E3 2007 Disappointments

With Next-Generation gaming materializing in a big way this year and DirectX 10 all set to push the graphical bounds beyond, there’s no doubt that the gaming industry is really pushing forward at a fervent pace. Gaming is in the spotlight more than it ever was and at such a time you’d expect the biggest event in the industry, E3, to be bigger and more epic in size than before. But what gamers got was an extremely downsized E3 that was merely a shadow of its former self. Although it was announced a while back that E3 2007 would be smaller, I expected it to be more to-the-point and deliver a good amount of content nevertheless. In that respect, I was a little disappointed this time, since along with the glam, the event seemed to have lost most of its magic. To make things worse, a few other things (announcements included) saddened me even more; allow me to share a few of those with you…
Metal Gear Sony

During the last generation of consoles, the PlayStation 2 reigned supreme and almost every gamer had one; which means that a large portion of those people got their hands on the previous Metal Gear Solid titles. In the current generation of consoles, the Xbox 360 is undoubtedly more popular compared to the PS3 (at least where sales figures are concerned), which means that making MGS 4 a PS3 exclusive would restrict a lot of former PS2 owners and MGS fans who now own Xbox 360s, from playing the game. And that totally sucks. But it’s exactly what happened this E3. Yes ladies and gentle-gamers, Metal Gear Solid 4 is a PS3 exclusive (your tears go here).

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Couldn’t get any worse right? Wrong! Following the bomb he dropped at E3, Kojima said in a Sony Conference that E3 2007 was crap (his selection of words was slightly better than mine though), and he hoped that it would go back to its former self. Maybe that’s the reason he didn’t release any gameplay footage at the event; instead, he released another cinematic trailer (made using the game’s engine) featuring a bout between Vamp and Raiden. Why the hell would we want any of that stuff (we’ve already seen a ton of them) when we haven’t even seen what the game plays like!? To spit even more on E3, Kojima showed off gameplay footage from MGS 4 at Sony’s Conference in Japan, less than a week after E3!

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Unreal Tournament (PS)3

After we heard that Epic had scheduled a simultaneous launch for UT3 on all three platforms (PC, Xbox 360, PS3) Avinash and I expected to jump into the action as soon as the game was out. I upgraded my personal rig, while he got himself an Xbox 360 and we were both quite certain that we’d get the play the game right when the game released. The deal is that the both of us are pretty hardcore UT fans; in fact we still play a game or two of UT2k4 after lunch almost everyday (DM_Rankin FTW!).

When Epic announced that UT3 for the Xbox 360 wouldn’t release before 2008, just like a lot of the 360 owners out there, Avinash was upset. Now he can deal with it cos we’ve got a PS3 too, but what about the others out there who’re starved for some UT action but don’t have a killer PC or a PS3? I guess they’ll just have to wait till 2008; way to go Epic!

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Huxley: Vaporware Edition

Huxley is one game that’s been on our radar ever since we heard of it. You can’t blame us. A first person shooter, made using the Unreal 3 engine, set in a persistent world sounds like one killer MMOG. The game got a lot of media coverage in E3 2005, and was rated as the Best Online Game of the event. During E3 2006 all eyes were on Huxley, and while a lot of people commended it for