Daeval's E3 2006 Impressions

[Daeval]

Alright, now that the server move is over with, I can finally post this. Sorry it's a week late this time, but between school and work I'm lucky I had time to eat this week. I didn't get a whole lot of reporting done this year, and you can blame Nintendo.

 

Same as last year, I didn't bother much with games that only had a trailer on the floor. Those will be up on GameTrailers by now, so you'll be able to see as much as I did of those games. I tried to cover as many requests as possible, but I didn't even make it to most of the bigger hall, so I'm sorry to the many that I missed. The quest for the Wii dominated my experience, both temporaly and energetically. Nintendo had a very tangible presence in the crowd's group psyche at E3 this year, and I felt it would be insincere if I didn't reflect that in my report. Thanks go to my housemate for a few of the random pictures. This will be a multipost.

 

Standard disclaimer: 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 to check all the news pages. Just enjoy it or ignore it.

 

Images are thumbnails!

 

Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting.

 

 

 

 

Nintendo Wii Saga - Part 1:

It's 8:30am and we're still on the train a few blocks from the LA convention center. Already the buzz is kicking up around us, everyone with a badge or a backpack is talking about it. Groups of strangers conspire together, mapping the fastest route through the show floor, crafting their plan of attack. Everyone wants some, and everyone knows they'll only get one chance. It will be high tide at the Nintendo booth the second the doors open.

 

It's 9:00am and we're at the gates, the doors have just opened and we're all on the same mission. The entire crowd moves in a single direction from every corner of the floor, drawn towards the giant blue Nintendo logo. We get there, and we realize the line has already begun to snake its way out of the booth. Dashing just as fast as security will allow, we follow the queue towards the back of the hall. Like a sergeant shouting orders over falling artillery, a grizzled older man in a Nintendo uniform directs us through a shortcut towards the end of the line. We are nearing the other side of the hall, and what looks like the end is only the first of several turns.

 

It's 9:03 and we are standing at the end of the line to see the Wii. We will have to go a quarter of the way up one side of the hall, accross the entire length of the back, and then back down half of the other side before we're at the entrance to the Nintendo booth. We wait. We commiserate and befriend our neighbors. We start to count "holy craps" and "oh my gods" as people come around the corners only to find more line. We start waiting in shifts, I get to escape for a little while...

 

 

 

The Sony Booth:

The huge Sony booth was smattered with PSP mini-booths that were cleverly crafted to look like public places. There was a train/subway car, an air liner, a park green, a city street, and others. There was none of their much-loathed PSP advertising campaigns that I could find.

 

 

Warhawk - PS3:

I was surprised they had this playable, since supposedly it was thrown together fairly quickly. It was a little disorienting at first, but after a minute or two, moving around the dual-shock shaped controller to fly the plane became pretty easy. It didn't control exactly like a normal jet sim though. To turn sharply or roll you had to turn the controller and then hit one of the L or R buttons that was bound to "tight turn" or "roll" to modify the manuever. So far as I could tell it would always level you out as soon as you let go of roll, so for better or worse you never had to worry about flying upside down. I thought it would be weird to use the face buttons while controlling like this, but it felt pretty natural. I did occasionally wish that my wrists had a greater range of motion, but I think most of it could be fixed with calibration. By the end of my five or so minutes with it, I was doing fly-bys on capital ships and taking out fighters with relative ease. All in all, it was a pretty solid first effort for the PS3's motion sensing technology, and in some ways it felt more polished than some of the Wii stuff I would eventually see. Oh yeah, and the enemy fighters (at least, I think they were enemies) moved in bird-like flocks, which was very cool looking.

 

 

Gran Turismo HD - PS3:

People were almost invariably playing this with the newly added bikes. People who talked like GT veterans were hitting a learning curve trying to ride the bikes, so it sounds like they handle significantly different from the cars. One person mentioned "leaning," which made me think the tilt sensors may be involved, but I couldn't confirm this due to time constraints. The graphics looked really nice in-game, though I only saw the familiar GT4 tracks. Bikes looked clean, and riders seemed to move appropriately. What I saw of the between-races interface looked like it was new, and maybe a little more user-friendly than GT4's load-time-heavy UI.

