E3-PO

As I am never embarrassed to admit, I am a nerd. As such, I pay a lot of attention to gaming news. A few weeks ago, one of the biggest events of the gaming year happened, and I just haven't had the chance to sort my thoughts on it to write a coherent review of what I thought were the good, the bad, and the ugly announcements of the year.

Electronic Entertainment Exo 2009 (E3) was the fifteenth expo held in the history of the event, after almost being destroyed a couple years ago due to the Electronic Software Association (ESA) Terror Squads trying to make the event a whole lot less fun. Historically, the announcements at E3 could be ranged from pants-creamingly awesome to so boring you'd need to take meth just to stay awake. With the history of Virtual Boy, Dreamcast, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Metal Gear Solid one, two, Portable Ops, and four all being announced, as well as the spectacular melting of the first ever PlayStation 3 demo occurring since its inception all add to the spectacle of what was to be expected.

This year, some of the news struck me as really lackluster. Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Halo: Reach...I mean, really? How is a sequel to the biggest zombie shooter of the year a big announcement? Crackdown was good, but as with most sandbox games, it lost its appeal once it had been finished once. That, and no one bought it unless they wanted to play the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. And another Halo game? What the hell. Ugh. Just ugh. Nintendo made a bunch of blah-like announcements as well, with a new Metroid, a new Super Mario Galaxy, a new Wii Fit, and other revitalizations of dead properties. Where's Mother 3, huh? And with the dead properties, who needs a new Final Fantasy online game for the PS3?

Big announcements that excited me were a bit rarer, but they were worth it. The first thing that made me jump for joy was Team ICO's announcement that they were supposed to announce last summer at the Tokyo Game Show, but put it off for a goddamn year! The Last Guardian looks absolutely amazing, though I do not imagine it being a huge seller on the PlayStation 3. While Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are undeniably some of the best titles for the PlayStation 2, they did not sell well because most gamers spend hundreds of dollars on systems only to play the latest Madden or the easiest shooter that makes them feel badass. Team ICO does not care for these people, and neither do I. The team is completely made up of people who do not work in video games, but rather artists. Sony had the idea to diversify their portfolio with this odd team, and they rock the hell out of the games-as-art ideal that I hold. For those who played Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian was made on the idea that the relationship between Wander and Agro was something worth exploring and creating a game on, and the trailer looks fantastic, done in classic Team ICO fashion. I was so excited for this, I canceled my reserve on Saboteur to put it on this. As far as the computers at work are concerned, The Last Guardian should be out around April.

Microsoft did have one out-of-this world announcement with Project Natal. It is akin to the Wii Sensor Bar, but way better. You walk in the room, the system turns on, welcomes you by name, and one game by Lionhead Studios, Milo and Kate will recognize your emotions by your face and voice. To me, it will probably be way too expensive to consider buying, and talking to a virtual kid will get old kind of quickly, but just the fact that we have this kind of technology is goddamn sweet.

Other short but good announcements were things like Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Tatsunoko vs Capcom. Good games coming from good companies, especially the latter, which has gotten really good reviews over in Japan. New Metal Gear games are always good, I just don't have a PSP and can't get really excited for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

A big flop of an announcement to me was the PSP GO. It has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry, but it won't. It can't, really. People like selling their physical games for credit, as stores like GameStop prove. Amazon.com has instated a trade-in program, as other stores starting to sell used product. Taking away the physicality of games and making them all downloadable, it A: hurts the games that people already own that inevitably will have to be re-bought in order to play with the new system, and B: it will hurt sales on the older PSP models if games stop coming out for it and are only downloadable, especially since a lot of customers still don't practice downloading content on a regular basis. If they cancel the PSP 3000 production for the PSP GO, the Sony portable system will almost definitely crash and burn, such as the Virtual Boy.

E3 had some really good stuff, a lot of mediocre stuff, and some down-right bad ideas. But thats what sharing ideas is about: weeding out the crap.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor