Daeval's E3 2005 Impressions

[Daeval]

(2 Part Post)

 

Well, I'm back from E3, so I thought I'd share my findings. I didn't take as many pictures as I'd hoped, mostly because a lot of the games I was interested in only had a trailer on the floor - which would already be available in higher rez on gametrailers. I decided to try and show some of the stuff that the media DOESN'T usually show you at E3, so I took some pics of displays and stuff when no real info was available.

 

A lot of this is just going to be opinions and impressions and such, but there will be scattered images too. I'm positive that some of this will already have been covered by the media by the time I post it - I don't care, I've been too busy at E3 to check all the news pages. Just enjoy it or ignore it.

 

Images are thumbnails!

 

Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting

 

 

 

Hellgate: London:

This game looked very impressive. It had some really weird looking weaponry. This is definately one to keep an eye on if you're into hack n' slash style rpgs and/or FPS games.

 

 

Genji: Dawn of the Samurai:

Final Fight meets Dynasty Warriors - pick your ancient asian hero and walk down ancient asian streets, thumping the ancient, mystical equivalents of street thugs and the occasional boss. It looked like there were a variety of options in combat, including some fairly large spell-like effects, but no one playing knew what they were doing so nothing got too crazy. Some of the enemy animations were pretty wild, but the player's combat animations looked almost directly "inspired" by Dynasty Warriors. Ironic that Koei's booth was clearly visible from the display. I totally forgot to check out Koei, even after making this observation... Ugh...

 

 

Alan Wake:

Theatre only, probably just a trailer that will be online.

 

 

Shadow of the Colossus:

This is that game the ICO people are working on. The demo level was the same giant monster thing that has shown up in most of the magazines, and most of what I saw had the hero climbing its fur and jabbing it like mad - rare was the player who figured out the puzzle. I managed to catch one just as he finished it, and what is that pouring from the creatures head like an uncapped oil well but shadowy black stuff? Possibly familiar shadowy black stuff? Maybe not, I dunno, we'll see. Consider my interest piqued.

 

 

Okami:

Still shots don't do justice to this game. It's pretty. It involved drawing things, calligraphy style, into existence at certain points in the adventure action. One person approached a statue and was asked to (roughly) paint the sword into the statue's hand, and then the sword appeared. The sounds and animations really reminded me of Wind Waker - completely aside from the graphical style.

 

 

Tales of.... Whatever:

The one at the Namco booth. All they had was a trailer. I watched some media dork film it with a really nice camera. Check Gametrailers.

 

 

Spore:

I totally missed the EA booth. :\

 

 

Everybody Loves Katamari Damacy:

It was playable on the floor, and the demo actually made mention of E3. If your performance was dissapointing, your reprimand might include things like "You're supposed to have fun at E3!" etc. That said, it looked just like its predecessor, so I didn't bother with pics. I DID get a few pics of the giant Katamari at the Namco booth though. They were putting out loud announcements to bring stuff, but it was still pretty dissapointing by the King's standards.

 

 

Advance Wars DS:

Using the stylus is extremely intuitive - I only played with it for a minute and I'm wishing I could just finish the game of AW2 I started whenever I get a DS. The top screen usually shows the info for the currently selected unit, although someone got it to show some kind of unit count. Some, if not all, of the older War Room maps are in. No gimmicky changes to gameplay that I could find.

 

 

Final Fight: Streetwise:

I played this one for a while and had a blast. Buttons are Quick attack, Strong attack, Throw (yes, you can direct thrown people into others), Action, Block, and two special buttons that I didn't really use. All the attacks (including throw) are special with weapons, and the attacks mostly look pretty good. Controls are surprisingly easy to work with for a 3d-beat-em-up, no messed up "targetting" system to get in the way. The game makes the "walking down a street in a flocked up neighborhood" feel kind of work. People are scattered about the environment, appearing somewhat natural, and not all are enemies. You can attack people out of the blue, and if they have friends then you have a fight on your hands. Others will get scared if you attack someone unprovoked, but it's not an unnatural "OMG I RUN AWAY" effect - they actually kind of back off slowly and try to talk you down if you approach them next. Unless they're gang members, in which case they talk trash and you choke them out with a baseball bat. I accidentally broke a 2x4 over a napping bum.

 

 

Dawn of War: Winter Assault:

The I.Guard units look really nice. I overheard one of the exhibitors say that they will have two campaigns - he called them Order and Disorder(?) (or some synonym, but it wasn't "chaos") - and that you could play each as the appropriate races. He also mentioned that single player missions would have less linear gameplay. Recorded footage only - not playable. Impereal Psyker units are freaky looking.

