Wednesday, June 08, 2011

First day of E3...

It was a long day yesterday, got up early to go to the Nintendo Press Conference at the Nokia Center. Overall not a bad presentation. I was not thrilled with the name "Wii U" of the new console, but I didn't like "Wii" either to begin with. It seems like an HD console with an iPad for a controller, and the fact that you can only have one connected to the system and the rest are normal Wiimotes is kinda weird.

The line to see it on the show floor was huge, and the fact that most of the stuff is just tech demos doesn't thrill me. I stuck around Nintendo's booth since the line was so long, amazingly the line for the 3DS stuff was almost non-existent this year. I tried a lot of 3DS titles including Luigi's Mansion 2, Super Mario, Star Fox 64 (multiplayer), Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D, Mario Kart, Kid Icarus Uprising (multiplayer), and Resident Evil Revelations. Luigi and Resident Evil were both awesome and looked really good in 3D, Mario Kart and Super Mario were both fun although I found it a little difficult to make some of the jumps in Super Mario playing in 3D, but maybe that was just me.

The rest of the day was mainly spent walking around checking out what was there, I did watch presentations on Saints Row the Third, as well as Metro Last Light which both look really good, Saints was just amazing and Metro just reminded me that I still need to play the first one Metro 2033. I noticed during the Metro presentation that Joshua Gomez (Morgan Grimes on Chuck) was sitting a couple rows ahead of me, and after it was over and the lights came up noticed that Zachary Levi (Chuck Bartowski on Chuck) was sitting in front too, so I asked for a picture. :)

I also played Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City co-op on the 360 that was pretty neat, the whole campaign can be played single player or 4 player online co-op. Microsoft again has all of the Summer of Arcade titles set up, along with some other XBLA titles that I'm going to try out today.

Monday, June 06, 2011

E3 baby! Craig Ferguson, and more...

Well 2 of the big 3 press briefings are already over, with just Nintendo left tomorrow morning (check-in @ 7:15am, I really should be going to bed....). Starting with Microsoft, I felt a little underwhelmed by the whole thing. I loved the CoD:MW3 play at the beginning and Tomb Raider, and the new dash control looks neat. Some of the Kinect intergration was neat (game wise), but unecessary as far as I could tell, and I wasn't really excited about anything else. I'm not a fan of the Gears series, but tonight I found that MS was releasing a new console for the launch, this 320GB 2 controller system will be out September 20th for $399.99 and looks sweet!
Sweet ass Gears box!

I only caught Sony's conference after it started, but read up on what I missed. What's up with Sony getting all the 'extra' content included with games now? Bioshock Infinite nets you Bioshock on the same blu-ray, and with Battlefield 3 you get Battlefield 1943. I was not inclined to get a NGP (oh wait Vita) but then Irrational Games goes and says they're working on a Bioshock for Vita probably the one thing that could get me to buy one.

I went to a taping of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson this afternoon at CBS Television Studios, and have come to the conclusion that it's a lot of effort to be an audience member. It's not a very big set at all, but it was fun.