My Review of E3 2006

I was going to comment on the Nintendo and Microsoft press conferences like I did with the Sony conference, but I decided that it'd be more interesting for myself if I actually wrote about my first hand experience at E3.


This E3 was all about Nintendo. Seriously. Just the line to get into the Nintendo Wii booth was at least a 4 hour wait average. Don't believe me? Check out the lines. Of course, once you get inside, there are more lines for the Wii games themselves. Was the wait worth it? Hell yes. Every demo inside the Wii booth displayed the depth of thought that the developers are putting into the Wii.

Wii Sports looks like a fun party game. Metroid Prime 3 and Red Steel look like promising FPS style games. Although, Metroid looks far better than Red Steel does. (I do have a small reservation about the wiimote and FPS games: turning. Turning is done very slowly, as you have to aim the wiimote off screen in order to turn.) Tony Hawk and Excite Truck showed a promising future for racing games and maybe finally we'll have actual realistic analog input for racing. Finally, even EA's Madden managed to use the wiimote effectively.


The game I waited in line for was Zelda: Twilight Princess. I waited 45 minutes just to play the game for 5. That 5 minutes of game time with Zelda on the Wii was worth my 2 hour wait to get in (I'll talk about that later) and the 45 minute wait in line in the unairconditioned Nintendo booth. For being on GameCube hardware, Zelda looked beautiful. But the important thing is how the wiimote is used in the Zelda universe. The demo mainly centered around Link's bow and arrows. I loved the experience, but had some trouble aiming due to the controller being too sensitive. I'm more than positive Nintendo will polish this as time goes by but the demo served its purpose showing how games will be played in the future.


I really wanted to play Super Mario Galaxy as well (only got to play Zelda and Madden), but after spending about 3.5 hours in the Nintendo booth on Friday morning/afternoon I felt that I should give myself a chance to see the other booths before the show closed for the year.


Next to the insanely packed Nintendo booth was the relatively empty Sony booth. All of the PS3 games sucked ass. In fact, the only memorable thing from Sony was during their press conference. Sure they looked nice... but not $600 nice. The only PS3 game I tried was Warhawk and I only tried that game for one reason - to check out the new PS3 controller. First off, yes, the controller is extremely light and feels cheap. I guess that's to be expected when the controller was hacked together in less than two weeks before the start of E3. The Warhawk demo was the only game that made use of the PS3 controllers tilt functionality and it was implemented very poorly. Unlike the seemless motion based controls on the Wii games, I found myself repeatedly trying to control the ship with the left analog stick rather than tilting the controller. It also didn't help that there was a couple millisecond delay between my tilting and the movement on screen. Sony's fault was keeping the familiar dual shock style controller. It's just not meant for spacial movement. The only other game I wanted to try out at the Sony booth was God of War 2, but I forgot about that game until after the show closed.

I didn't spend all that much time at the Microsoft booth. There wasn't really anything on Xbox 360 to see. I would have checked out Gears of War had it been on the show floor. Doesn't make sense to not have the currently overhyped Xbox 360 game on the show floor. When something like this is done, it either means there's something wrong with the game or the game is still in the pre-alpha phase of development. Not good for Microsoft.

Spore was another game I wanted to see in person, but it was only available via another wait in line for a private screening. Lame.


I wanted to go to this year's E3 for one reason: Wii. I saw it, I touched the wiimote, and I got to play Zelda. Considering what else was on the show floor, I could have stayed in the Nintendo booth all day and still go home happy.

The second most memorable moment of E3 2006 was my wait in line for the Wii. Two hours into the queue, I decided to get on Pictochat to search for other DS owners in line to start up a game of Tetris DS. Soon after we started, a Nintendo rep came by and asked for the people who just started a Tetris DS game via Pictochat. We were asked to leave the line and immediately enter the Nintendo Wii booth as invited guests. Sweet.

Is there anything Sony won't rip-off?

Sony held their E3 press conference today to, I'm guessing, the excitement of many gamers worldwide. Obviously the main focus was to show off what the PS3 can actually do. I'll give Sony some credit - what they showed did look good... but only if it was real time. As of right now, I can't tell. I have to wait for IGN to host their HD quality video before I'll be able to tell.

Sony started off their conference like they always do - with a bunch of bullshit. PS2 is so great 'cause it sold all these millions. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we all know you sold a lot of crap to a lot of stupid people. Sometimes you sold awesome games, but they were never markted to the stupid people. The stupid people are missing out on great games.

Anyway, Sony then started going on about their PSP and how it is "unrivaled". Well, if unrivaled means getting its ass kicked 10 times over and then getting /spit on while their down by the Nintendo DS then Sony is correct. But for those of us who are in reality, the PSP is tanking. The UMD format has failed and believe it or not, the handheld market still shows that quality games rules over graphics quality. I wonder why this doesn't also apply to the home console market.


The first PlayStation 3 game Sony showed off was Gran Turismo HD. But before you get your hopes up, please note that Kazunori Yamauchi specifically said that Polyphony took Gran Turismo 4 and upgraded the graphics. That tells me one thing - GT HD is nothing but a cheap lame-ass port of a lame PS2 game. Polyphony Digital has really gone downhill over the last 5 years. It's a shame really...

An interesting demo using the next EyeToy was shown next. Basically you lay down cards on a grid and the EyeToy will "read" the cards and display creatures on screen. Hand motions will then instruct those creatures. If they wanted to, Wizards of the Coast could make a pretty neat Magic the Gathering video game with that technology.

