On E3

After prematurely coming back from my vacations I decided to check out what happened at E3. Now, in the past few years this particular even is going down a slippery slope to a pool of excrements. The press conferences are boring, people talk shit, less and less companies even appear on E3 and most of the games shown were either exploited so much before the show that anyone will lose interest in them, or are something not even worth paying attention to.
This year is no different I’m afraid. Actually, it’s worse then ever.

First of there are no big announcements, unless you think Square-Enix announcing Final Fantasy XIII for the 360 is something big. Still, I think anyone who can count saw that coming. Resident Evil 5 proved to me that even though I think it’s gonna be a great game it’s just RE 4.5, and when I didn’t mind Resident Evil 0 - 3 (including Code Veronica) being pretty much the same gameplay-wise (because they were survival horrors) an action game like RE5 should feature more changes.
What else? God of War III? That is a no-brainer; I think everyone was expecting it to be announced.
Fallout III seems to be ok, but they didn’t really show anything new.
Gears of War 2, Killzone 2. Resistance 2? We’ve all seen them before and E3 didn’t bring any substantial info regarding the bigger titles (and I’m not talking only about those three above).

How about the three big press conferences?
Microsoft did what they do every year. They said they are the best, have the most third party games (developers, developers, developers, developers…) and sell the most software. Not a hard thing considering they had a head start. Sure, they announced the new Dashboard which I think is pretty awesome. I even like the silly avatars, but I’m pretty sure that the typical 360 owner would like something that doesn’t look like a character taken out from a cereal commercial. And say what you will, but it’s a so obvious rip-off from the Miis that my liver hurts. The fact that they are more complex models and were designed by Rare doesn’t change much.
All the interactive games/shows/events shown are quite a neat idea, but since it’s M$ they will be only available in the countries that have their Live services, which means most of the world won’t be able to take part in them, and hence doesn’t give a shit. Good job with creating the global gamer community Microsoft. I guess some places are just not good enough to be the part of America Planet.

Now, a look at Sony. In their usual style Sony announced much, promised much, and then showed Buzz for the PSP. Yeah…
Ok, inFamous looks interesting, Resistance 2 seems ok, the Rachet and Clank PSN game is something worth looking into and the Little Big Planet presentation was awesome, but there was nothing that I would comment with “Wow”. I do admit that MAG (Massive Action Game) seems impressive from what they said (256 players in one game!), but as usual they just showed a CD teaser and gave little info. To be honest, I didn’t expect anything else from Sony, but I really hoped that they will show something meaningful. True, they announced the VOD service, but it’s only for the US at the moment, so I don’t care.

What about Nintendo?
For Nintendo I will be very brief. I think, Nintendo press conference was the most embarrassing thing on E3 I’ve seen in years. They made complete fools out of themselves and proved once more that they have absolutely no idea what to do with Wii, but to release a peripheral after a peripheral to satisfy the housewives and pensioners. They didn’t announce anything that would be even remotely interesting.
After watching all the people on the stage act like complete morons I’m pretty sure I suffered brain damage.

For me the 3 most interesting things of the show were the announcement of GTA: Chinatown Wars for the DS, Portal: Still Alive that will be released on XBLA and Fat Princess – the multiplayer PSN game.
Pretty sad considering it’s one of the biggest electronic entertainment events of the year.