E3 Discussion Thread

[icycalm]

Soon as I find it I will... but every computer I downloaded it to seems to no longer have it...

There's one more computer at work that might have it. So hopefully I'll be able to post it on Monday.

OMG conspiracy! Forget Monday, check now before it's too late!!1

[system11]

Someone who is usually very reliable with industry reports and rumours, has told me that actually the GT4-HD running at high res 60fps was in fact, running on a development PC.

Sony - when do the lies end, exactly? Edit: link added
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31681

And a couple of other gems:

"When we contacted gamestation to ask why it wasn't taking pre-orders for the 20GB deal, we were told in no uncertain terms that it was because Sony wouldn't be releasing the slightly more wallet-friendly bundle in the UK."

"During an interview with SmackDown! developer Yuke's, we asked senior director Taku Chihaya if he was disappointed that the new design of the PS3 pad lacked a rumble feature, and whether he was concerned about this detrimentally affecting the SmackDown! games. His alarming response was, "We didn't know that! Wow, that stinks.""

[dave4shmups]

As pretty as this may be, you'll be better off playing the first 3 by Insomniac I'm sure.

@JP, please let me know when you get the Project Slyph video up on Yousendit.com; thanks!

Soon as I find it I will... but every computer I downloaded it to seems to no longer have it...

There's one more computer at work that might have it. So hopefully I'll be able to post it on Monday.[/quote]

Ok dude, thanks! Game Arts and Square Enix ought to just put up some more footage of this game. I don't know why they insisted that that video be removed.

Speaking of the PS3, I was talking to Mike over at Gamecrazy yesterday, and was talking about how I'd love to get a J-PS2. He told me that the Sony rep. that comes by their store told him to tell me to wait for the PS3, because it's region-free capability will extend to PS2 and PS1 games.

Even if this is true, though, methinks that $219.00 for a j-PSTwo from Play Asia is a lot better deal then $600 for the PS3.

[dave4shmups]

Someone who is usually very reliable with industry reports and rumours, has told me that actually the GT4-HD running at high res 60fps was in fact, running on a development PC.

Sony - when do the lies end, exactly?

And a couple of other gems:

"When we contacted gamestation to ask why it wasn't taking pre-orders for the 20GB deal, we were told in no uncertain terms that it was because Sony wouldn't be releasing the slightly more wallet-friendly bundle in the UK."

"During an interview with SmackDown! developer Yuke's, we asked senior director Taku Chihaya if he was disappointed that the new design of the PS3 pad lacked a rumble feature, and whether he was concerned about this detrimentally affecting the SmackDown! games. His alarming response was, "We didn't know that! Wow, that stinks.""

AFIK Sony couldn't include the rumble feature in the PS3 controller due to legal issues they had with the DualShock 2.

I'm confused about the gameplay in Every Extend Extra, done by Q. I watched the gameplay video on this site:

http://gametrailers.com/e32k6.php?filter=gameplay

It looks fun, it certainly doesn't look like a shmup, and I don't understand how the gameplay works. It just seems like your "ship" lets off bombs when it's close to certain enemies.

[ahnslaught]

Someone who is usually very reliable with industry reports and rumours, has told me that actually the GT4-HD running at high res 60fps was in fact, running on a development PC.

Sony - when do the lies end, exactly? Edit: link added
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31681

Not too surprising, given their track record of promising the moon and delivering something more akin to a road trip to Gary, Indiana. It is surprising, however, that they would use a PC for a relatively old game like GT4 just to dress it up. Maybe they couldn't get their hands on one of the $600 PS3s with HDMI to show off 1080p?

[Bingo]

Even the only marginally interested local press (non-VG-specific) is pointing out Sonys credibility/image problems with regard to the E3. The hot air they're farting this year doesn't even match last year's, and that was a load of prerendered irrelevance already. No one knows what's coming, and I don't presume to by a long shot, but the mainstream press analyzing how Sony is steering past any discernable mass target audience is alarming. They even made fun of the hastily implemented gyroscope. The mentioned US retail price didn't shock me as bad as many, but seeing the local predictions gave me an inverse boner.

And the only justification is the comparison with other Blu-Ray players. Now I care about that, but almost the entire gaming demographic doesn't give a fuck. Sony is obviously gambling here, staking the CE divisions AND the gaming divisions on the future of Blu-Ray. It's either a combined demographic of gamer-CE-BD-philiacs snorting Sony coke in regular installments of interconnected exclusivity, or bust. I'm not emotionally affiliated with any of the camps, but seeing the sheer hubris behind this I'm not sure a Sony victory would be healthy in any way. Not that MS is better, but they're the better diplomats at the moment, I've got to give them that.

