E3 2009 Highlights - Day I

Even though E3 hasn’t quite returned to the state of awesomeness it used to be, there were a significant amount of announcements coming out of the Los Angeles Convention Center this year. In case you weren’t following our live tweeting or non-stop news coverage, here’s a recap of the (2) days gone by. Today we’ll take a look at the events that transpired on Day 1.

We’ll start off with Microsoft’s press conference since that did take place first. They kicked off their conference with Rock Band Beatles that in all honesty looked boring as hell to me. They spent way too much time talking about the game and if that wasn’t enough we had Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney come up on stage to talk about how awesome the game’s going to be (no surprises there). Even though I was a bit ticked off with the excessive Rock band coverage I gotta hand it to Microsoft for cutting out the sales charts, the PR crap and heading straight for the games. Respect!

They kicked off the festivities with a bunch of trailers of certain exclusives like a brand new halo game called Halo Reach, Halo 3 ODST, Splinter Cell Conviction (that we later found out was coming out on the PC as well), Left 4 Dead 2 (once again available on PC) and Crackdown 2 that by the way is not being developed by Realtime Worlds since they’re now working on APB (All Points Bulletin).

And speaking of APB, the game will now be produced by EA and should be available sometime next year for both Xbox360 and PC. Since we are on the topic of EA’s press conference allow me to tell you how depressing it was since they spent most of their time talking about casual games for girls, Wii games and Sports games. We did get a Crysis 2 announcement for consoles as well as PC but with no video or trailer to talk about we really can’t get terribly excited.

Mixed martial Arts games are all the rage these days and keeping that tradition in mind EA announced a new MMA game for consoles called EA Sports MMA (don’t you just love the creativity here?)
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Back to Microsoft now. During their conference, Epic’s Cliffy B came on stage as well, not to announce a new Gears of War game but to let us know that Epic has been working on a side scrolling 3D action game for XBLA and the PC called Shadow Complex. Even though I was a bit disappointed by the lack of any Gears of War 3 info, I have to admit, the game looked pretty entertaining, and not to mention gorgeous.

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Then we got Forza Motorsport 3 that’s not my kind of game but if you like racing sims you’ll be pretty pleased with what the game will bring to the table. You have “visuals running at 60 frames per second, over 400 vehicles to choose from, user-generated content and the ability to upload your very own fully customized high-definition videos on Xbox Live.”

Before their show ended Microsoft dropped the bomb on all of us as Hideo Kojima took center stage to announce a Metal gear Solid game called Metal Gear Solid Rising for the Xbox360. Initially there was a bit of confusion as to whether MGS Rising would be an Xbox360 exclusive but it was later disclosed that the game would be coming to the PS3 and PC as well. MGS Rising won’t feature Snake as the protagonist; instead you’ll be stepping into the boots of uber-badass ninja Raiden and the focus this time around will be more on all out action than stealth.

Besides gaming Microsoft also announced a bunch of stuff for Xbox Live. Gold members will now have access to Last.Fm for free. You’ll now have live on-demand streaming 1080p movies on Xbox Live and judging by our internet connection, each movie should take at least 35 years to buffer. Social networking whores will be glad to know that both Facebook and Twitter will be available on Xbox Live as well.

And before MS ended their press conference they announced Project Natal, a unique way to play video games in which you become the controller. Now since none of us are at E3 we can’t really tell you how awesome or crappy this innovation would be but from what we’ve been hearing, it sounds promising. Also making his E3 debut was Milo, Lionhead’s virtual friend. Take a look at the videos below to see both Natal and Milo in action.

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The day ended with Ubisoft’s conference that was super long, boring and pretty uninteresting. James Cameron took center stage for nearly an hour and spoke at length about his upcoming game Avatar but without videos, how can you expect us to scream like little girls James?

The one game that stood out for me on Day 1 would have to be Splinter Cell Conviction. The game that had gone into hiding for a while now emerged in an all new avatar with a new badass Sam Fisher who could give Jack Bauer a run for his money.

If you’ve played Double Agent you’d know that Sam’s daughter died and in Conviction he’s going after the people that killed her. Even though stealth remains an important part of this game, Sam’s got a new repertoire of moves at his disposal now with which he can swiftly and brutally dispose off foes on a more up close and personal level.

Gunplay has undergone a significant change as well and as and when you don’t feel like sneaking around in the shadows no more, you can clean shop using the balls-to-the-wall method.

On the whole, the first day was a mixed bag. We got some cool announcements followed by some unimpressive stuff. While I was pretty elated about Crackdown 2, the absence of any gameplay videos did depress me a bit and what’s worse is that I’ll have to wait till 2010 to actually play the damn game. Luckily I have Halo 3: ODST, Splinter Cell Conviction and Left 4 Dead to keep me busy this year.