written on Monday, May 1, 2009
A lot of trailers came out just before E3, trying to be heard above the din of the actual event. But apparently they waited for the day of to release the Just Cause 2 trailer. While not as completely insane as Neo Contra, the game is delightfully absurd. There's plenty of vehicle hijacking, parachuting, and stuff blowing up. It brought a smile to my face.
Valve announced a sequel to Left 4 Dead, due out this year. That seems awfully quick, especially for Valve. Also, the Rock Paper Shotgun preview has some interesting tidbits. I'm most interested in the pacing changes.
The old game had Crescendo events where you had to hunker down and survive an onslaught. L4D2 (R2D2's brother?) now has Gauntlet events where zombies only come from one direction, but it's exactly where you need to go. (Insert salmon analogy here.) And the director can now change the layout of certain parts of the level. That could be nice. Although historically, randomly generated levels have always felt randomly generated. :P
Microsoft made their standard play for the Wii demographic. They've got a motion sensing camera now. They're adding internet radio, improving their Netflix capabilities a bit, and adding Facebook and Twitter support, allowing people to post screen shots from new games that bother to support it. I've seen Microsoft make this play so many times, part of me wants them to succeed just so they'll give it a bit of a rest. They wouldn't of course. E3 is the only gaming event mainstream media even knows about, so it's where announcements for broader audiences get made.
It's probably also worth mentioning that they're planning to have digital distribution of full games starting in August. All the initial titles are over a year old, so retailers shouldn't instantly revolt. It looks like the next logical step.
Oh, and Red Steel 2 looks promising. I am tentatively pleased. :)
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