The Good, Bad & Ugly (Gaming)
One week ago, I wrote that the theme of E3 2010 would be Innovation. I was wrong. The real theme was Schadenfreude, in every possible way.
It was slamming motion control on the Xbox and PS3 non-stop for a year, then finding one game that genuinely sold its potential. It was professional PS3 basher Gabe Newell stepping out on Sony's stage and thanking people for not punching him in the face. It was Shigeru Miyamoto unable to get a Wiimote to work live in front of a thousand chuckling people, and then blowing those same people away with the 3DS.
And more: It was admitting Treyarch may have stepped up to step into Infinity Ward's size-12 shoes. It was Dave Jaffe eating years of flat-out denials to unveil a high-def Twisted Metal. It was Nintendo passing out sacks of candy after years of broccoli. It was getting excited for Gears of War multiplayer again. It was Microsoft ignoring XBLA at its own press briefing, then unveiling an evolved Xbox. It was the PSP getting a ton of love and a new mascot, two years after many wrote it off. It was Epic producer Tanya Jessen dropping the s-bomb for Bulletstorm and Dead Space 2 scaring the dicks off people, and even giving Scribblenauts another chance. It was Grand Theft Auto V, Milo, the Vitality Sensor, Wii HD, The Last Guardian, Pikmin 3 and Resistance 3 all pulling no-shows and nobody even minding too much, because there was so much Awesome to wrap your brain around.
It has never been so satisfying for so many people to be proven so wrong.
WTF?: Pay attention, future generations. This is how you launch a major, if not revolutionary piece of electronics hardware: give it a silly (if copyright-friendly) name, surround it with French Canadian performance artists, then make every journalist covering the premiere event surrender their dignity by forcing them wear white ponchos with gimmick light-up shoulder pads, just to build up some extra good will. They even made Tomonobu Itagaki wear one That should've been somebody's ass right there.
I've paid to see Cirque du Soliel on several occasions and strange things happen with regularity at a typical E3, but "The Natal Experience as imagined by Cirque du Soliel" will be spoken of with derisive laughter and counted on "Worst Ever E3 Gaffes" lists for years to come. Man, I wish I'd been in on that meeting. "I've got it... ponchos! We'll make the whole presentation look just a few hoods shy of a backwoods meet-and-greet and have a jungle tribe pretend we've introduced them to fire! Oh! Oh! And we'll sneak into journalists' hotel rooms while they're on the show floor and put creepy Kinect ads on their bathroom mirrors!" Then Microsoft Entertainment Division President Robbie Bach and CEO James Allard stand up and say, in unison, "We quit." The End.
Most Awesome Moment: Microsoft brought Cirque du Soleil. Sony brought Kevin Butler. Advantage: Sony. While KB didn't host the entire event - hard to picture Jack Tretton giving that up - he did make an unannounced walk-on to take over from Peter Dille just as Sony's conference started dragging, and then he got a little something off his chest . Mr. Butler laid it down in less than four minutes. Walk-off homers and headshots. Drifting a turn at 100 mph and boss battles with a 600 ft. tall Greek god who may or may not be your father. A ridiculously huge TV in a tiny one-room apartment. Staying up 'til 3:00 a.m. to earn a trophy that isn't real. But IS. This is gaming.
Amen, KB. Swing by my house and I'll officially knight you with my Buster Sword.
Biggest Coup: Microsoft's exclusive deal with ESPN - and making that content free to Gold members - is nothing short of huge, and another big step towards the MS vision of convergence. A few people at IGN are already thinking of cancelling their cable packages. Special kudos to SportsCenter's Josh Elliot and Trey Wingo for showing up to show everybody how on-stage banter is done, and for taunting the Lakers mere yards away from Staples Center, where 19,000 screaming Lakers fans in playoff berserker mode waited to tear them to humorous shreds.
Genre to Watch: Oh yes, shooters were well represented, even over-represented, but turn your attention to all the driving games. You get a lot of overlap in all that gunplay, but the driving games this year are showing a lot more diversity... Joy Ride's causal kart racer, Need For Speed's arcade asphalt-ripper, Driver: San Francisco's car-hopping tactical fantasy, Twisted Metal's darker, flaming chainsaw fantasy, and big daddies Forza 4 and Gran Turismo 5's photo-real simulators. It's going to be a very good year for anyone who likes to burn rubber.
Dropped Kinections: After all the hype, it wouldn't be fair to say Kinect and Move hit with a thud, but they sure didn't nail the landing. Nobody's disputing the technology works, though maybe it's got a case of the hiccups. Rumors persist that Kinect has trouble tracking subjects who are sitting down; Microsoft reps insist you can "use" Kinect while seated, but it's unclear if "use" means motion control, voice control, or both. Regardless, of all the Kinect features demoed at Microsoft's conference, the coolest were all non-game related. Unless you count the insultingly canned "Girls can use it too, tee hee!" video phone feature as demoed by Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite.
