E3 press conference overview part Drei-del : Ubisoft

Ubisoft is a company I like, I suppose. They're the ones that made Assassin's Creed 2, my game of the year 2009, but I still never forget that they're to EA what EA is to Activision, if that makes sense.

The confrence was hosted by Joel McHale. At first I found him amusing but after a while I realized that having him is a bad idea. His style of comedy is based off of making fun of other things and being a dick, so even when he tries to sound interested it comes off as him being a sarcastic dick so he always has to apologize after every remark targeted at someone else since they might not get that he's joking and realize that he's actually an asshole. Now on to the games.

It starts with the only Kinect game I want, Child Of Eden from Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the person who made Rez. Later I found out that you can get it on the PS3 too, so I was thrilled. It's another trippy and colorful shooter that assults your eyes and ears with colorful displays of particle effects and sounds. The way it was shown as Mizuguchi himself played the game gave it an impression of a symphony of awesome. A+ would buy twice.

Then it gets better with Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, which starts with a pretty cool CG cutscene of Ezio going through a crowd to confront some person while other assassins provide cover with bows and arrows. It ends with the typical VERSUS shot with the two sides running at each other head on. After that there's a demonstration that begins with an awkward sex scene. The fort is assulted by.. some guys and they have cannons and shit. It ends with a certain item being taken by Ezio's rival and Ezio getting shot and falling from a rooftop. Gameplay improvements... ehh... They said they'll improve the horses and insert, god help us, horse combat. I personaly never used a horse in AC2 and avoided them whenever possible so the idea of horse combat, which will probably be forced, does not thrill me. Also turret sequences. They said they fine-tuned the combat, but the AC combat was never good so ehh. Still will buy.

Then it was time for Shaun White Skateboarding featuring guest star Shaun White. Shaun White may be the son of Carrot Top but he's still a pretty cool guy I suppose. Now the game sort of reminded me of Flower and Saboteur with the fact that through your actions you return color and life to the world. And Shaun White has the powers of Green Lantern, since he can generate green halfpipes and extending rails out of thin air.

Then it was silly time, since the next game was pretty much laser tag that you can play at home. It was... well it was laser tag but... moving on.

Then it was fitness time with the same exact fitness game and script as the one in the Microsoft conference.

Then there was another Rabbids game. meh

Then they showed Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Future Soldier, which I view as one part Splinter Cell, one part Gears and one part Modern Warfare. It looked like an interesting game to play with people.

Then the CEO of Ubisoft came and sounded like girl someone had beaten up a bit. Then they showed Driver San Francisco which has the feature where you can jump from car to car with the power of... umm... being in a coma. While the game didn't look bad, the other racers seen shit on it.

Then there was some Populous style game called Project Dust.

Then there was Rayman Origins, which looked cool and very impressive for a game only 5 people work on. I mean really, that's the dev team. 5 people.

And finally, a Michael Jackson game, no gameplay was shown. Not even a trailer was shown. Just a bunch of dancers came and reenacted Beat It.

Overall, Ubisoft was second worst, but still okay I suppose.

E3 press conference overview part Duhx : Electronic Arts

In the PS2 generation, EA was considered the devil. Well now that title is owned by Activision, for reasons not directly connected to this press conference. So anyway, I had no real expectations of EA itself since I always associate EA with Madden which I assoicate with... nothing? I forgot what I assocate it with. But over the past years EA has made some good games. The most interesting part, however, was to see the new EA partners. I was surprised by the fact that EA actually was capable of keeping me interested for 1 hour and 30 minutes so that I wouldn't have to reach for my Kamen Rider figures to keep myself entertained. Also it's funny how EA is a company I (possibly wrongly) associate with Americans with all the sports and shit yet most of the people who presented something were all clearly european, or atleast French Canadian. No wait that's Ubisoft.

It all started on a high note with Need For Speed Hot Pursuit developed by Criterion, the studio that brought us Burnout. Need For Speed was a game series that probably needed to be put in to capable hands to stay relevant, and this is exactly what they did. They showed some one on one car chases. It looked fun, I'm not the hugest fan of racing games but I play them sometimes. Would consider buying.