[JBC]

Despite all the complaints about Sony and it's PS3 Coded Arms looks amazing. The trailer itself was quite short and boring, but i've seen some show floor videos of the actual gameplay and it looks to put anything i've seen on 360 so far to shame. Strange, because excluding the Metal Gear series Konami games are usually a step behind the rest in the graphics department.

[Eps]

I'm confused about the gameplay in Every Extend Extra, done by Q. I watched the gameplay video on this site:

http://gametrailers.com/e32k6.php?filter=gameplay

It looks fun, it certainly doesn't look like a shmup, and I don't understand how the gameplay works. It just seems like your "ship" lets off bombs when it's close to certain enemies.

It's still a shooting game. The difference is, you're basically the projectile.

[system11]

http://www.cooltechzone.com/Departments ... 5152312/1/

I don't agree with the assertion made by the article title, however - it contains many valid points. I don't think I can recall an upcoming console that carried so much baggage.

[bigbadboaz]

Well, I was fortunate enough to get a show badge at the last minute, so I figured I should add my impressions to the thread. Let me know if there's anything I missed you want to hear about.

I really expected to see more out of Microsoft. Moving through their booth, I really saw no big-name titles that hadn't been previously announced. The amount of titles on display seemed awfully low, period. then again, it appeared that roughly half of their booth was reserved for behind-closed-doors sessions, so they may have simply chosen to keep the good stuff under wraps. Nonetheless, I came away with the impression their second wave is very slow in coming. I wasn't compelled to stop and play much at all at their booth, and there were a lot of titles with framerate problems and/or a general lack of onscreen activity.

Sony - of course I am with the general sentiment that their pricing is ridiculous. However, I was more impressed with the PS3 titles on display than I expected to be. After a few months of sentiment that the 360 and PS3 would be closer than expected in hardware power, I was surprised to see that most of the PS3 titles looked noticeably better than the 360 titles. The Resistance FPS was very impressive in just how much it put onscreen. Easily a step above what COD2 acheived on 360 from what I've seen, and it looked to maintain 60 FPS at all times. Likewise, the amount of geometry onscreen in Heavenly Sword was a step above anything I've seen. Overall, the PS3 titles on the floor seemed a large step above the 360 titles both in geometry and smoothness. Of course, with all of the revelations/rumors now coming to light, it's impossible to know if these were actually running on PS3 hardware.

The PS3 controller felt alright. I am not thrilled about the retention of the DS design. The lack of rumble stinks and the controller is so light as to feel insubstantial. Sony lengthened the throw on the analog sticks, which is a good idea in theory but felt a bit unwieldy in action. The new "triggerized" L2/R2 buttons felt surprisingly good. I did not get to use the motion-sensing capability to any judgeable degree, but I feel it's a knee-jerk response to the Wii controller and am not pleased about it.

The hardware casing was on display and while all three variants had a very nice glossy look to them, the case itself is as huge as reported and undeniably ugly.

Nintendo - I did not get to see the Wii at all. The four-hour wait to get into the walled-off section just wasn't worth it. They did have very large banks of DS Lites set up with lots of titles, so I was able to get an impression of the new hardware. The unit is a nice size and quite a sleek design. I will be very happy to own this as opposed to the old design I happily passed on. The buttons and D-pad are nicely sized with a soft action. They are similar if not the same as those on the GB Micro. Between the layout and buttons, GBA games should play quite nicely on the Lite. Game-wise, I came into the show very excited about the DS lineup and left with some hopes dashed. New SMB was a lot of fun - a feel very like the original SMB with an N64-plus facelift. There were long lines to play this, at the end of which you were rewarded with a free DS Lite carrying case. Some of the other marquee titles disappointed me. Not owning the original DS, I have not had much exposure to the use of the touchscreen. I was sorely disappointed to find that in many cases they are, in fact, forcing its use where regular D-Pad control would have been superior. Both StarFox and Mario Hoops suffered from this. In StarFox you had to fly the ship with the stylus and fire with the D-Pad. In Hoops, you used directional stylus sweeps to pass and shoot instead of just aiming and performing actions with the D-Pad and buttons. Guess what? The stylus control was far more awkward than the usual D-Pad control would have been, and the games were NOT doing anything innovative that required this input method. Very disappointing.

Again, I did not see the Wii, but based on my DS experience and some of the reports filtering out, I will not be surprised to find the Wii control more of a gimmick than true innovation. I get the sense Nintendo isn't really innovating so much as creating a niche where they can still exist in the face of Sony and Microsoft. I will reserve judgment until I can play for myself, but I think that just like with the DS, there will be games released where I will be irritated at having to wave a wand around when I would have been much happier to use a good old gamepad.

