Nerding it up, I managed to watch all the major conferences at E3 this year. Here's a summary.
Microsoft
A faceless MS exec opens E3 with some The Beatles Rock Band. A tasty stylised trailer culminates in the usual footage of trippy elephants dancing on a cliff. The 'I Am The Walrus' section looks incredible, but unfortunately the game is instead demo'd with boring old 'Day Tripper'. The plastic guitarist keeps screwing up. Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison briefly appear. McCartney and Ringo prance out. For a brief 'oh god is this actually going to happen' moment the opportunity of some kind of surreal plastic instrument based Beatles reunion arises. Thankfully, disaster is averted. Instead, Ringo cracks a joke about the crappy animation. Faceless Microsoft exec looks worried. McCartney likes his 'android' self. They head off stage to pick up their truckload of cash. Faceless MS exec then proceeds to list some Beatles innovations, inexplicably including 'colour'. Yep kids, they really were that good. Still, the game looks ultra-rad.
However, something very non-ultra-rad follows. A visibly embarrassed Tony Hawk shuffles on stage, holding a plastic skateboard like a used condom. He then proceeds to demonstrate Tony Hawk's Ride. It's retarded beyond belief. Ashamed, Hawk exits stage left.
Next, a man wanders on to play some Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Angry soldiers shooting things ain't really my bag, but there's a fair few fans of the 'original', aka Call of Duty 4. Things start badly, with the player spending an eternity in a semi-interactive climbing a cliff segment. Once at the top he begins running around shooting people. Yawn. Next he jumps on a snowmobile for the token vehicle section, albeit one that screams last-gen mediocrity-fest 007: Nightfire. All in all it's breathtakingly dull, although no doubt twelve year olds who like screeching “faggot” over Xbox Live will lap it up.
Now a quick fest of new titles kicks off with Final Fantasy XIII. An utterly confusing and vaguely depressing battle sequence is shown. Well, that's Final Fantasy for you. Shadow Complex, aka Gears of War 2D, follows. It's so unimaginative that the universe practically implodes under the weight of its own brain deadery. Then, a quick one-two hit of pre-rendered Crackdown 2 and Left 4 Dead 2 footage, and Joy Ride revealed as an avatar driven freebie. A demo of the new Splinter Cell stuns the world by not being The Most Boring Game Ever, instead showing off a few vaguely interesting innovations.
Forza Motorsport 3 is'wheeled' (lololol) out and gets lengthy stage time for some reason. The guy calls it 'the defining racing game of this generation' at least eight times. It looks exactly the same as Forza 2. A hilarious movie is unleashed, in which people talk about the impact Forza's decal editor has had on their lives. Dear god. Then Forza 3 gets a trailer, showing cars 'dancing' to Los Campesinos. Dear, dear god.
Never mind that though, because HEY DUDE YOU LIKE HALO?? Have some spin-offs in your face then, as a man from Bungie reveals Halo: ODST and Halo: Reach. Nothing actually shown from the latter though, but the former gets a demo. The player runs around a brown bridge hitting switches. The AI shouts “HIT THOSE SWITCHES” over and over again. Bullets fly from invisible assailants. Jittery cut scenes interrupt the action repeatedly. It looks like hell. Guy from Bungie fights back the tears.
If that wasn't disappointing enough, a play through of a, *gasp*, ORIGINAL title, Alan Wake, reveals it to be a shitty Resident Evil 4 clone, rather than the subtle psychological horror hoped for. Alan Wake is shown shooting endlessly spawning monsters. The cable car bit from Resi 4 is lifted wholesale. I renounce video games forever.
Twitter/Facebook/LastFM are announced for Xbox Live. Er, cool? Sky Sports is also hitting, with 'test cricket' as one of its selling points. The LA audience doesn't react. What's up guys, not fans of TEST CRICKET?
Test cricket nut Hideo Kojima is trotted out to confirm Metal Gear Solid Rising. It's a spin-off, it stars Raiden, and it's also coming out on PS3, but this doesn't stop the faceless MS exec claiming Xbox is now “whole again” in some weird pseudo-sexual Atomic Kitten reference. Scary.
It's the big moment now though, with the infamous Project Natal whipped out. It's like a Wii, just without a controller. A woman hits balls, a man paints an elephant. This is the future of interactive entertainment. Spielberg pops out to say ''this is the future of interactive entertainment.'' Then Peter Molyneux jogs on to present a pre-filmed demonstration of Milo. You interact with a child. See the internet for many jokes about this. And that's it.
Nintendo
So, all eyes on NINTENDO then. 'Cammie Dunaway' is on stage in a white trouser suit. “Everyone is playing games” she drones, clearly dead behind the eyes. Still, the first game of a conference is always important, and it seems New Super Mario Bros. Wii is gonna be Ninty's big 'un. But: a lazy port of a ye olde DS game? Oh dear.
This diversion over, Cammie continues to suppress any glimmer of emotion, grimly intoning that Wii Fit is the best selling video game in the world RIGHT NOW. It's getting a sequel, Wii Fit Plus. Who is buying this stuff?
Ninty are failing in epic fashion, so the million times more charismatic Reggie leaps onstage to wave around the 'Wii MotionPlus'. You stick it on the end of your Wii Remote and it, er, makes it a bit better? Reggie doesn't clarify. Wii Sports Resort is shown which, while as throwaway as the previous 'five-minutes-on-golf-at-Christmas-then-thrown-into-the-cupboard-for-the-rest-of-the-year' iteration, will no doubt rack up sales in the bazillions. Before taking each other on at the basketball mini game Reggie has some awkward banter with one of the developers of the game. The audience can practically smell the sexual tension which, when combined with the stupidly long loading times, leads to the two having to actually improvise their 'disses'. Excruciating.