Or maybe you heard the groans when Move was priced at a minimum $80 entry point. Sony released a back-pedaling statement days later pointing out you could just use half a Dualshock and save yourself thirty bucks on the navigation control. Why, thank you, Sony, for telling us half your new hardware is unnecessary. Of course, Microsoft didn't even price Kinect, the more sophisticated piece of technology.
That's not a cause for concern, right?
Best Reasons to Get Kinect or Move: That said, I laid out my ground rules for a good core Kinect/Move game a week ago, and a couple of titles at E3 actually met them. Child of Eden from Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi lets you play Kinect like you're conducting a symphony, instead of jumping and leaning and kicking like a maniac, and the result is magical. Over on the Move, Sorcerer is the Harry Potter game Harry Potter fans have wanted since they first enrolled in Hogwarts. I've been talking about motion-wanding for years, and Sony looks to be the one who will finally make it happen. Shame, Nintendo. Shame. And if you're skeptical about the Harmonix Kinect title Dance Central, rest assured. Several IGN editors who would normally never be caught dead dancing in front of a television had to be dragged away from the thing.
So, anyone else want to make a cool Kinect/Move game? Anyone?
I Expect You to Die, Mr. Bond: The return of GoldenEye is major. Popular shooters on Nintendo platforms are rare, but this one's the gold standard of shooters on any platform, and a contender for best motion control shooter in a suddenly crowded field. Oh, I'm sure somebody's willing to spend an extra $80 to play SOCOM 4 with Move, but I'm also sure they're in the minority.
The Matrix is All Around You: While body-swapping in the middle of a firefight for Square Enix's Mindjack opens up intriguing possibilities, I'm not feeling it nearly as much as the Shift feature in Ubisoft's Driver: San Francisco. Here's an entirely new way to play a driving game: pause it, leave your car, and instantly hop into any other car in range. That range expands as you level up, until it encompasses the entire city. So you can, say, shift out of a pursuit car, drop into an 18-wheeler a mile up the road, and steer into a head-on collision with the person you're chasing. That's how an Agent of the System rolls, baby.
Miss Manners: Kinectimals is cute enough to send weaker men into diabetic shock, but it's so much more insidious than that. Sure, I'll take a cute baby tiger named Skittles if I can order him to maim and devour my enemies, but lacking that, I'm going to have some fun with my furry little homunculus. Except you can't. See, you call out names until the Kinectimal you're adopting wiggles its ears in approval... meaning it can reject names you come up with. So after emptying your wallet to get an Xbox, a Kinect, and the game, you can't even name your new friend Hitler or Whorebags or [CENSORED]-Slurp. Way to suck the fun out of life, Microsoft.
(Don't Call Them) The Comeback Kid: The word "momentum" was used at least five or six times during the Sony conference. I can't honestly say they picked up any new momentum coming out of E3, but they didn't lose any, and after years of Microsoft sticking it to them by breaking former Sony exclusives, they did manage to get a little of their own back. Valve gave them a great big sloppy wet kiss for all the mean things they've said over the years with Steamworks support for Portal 2, which implies (unconfirmed) exclusive content. More implicit were exclusive content deals with EA, including special edition Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 packages with Medal of Honor: Frontline and (Move-enabled) Dead Space: Extraction bundled in, respectively. An exclusive multiplayer beta for Assassin's Creed Brotherhood pretty much sealed the deal. It's not Epic suddenly taking Gears of War 3 multi-platform, but it's a start. Best of all, nobody pushed the Insomniac defection in their face.
Though it has to be said, Jack Tretton himself announced to the world that people play a PS2 more often than a PS3, four years into the newer console's life cycle. That's a bit sad. It's also why you'll never, ever see backwards compatibility on the PS3. Sony just can't give up that pipe.
And I Care Because...?: Anybody else get the feeling Sony's regretting not charging for premium PSN memberships, and then bragging about not charging for premium memberships for so long? The PlayStation Plus add-on to the PSN, running at $50 a year, is promising "hundreds of dollars' of products" and exclusive content (that you lose if your subscription lapses), which might be worth hundreds of dollars to somebody who isn't me. Early access to betas sounds nice, but at least those come with a full game like Crackdown or Halo 3: ODST when Microsoft does it. Even less appealing is EA's Gun Club, which promises the exact same thing. Who to join first? How about neither, because I'm expecting this weak-tea trend to quietly evaporate before E3 2011.
The Sound of Cruel, Cruel Laughter: There are two games I didn't see enough of, but what I did see left me giggling like a happy little maniac. Metal Gear Solid: Rising's Zan-Datsu cut-what-you-will gameplay already has me planning how to ginsu everything in sight. But for sheer badassery, I direct you to the trailer for Tomonobu Itagaki's first Tecmo-free project, Devil's Third. Remember what Itagaki did for edged weaponry in Ninja Gaiden? Now he's adding firearms and explosives. Katanas and mini-guns and bazookas, oh my. I can't wait to take out wall-running ninja with a rocket launcher. That should be one of my rights as an American.