Miscellaneous notes: the Sony Bravia LCDs used to display the PS3 were pretty incredible. I had no idea how far LCD TVs had come. They looked very sharp with no noticeable ghosting; the screens were viewable from just about any angle, and the black levels looked just fine, at least when the screens were viewed standing alone.

I do feel Nintendo is on to something by bypassing HD resolutions in favor of cost reductions. I had a definite sense when watching the PS3 and 360 games that without the additional investment in an HD set, this generational leap wouldn't be that huge on a legacy SDTV. Nintendo will definitely have a much easier sell to the mass market, SDTV-owning demographic.

Sega had a VF5 Lindbergh setup on display. The game looked very nice but not nearly as good as some of the PS3 titles. It should port over very well. Much like the 360 and PS3 titles, I felt that aside from the HD leap, it didn't look that much better than VF4 on the previous gen.


The outlook for PSP overall was very disappointing. I saw no major titles we haven't known about for a long time, no wave of second- or third-gen games. Gradius Collection was fun to play and they may have cleaned up the emulation on G3 - I saw no inaccuracies from what I played. I greatly enjoyed Ultimate Ghouls N' Ghosts, but the game definitely feels polygonal compared to the old titles. There's a sense of lag in the gameplay that just wasn't in the 2D games.

Namco had a Time Crisis 4 arcade machine in their "mobile arcade" booth. I had no idea this was even being produced and was disappointed to see it's basically more of the same on the old System 22 hardware. Shimmering, jaggy graphics and all. Still a lot of fun. It keeps the weapon-selection system from three and adds a simple "view selection" function where you can occasionally "look around" by shooting arrows on the sides of the screen. Not a big advance by any means.

All right, I'm tired of typing. Of course there was a lot more there; fire questions at me and I'll answer what I can.

[dave4shmups]

Well, I was fortunate enough to get a show badge at the last minute, so I figured I should add my impressions to the thread. Let me know if there's anything I missed you want to hear about.

I really expected to see more out of Microsoft. Moving through their booth, I really saw no big-name titles that hadn't been previously announced. The amount of titles on display seemed awfully low, period. then again, it appeared that roughly half of their booth was reserved for behind-closed-doors sessions, so they may have simply chosen to keep the good stuff under wraps. Nonetheless, I came away with the impression their second wave is very slow in coming. I wasn't compelled to stop and play much at all at their booth, and there were a lot of titles with framerate problems and/or a general lack of onscreen activity.

Sony - of course I am with the general sentiment that their pricing is ridiculous. However, I was more impressed with the PS3 titles on display than I expected to be. After a few months of sentiment that the 360 and PS3 would be closer than expected in hardware power, I was surprised to see that most of the PS3 titles looked noticeably better than the 360 titles. The Resistance FPS was very impressive in just how much it put onscreen. Easily a step above what COD2 acheived on 360 from what I've seen, and it looked to maintain 60 FPS at all times. Likewise, the amount of geometry onscreen in Heavenly Sword was a step above anything I've seen. Overall, the PS3 titles on the floor seemed a large step above the 360 titles both in geometry and smoothness. Of course, with all of the revelations/rumors now coming to light, it's impossible to know if these were actually running on PS3 hardware.

The PS3 controller felt alright. I am not thrilled about the retention of the DS design. The lack of rumble stinks and the controller is so light as to feel insubstantial. Sony lengthened the throw on the analog sticks, which is a good idea in theory but felt a bit unwieldy in action. The new "triggerized" L2/R2 buttons felt surprisingly good. I did not get to use the motion-sensing capability to any judgeable degree, but I feel it's a knee-jerk response to the Wii controller and am not pleased about it.

The hardware casing was on display and while all three variants had a very nice glossy look to them, the case itself is as huge as reported and undeniably ugly.

Nintendo - I did not get to see the Wii at all. The four-hour wait to get into the walled-off section just wasn't worth it. They did have very large banks of DS Lites set up with lots of titles, so I was able to get an impression of the new hardware. The unit is a nice size and quite a sleek design. I will be very happy to own this as opposed to the old design I happily passed on. The buttons and D-pad are nicely sized with a soft action. They are similar if not the same as those on the GB Micro. Between the layout and buttons, GBA games should play quite nicely on the Lite. Game-wise, I came into the show very excited about the DS lineup and left with some hopes dashed. New SMB was a lot of fun - a feel very like the original SMB with an N64-plus facelift. There were long lines to play this, at the end of which you were rewarded with a free DS Lite carrying case. Some of the other marquee titles disappointed me. Not owning the original DS, I have not had much exposure to the use of the touchscreen. I was sorely disappointed to find that in many cases they are, in fact, forcing its use where regular D-Pad control would have been superior. Both StarFox and Mario Hoops suffered from this. In StarFox you had to fly the ship with the stylus and fire with the D-Pad. In Hoops, you used directional stylus sweeps to pass and shoot instead of just aiming and performing actions with the D-Pad and buttons. Guess what? The stylus control was far more awkward than the usual D-Pad control would have been, and the games were NOT doing anything innovative that required this input method. Very disappointing.

