E3 2010 opinions

Or better late than never.

Another E3 has come and gone and we've picked up all the pieces and cleaned out the conference hall for another year.  Let's all first breathe another sigh of relief that this years media flurry is now over and we can go back to our gaming lives again.
*Puh*
So then, what do I think of this years E3 then? Let's begin with the big conferences.


Microsoft focus on Natal- I mean Kinetic made me realize one thing. I hate the name Kinetc. It's ridiculous and dumb and they just should've stuck with Natal and not try to be chic or witty.
It was kinda sad when a 6 year old girl did a better presentation than any other person that had been on stage before her. (Also that Kubo guy looked and acted like a total grade A douche.)

Otherwise I found the conference a bit lacking. Just too much focus on motion and sports and less on the games. Cliffy B trying to look cool on stage with the co-op demo just doesn't cut. But that's probably because I find him annoying and overbearing.
Halo Reach looked... well it looked like Halo and I really have no intentions to play it since I don't own a 360. (I was secretly hoping for an announcement regarding Halo 3 on the PC but that didn't happen. :( )
And I wonder if Fable 3 is going to have the same horrible storytelling that permeated the second game. And for that part, when is the second game even coming for the PC as it's been more or less confirmed that it will come for the PC.
Microsoft's final move with the 360 was clever. But at the same time I feel pity for the European journalists attending that will be given an American console. But I guess they can score a fair price on Ebay or something.
Also I think all the MS presenters had been taking a little too much of the company happy pills.

EA's was marginally more interesting actually. Here the focus lay not so much on movement (even if reared its head) as before. Games were marginally interesting frankly, although the presentation has to get top marks from my part. The "I love guns" song regarding the Gun Club I want as an MP3 and the trailers for the EA sport titles were quite entertaining.
However the idea of releasing the SWTOR trailer that was shown way before the conference I found was a bit of a miss. It was a bit of a pointless gesture to just show it again.
Bulletstorm looked like the title that is fun for the first hour and then just gets bland when things get repeated.
And they went in the completely wrong direction with Crysis 2. The fun part wasn't with the aliens. No it was going up against the North Koreans and playing predator with them. So the focus on more Aliens felt like a miss. Fighting aliens with a super suit we have done so many times before. But toying with humans with one is a lot more fun. Feels like Crytek still hasn't learned that lesson as they introduce an enemy that is fun to play against and they introduce the supposed main enemy that isn't half as fun to fight against.
Also that 3D trailer just looked stupid frankly.
And my only comment regarding Medal of Honor is: Modern Warfare 2. I don't need to say anything else.
Also was it fully necessary to have that 20 minute talk about the Sims?

Ubisofts conference was... bad. No wait. It was embarrassingly bad. Again. I am starting to question what is going on in the Ubisofts executives head's nowadays when they suddenly start to pull out stuff like laser tag and Breathing games. I mean even the announcer took the piss out of things.
At least we didn't have to suffer through James Cameron orally masturbating over his pet project. So I guess I have to count my blessings.
Ghost Recon looked nice though. It looks like it has more stealth that the latest Splinter Cell game. Expected a HAWX2 trailer, didn't get any sadly.

Now Nintendo on the other hand. Now Nintendo was to me The clear winner for this years conference bout. Because they focused on the important part. Namely the Games. They've already shown off what their motion system can do. And I have to commend them for not acting overly smug (like some others) about the whole thing. Even if I expected them to. This year it was all about new games, Kirby, return of Donkey Kong, new Zelda, new Kid Icarus and not to mention the list of 3DS games. Nintendo showed what E3 was really about. It wasn't about the latest doodads and such. It's about the games and they delivered strongly there. I am sorely tempted to buy a 3DS when it comes out but I doubt I will. But I tempted.
However that 3DS trailer was hilarious because it was so Japanese.

Lastly we have Sony and their focus on both 3D and their, frankly ridiculous looking, Motion controller. Killzone 3 looked gray, bland and nothing really interesting.
I really didn't pay much attention to their whole thing since I was busy with other stuff in the mean time. The questionably silly PSP advertising campaign raised my eyebrow a little in how utterly stupid it was but otherwise it was nothing utterly remarkable. However one part that was really good was Kevin Butler's gaming speech. I sorta expected him to slightly go off on a tangent talking about how gaming was supposed to be on the PS3 or something but I was surprised that he didn't and instead it was about gaming in general and it turned out to be a very good one to boot.
The trailers towards the end were nothing new that one didn't already know about and to be honest I can't really even remember what was shown.
In the end it was pretty much forgettable just because the top had been reached in beforehand.

Frankly I was kinda disappointed with the content in this years E3. It just felt a bit empty. Not bland perhaps but a spark was missing. There was a lack of new stuff, especially on the PC front. There just wasn't any amazing announcements for the PC that really made me go "Ooh". It was just showing off what was there. The case was the same for the first three conferences as well. All the talk about movement controls and sport games and established franchises for them was boring. One could say Bulletstorm was fresh and new. Even if I'd counter with that it was more a step back to the old days where shooter were mostly just about killing stuff. Which is good, even if they did ham it up a bit too much.
But otherwise this year was about just showing how far developers had gotten with their games.


Aside from all the Motion controls and 3D. Especially the latter I don't think will live for that long before sorta shrinking away. I think 3DS will the longest living machine that does it. But then it's Nintendo and they have a pretty sizeable userbase. Not to mention theirs won't require goggles.
I for one refuse to even consider wearing them. Why? I'm nearsighted which means I have to wear glasses. Work out the rest yourself honestly.

Someone mentioned to me that there was a larger number of demos on E3 than before. Which is good.
If you are attending E3.
I can never really be that excited over a demo that I'm not playing myself, it just isn't the same thing. Sure it is a perfect way of seeing how some aspects of the game works in motion but you'll never really get the entire thing from it. Not to mention it tends to be alpha builds and all that jazz so I find it hard to really get excited over demos since things are bound to change a lot during development.

Maybe I'm just getting grumpy but E3 wasn't that much of a grand affair to me this year.
I can admit I only had a cursory glance of its contents and never really went in depth in what was on the floor but I get the feeling I really didn't miss that much. Especially on the PC department I don't think I actually missed that much of what I already knew about.

Lastly I can however admit I am incredibly excited about Deus Ex 3.
And HAWX 2...

(TLDR: E3 was okay, bit boring, nothing exciting for PC. Nintendo won the Conferences.)