[Daeval]

(Part 2 of 2)

 

Prey:

This one had a really small showing (only 2 randomly placed screens in a huge booth), but some rather enthusiastic exhibitors. They only showed a short trailer that DID have some gameplay footage. However, the gameplay footage was broken into extremely short chunks, making it hard to form any opinions. It was a graphically endowed FPS game, but not much else could be drawn from it. There is some kind of energy-bow-and-arrow weapon, and an old indian dood and the slogan "Earth's savior doesn't want the job." I had a conversation with one of the exhibitors who said they're going for a European media blitz in the coming month, followed by a trickle down into the US - he said the gameplay shots in PC Gamer are going to be the exclusive US gameplay shots for a while to come. They gave out copies of that mag, and I can make scans if you're interested (you know who you are). However, a belgian website was video taping the trailer while the exhibitor was explaining to me that us americans weren't supposed to have any other in-game pictures for a while. In other words - that trailer should be available soon anyway.

 

 

Electroplankton:

A strange "game" for DS. You put various types of "plankton" into a virtual environment and they make "music" as they (and you) interact with said environment. It's more along the lines of a "sandbox" than an actual game, as far as I can tell. For example, one type of plankton might jump out of the water and make noise as it does so. Another might make noise based on disturbances in the water - combine the two in weird ways. You can also interact with the stylus to make for a lot of combinations. Neat stuff.

 

 

Quake 4:

This was being shown in a closed theatre only. I didn't bother waiting in line - it's probably already on the web.

 

 

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars:

Trailer only. Nice booth display though.

 

 

Soul Calibur III:

Playable on PS2, but limited character selection (tira was the only playable new one). Plays almost identically to SCII, as far as I could tell in a few matches. Tira is teh hot - yellow 2nd outfit looks like a Final Fantasy reject. I videoed a few rounds of her and mitsurugi fighting (in both of her costumes), but there will probably be better ones out there. Let me know if you want them for some reason.

 

 

Ultimate Spider Man:

Except for the use of the mostly hideous "Ultimate" versions of the characters, this game looked pretty cool. You can play as Venom.

 

 

Prince of Persia III:

Basically more of the same, but with some new, really wicked aerial attacks and moves that combine stealth, movement, and combat in one fluid motion. There's a playable, white-haired, anime-ish character who uses a chain as a weapon and to interact with the environment, not sure if he's in part II. There are also chariot battle sequences. This game didn't look half bad.

 

 

Square/Enix:

The big thing at their booth was Kingdom Hearts II, it was everywhere. There was a huge screen running trailers and things, but it took too long between so I didn't bother watching it. Other than that, no new info on any of the hotly awaited titles. The Mana game had a neat trailer that included the pink birds from Secret of Mana flying over a lush Mana-tree-ish foresty place. I shed a tear of joy.

 

 

Destory All Humans!:

I didn't get to see much of this, but I had a friend who was really impressed. He said it captured a kind of goofy humor really well, and looked like fun. The little bit I saw looked basically like ratchet-and-clank style jumping around and beating on things, but I dunno.. They had a neat booth display with an alien that would come down this tube thing on an old school diner.

 

 

The Next-Gen Stuff:

Nintendo and Sony had things in theatres with lines - I avoided them. There was actually a decent amount of XBox360 stuff on the floor by comparison, including a ton of them on display with really hideous faceplates. They were the only next-gen system that appeared to actually be running on the floor, but the system itself was not visibly attached to the monitor in any way, so it may have been some kind of dev setup. There were also room-cooling fans (the kind that stands about two feet high with a blade length of about 6-8 inches) hidden poorly inside the display kiosks, with their backs to the outside and pointed right at the systems (or vice versa). To be fair, it was pretty warm in there. The XB360 games on display were almost all sports titles.

 

 

The Gameboy Micro:

Don't doubt it until you've seen it - it's actually pretty impressive. The screen is scarily small though, and most of the games running on them were not fast-paced titles. The faceplates were very abundant and of surprisingly tasteful design. The thing is TINY, and the ones you could play with were literally tethered to the booth babes to keep them secure.

 

 

something revolutionary that does not include 3d graphics, first person shooting, or carrying a type of sword that hold spiritual value:

See "Electroplankton," it meets all your criteria for revolutionary.

 

 

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:

I cruised THQ but found nothing on this game. It's entirely possible that I missed it, their booth was big and messy.

