2008 E3 Impressions

I’ll just sum it up in small bullets, so you don’t have to read walls of text:

• PS3 Home – looks cool, but too God damn much that it won’t get used as much. Also, those who hated Second Life will probably hate this.
• XBL changes – too little, kinda off-the-wall, and it will help me like XB Arcade. The avatar thing is a little quirky and a rip from Miis.
• Bioware’s Dragon Age – looking forward to it with anticipation. Also looked at NWN2’s new The Storm of Zehir. Looks cool.
• Firefly’s Dungeon Hero – looks good, may try it.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed – looks good, but looks can be deceiving.
• Puzzle Quest: Galactrix – looks interesting, one for my list of possibles.
• Fable 2 – probably the most impressive change up I’ve seen. Like the new way of inviting people into your games, like the way they showed it being played.
• Warhammer 40k Dawn of War 2 – while it looks great and the trailer looks fabulous, I’m not sure if it’s much of an improvement over the first to warrant a must-buy.
• Warhammer: Battle March – looks strange and somewhat interesting. May put it on my 360 list.
• Halo Wars – eeehhh, not really interested in that, I think. It seems to be horribly lacking in core Halo-esqueness.
• Final Fantasy XIII – it’s coming out for the XBox, so yeah, must-buy. Looks fantastic, and an improvement over FFXII.
• Rise of the Argonauts – holy shit, looks awesome. Made by Codemasters, the guys who made Overlord, one of my faves. Hope it reviews good.
• Civ IV – looks pretty, but it looks like it’s more of the same.
• Ghostbusters – looks awesome, and going on my “watch closely” list.
• Dead Space, Animal Crossing: CF, and Silent Hill: Homecoming – they look somewhat fun, but I’ll probably pass until they are cheap.
• Little Big Planet – while it looks like fun, until I can afford to buy a PS3, it’s not that great a thing for me.
• Spore- holy shit it looks like it’s going to take months to play. Each stage is a fucking game of it’s own (they showed the tribal stage, and it looks pretty complicated). Must buy x 2 (one for me, one for Michi)
• Gears of War 2, God of War 3 – they look pretty, but I’m not interested. GoW3 looks really stupid. GoW2 looks … repetively hard.
• Fallout 3 – looks fantastic and fun. Already had my rant about the fantards. A must buy.
• Endwar and C&C Red Alert 3 – Jesus, it’s like the RTS games never stop. Both look good, but I will pass.
• Champions Online – while it looks good, it kind of feels like a CoH/WoW hybrid. Could be fun. Will have to see what others say after they try it first.
• Rock Band 2 & Guitar Hero: World Tour – both look fantastic and fun. RB2 has half the music and the forwarded content features, while GH:WT has the other half the music and the create your own content. Weirdly enough, that lawsuit about the instruments being compatable with each other seems to have disappeared and they both tout you can use the other’s kits in their game. I’ll probaby end up buying GH:WT as a kit, and RB2 as a disc. Since I already own RB1.
• Sony’s, Microsoft’s, and Nintendo’s Press Conferences – Penny Arcade summed it up nicely. Sony was arrogant and sounded like they don’t give a shit about the gamers. Microsoft said shit that didn’t make sense sometimes. Nintendo was ill-equipped and sad. All three should be thoroughly slapped for such shitty conferences. Sony needs to STFU and calm the fuck down compared to the other two.
• The Rest – everyone had some neat stuff showing. One thing that was both funny and sad at the same time was the Apogee Duke Nukem trailer. I sure hope it’s a gag, because that was pathetic to the point of awesome. Other things to watch for were Mirror Image, and the slew of DS ports like the Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger and a new Rune Factory. The PSP, in my eyes, had the worst showing and not much to say except that it’s now the PS3’s whore.

And that’s my spiel. I watched a lot of Gamespot’s live coverage of E3, since they seemed to get a LOT of inside information and exclusive reveals. Gotta hand it to them – although they are a bit biased and sometimes suck at reviews, they do get the inside information and great vids.