16 July, 2008

E3 2008: Post Press Conference Quagmire

Okay, so it sounds like the add on for Nintendo's new motion controller is a gyroscope. By pulling together accelerometer, infra red, and gyroscope data, the Wiimote will give much better tracking data. How much better remains to be seen. And since the thing will be sold with Wii Sports Beach Games next spring, there's really nothing to care about yet. Microsoft or Sony could still eat Nintendo's lunch.

Sony put up their video on demand service. I know Xbox Live had some video on demand, but I honestly have no idea how the services currently stack up or will stack up after Microsoft's other partner deals go through.

For me to care about video on demand, there'd have to be something I want to watch. Battlestar Galactica is far too bleak to own. I have no tolerance for fiction that's stingy with details (Robert Jordan's corpse, I'm looking at you.), so Lost is out. And Heroes might be worth seeing. But I know they had two crappy episodes before the writers strike, and that's the last I heard. I guess I'm veering off topic, but the truth is, the biggest part of E3 is done.

With the press conferences over most of what I'm doing is reading impressions of game demos. There are a million trailers, too, but anything can look good in a trailer. I want gameplay footage or the written impressions of someone who spent time with the game. And even then, things change. The demo for Uncharted I played at PAX last year was awful, but reviewers (who also hated that demo) say the game was extensively reworked and turned out great.

Still, it's always scary to see stuff like this Resistance 2 demo. The events feel painfully contrived. The demo player anticipates an event that doesn't look like it could be survived by anyone who didn't have prior knowledge. There's a lot of boring jogging through uninteresting environments (that's probably supposed to be suspenseful), and the player gets hurled for absurd distance. There's no falling damage in the game ever, right? Because if there is, this sequence is so reality breaking as to be offensive. You are not Kojima! Do not pretend you are!

Considering Resistance 2 is the PS3's big shooter this fall, Insomniac will undoubtedly be earning its name, working all hours to get this game ready. Here's hoping.

Borderlands had a similar poor showing, at least as Shawn Elliot and Jeff Green described it on the GFW Radio podcast. Gearbox is apparently still trying to sell the fact that the game has a random gun generator. I would like to sing you the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (with a tip of the hat to Billy West and John DiMaggio).

NO-BO-DY CAAARES!
NO-BO-DY CAAARES!


Anyway, Giant Bomb just put up another podcast of E3 impressions. The sacrifices I make for you people. :P

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