E3 Recap, Final Round - The Hits and the Misses, the many, many misses.

E3 is and will forever be a hit or miss type of event. There really is no "in-betweenies" in this case. You either loved or were totally let down by the event. You may like or dislike a couple of things, but by week's end you have one distinct taste in your mouth. And this year, I must reiterate, I am very disappointed.

To me, E3 is that place where you expect to be shocked by what's said. You expect the big gaming news that will pump you up for the upcoming year, if not the next couple of years.

This might sound surprising coming from me, but I blame the internet (gasp); that's right, thanks to gaming websites, and my bad habit of being informed, I already expected most of what would be said at each press conference. At least the "important" things.

We knew we were getting Nintendo's new thing, we knew we were getting info on what we now call the PSVita. And the only company that might have had an ace up their sleeve gave us diddly squat. Analysts and bloggers alike kept saying that "the star" of E3 this year might actually be the games and not the hardware, well they underdelivered too.

Reporting for *chuckle* DUTY.

So, now I'm going to divide this into groups. If you've been following you know what I thought of each company... So on this, my final run at E3 2011, it's going to be about the games. Keep in mind, I am slightly biased, I do tend to be more of a Sony guy. And on top of that, I'm not big on the fan favorite FPS genre. I think it's outdated and unimaginative... Like Michael Bay movies. Yeah, I went there.

So, without further shit talking, here we go:


The Hits:

- Bioshock Infinite kicked all sorts of ass this year. I know plenty of people who absolutely adore the first Bioshock, and everyone of them said that the second seemed rushed and unfinished. It also seems that the devs have heard this more than once, so they seem to be working their asses off on this game, and it shows.

The demo, the cutscenes, the writing - they all seem to be on point for this one.

- If you haven't seen video from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim hold on to your jaw before you press play to avoid damaging your computer or yourself.

It's hard for me to get this excited about an RPG, but in this case I can't help myself. It just has such a huge feel to it that I just can't wait to play it.

- Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception keeps upping the bar every time it show anything. At E3 we saw a whole new level, and I'm confident that it's the tip of the iceberg.

I'm pretty sure Naughty Dog could keep teasing us 'till November and the game would still feel fresh at release.


The Misses:

- Let the hate rain. Modern Warfare 3 was a huge miss. This is supposed to be the king of games this year. And it showed next to nothing new. It looks just like Black Ops. Seriously, Activision is going to have to do a lot more than change up the scenery to pump me up.

It just showed how stale the genre is.

- Battlefield 3 just missed it's moment. The game does look beautiful. But their demo was like watching paint dry. The tank sequence went way too long, and it just doesn't look like fun. EA seems to have beaten Activision to that line that sits between 'game' and 'simulator' and that might not be a good thing for them. I expect to see more, but for now, this is a downer.

- This one is getting the brunt of my heat because it's not one, but two games that didn't show at all. I'm not a big Halo fan to begin with. But I will admit it's Microsoft's golden goose... And an absent one at that.

MS needed that gameplay footage from one of the two games to get themselves over, yet they failed at it and in my eyes, it cost them.

Games I wanted to see more of:

- Twisted Metal was the big surprise last year at the Sony conference. This year, it was barely mentioned. Why? Talk about a letdown. After a year of close to silence, we got some gameplay on a tiny screen in a little room, and I for one am not satisfied.

My sweet tooth for Sweet Tooth must be fed.

- It saddens me that Gears of War always plays second fiddle to Halo. I prefer Gears. I really do. It's the one Xbox exclusive that I really enjoy. And it saddens me that it gets such a lackluster push right before launch.

I would have been happy with less Kinect and more Gears.





Games that no-showed that I wanted to see:

- Call it Borderlands 2, call it Borderworlds, call it whatever... I want to see it, I want to play it, and it just wasn't there.

I know Gearbox was still prepping for Duke, but dammit give me something!

- This game has been talked about forever now, and still we know little to nothing about it. The Last Guardian still lingers in shadows, and we'll have to keep waiting to see what it's all about. Miraculously, for a game to which we know so little, it has us all chomping at the bits for any info.




In closing, I need to repeat, the problem with this year's E3 was the lack of shock value. Aside from the mention of a new Smash Bros nothing made me really excited. A new Metal Gear would have been nice, maybe more info on the new God of War... But I'm going to quit bitching and moaning and finally announce the end to my E3 coverage for this year. I will now go back to writing stuff people might actually read (I sincerely hope Ray isn't the only one to read this shit, he did request it).

E3 Recap Part 3 - Do we even care about Microsoft?

Makes you want to turn 360... you know the rest, and it's still funny.

Now I know what you're thinking, "Chiko, wasn't E3 like two weeks ago?" And yes, it was. But in all seriousness, Microsoft wasted it's time there so it just took me a week or so just to think up something to write about them.

If there's one thing that all three companies proved this year is the importance of first party titles. Nintendo has always been ahead of the pack, establishing generation defining franchises like Mario, Zelda and a metric shitload of other games from the start. Sony has somehow established itself as well, with Uncharted leading the pack of a number of smaller yet still great titles.

Here lies Microsoft's problem. Now that Mass Effect is pulled what I'm calling a 'reverse Final Fantasy' and is playing for both teams, the Xbox 360 is really only left with two big first party titles: Halo, and Gears of War. With the GoW franchise about to close down it's trilogy (even though we all know it's gonna keep going), and Halo starting to re-hash, they should know they're in trouble.

So, how do they solve this problem? Well, they start their press conference with Modern Warfare 3, a game that's going to be on every single console under the sun. Followed mere moments later by Battlefield 3, another game that will be on every competing console. I'm not doubting that in the over saturated FPS market today these two titles are the obvious kings, but you can't base your big moment on things other companies have.

Not only am I saying that they should have based their conference on soon to be released GoW3 and the newly announced Halo 4 and Halo: Combat Evolved remake; I'm also flat out saying that Microsoft by far has the weakest first party lineup, and it shows.

So, how did they attempt (and fail) to balance this all out. If you guessed Kinnect, you are correct (and probably disappointed). MS is finally throwing some weight behind their motion system, unfortunately it's mostly dead weight. There are a lot of games you would never play, some you will play for a couple of hours and get tired of them, and then there's Dance Central, which is also available for the PS3 and the Wii (I sense a pattern here).

To sum it all up. Microsoft fell (way) short of the competition. Even the Konami video had more punch in it that the Microsoft conference. It left gamers wanting to say the least. I do believe that both the 360 and the PS3 still have ways to grow as consoles, but unless MS starts to expand it's exclusive library towards a hardcore audience instead of marketing to six year old's with Kinect they're just swimming in circles. For a console that touted itself as a machine for dedicated gamers, it sure seems to have folded quick after seeing the Wii's success.

One more thing... If you're biggest competition just dropped the ball right before the biggest gaming event of the year, and you have little to show... I would poke the soft spot... With a cattle prod.