Monday, June 6, 2011

E3 Day 1 Recap

E3 kicked off today with press conferences held by the major gaming corporations such as Microsoft, Sony, EA and Ubisoft. I'll briefly discuss the Microsoft and Sony press conferences since I think they were are the most relevant to everyday gamers.

Microsoft's press conference started off great with a long COD Modern Warfare 3 demo which looked totally badass much like we have come to expect from the COD franchise. Then we were given a look at the new Tomb raider game which again looked pretty good, definitely going to keep following it until release to really make up my mind on it as not too much gameplay was shown. There was a quick look at the Halo anniversary remake which I personally would  not waste money on as it's just Halo 1 with a graphics upgrade. Then Microsoft brought out the Kinect and it was basically downhill from there, they announced that Mass Effect 3, Forza 4 and Tom Clansy would all be supported by Kinect which I don't really see a need for (although the Mass Effect3 demo with Kinect actually looked like it could work due to the voice commands etc.)  but suddenly they brought out the new Kinect games and it was like 2010 all over again with games like Disney World Adventure, Dance Central and Star Wars with each looking even more disappointing then the previous, especially the Star Wars game, there is no word to actually describe how bad it looked. They closed with the announcement of Halo 4 so I guess it wasn't all bad.

Sony was basically the same thing, started off great with a look at Uncharted 3 and it looked amazing. Then we got a look at Resistance 3 which came off as OKish, nothing too impressive and they went on about 3D and ended up announcing a PS3 3D TV thing that wasn't appealing at all as it was basically a 24" 3D monitor for $500. Slowly but surely they got to the Move and a NBA2k12 demonstration with Kobe Bryant and it was basically terrible... following were a whole bunch more motion control games that looked less then impressive. There were a few up-sides with a new Sly Cooper cinematic and a look at Bioshock: Infinite which works with motion controls apparently (don't really see the point of this). Next up was the NGP (sony's new handheld) which ended up being called the PSVita, there was an Uncharted demonstration for the vita that looked pretty fancy with all the touch screen controls and graphics, followed by another Vita game, Ruin which is a diablo style rpg type game that seemed ok. Followed up with some actual interesting titles such as Street Fighter X Tekken, Little Big Planet, SSX and Need For Speed and that pretty much wrapped up a pretty bland press conference for Sony

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