 

 

Odama:

I saw this quirky title at last year's E3, but hadn't heard much on it since. On screen, it looked about the same this year, except now it used an awkward looking microphone strapped to the GameCube controller. The game is basically this: You have a slow-moving "bell carrier" and a small army of soldiers on the bottom half of the screen, all of which you order around with a series of simple voice commands through the mic. Your goal is to get the bell through the gates at the top of the screen. In your way are an enemy army, which can call in reinforcements, and some obstacles like rivers, huts, etc. At the same time, you're playing pinball on the same screen - using the ball to knock open gates, bash enemy soldiers (or your own!), smash huts, trigger events, etc. If the bell gets pushed back through your "flippers," you lose. It's simple, but surprisingly fun. The mic didn't respond well to commands amid the noise of E3, but there were a lot of commands on thier cheat sheet, making for a decent amount of possible tactics. I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

 

 

Beat Down:

My first impression: "We didn't get the Def Jam liscence." It looks like the fighting system might be slightly more complex than Final Fight's, and the world is all about "bling." Think Final Fight meets NBA Ballers. The first thing I saw was a large man brutally piledriving and then bodyslamming a small woman dressed like someone you might find loitering alone in front of a liquor store at 3am - and then trash talking her. The animations were pretty good, but I can't say I was terribly impressed by the content. My eye is on Final Fight.

 

 

SFA3 for the PSP:

Most handheld titles only had one screen and no monitor display, so I skipped over a lot of them. If this was there, I missed it completely.

 

 

Eye Toy: Kinetic:

I was ready to dismiss this when I saw the althetic people they'd hired to kick and punch at the circular on-screen targets. Granted, the hit-detection looked much better than the older eye toy titles, but it was still your basic "swing at this, flail at that" kind of deal. And then I saw the second screen. There, an older woman gracefully manipulated an on-screen ball with Carradine-esque, tai-chi-like motions. This was something new - precise control through the eye-toy's motion detection. That's also when I realized that it was intended as an "excercise game" - something along the lines of "Yourself." With this purpose in mind, I was actually kind of impressed with both intent and execution. However, I watched it demonstrate how to kick and punch properly, but I don't know how well it would teach tai-chi.

 

 

Shadow the Hedghog:

I watched people play this one for a bit. The graphics are much prettier than the older 3D sonic titles, and there seemed to be much better variety to the acrobatics. There's not really a lot to report though - it's basically a 3d platformer/action style deal - but it looked like a decent one.

 

 

NamcoXCapcom:

I checked out both associated booths and saw nothing related to this title. Both booths were huge though, I might have just missed it.

 

 

 

 

Other Random Stuff:

 

* Falcoon was signing some limited edition Mai posters at the SNK booth. The 1P one was given out today, the 2P one will be given out Thursday. Most people waited an hour to an hour and a half in line to get Wednesday's poster. Booth babes were giving out the Terry hats to people in line and then just in general. A man with a very big nose and an excellent K' costume passed out rubberbands.

 

* Outside, looking South from the North entrance.

 

* Nintendo had a DS "download station" in their booth. It looked kind of like one of those poster-size information stands they have in malls. People surrounded it, DSes in hand, downloading various E3 demos and things. It was quite a sight.

 

* PS3 Banner over the northern entrance.

 

* US Tax Dollars At Work (Maybe?)

 

* The game looked decent, the booth looked better.

 

* They had the Batmobile on display for Batman Begins. I'm assuming it's the BMB anyway. It has a weird post-apocalyptic batman kind of look to it, like maybe Alfred threw it together in the garage. It's neat, but I don't know if it says "I'm batman and I just started." Maybe it's a kind of naievety about his not-being-invincible like in Year One. It has teeth in the front - you can make them out in the picture above and between the front wheels. They sort of say "catwoman" more than "batman" to me, but whateva.

 

* A few shots and a Video Pan of the XBox "booth." The video pan may not work until tommorow 'cause I borked it. It may not work after that if geocities is especially stupid.

 

* I forget what this blurry tank was for, but it looked cool. I didn't even know the booth babes were there until I got close enough to take the pic.

 

* This display by LucasArts was in the middle of a long, heavily trafficked hallway connecting the two major parts of the convention center. It appeared to be a video advertisement at first, but observant pedestrians noticed that it was contact-sensetive. When the shown ad was displayed, lighting would reach out and touch the feet of people walking on it, similar to one of those electric globe things. Others images included sparkles around the LucasArts logo that followed footsteps, and a series of X-wings and other ships that flew by, and would explode when stepped on. It was surrounded on one side by a large static display (behind the cameraman in this image). When taking the picture, people didn't understand that they needed to be IN MY WAY in order for the picture to make any sense. The rightmost pair of feet belong to the person who got me my ticket.

 

* Call of Duty 2 had this cool huge turret thing built up that stuck out over people waiting in line for the theatre thing they had.

 

* Far Cry Instincts had a cool display in the ubisoft booth.