 

 

 

Nintendo Wii Saga - Part 2:

I'm now on my way back to the Wii line, and I pass by Sony's PS3 theater. There is a sign near some rope barriers that says "120 Minutes from this point," but there isn't a soul around. I pass one that says "60 Minutes from this point," and again, nobody anywhere. Finally, I pass a sign that says "30 Minutes from this point," and about 25 feet ahead of that there are a few people waiting just outside the theater. Sony has at least 20 playable PS3s on the floor, but I had only had to wait about 5 minutes to get my hands on one. I meet my friends back in the Wii line, at about the "Two and a half hours from this point" mark. It's really clear what has people excited this year.

 

It's about 10:15am and we're still in line. Some Nintendo reps are asking people to show them a Zelda related tattoo for an instant-in to the booth. I have a green pen in my backpack and consider tattooing myself on the spot, but doubt my artistic abilities. Talk with a friendly neighbor passes some time, then it's my turn to go wandering again...

 

 

 

Steambot Chronicles - PS2:

Atlus had a lot of interesting looking things at their booth, but none of them were the kind of game you could really "get" in the few minutes I had to spend with them. This one started with an Ogre Battle-like personality questionnaire that presumably determined some things about your character. The art style was pretty neat, and I liked the concept of giant steam-powered robots.

 

Contact - DS:

I couldn't really figure out what this one was about, which was in itself kind of intruiging. It looked like some kind of social game with the DS, with an art style reminiscient of Earthbound. I will be checking the game sites to figure this one out.

 

Yggdra Union - GBA:

This one had a battle system that looked like Ogre Battle's, but was some kind of virtual card game. It was kind of pretty for a GBA game.

[Agozer]

Yggdra Union is from Sting, which automatically makes it awesome.

[Daeval]

Nintendo Wii Saga - Part 3:

Roughly 11:00am, still in the Wii line. We're now nearing the back side of the Nintendo booth, the final stretch. Several groups ahead of us have dropped out of line, but those still in front are in it for the long haul. A Nintendo rep goes by, asking if anyone has mismatched socks for early admittance. Myself and a friendly stranger briefly consider swapping socks. We realize to our dismay that we're both wearing plain white.

 

Noon, and we've made it around to the front side of the Nintendo booth. Two of the four of us (We'd spent enough time with the friendly stranger to include him now) run to make bathroom breaks before we get inside. I return to find our four is down to two. One of our party had been caught in Pictochat by a Nintendo rep and our group was invited past the line. Much love to my housemate for staying behind for me.

 

12:30, now inside the Nintendo booth, but still in line for the closed-off Wii section. There are screens kind of camoflauged in the wall that makes up the outside of the Wii section. Occasionally, a life-sized person will appear on the screen and communicate with the people in line via semi-hidden cameras and mics mounted above the LCDs. Though it's basically video-chat, the life-sized scale, crowd dynamics, and lack of information about the "other side" make it an interesting, and rather artful experience. In the pic is some chump from High Moon Studios getting bunny ears from the girl on the screen. Note that the same girl appears later, on a recorded screen inside the booth.

 

About 12:45, we were the cut-off for the last group in, so now we're sitting at the very front of the line. We watch countless people walk right past the bouncer with special Wii booth stickers on their badges and now fully understand why it's taken three hours.

 

Eventually, we're let in. The inside of the booth contains a HUGE led screen that occasionally scrolls a monolithic Nintendo logo. A friendly older Nintendo rep lines us up again, this time in front of a torus-shaped structure that conceals what we're told is a "stage." He explains that our time inside is unlimited, we won't be kicked out, and as a result there are fairly long lines for many of the 26 games playable in the booth. He tells us where to find the ones with the shorter lines, and after a few minutes we're let into the torus-shape to watch a few people demoing the system live, and then a brief "drum demo" where a pair of drummers show off a few of the Wii remote's capabilities. One wanders out of the torus to demonstrate the range of the Wiimote, while another beats the same drum softly, then gradually increases in intensity to demonstrate its wide range of sensitivity. Finally, we're let loose into the heart of the Wii booth, where 70 playable Wii systems await.