Then there was a demo of Dead Space 2. Dead Space is a game I only didn't play out of being a pussy. The game didn't seem scary when you're watching it together with thousands of people over the internet but I'm sure it would get to me after a while of playing it alone. Also the demo ended with a cliffhanger, and they said that they would show the thrilling conclusion in Sony's conference.

Then they demonstrated a 24 player game of Medal Of Honor, but truth be told, it went too fast and too perfect to seem like people were actually playing it, especialy since noone was talking. Atleast in the Gears Of War 3 demo from Microsoft Cliffy B and his nigs seemed to communicate.

Then they showed a teaser for another Battlefeild. Battlefield is a series I know even less about than I know about CoD.

Also Gunclub, some sort of EA service for their shooters.

Then it was sports time as Peter Moore came on the stage. I wasn't terribly thrilled but I didn't hold it against EA since that's what EA does. It makes sports games.

First game was EA MMA, following hot on UFC Undisputed's footsteps. Now if there is something I like about EA Sports is that they make nice trailers. The thing about MMA games is that I think the gameplay is shitty, but maybe I just don't get any game about fighting that doesn't involve parts of cricles and directions. Also no schoolgirls or fireballs ether.

Then there was a fitness game. I seriousy don't think the people that care about this sort of thing would be watching this.

Then Joe Montana came and had smalltalk about sports with Peter Moore while they showed footage of Madden NFL 11-ty umpleen. I don't think Joe Montana knows shit about video games, but atleast he seemed like a nice person.

Then, after a philosophical speech from some british person about existence and free will, they showcased some Sims stuff. Once again I don't think the Sims crowd was watching.

Then it was EA partners time. They first talked about some of their partners in the crowd, like Respawn and Bioware, who had nothing to show this year, Then Cliffy B came with some other people and presented...

Bulletstorm. Bulletstorm is claimed by Cliffy B as a balls to the wall over the top action shooter as oppsed to dogshit brown shooters most people make, including himself. But then they showed a gameplay demo. My first reaction was ''Clifford, if this is your understanding of over the top then you are boring as shit, since the Japanese shooter games like Vanquish or even cookieface's Devil's Third look over the top than this.'' Altough it did look like Bulletstorm had more going on than say, a Tom Clancy game, it still did seem like it wasn't making most of the ''over the top'' thing. I watched it and the only thing that crossed my mind was ''who is that voice actor I'm hearing''. Turns out it was Steve Blum putting a bit of Solid Snake in to his voice.

Then they showed Crysis 2. I still stay by my opinion of Crysis main selling aspect is graphics. A friend of mine can try telling me that Crysis is fun and open ended, but I still couldn't get rid of the throwing up reflex from seeing another cuntgargling game about spacemarines killing aliens in first or third person with a rifle. Also it featured 3D. Yay, I said, with the same enthusiasm as this picture.

So all in all, it was surprising that EA could do a coherent and interesting press conference. I'm interested in seeing more partner projects with EA.

E3 press conference overview part 1 : Microsoft

Microsoft, I'm very dissapointed in you. Well actually no, since I don't have any big expectations from Microsoft, but for different reasons than I have no big expectations from Nintendo.

The Microsoft Press Conference was dissapointing since it really didn't have a lot to do with what I consider gaming, it was mostly for casuals who probably don't get out of their way to tune in and watch press conferences when there's stuff to do like play Wii Sports Resort and watch sitcoms, but I digress.
For the first 30 minutes they showed their ''hardcore'' games, which were crammed back to back so it gave the impression that they needed to get rid of this shit fast before they could start the real show. Here's a quick rundown of the games they showed and what I think of them.

Call Of Duty Black Ops.
I've only played one Call Of Duty over the course of my entire life and I think it's enough. I think Call of Duty will fuck up after this one even more. You see, Treyarc or something was the second-string developer they used to fill in the space for the IW CoDs. Now they have a lot to follow up on, since MW2 was the best selling shooter of all time. But that's not really the issue, I think it's more of an issue that I enter a short coma whenever I watch something that has to do with CoD since even if you don't play it, you still come in contact with in all the time like with second hand smoke. But since this is Activision, they will milk the tits of this cashcow so hard that it will look like a shot from Riki Oh.

