E3 has officially kicked off and anyone who's a gamer has their eyes aglow as companies shows off and dish out what they'll be serving for the Holiday 08 - Spring 09 schedule. Microsoft held their press conference first and I'm just going to go over what I liked and disliked about their conference. Let's start with the positives...
They brought with them what seems to be another strong lineup of games for the upcoming holiday season, as far as their first party lineup is concerned I'm most looking forward to Gears of War 2 and Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. I want to play Fable 2 but the new footage they showed didn't reach out to me and give me shaken baby syndrome as I'd hoped it would. Their third party lineup is as strong as ever, bringing over a once thought Sony exclusive, Final Fantasy XIII as well as promising that GTAIV exclusive content and Todd Howard announcing that Fallout 3 would also get the exclusive DLC treatment. There are far too many games to list coming from third party developers that have me excited, but it's nice to see that are a few exclusive titles to the system that should also be a lot of fun. Oh yeah, and I really hope that Rock Band 2 puts Guitar Hero IV to shame. No consumer out there wants 3 or more sets of plastic drums, I say 3 as if to include Rock Revolution, but I just more or less like including them into the fold as a joke onto itself. Have you seen that 6 padded disaster of shapes? I say Harmonix should be the ones to stay, they brought Guitar Hero to the market, then they brought the rest of the band into the market. Let them control the market, they'll do no harm.
I was ecstatic not to see a motion sensing controller that had been rumored since an interview about the latest Banjo Kazooie game. I'm so glad Microsoft didn't go that route, just let Nintendo have it, let's stick by the old standby controller. It's never let us down before. Finally, I like the idea of partying up with people on Live, I think up to 8 people, and being able to play casual social games like 1 Vs. 100 and also if the Party Leader is a Netflix user the entire party can watch TV shows and movies together. That's pretty damn cool. Anyone up for MST3K'ing some god awful movies? I'm totally down.
As for disappointments I'm not all that thrilled with the new look of the dashboard and the whole Avatar thing. Once again, let Nintendo and Microsoft dabble in it. I'm wondering what's going to happen to all the Gamerpics and Themes I spent Microsoft Points on, was that all just free money I've given away now when the new dashboard update rolls around? If that's the case, awesome. I'm not going to further rant about their other endeavors into casual territory, I think Lips isn't half bad since you can play music off of your Zune or iPod, but the rest that they showcased didn't wow or have any effect on me. In the category of games that have long been M.I.A. is Alan Wake, I really wanted to hear something about this game, maybe see some new footage and get a release date even if it was in 2009. Besides Resident Evil 5 there really isn't a whole lot known about what we can expect to play in 2009. Hopefully some RE5, Dead Rising 2, and Alan Wake if they're on the up and up.
Well that's all from me for today, feel free to leave a comment, did your brain asplode when FFXIII was announced? Mine tweaked for a moment. Next year I'd like to see Hideo Kojima both announcing that MGS4 will be hitting the 360 around Holiday 09 and that him and Suda 51 are also working on a game for the console.
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