 

 

 

The Classic Style Controller - Wii:

The Virtual Console was on display using the Classic Style Controller. I played Sonic the Hedgehog 1 for a few minutes, and promptly found that after 10 or 15 years, I seriously suck at this game. The graphics looked as good as they ever did, framerates were smooth, and the sound was fine, so I have no concerns over their Genesis emulation. You could use either the D-pad or the left analog stick to control Sonic's movement. Interestingly, the right analog stick seemed to change the emulator's screen resolution, but there were only two and neither filled the entire widescreen display. The presenter wasn't sure exactly what that was for or whether it was a function specific to the Genesis emulator.

 

The controller is what I was really after, and it felt pretty damn good. The cord does come out at the bottom, but the controller plugs into the Wiimote, which will presumably be rested on your lap or otherwise closer to you than to the console, so it's not a big deal. The cord is also much more flexible than the Dreamcast's, and I couldn't even tell it was there despite that it was running away from me towards the demo unit while I played. The controller is small, probably only a little larger than a SNES controller, but was really comfortable and felt extremely well built. It lacked the bulk that necessitates the handles on last generation's controllers.

 

The buttons had really nice action and were responsive, and the D-pad was a good size (if maybe a little small) and rolled really well (hello 2D fighters). The shoulder buttons had just the right amount of action to them, much more solid-feeling than the dual-shock's but not slow and triggery like the Xbox or Cube's. Some people were complaining about the placement of the Z button - it's in line with L and R, but more centered on the top of the controller - but I found it slightly nicer than L2 and R2 on a dual shock. The way the controller fit in my hand, the tips of my pointer fingers rested on Z, allowing me to tap it, while I could hit L and R with the inside of my knuckle by straightening the finger over it. It might be an issue if you have particularly beefy hands or stubby fingers though.

 

The little nub at the top center, what I thought was the end of the cord in the press photo, is actually a quick-release for a clip mechanism on the back of the controller. As far as the presenter knew, this clip was not any kind of electrical connection, only a physical one, but was designed to allow for expansions to the controller.

 

 

Red Steel - Wii:

Alright, I have to get something off my chest. This game is butt ugly. Seriously ugly. Screenshots do not do justice to this game's ugliness. That said, the gameplay looked alright. It felt like a first attempt at using the Wiimote, but it wasn't bad. Looking around by dragging your reticle to the edge of the screen feels clunky, but this was how all of the first-person games I saw did it. It seems like they would be better off locking the reticle at the center of the screen, and letting the Wiimote control head and gun-arm at the same time, FPS mouse-style. Despite its ugliness, the line for this game was extremely long.

 

This game best demonstrated what I found most interesting about the Wiimote. It's TOO intuitive. I watched a player click helplessly on a door for about 15 seconds before deciding it must not be a door you can go through. The booth babe presenter then kindly pointed out that humans open doors by grabbing and twisting the doorknob. A second presenter helpfully chimed in that a hard enough shove would "open" the door as well.

 

 

Elebits - Wii:

This game was a pretty simple scavenger-hunt type concept, where you search a very katamari-inspired environment (a kitchen in the demo) for little pikmin-looking characters, then zap them for points. The Wii-mote operates much like the Half-Life 2 physics gun. Not the gravity gun, but the blue-beam physics gun that's unlocked in Garry's mod. You move furniture around, open cabinets and drawers, etc to reveal the little critters, then aim and fire to capture them. In the demo, you had a limited amount of time to do this, and then were ranked on a scoreboard. Apparently, you could also turn on electrical devices using the energy you stored by zapping the little critters, but I don't think I saw that in action.

 

Being a relatively unknown title, the line for this was pretty short, but it was a great demo to get a feel for the features of the Wiimote. As such, it was the first Wiimote game that I actually played. Like all the other Wiimote games, it asked you to hold the remote and hit the A and B buttons (top and trigger) together before gameplay. I'm pretty sure this was some kind of calibration, but it didn't exactly give details. Both Wiimote and nunchuck were retardedly comfortable to hold and use, being just the right size and weight. I never had any trouble with the length of the nunchuck's cord, but I found the pause button on the Wiimote to be dangerously close to the underside of my thumb, to the point where I did hit it accidentally once or twice. It seems like this could be gotten used to, but it was a little awkward.

