Day one of E3; The highs & the lows

So the first & biggest day of E3 is over and done with, and in a way I could not be more relieved. Living in the UK meant that I was up until 3am watching everything, and had been watching it for 10 hours straight after a morning at work as well. I have never wanted to just curl up and die in bed more so than I do today. Anyway, yesterday had some highs for me, but also a lot of lows. Here’s a brief look at what I reckon to E3 so far;

The Highs

• Dance Central 2 is getting a campaign mode. I mentioned that I wanted something like this in my Dance Central review previously so I am quite excited to try this out.
• Need for Speed; The Run. I’m not a massive racing fan, but the NFS games have always intrigued me and this just looked stunning. I’m not sure about the QTE’s in the out of car sequences, but we shall see.
• The new SSX looks awesome amounts of fun. I haven’t played SSX since the N64, so this had better be good.
• Overstrike announced by EA. Looks like a fun to play TPS, capable of four player co op.
• Battlefield 3. this looks amazing even though I haven’t played any of the series before. Infinitely better than COD already in my books /controversy
• Raving Rabbids coming to the Kinect. I don’t like the Kinect, but I like Raving Rabbids. Instant win for me.
• Assassins Creed Revelations. A gameplay trailer was shown and it looks like an incredible ending to an incredible series. I just hope we get to find out what it’s really all about in Ezio’s final chapter.
• Cross platform functionality between the NGP/PS Vita & the PS3.
• YouTube partnered with XBL.
• New Tomb Raider. Live demo was shown & it looks incredible, although they may want to consider investing in a new voice actor for Lara.

The Lows

• Way too much emphasis on Kinect. Not everyone wants this peripheral, nor do they have the money to afford this peripheral.
• Fable with Kinect. This looks awful. Who the hell wants an on the rails RPG adventure game in 2011? I don’t care if it has motion control, it looks terrible.
• Just Dance 3 is going multi platform. This might be a good thing, but I’m unsure. Just Dance on the Wii has unresponsive controls and a tiny catalogue of tracks that come with the actual game. Will they learn from this mistake on the other consoles?
• Driver San Francisco. This wasn’t so much a low for me, as a bit of a confusing moment. Only because I remember playing a demo of this in London a year ago. I honestly thought this had been released already. Old news.
• Cross platform functionality between the NGP/PS Vita & the PS3.
• The Sims Social. I was initially excited about this last night, but I think I’ve changed my mind. It’s a little bit stalker-ish and looks like EA’s answer to Habbo Hotel.
• ME3 uses Kinect voice recognition. Some people were excited, I thought it was pointless. Don’t be so lazy and just use the controller.
• Kinect Disneyland Adventures. Enough said.
• Bing partnered with XBL.

So far there are few things that have wowed me without then delivering some form of disappointment. I am interested to see what Nintendo pull out of the hat today though as so far Microsoft have failed me miserably, and EA & Ubisoft are beating the top dogs.  I won’t be impressed with the Wii 2 if that is announced, nor do I care about more remakes for the 3DS.

The build up to E3

I shall be away again as of tomorrow, and then down in London on Saturday for the MCM Expo, so figured I had better actually make a quick update on my personal ponderings about E3.

Taking several days off work has become a bit of a habit for me as soon as E3 rolls around. No I’m not flying out to America to attend, as much as I wish I was, but instead I shall be sat at my computer, watching every last conference with intrigue & glee. I will even sit here with my notepad and pen, scribbling down notes furiously as I drool over the biggest news on games & hardware. It may sound sad, but gaming is my passion & I need to know what’s going on.

What will E3 hold for us this year though? It’s been a funny year for the gaming industry; Sony are grovelling & begging for our forgiveness due to this entire PSN debacle, Nintendo have won some and lost some with the 3DS, and well, Microsoft have likely just continued to grin with delight as Bill Gates bathes in money.

From Sony I believe it will be a 2 hour grovelling session complete with some thrown together ideas to appease the public. Microsoft may announce a new console, but I find that highly unlikely with the continuing roaring success of the Xbox 360 & the recent release of the Kinect. As for Nintendo, well, the rumour mill has been churning out pictures & news of a new console from them, but I can’t help but feel it could be overkill if they do announce the ‘Wii 2′.

There is a lot of uncertainty for me this year. Last year was hardware-centric from all three of the big boys in the industry, so it would be nice if this time they just took a step back & focused on what we use their hardware for; the games themselves.

Ubisoft Summer BBQ Event

Yesterday I had the pleasure of making my way to the Ubisoft Summer BBQ down in London with my lovely friends at Top Gayer. How excited was I to be trying out a bunch of awesome new games and technology months before release? Very wouldn’t even begin to cover it. There was also free food and drink, but that was only a small incentive…promise.