And the torture continues with a new Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. Why/how/please no? Meanwhile, Mario and Luigi: Bowsers Inside Story sees the brothers trapped in Bowsers bowels. What? Golden Sun DS is a nice surprise though. If it's half as good as the GBA versions, it should be pretty sweet.
Stop press! Women’s Murder Club is announced. Sadly, it's not a lorry driving sim, but actually some thang based on James Patterson's production line of trashy crime fiction. Equally bizarre is Cop: The Recruit. Meanwhile, Style Savvy's title alone tells its own deeply disturbing story.
Cammie is back on now, apparently lots of DSi's have been sold. OK then. Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again and New Wario Ware are coming. They don't look very good. Train obsessed spin-off The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks sorta does though, in a weird way.
Chortles follow, with Ninty president Satoru Iwata demonstrating the 'Wii Vitality Sensor.' You stick your finger in it and it measures your heart rate. No explanation of how or why this needs to exist is given, although the internet lights up with gags revolving around sticking other objects in it. LOL!
Cammie returns, hoping to appease the hardcore. Super Mario Galaxy 2! It should be exciting, but in reality just looks like a map pack rather than a true sequel. The Conduit! The kind of generic FPS you would utterly ignore if it was on 360. Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles! Popular franchise gets shitty lightgun spin-off. Dead Space Extraction! Ditto. Metroid: Other M! Very bad looking PS1-style beat 'em up desecrates cherished brand. Cammie walks off, the lights come up. Oh Nintendo, what have you become.
Sony
Cut to Sony where some guy who looks like George from Seinfeld is running onto the stage. He cracks a joke or two. The auditorium is silent. George from Seinfeld is sweating. He mentions how nervous he is. Hey dude, maybe you could measure your heart rate with the Wii Vitality Sensor? He doesn't. Lots of sale figures are shown, yet no-one mentions that PS3 is currently dead last. The audience whoops loudly. Sony paid them to do this. I'm not kidding.
A demo of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is booted up. There's lots of explosions and people shooting things and things shooting people. A helicopter fires crazy shit at the player, but its OK because he's taken cover behind a wooden table. It's boring, but the hired guns in the auditorium go crazy. The player clambering over a ledge is greeted like Caesar returning to Rome.
Next up, online FPS MAG is rolled out. It's brown and people are shooting things. I feel ill just watching it. “The player can select from over 25 different weapons!” cries the developer, seemingly unaware that this is the last thing in the world I would ever want to do.
Thankfully, MAG is quickly kicked off stage. A pink Hannah Montana PSP is announced. Embarrassingly, Sony's whores in the crowd go crazy. Everyone else cringes so hard their jaw shatters and they end up looking like Roger Ebert. Slightly bigger news follows: a redesigned PSP subtitled Go! is launching. This meets with a more muted reaction than Hannah Montana.
Gran Turismo for PSP is 'announced' even though it was like five years ago. No-one cares about Gran Turismo anymore so, naturally, Sony wheels out its Japanese creator for an interminable speech. His translator is wearing a fleece. Indoors. In June. In LA. Lots of stats about numbers of cars and tracks are bandied about. It's eye-wateringly tedious.
Still, look whose here! Having spent the night with Microsoft, Hideo Kojima is back in Sony's arms. He confirms Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker for PSP. The graphics look terrible and it's the same game you've been playing for over a decade now, but hey! Following these Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid announcements, Sony continues to timewarp viewers back to 1998 with a Resident Evil for PSP. Zzz. Then a trailer for a bunch more PSP games, i.e. feature stripped ports of games you can already play on your TV. Won't this format just die already.
Back to PS3 and George is excited because Final Fantasy VII is in-bound. At this point I really do start to freak out and think that I've hit some anomaly in the time-space vortex. Thankfully, footage of PS3 interface disaster Home brings us all back to the 21st century with a depressing thud. It's Second Life, only even more sordid and unusable. George grins, though even the bought members of the crowd can't muster any enthusiasm for that car crash. Still, another trailer is quickly bunged in the projector, a montage of various forthcoming PS3 games. I see angry bald men shooting other angry bald men, angry bald men hitting other angry bald men and a grinning family playing plastic instruments in their minimalist house. So, video games then.
Assassin's Creed II is demo'd. It's set in Renaissance Venice, hence I was briefly interested, or at least until the words 'Leonardo Da Vinci' and 'gives you weapons' were put together. WHY VIDEO GAMES, WHY??? Next up: Agent, Final Fantasy XIV (already??), and, shudder, Gran Turismo 5 are exclusive to PS3. You could probably hear my MEH from LA.
Things are getting dull so the obligatory motion controller puts in an appearance. Some dude and a Norman Bates lookalike come out to pretend they're having fun while wrestling with twitchy crosshairs in sub-PS1 minigames. Bates and friend are described as the 'creative minds' of the project. Considering it's a Wii remote with a ball on the end, that 'creativity' wasn't stretched too far. They swing around virtual golf clubs and do some archery. You've seen it all before and it's shit.
Aside from motion controllers, what the world really needs more of are Mario Kart clones. Luckily, it seems PS3 will soon be blessed with Modnation Racers. A veeeeeeery long demo ensues, that takes an age to basically say it's got a track editor. To be seen in a bargain bin near you three weeks after release.
Then! Just as E3 seems to have offered nothing interesting since The Beatles Rock Band way back when, the new Team Ico game is shown. It's called The Last Guardian. Stunning. No guns, no waving around silly peripherals, no 'gritty' realism, just beautiful art and buckets of promise. Best in show. Unfortunately, rather than end on this fabulous note, Sony spoils everything with a God of War 3 demo. Boring violence, mindless gameplay and no discernible advance over its equally moronic predecessor. A suitable note for E3 to end on.