 

Aiming the reticle felt very much like a standard light-gun, and you moved your view by moving the reticle off the edges of the screen. As mentioned under Red Steel, this was not a terribly comfortable way to look around, but it worked. You walked around with the analog stick on the nunchuk, which was a little funky at first but quickly became as intuitive as using an analog stick in an FPS ever will be for me. The sensitivity was really high and it was kind of annoying at first, but I can only imagine you'll be able to calibrate this at home.

 

I had a few of my own "too intuitive" moments searching for the little critters. I would lock my beam onto a drawer or a cabinet door and flail side to side like you would in Half-Life 2, only to realize that a gentle movement along the previously non-existant Z-axis would slide the drawer open or a nice arc towards myself would move the cabinet door on its hinge. Most players ended up hurling the refrigerator accross the room trying to get it open, but by the time I got to it I knew to target the handle and swing the door open. I was rewarded with a block of Elebits frozen in ice, which I had to grab and then slam on the floor to bust open and claim my prize. I also twisted on a water faucet, a dishwasher, and did something funky to turn on a microwave, I don't remember what exactly. All in all a very pleasurable first experience with the Wii-mote, although the sensitivity still felt slightly wonky.

 

 

Legend of Zelda - Wii:

I will first admit that I did not see nearly as much of this as I probably should have. Lines were rediculously long and the area was horribly crowded. I snuck forward past the lines to watch a few people play though. I didn't see anyone in any swordfights, but I saw a few people flipping upside down and apparently walking on the cieling, which I think might have been a particular area. Archery was done by holding a button to arm the bow, aiming with the Wiimote like a lightgun, and then releasing the button to fire. I was a little dissapointed that there was no "draw back the Wiimote" mechanic, but oh well. I also saw one player using the Wiimote in his left hand for this game, so apparently it works pretty well for leftys too.

 

 

Dragon Ball Z - Wii:

I'm not a fan of the DBZ series, so I didn't play this one, but one of my partners in crime reported to me on it and it was too interesting not to relay. You moved with the nunchuck, but to attack you had to punch with the Wiimote. For a stronger attack, you had to wind up your punch, pulling back before you swung would result in a stronger attack, and apparently there were several levels of "wind up." But the coolest part was the kamehameha (forgive my spelling you fanatics), for which you actually had to pull the Wiimote and Nunchuck back in the universal motion for hadouken and then thrust forward like you meant it.

 

 

 

Nintendo Wii Saga - Part 4:

It's about 2:20pm, and if I want to see anything else before the doors close at 4, I better get a move on. I'm happy with what I've seen of the Wii. All of the games still feel a little unfinished, a little experimental, but they also feel pretty fresh. Even the fairly straight forward FPS games and beat-em-ups feel slightly reinvigorated by the new controller. If what's there doesn't impress me, there is plenty of talk of what's to come. Hundreds, if not thousands of developers had waited hours (or gotten past with a sticker) to see this thing, and the buzz at the booth's exit is no less excited than that it had been at the back of the line. It's clear that Nintendo has a winner on its hands, at least as far as developers and morale are concerned, and at E3, that means a lot.

Edited May 20, 2006 by Daeval

[Daeval]

Tekken: Dark Resurrection - PSP:

Played this one briefly. Felt pretty much like any other Tekken title, but with PSP graphics. Go figure. If there was anything really amazing about it, I must have missed it.

 

 

New Sonic the Hedgehog:

This one looked a lot like the other 3D Sonic titles, but had a more solid feel. The environments and characters looked pretty retro, like they were much more inspired by the older 2D titles. There was a new character (at least I'd never seen him before) called Silver and aside from Shadow, I didn't spot any of the other older characters. The controls felt tighter than they had in previous 3D Sonic titles that I've played. For the first time in a while, I'm kind of looking forward to a Sonic game.

