With the electronic three finally coming to it's sad but inevitable end, I figured I would sputter out my belligerent ramblings as to what I thought was awesome. Each of the big three had some great things to offer this year. Grades seem like a nice, however inflexible, way to give my thoughts on how each company did individually, while also pointing out what my highlights of each were.
Nintendo
First off, holy shit. I had no expectations coming into this year for Nintendo, they had disappointed me continually in years past and I had no reason to hope for otherwise. There was one focus in this conference, games. Nintendo pulled out a handful of awesome looking titles for the Wii to excite the hardcore. Then the 3DS came out, and it worked. Not only did it work well, but there was a massive amount of games announced for it. Once again proving that software drives hardware, Nintendo knocked me out with all of the awesome 3DS demos and first party Wii games.
GRADE: A
Three Highlights:
#1) 3DS (Including the shit ton of games announced for it.)
#2) Kirby and DK
#3) The legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Expected, but still awesome.)
Sony
While Sony seemed to lack a bit of direction or focus in particular areas, I still throughly enjoyed what they had to show. I do feel there conference would have been more well received had they kept infamous 2, LBP2 and killzone 3 secret, but thats just me. I appreciate that they didn't dwell on move or 3D for two long, and really tried to cycle through a lot of games in a short period of time. All of the aforementioned games looked awesome, couple those with a new twisted metal and I am quite the happy camper as far as Sony goes. However, I would have liked to have seen what insomniac/naughty dog are working on as well as the last guardian.
GRADE: B
Three Highlights:
#1) Twisted Metal
#2) LittleBigPlanet 2
#3) Killzone 3
Microsoft
If I hadn't known any better, I would have thought I was watching last years Nintendo conference. While kinect seemed to work decently well, it just didn't seem to have the software that would peak my interest. Halo Reach looks fun, but just feels a bit dated at this point. Gears 3 was easily the highlight of the show for me, as it showed a real conscientious effort to change things within the franchise to make it feel fresh. Overall, I felt they focused way too much on the casual market, that of which I don't think this will reach, and almost completely ignored their best consumer.
GRADE: C
Three Highlights:
#1) Gears of War 3
#2) Halo: Reach
#3) Codename: Kingdom (It was hard to find a third thing that was interesting)
Exciting Multiplatform Games
#1) Dead Space 2
#2) Portal 2
#3) Mortal Kombat
This year's E3 was great for gamers; Nintendo came out throwing hay-makers to reassert their foot in the core gaming realm, Sony had a few uppercuts to throw in while also missing a few punches, and then Microsoft, well they seemed to lack direction and got their neck broken like Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby. But at the end of the day, all of the stellar multiplatform titles gave all of us something to be happy about.
Can I get a w00t w00t for mortal kombat!
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