Best of E3 2007 - Part I

The Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3 as it’s most commonly known as has always been a modern day Mecca for gamers who unfailing stay logged onto the internet for a period of three days waiting with bated breath for any sort of news to come out of the expo. What a lot of people do not know is that the event isn’t open to the common man so unless you’re a game developer or work for the press there’s no way you’re getting in there… even if you can afford to fly down to America for three days.

Till last year this event was celebrated in an extremely extravagant and grand manner with developers splurging on everything under the sun to make their stalls or booths look the best. And speaking of booths, the only thing that comes to mind with that word are Booth Babes, the cornerstone of every successful E3 (they will be sorely missed).

As time passed by developers and publishers felt this sort of an event wasn’t feasible for them in the long run and after much discussion it was decided that E3 would no longer be one of the world’s biggest parties; it would in fact be a ghost of its former self in the form of a business expo that concentrated a lot more on well business. But this is the video game industry we’re talking about so there’s bound to be fun and a s***tload of games right?

Now even though we never got to go to E3 this year, we’ve tried our level best to provide you with an extensive coverage of all the news that came out of E3 2007 but if you don’t have the patience to sit down and go through all of that or if you’ve joined us late, sit back and relax while we take you through all the major events that rocked this year’s E3. So that we don’t overburden you with all that information we’re dividing this feature into two parts: one part that looks after the PC gaming and the Xbox 360 while the other takes care of the PS3 and the Wii. And as an added bonus Nikhil will also be working on a feature that’ll showcase all the games that were Missing in Action at this expo.
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We’ll start off with the humble PC which in recent times has been getting the royal ignore ever since next gen consoles made their way into people’s living rooms; in fact even faithful to PC developers like Ubisoft started concentrating more on the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of their games ignoring the platform that made them the moguls they are today. But this year’s E3 brought the PC back into the limelight (albeit momentarily) with the announcement of Xbox 360 games like Viva Pinata and Gears of War that were all set to be ported to the PC. Now Viva Pinata didn’t make too much of an impact on people but the Gears of War announcement sent PC gamers into a tizzy who finally would get to experience Epic’s third person shooter for themselves.

The PC version of Gears of War will ship with newer levels, a new MP game type (co-op included), new multiplayer maps, newer enemies like the hulking Brumak and DirectX 10 support. And there’s no need to worry about upgrading to Vista since the game is NOT a Vista exclusive title (suck on that Halo 2).

There was quite a bit of activity happening in the F.E.A.R. universe as well. First, a brand new expansion pack called F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate was announced that would allow players to experience the events that shook Armacham Corporation from a different character’s perspective. The game will be developed by Timegate Studios, the very same studio that was behind F.E.A.R. Extraction Point and not by Monolith since those guys are busy working on a full fledged sequel to F.E.A.R., the details of which are extremely scarce as of now. In fact even at E3 only a lucky few got to sample the first level of the game and here’s what one such site had to say…

It begins after the concluding explosion of F.E.A.R. (perhaps ignoring the timeline of Vivendi’s faintly silly Extraction Point expansion pack) with the lead character dropping in and out of consciousness on a hospital operating table. Doctors struggle to revive you one minute, then you drop out of the real world (perhaps) and see shambling bodies gorging on your flesh. Up above, in the operating theatre’s gallery, a shadowy woman calls for ever more extreme efforts to bring you back to the living and slightly dead - defibrillators are brought out, special effects go crazy and you awake an unspecified amount of time later in that now-wrecked hospital (with a frequently recurring decorative blood stain motif) with a painful ringing in your ears.

Continued here …

GSC World’s underrated (yet excellent) first person shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is set to receive an expansion pack as well that’ll take place a year before the events of the original game and will chronicle the events that lead up to the original game. S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky will pack newer weapons, newer enemies, newer anomalies, a reworked HUD (Heads up Display) and PDA and DirectX 10 support. For more on S.T.A.L.K.E.R., head over to our review here .

And last but not the least; PC gamers will get a chance to play Unreal Tournament 3 this year itself so I suggest you start upgrading your rig because November isn’t all that far off.
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This year’s E3 was pretty crucial for Microsoft since Sony was all set to unveil their highly anticipated shooter Killzone 2 as well as announce a price cut for the PS3 (more on that in a bit) and with so much coming out of the Sony stable Microsoft had to have some sort of game plan up their sleeve and even though people were a bit disappointed with their E3 presentation this year, they finally came through with a bunch of AAA titles that included first party exclusives like Halo 3, Halo Wars, Project Gotham Racing 4, Fable 2 and Mass Effect which by the way has received a November 2007 release date.

One of the games that stole a tremendous amount of thunder at E3 this year was Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4 and if you’ve seen the game in action you’ll understand why. Not only does the game look mind-blowingly (yeah I know that’s not even a word) next gen but it’s as visceral, fast paced and chaotic as a Call of Duty game can be and Xbox 360 owners have a special treat in store for them in the form of an exclusive multiplayer beta that’s set to hit Xbox Live this August.

As expected Microsoft is also planning to ride on the Halo 3 mania with the announcement of a Halo 3 special edition Xbox 360 unit that would ship with HDMI output and a 20 GB hard drive but no Halo 3 game (why am I not surprised).

On the accessory front MS announced two colored controllers: blue and pink and priced the Xbox 360 messaging keyboard that’ll help you chat on Xbox Live at $29.99. Besides this you even have tons of Halo 3 merchandise to look forward to in the coming months.

To enhance the HD content available on Xbox Live, Microsoft announced their partnership with Disney that’ll allow them to offer customers High Definition flicks from all of the studios under The Walt Disney stable that includes Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures and Miramax Films. As of now this facility is only available in US and America and we’ll only get to know what the deal with India is as and when Live launches over here is September.

And last but not the least; fans of Arcade games have tons of stuff to look forward to in the near future with Microsoft announcing a slew of Xbox Live Arcade titles like:

• Bomberman Live
• Golden Axe
• Hexic 2
• Marathon: Durandal
• PAC-MAN Championship Edition
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
• Sensible World of Soccer
• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Undertow
• War World

Well that about wraps up the PC and the Xbox 360; stay tuned for our Wii and PS3 recap.