E3 Perspectives: Random Rambling

I’ll probably never get to visit the Electronics Entertainment Expo, but being more of a casual gamer, it doesn’t bother me as much as not visiting a Comic-Con or Botcon event. However, in recent years video games have become just as much a platform for storytelling as anything else I cover here at the Spotlight, so I’m dedicating the next four days to covering last week’s events. Tuesday through Thursday I’ll post G4TV.com’s airings of the Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony press events along with my thoughts.

Today, however, to give me some time to get those done, I through together a list of thoughts as I watched both G4’s coverage, and coverage at sites like The Spoony Experiment or the Angry Joe Show. While putting these down I actually started to wonder if I should rethink not having a Twitter account that I probably wouldn’t use except to occasionally see what some of my favorite bloggers and creators are up to (although in the case of the bloggers, I just look at their sidebar). But here is the unfiltered ramblings of what popped into my head last week while you were watching filler videos and Space Monkeys, copy/pasted from a Notepad file.

• Need For Speed Pursuit: Not only do you finally get to play as one of the good guys, but they have the coolest ride! Why don’t more police have speed enforcers?
• Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions: We’ll learn at Comic-Con what the fourth dimension will be. I’m hoping for the Unlimited cartoon, so I can turn invisible and kick Sir Ram in his backside.
• Star Wars The Old Republic: I want an animated movie with the quality of that trailer.
• Active 2: Forget Natal/Kinect, I’d be satisfied with seeing those arm/legbands used beyond fitness games. Imagine a Power Rangers game with the biometer thing doubling as a Morpher.
• Child of Eden: What I got to see before G4 screwed up their feed looked simply amazing. (And now that I’ve seen Ubisoft’s posting there, all I can say is “oh, wow!”.)
• Battle Tag: I’m not quite sure how it works. They didn’t do a good job describing it at the Ubisoft panel. I am curious, though. It seems like you use the computer (console?) to keep score as you play a form of Laser Tag.
• Innergy: Remember last year when they brought out a pulse meter, and people wondered how it could be a game peripheral? Turns out it can.
• Awesome Nintendo continued franchises: Kirby Yarn, Donkey Kong Country, Zelda: Skyward Sword
• If Nintendo 3DS delivers on what it advertises, it will continue hand held dominance. The only way it could have blown my mind more is if they announced video Skype compatablitity.
• OK, gamers, your getting your Kid Icarus game, with actual flying and in 3D! So shut up already!
• And your getting your Goldeneye. Hope it was worth it. And shut up about that, too.
• I’m surprised that I’m neutral on Epic Mickey. It looks good, but for some reason I’m not that blown away. I like what they’re trying to do, though. Maybe if I see more.
• Odd that the new Wii partnership with Netflix wasn’t mentioned at the press event, but I’ve been seeing the ads all week.
• As a Christian, I’m opposed to the use of magic, and that brings spritiual concerns I won’t get into here with a game like PS3’s Sorcery, but it is a well designed game.
• Heroes on the Move, or “how many fanboys can we get to play one platform game”?
• God of War game. I thought Metal Gear Solid was the game that wouldn’t finish?
• Little Big Planet 2: the first game announced as a PS3 exclusive that actually interests me.
• Portal 2 on PS3? Fine, but there better be a PC version!
• Infamous 2: still not enough exclusive to make me bother with a PS3.
• I can’t tell you how little I care about Twisted Metal, because “hardcore” gamers would kill me.
• I wish Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 was coming to PC. I really, really do.
• I’m not a big FPS person, but Halo: Reach intrigues me.
• A game with parkour and capoiera elements sounds cool. However, it feels wrong in a Tron game. The light cycles, however, look awesome.
• El Shaddai is a beautiful looking game, but the Christian in me has some concerns.
• Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom looks pretty cool, but it’s not on PC.
• Konami is making a video game based on the Saw franchise. Why?
• Did Activision have a press conference? They have two of the three games I’m most interested in at the moment, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Transformers: War For Cybertron.
• For that matter, why not schedule an event for PC gamers so we can see what we’re getting to play?
• I can see why G4 didn’t carry the Konami press conference. In software terms, it’s kind of buggy.
• They’re certainly going all out for flippin’ “Def Jam Rapstar”. Also, Russell Simmons is only slightly less boring that James Cameron last year at the Avatar announcement.
• Lucha Libre wrestling game: it’s about time. But of course not on PC.
• No, seriously, why the hell does a Saw game exist?
• When you have to ask for applause for your game, in this case 99 Nights 2, that’s not a good thing, especially more than once. But I know nothing about the series.
• All I can say about Dancemasters here is that Konami found two really annoying people to introduce it. It was more interesting during Microsoft’s event. (I made a mistake on this one. Apparently, game at the XBox event was “Dance Central”. Both look pretty good and use Kinect.)
• If you like Glee, here’s a karaoke game for you. I…really don’t know how to respond to that.
• I didn’t think Beyblade was still that popular in the states, much less calling for a video game version.
• The only Hudson game that looks good is Lost in Shadows, but that’s certainly enough.
• Neverdead just looks…bizzare. (I’ve seen bizzarer, but still…)

Note that these aren’t detailed analysis, nor am I prematurely convinced that Sorcery and El Shaddai are going to drag people to hell or be blasphemous, intentional or otherwise, or even that the final games will be good or bad. These are just the initial thoughts I had when I saw the trailers or demos on TV or online. And these are just the ones I saw. There are more trailers and demos than I could possibly check out.

So let’s forget all that. What about the big three conferences? Which one blew me away, and which one made me go “meh”? Tomorrow, the least interesting conference, Wednesday the middle of the road, and Thursday the one that got me the most jazzed.