 

 

Chrome Hounds - 360:

Looked like a combination of Armored Core and the clunkier style of the Mechwarrior universe. I couldn't quite tell if the action was of the slower Mechwarrior style or fast and arcadey like Armored Core, but either way it looked a hell of a lot better than that bastard Mech Assault.

 

 

Virtua Fighter 5:

This game looked good. I mean really good. The footage that's online doesn't do justice to how nice the gameplay looks. And then there's the cutscene CG. OMG. The full-body cutscene CG is nice, but the closeups are freaking amazing. I haven't been impressed by cutscene CG in a long time, but this stuff put even Square's latest work to shame. The trailer that's on GameTrailers is the one they were showing, and the parts where they close-up on El Blaze and Eileen's faces were just absolutely stunning on their nice monitors. The last time I went by the booth, it had "best visuals" awards and nominations from several different media outlets that were handing them out at the show, as well as a "best fighter" nomination.

 

The gameplay was pretty sweet too. They had fully playable arcade cabinets there, and I got a round in as Eileen against some guy's Akira. In general, it felt like lateral movement was a lot more fluid, and I was able to make use of a few lateral strikes, which I normally have trouble with. She is really quick, but I couldn't figure her out fast enough to win the first round. I just barely took the second with some really fancy looking flips that threw him off and got an "ooh" from the crowd. The third was no contest as I had figured out a few high-low mix ups in round two that I put to good effect, getting damn near an Excellent win with some quick punches and a lot of elaborate aerial spins. Overall, my three-round assesment is that she feels like a mixture of Pai's speed, Kage's acrobatics, and Shun's stupefying tactics.

 

 

Hellgate: London - PC & ?:

I wanted to cry. This game looked SO good last year. This year, it was like they'd scrapped their original idea and borrowed all the wrong things from MMORPGs. My character's ranged weapon had a dreadfully long delay between trigger and projectile, which might have been some kind of tactical tradeoff if they'd put me up against anything more threatening than a genericly ruined city street full of landlocked sea cucumbers. The melee weapon looked really nice, and after each swing she ended up holding it in a new threatening position. Like in Jedi Knight, moving in a particular direction seemed to result in a different swing, but against the sea cucumbers it was impossible to tell if they were doing anything special. It almost seemed like it could have been an elaborate chain-attack system, but I could find anything special swinging at the air and.. well.. sea cucumbers. The skill list was full of the same old dry, boring skills that lacked the kind originality I expected from an RPG-gone-FPS. Oh yeah, and none of the monitors were running in first-person mode. All of them were in a rather stiff third-person mode that made it feel that much more tired.

 

 

Dead Rising - 360:

This one pleasantly surprised me. It was kind of like GTA, but as a beat-em-up in a shopping mall full of zombies. You ran around in what seemed like a relatively open environment, using all kinds of random objects to beat on the zombie hordes. You got missions over your radio to do things like rescue people in certain stores, and you carried around a camera that you could use to take pictures. The picture thing kind of felt out of place, but it wasn't bad. Photos would be given a genre and a rating based on what you managed to capture, and I think you got cash for them or something like that. At one point, an annoying photographer character followed you around bugging you to take pictures of him doing various things. Of the three people I saw playing, two decided after much harrasment that he was better off dead. I used everything from a katana to a guitar to a park bench to beat on zombies, and at one point rode a skateboard down some stairs and through a mob of them. I also accidentally changed into a tube top and some hot pants like the second I picked up the controller, much to the amusement of my temporary audience.

 

 

DS Web Browser:

OMFG this thing was unintuitive. SOOO many buttons, none of their functions terribly obvious. Character recognition had trouble with "1," which it insisted was the oft-used pipe "|" no matter how I wrote it. I'm sure it wouldn't be bad once you got used to it, but an experienced web user should be able to suss out the basics of a browser in under 5 minutes, and I can't say I was able to. I've browsed the web on Solaris, damnit, they've got to be able to do better. Ok, maybe it's not that bad. It certainly wasn't intuitive though.

 

 

 

Other Random Stuff:

 

* Neat Brothers in Arms Booth

 

* This picture taken just for K'Dash, my fellow Harvest Mooner.

 

* Cute Guitar Hero Babe with some chump from High Moon Studios.