Skipping the old trailers from last year and the usual garbage EA had to show...


Final Fantasy XIII looks very pretty. Look carefully though, as usual Square-Enix mixes pre-rendered video and actual gameplay. Unless I'm wrong and the PS3 more powerful than the render-farm Square used to make Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. If the FFXIII trailer was all real-time, then that's some mighty raw power the PS3 is packing. I still have my doubts though.



What PlayStation launch is complete without showing off a new Metal Gear, in this case, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Kojima Productions always out does themselves. It's really insane how much more effort they put into their games than everyone else. Too bad I won't be able to play MGS4 for many years...


Because the price of the PS3 is $499 (with 20GB harddrive) and $599 (with 60GB harddrive). OMG WTF! Is it just me or is Sony asking a lot of money? Also, what is the need to have two versions of the PS3? If you look at the pictures above, you can clearly see that the one of the left is the gimp Ps3. It's missing the HDMI port and according to IGN, it's also missing several other features. That is fucking lame. Having two separate system packages at launch will only lead to confusion, customer dis-satisfaction, and low supplies of a console that's already low in supply. Didn't Sony learn anything from the Xbox 360 launch fiasco?


Sony yet again shows that they have no imagination of their own as they showed off the new PS3 controller. Gladly, it looks like the tried and true PS2 controller and is wireless. Oddly enough, if you get the gimp package, the controller doesn't have rumble feature. The real kicker is that the PS3 controller can also sense 6 motions, or in other words, has spacial controls. Gee, I wonder where Sony got that idea? I'll see how this hacked spacial controller works when I attend E3 this Friday. My thought is that Sony is playing catch up to Nintendo but from the description, the PS3 controller has no where near the spacial ability of the Wii. Sony also ripped off Microsoft's Xbox-button, as you can see.

Overall, I felt the press conference was boring but there were some good surprises. I also appreciate Sony's acknowledgement that Nintendo is on the right path.

E3 2006!

I have high hopes for this year's E3 to be very exciting and interesting. Last year was a huge disappointment thanks to the poor showing from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as well as the Nintendo Wii not being present at all.

Like many gamers, I've been dying to see how the Wii plays. At this point in time, I can't even imagine how the gameplay for Mario Revolution will be. How can we just use that wand controller to move Mario around the Mushroom Kingdom? How will Smash Bros. Revolution or Mario Kart Revolution play? And for that matter... will it they online playable at launch? It'd kick so much ass if they were and I hope Nintendo realizes this too.

For this Nintendo fan, it's both an exhilarating and scary time.

Like they did with the N64, Nintendo is attempting to show the industry new ways of interacting with the game worlds. I remember thinking the same things I'm thinking now about how would analog controls work in a video game when Mario 64 was announced. Of course, now using analog controls are a tried and true standard. Will the same be said about spacial controls in five years? I certainly hope so, because pressing the A button to swing a tennis racket is nothing like actually making a swinging motion to swing a tennis racket.

Even better still, I'll be going to this year's E3. First thing that I'm gonna do when I get there? Head straight to the Nintendo booth and get in line to play the Wii. Even if that's the only thing I get to do at E3, I'll go home extremely happy.

Cell Phone Gaming? LOL

During a previous interview, I remember being told that cell phone games are going to be the wave of the future for gaming. As I said before in a previous blog post, there's no chance in hell of that ever happening. Earlier this week, Slashdot posted news that shows that I'm right. So I give a /golfclap to those poor people working for the cell phone gaming industry. You tried your best, and the only games that are selling are Tetris and Pac-Man. Woohoo.

Try as they might to convince people, the fact remains is that gamers aren't interested in gaming on phones. Hell, even the people I interviewed with admitted that they'd rather play a game on a console than on a cell phone. It is true that cell phone gaming is popular in Japan, but you have to figure in the fact that the main method of travel in Japan is public transit. That's a lot of free time for Japanese gamers to play portable games or read manga.

EA FTL

EA, in all it's wisdom, has stated that development for the Nintendo Wii/Revolution is very difficult thanks to it not being HD and not being as powerful as a PS3 or Xbox360. This is very hypocritical of EA, as they have previously stated that the reason for the craptacular Xbox360 launch titles was due to the difficulty in developing for the powerful platform. So what exactly is the reason for EA sucking major ass?

How can it be difficult to develop for the Wii/Revolution as it is basically a "Super GameCube"? My understanding is that the APIs have barely changed at all. Is HD gaming hard to develop for or not? Make up your damn mind and stop feeding us crap excuses to cover up for your laziness. Yeah, that's right, EA is the absolute laziest developer in the industry. The real reason why they make up crap that Wii/Revolution is hard to develop for is because they're too fucking lazy to think up how to effectively use the console's unique controller. Need evidence? Look at their Nintendo DS releases. Nothing original at all - just GBA ports with half-assed touch screen functionality added. Fucking lame.

EA has gone on record stating that Madden Wii/Revolution isn't a port but a unique title that will effectively use the controller. I wouldn't put my hopes up. EA is willing to say anything and everything in order to sell a game - even if it's for a platform the don't believe in.

I'm pleased to see that EA is losing money. I'm hoping that it's a sign that casual gamers are no longer satisfied with being fed the same rehashed games year after year. Maybe they're finally interested in trying something new, something different. In order for the industry to continue increasing their consumer base, the rehashes will have to go.

So EA, get off your ass and stop being lazy. It's damn time that you actually earn that money and praise.