 

* My Loot.

 

* K'Dash asked me to get him one of those Falcoon posters, in exchange for a rich bounty from the far east, so I did.

 

 

 

Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting

 

Note for admins: Maybe this could be moved to Rants & Raves? I didn't want to put it there without asking. Move and rename as you see fit, if appropriate.

Edited May 21, 2005 by Daeval

[Agozer]

I must have videos of Tira and Mitsurugi fighting. Excellent coverage. Thanks.

[Gryph]

(Part 2 of 2)

 

Prey:

This one had a really small showing (only 2 randomly placed screens in a huge booth), but some rather enthusiastic exhibitors.  They only showed a short trailer that DID have some gameplay footage.  However, the gameplay footage was broken into extremely short chunks, making it hard to form any opinions.  It was a graphically endowed FPS game, but not much else could be drawn from it.  There is some kind of energy-bow-and-arrow weapon, and an old indian dood and the slogan "Earth's savior doesn't want the job."  I had a conversation with one of the exhibitors who said they're going for a European media blitz in the coming month, followed by a trickle down into the US - he said the gameplay shots in PC Gamer are going to be the exclusive US gameplay shots for a while to come.  They gave out copies of that mag, and I can make scans if you're interested (you know who you are).  However, a belgian website was video taping the trailer while the exhibitor was explaining to me that us americans weren't supposed to have any other in-game pictures for a while.  In other words - that trailer should be available soon anyway. 

Thanks for that. Yesterday IGN, Gamespot, and GameSpy got a sit down preview and they had impressions. Sounds like a very weird game. And I already have the magazine but thanks for tha offer.

 

Interesting stuff, hope you're having a blast. You got a nice batch of stuff. The Fatal Fury hat is cool.

[Wizard]

You so win. 1st poster is good enough but the 2nd one is where it's at (Mostly because the MI outfit is hot). Hell tell me what you waaaaaant!

 

Edit: Funny you took a picture of Tira from that angle. More Setsuka too =o

Edited May 19, 2005 by K`dash

[Inky]

good stuff

you didn't happen to stop by the Capcom and SNK booths did you?

Edited May 19, 2005 by garageink

[Daeval]

You so win. 1st poster is good enough but the 2nd one is where it's at (Mostly because the MI outfit is hot). Hell tell me what you waaaaaant!

 

Edit: Funny you took a picture of Tira from that angle. More Setsuka too =o

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I know, the second poster was the better one, but alas, after 23 hours without sleep, there was no way I was making it up there at 10am today. Surprise me, you know I like nerdy stuff.

 

And those damn Soul Calibur statues were up on the top of the display, and life-size or bigger. However, when I was trying to get that shot there was a crowd and a guy just kind of standing around with his huge camera filming them, and I was actually leaning under a sign, around the signpost, and over a stand and I think a trash can all at once just to get that damn shot. So we were both at odd angles.

 

 

good stuff

you didn't happen to stop by the Capcom and SNK booths did you?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I did, that's where I saw Final Fight and Okami and stuff. Was there anything in particular you wanted to hear about?

 

 

Reminder to self: Post on Odama, Beat Down, and that Eye Toy game when you have more time.

Edited May 19, 2005 by Daeval

[Lucandrake]

You so win. 1st poster is good enough but the 2nd one is where it's at (Mostly because the MI outfit is hot). Hell tell me what you waaaaaant!

 

Edit: Funny you took a picture of Tira from that angle. More Setsuka too =o

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I know, the second poster was the better one, but alas, after 23 hours without sleep, there was no way I was making it up there at 10am today. Surprise me, you know I like nerdy stuff.

 

And those damn Soul Calibur statues were up on the top of the display, and life-size or bigger. However, when I was trying to get that shot there was a crowd and a guy just kind of standing around with his huge camera filming them, and I was actually leaning under a sign, around the signpost, and over a stand and I think a trash can all at once just to get that damn shot. So we were both at odd angles.

 

 

good stuff

you didn't happen to stop by the Capcom and SNK booths did you?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I did, that's where I saw Final Fight and Okami and stuff. Was there anything in particular you wanted to hear about?

 

 

Reminder to self: Post on Odama, Beat Down, and that Eye Toy game when you have more time.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yeah, SFA3 previews for the PSP. O, no shadow the hedghog

 

No news on NamcoXCapcom neither?

Edited May 19, 2005 by Drake

[Wizard]

No news on NamcoXCapcom neither?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Theres a new NxC trailer out but I can't find the link. It was posted on the Offical site though.

[Alpha]

Simply awesome, thanks for sharing this here exclusively on 1Emulation.

[Diso]

Awesome stuff man. Thx for sharing