Don't Judge Me!: As if chainsawing your way through the zombie apocalypse wasn't enough fun, I saw a demo where Dead Rising 2 protagonist Chuck Greene ditched his motorsport leathers for a cute sports bra and Daisy Dukes right before braining more undead with a baseball bat. SO much hotter than the cocktail dresses Frank "I'm a Journalist!" Black was stuck with.
Financial Crysis: Okay, what the hell is with those guys at Crytek? I appreciate their commitment to making the best looking games in existence, and they're single handedly the best argument for 3D console gaming thus far, but if you thought Crysis had a high price point to get the full effect, stay tuned. You had to shell out for a boss PC rig to run the first game properly. You're obligated to purchase a 3D LCD television (from Sony, who makes them) and glasses to appreciate Crysis 2's stereoscopic violence. Presumably, you'll have to buy an entirely new house for Crysis 3.
All the Rage: Sorry, Sony, but the best graphics aren't on the PlayStation 3 anymore. Not only is id's RAGE gob-smacking gorgeous, but there are no reused textures in the entire environment. It's all hand sculpted and hand painted. Everywhere you go, wherever you turn, you will see something new. That's Gamer Heaven in a nutshell. I wish Fallout looked this good... maybe if I squint a bit, I can pretend this is Fallout, yes?
Shooter of Shooters: Killzone 3 is Killzone 2 with jetpacks. Rage is pretty and Bulletstorm funny. Ghost Recon: Future Soldier's aggro-stealth amuses and Halo in Space makes me giddy, but it's the Medal of Honor reboot that looks the most intense, with Call of Duty 4's campaign and Battlefield: Bad Company 2's class-based multiplayer, with CoD killstreaks. If Treyarch doesn't deliver on Call of Duty: Black Ops, Medal of Honor will be the new Modern Warfare. Then Activision investors circle Bobby Kotick's mansion with torches and pitchforks.
I Should Be More Excited : So, Heroes On the Move. What could be more natural than a mash-up of Insomniac characters and Naughty Dog characters? Hell, the first Ratchet & Clank game was built on a Jak & Daxter engine. Yet there they all were, just sorta standing around, doing... what? Where's the morph-o-rays? Where's the insanity? Wake me up when they demo the Rainbow Afronator.
WANT: Portal 2. Yes. Yes. Yes. You Monster.
The Loser: Original games. Towards the end of Day One, I started counting the number of non-sequel, non-licensed, non-franchise games made for core gamers. Six. Rage, Bulletstorm, Child of Eden (which could easily be called Rez 2), Mindjack, Sorcerer and Devil's Third. If I missed any, it's because I couldn't see them through all the numbers. C'mon. I like well-done sequels that improve on the original, but let's see something new, eh?
The Winner: There's a lot of criteria you could apply to get the result you want. The system with the most games I personally want to play? That's Xbox. Best moments? Sony got me on my feet five times. But if the Electronic Entertainment Expo is about whipping gamers into a rabid frenzy over what's coming in the next twelve months, hands down, this E3 belonged to Nintendo and no other.
A few Nintendaddicts called me out for calling them the underdog in my Nintendo conference write-up , but they mistook the context. Going into this E3, all eyes were on Microsoft's Kinect and PlayStation's Move. Anything else was afterthought. Then those challengers arrived and fumbled under the weight of way, way too many dance games, mini-games, exercise games... in other words, they pulled straight from a hyper-myopic version of the Nintendo playbook, while Nintendo showed up with an entirely different playbook. Microsoft touted Kinectimals. Nintendo debuted The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Sony offered Heroes On the Move. Wii rearmed GoldenEye.
The list of old friends coming back after extended absences was nothing short of astounding, every smile bigger than the last. I've heard complaints it's merely a rehash of old properties, but those people must have trouble counting. By my reckoning, it's two years between Halo games, Gears of War games, Killzone games; Call of Duty, Need for Speed, and Assassin's Creed only went one year between installments. It's been twenty years since Kid Icarus flew in a game of his own, fourteen since we last went to Donkey Kong Country and four since Kirby ate a thing. They're due. Overdue, really.
That would've been enough. But Nintendo also delivered new hardware of its own. It handles better, with a new analog stick. It's a new experience - mobile, glasses-free 3D gaming - that doesn't lock out all your old 2D games. And then more old friends: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the greatest games ever made, a Pilotwings sequel, Starfox 64, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Animal Crossings, a collection from the 8-bit era, all re-mastered for the 3DS and developers from Hideo Kojima to Motohide "Okami" Eshiro talking how excited they are to make new games for the platform. It even addresses the growing threat of the iPhone by adding motion control and a gyroscope, and while deals clearly aren't in place to put 3D movies on the 3DS quite yet, incoming announcements were strongly hinted at.
They didn't ignore the casual players - nor should they - but it was as if Nintendo suddenly remembered their core fans, and heard them, and responded. This year has people talking about dusting off their Wiis for the first time in a long time, and I'm one of them. I want to play Epic Mickey and Kirby's Epic Yarn and GoldenEye multiplayer into the wee hours, just like we used to.
Here at E3 2010, Nintendo stood up proud and reminded a generation of gamers why they became gamers. They win. We win.
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