Metal Gear Solid Rising
Sold. Sold. But for the PS3. I'm a MGS superfanboy so this, with incredible bias, wins best of Microsoft. But hell, it was still the best thing if I wasn't biased ether. But retooled gameplay? A character we hated turned badass that we now love? Slashing shit? Count me in!

Then Peter Molyneux came, or as I call him, the Prince Of Lies. Pete had very limited time on stage, but he still had time to boast a bit in traditional fashion. This time he didn't bring his son's soul stuck in an Xbox, so it was already better. Then he revealed...

Fable 3
Fable is a game series I have absolutely no interest in. The artstyle, plot and gameplay all seem boring to me, for biased reasons, so feel free to call me out on sucking glorious nippon's dick all the time, since I have no comeback for that. I really do do that. ALL ZE TIME. But it looks like Fable's theme now is about revolution. I'm sure there's people who will buy this and enjoy this. Pete doesn't make bad games, but he does make exagerations of cosmic proportions. No gameplay was shown.

Halo : Reach
Halo. 4 person co-op. Would maybe play. Not really excited.

Gears Of War 3
4 person co-op. Would play. There's really not a lot you can say about Halo and Gears since it's the same shit all the time. ALL THE TIME.

Absent was Crackdown 2, which was weird since that comes out in like a month. Then there was a teaser trailer for some sort of gladiator game from Crytek. After that it all devolved in to horrible shit and I almost booked a ticket to LA just so that I can demand moral compensation.

Then they talked for 30 minutes about Natal... I mean, Kinect. They talked about the menus and shit and how you can use them with the camera. So you can say ''Xbox '' and something happens. I don't know, have we really become so lazy that we can't even pick up a controler to navigate our menus? It's just clicking a dpad for a bit and then pressing a button. In fact, the idea of having to tell the Xbox what you want it to do sounds more complicated than doing it yourself. It would be like using the phone to tell your grandpa how to use a VCR. Also, the first presenter was black, which is actually interesting, because if you remember last year when they unveiled Natal, a certain African American journalist couldn't use it since the camera was racist or something. So this guy was to prove that they solved that, altough everyone already forgot that since noone likes N'Gai Croal.
Then some girl who was bad at acting came out and talked about some more features. Then she video chatted with her twin sister. (spoiler : there was no twin sister) Then two American sportspersons who I don't know anything about came out and talked about some sports channel that could now be streamed on Xbox 360. Gold subscription only, what a surprise. Altough it means even less to me since I'm European and have no interest in sports, so I can't, and wouldn't anyway. But atleast these sportspersons were good at public speaking since they do it for a living.
Then Kudo motherfucking Tsunoda came, who looked like he fell asleep drunk on a park bench next to a playground in the previous night came. This meant ''lube up your buttholes, it's NATAL TIME''. Then the rest was more or less a boring blur. Games no better than any of the Nintendo ones were shown. The best part was watching the humans IRL as they spazzed around like they were running from invisible rapists while covered in bees. There was a game like Nintendogs, there was some game that made the players look like complete re... oh wait that's all of them. Everything looked like something already done on the Wii, and not done one bit better than the Wii. I stopped paying attention, I was at that point just imagining a scenario where I am in the E3 crowd, I sneak out and follow Kudo as he goes to a toilet, and then I beat him up and rape him with his own shoes. Then they showed some Forza game with Natal and for the first time since Kinect time started, I actually said ''oh hey, that looks cool.''.
Then finally they unveiled the Xbox 360 Slim. Bigger HDD and stuff and it was all nice, but they forgot to tell one thing, the Red Ring of Death rate. Actually, I don't think they forgot, I think they were too proud to accept that there's a failure rate, which is stupid, since that's the first thing that stops me from buying one.

So overall, Microsoft had the worst press conference, not just from the big 3, but every company that had one. Also, no pricepoint on Kinect. Why? Probably since if it really is the 150$ rumored, the internet would have laughed at them so hard, the penises everyone who participated in this press conference would irreversably shrink.

55/100