Again, I did not see the Wii, but based on my DS experience and some of the reports filtering out, I will not be surprised to find the Wii control more of a gimmick than true innovation. I get the sense Nintendo isn't really innovating so much as creating a niche where they can still exist in the face of Sony and Microsoft. I will reserve judgment until I can play for myself, but I think that just like with the DS, there will be games released where I will be irritated at having to wave a wand around when I would have been much happier to use a good old gamepad.

Miscellaneous notes: the Sony Bravia LCDs used to display the PS3 were pretty incredible. I had no idea how far LCD TVs had come. They looked very sharp with no noticeable ghosting; the screens were viewable from just about any angle, and the black levels looked just fine, at least when the screens were viewed standing alone.

I do feel Nintendo is on to something by bypassing HD resolutions in favor of cost reductions. I had a definite sense when watching the PS3 and 360 games that without the additional investment in an HD set, this generational leap wouldn't be that huge on a legacy SDTV. Nintendo will definitely have a much easier sell to the mass market, SDTV-owning demographic.

Sega had a VF5 Lindbergh setup on display. The game looked very nice but not nearly as good as some of the PS3 titles. It should port over very well. Much like the 360 and PS3 titles, I felt that aside from the HD leap, it didn't look that much better than VF4 on the previous gen.


The outlook for PSP overall was very disappointing. I saw no major titles we haven't known about for a long time, no wave of second- or third-gen games. Gradius Collection was fun to play and they may have cleaned up the emulation on G3 - I saw no inaccuracies from what I played. I greatly enjoyed Ultimate Ghouls N' Ghosts, but the game definitely feels polygonal compared to the old titles. There's a sense of lag in the gameplay that just wasn't in the 2D games.

Namco had a Time Crisis 4 arcade machine in their "mobile arcade" booth. I had no idea this was even being produced and was disappointed to see it's basically more of the same on the old System 22 hardware. Shimmering, jaggy graphics and all. Still a lot of fun. It keeps the weapon-selection system from three and adds a simple "view selection" function where you can occasionally "look around" by shooting arrows on the sides of the screen. Not a big advance by any means.

All right, I'm tired of typing. Of course there was a lot more there; fire questions at me and I'll answer what I can.

Thanks for all that info and impressions!

Two questions-was there any mention of a home port of Time Crisis 4, and did you see Killing Day or Xyanide anywhere?

[bigbadboaz]

Dave - no, no, and no. The main Namco/Bandai booth was surprisingly light on content. They didn't even have anything on Ridge 7 beyond the trailer we'd already seen, looping on a plasma screen. TC4 was placed somewhat incongrously in the middle of their second booth dedicated to mobile games. I was lucky to have stumbled upon it.

I didn't comb through many of the third-party booths as well as I probably should have. But as far as I know, no Killing Day or Xyanide.

[dave4shmups]

Dave - no, no, and no. The main Namco/Bandai booth was surprisingly light on content. They didn't even have anything on Ridge 7 beyond the trailer we'd already seen, looping on a plasma screen. TC4 was placed somewhat incongrously in the middle of their second booth dedicated to mobile games. I was lucky to have stumbled upon it.

I didn't comb through many of the third-party booths as well as I probably should have. But as far as I know, no Killing Day or Xyanide.

Ok, well thanks anyhow!

Did you notice PS3 LAIR? I'm just curious as to what the gist of the gameplay is; killing dragons, riding on dragons, using dragons to kill other dragons, etc.

[judesalmon]

Sony - of course I am with the general sentiment that their pricing is ridiculous. However, I was more impressed with the PS3 titles on display than I expected to be. After a few months of sentiment that the 360 and PS3 would be closer than expected in hardware power, I was surprised to see that most of the PS3 titles looked noticeably better than the 360 titles. The Resistance FPS was very impressive in just how much it put onscreen. Easily a step above what COD2 acheived on 360 from what I've seen, and it looked to maintain 60 FPS at all times. Likewise, the amount of geometry onscreen in Heavenly Sword was a step above anything I've seen. Overall, the PS3 titles on the floor seemed a large step above the 360 titles both in geometry and smoothness. Of course, with all of the revelations/rumors now coming to light, it's impossible to know if these were actually running on PS3 hardware.

That's pretty much the same thing I've been hearing from the people at work who went to E3 - they've said that when you're up close to the games, you start to notice that difference.

It's unknown whether everything was running on final PS3 hardware, but I'm fairly sure it was, and stuff like Resistance and Heavenly Sword definitely was.

[Zweihander]

Enjoy.