 

* Nifty Gears of War perspective drawing on the floor of the main lobby

 

* I'm not one to gawk abnormally at booth babes, but the girl dressed as Jessica Cannon from SiN Episodes was so hot she got past the bouncers at the Wii booth without a special booth pass or the four hour wait in line. Tight Vinyl Pants + Really Nice Butt = Ticket to anywhere.

 

* Speaking of booth babes, they were heavily restricted this year, with booths suffering a reported $5,000 fine for a violation of newly instated booth babe clothing standards. Outside, an unlikely group was protesting this prohibition. The booth babes! Apparently, they were pretty upset about all the jobs that had been cut out from under them by the new standards. Reportedly, some booths weren't afraid to absorb the extra $5,000 into the several tens to hundreds of thousands that they had already spent on floor space.

 

* Actual text message received at the show: "Peter Molyneux just cut in front of me to play Monkey Ball on the Wii."

 

* Actual sentence shouted repeatedly in my general direction by an exstatic then-stranger: "Miyamoto signed my crap man!" Apparently Miyamoto had revealed himself from the confines of the Nintendo Fortress-Booth during the last few minutes of the show to meet fans and sign autographs. Mostly he was signing DSes, but this particular friend-of-a-friend was jokingly derided by Miyamoto himself for not bringing his that day. All he had was some kind of pokemon memorabilia, and Miyamoto drew some kind of googly eyes and I think horns or something on the Pikachu that adorned the cover.

 

* 1Emulation.com was accessed briefly from a DS Lite on the show floor. I almost logged in, but some dude wouldn't take his camera off my screen. Upside is that 1emu may be on a DS Lite on the internet somewhere.

 

 

Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting.

[NeuronMaster]

Oh man, awesome.

I've been swayed; I want a Wii.

[Robert]

Wish I'd been there (apart from the wii line-up).

 

If I was a school teacher I'd give Daeval a 10/10 for his reporting skills.

 

All I can say is you've done a super excellent job.

[Lucandrake]

Awsome report daevil, you gave me more reason to get a Wii, I'm finaly going to work a summer, and get about $2k at the end of it, most of it will go to the Wii

[Gryph]

Very cool write up. I don't think I could stand in line that long even for the Wii.

[Lucandrake]

Giving thought into it I have decided to not get a Wii until at least the summer of 2k7. I just want to make sure it's not a "fling"....

[Smilee]

Very nice! The only things that kept me excited from this year's e3 were the Gears of War demos (multiplayer looks promising) and of course the Wii. Wish I had the chance to go being it only an hour drive away, too bad school had to scrap those plans.

[Wizard]

But the coolest part was the kamehameha (forgive my spelling you fanatics), for which you actually had to pull the Wiimote and Nunchuck back in the universal motion for hadouken and then thrust forward like you meant it.

 

[typed stuff]

 

[dead raising stuff]

 

* This picture taken just for K'Dash, my fellow Harvest Mooner.

 

[skipping stuff!]

 

* I'm not one to gawk abnormally at booth babes, but the girl dressed as Jessica Cannon from SiN Episodes was so hot she got past the bouncers at the Wii booth without a special booth pass or the four hour wait in line.  Tight Vinyl Pants + Really Nice Butt = Ticket to anywhere.

 

[booth babe stuff here]

 

* Actual text message received at the show: "Peter Molyneux just cut in front of me to play Monkey Ball on the Wii."

 

[end of post]

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

1) AWESOME

 

2) I want a sheep plushie I think they come with a pre-order, I gotta check

 

3) The chick is also french, hot, and working on a local TV station here in Quebec. Good friends with Bianca too. Tomboy closet gamer also.

 

4) Best text msg ever.

 

Awesome stuff dude. I agree totally with the VF5 comment. Nothing compares to seeing it upclose in person, and I haven't seen it in person at all. VF5 and MGS4 is what Sony's hueg machine is tempting me with. Love the Wii preview, I'm pretty much sold on it now.

 

FYI, it's graphics chip is still in finalization process, while the CPU is pretty much final. Which is in response to someone catching a glimps of the Wii in a GC shell.