 3 and the new Halo game looks amazing.
Nintendo - There was a lot to like about this one. The new Zelda and Metroid games jump out right away, but their big focus was on the 3DS. It's a DS with 3D that's supposed to work without glasses. They couldn't show it to anyone who wasn't there to see it first-hand, but I have enough faith in Nintendo to figure it's probably pretty cool. The new Zelda looked impressive, even if it wasn't working at 100% for the presentation. Nintendo has a lot of hardcore fans and it's funny to hear them hoot and holler for the slightest things. New Kirby game? YEAH!!!!!!!!!!! He looks like a ball of yarn now??? HELL YES!!!!!!!!!!!! Not that I didn't blow my wad when I saw the new Gears, but it's still funny to hear such unbridled wonderment over so many things in a row. Kind of like dropping a pirated advance copy of Rob-sessed 2 into a middle school cafeteria. Or, my reaction to the Star Wars lightsaber game for XBox's Kinect.
Sony - They have a new motion controller too and this is the one I've been most excited about. It's an actual controller that looks much better suited for "real" games. A great deal of their presentation was in pointing this out (heh...get it? Pointing. It's a pointer controller! Moving on) and making fun of Microsoft's lack of buttons. Oddly enough, the coolest presentation they had for their motion control thing (The PS Move) was a game called Sorcery. This was odd, because I thought it was a game that could actually be played pretty well on the Kinect. Oh well. There were tons of games to love including Killzone 3 and a new God of War for the PSP. Sony also spent a lot of time harping their 3D tech. Do I need to buy one of those new TVs for that or does it come through fine with the PS3 alone? I'm not sure. It's one of those things that looks cool, but seems out of my reach. HA! Reach!! Like it's 3D and I'm reaching for....never mind. I'm burned out from looking at too many game trailers.
