Consolidated Letdown: E3 2009

[Mrbloodworth]

When i said application, i was referring to i can see many more of its capability's translating into game play.

The MS one seemed more oriented to thoes that use the consoles as a media entertainment, as opposed to games. (such as the voice activated calling and outfits shopping from the video).

[HaemishM]

but neither of these devices is going to draw in a whole bunch of Wii expats into their realm.

You missed my point. The Sony demo wasn't trying to target Wii expats. It was targeting its core audience. The MS demo was targeting the casual crowd. You might as well have had Peter Molyneux drive up and say "Wee would like to play."

[Mrbloodworth]

The Sony demo wasn't trying to target Wii expats. It was targeting its core audience. The MS demo was targeting the casual crowd.

This.

[naum]

The PS3 demo, OTOH, didn't target the casual audience - it targeted gamers, which is the console's audience. It targeted geeks with money to burn. In short, it was an upgrade for the current audience, not an attempt to reach a market that doesn't exist for the console. In business terms, it was a retention mechanism, not chasing after a new market that likely wouldn't buy the original product anyway.

But that has not been a successful strategy thus far

April 2009 sales figures: 

# DS: 1,040,000 (Total: 30.7 million; April 2008: 414,800 - up 151%)
# Wii: 340,000 (Total: 19.9 million; April 2008: 714,200 - down 38%)
# Xbox 360: 175,000 (Total: 15.1 million; April 2008: 188,000 - down 7%)
# PS2: 172,000 (Total: 44 million; April 2008: 124,400 - up 38%)
# PS3: 127,000 (Total: 7.6 million; April 2008: 187,100 - down 32%)
# PSP: 116,000 (Total: 15.1 million; April 2008: 192,700 - down 40%)

[HaemishM]

No, it hasn't, and frankly, I don't think much is going to change about the PS3 sales until they drop the goddamn price into the $300 range.

[Ghambit]

With the MS system you can sell peripherals with the game. 

Hack and Slash sword game?  You can sell a sword or a hilt or whatever with buttons and vibrations and whatever else you want to put on there.  That hilt can double as a bow and arrow thingy.

FPS game?  Obvious answer there.

The only issue i have is how do you create games where you have movement AND do that movement well so it isn't awkward like it is on the Wii.

Like I said, all they have to do is add a tagged-prop.  So, a sword with a glowy-dildo nubb that the camera can easily track.  This by-passes the number-crunching necessary for the system to know where your body is... it simply sees the tag and exptrapolates it into the game.  So not only would it track and render your entire body (including your face), but track any tool you're using in resolution better than that of the PS3 (the PS3's difficulty is it doesnt know where your body is, so no matter how fast it tracks the wand it still doesnt have a viable point of reference; a problem also shared with the Wii).

but neither of these devices is going to draw in a whole bunch of Wii expats into their realm.

You missed my point. The Sony demo wasn't trying to target Wii expats. It was targeting its core audience. The MS demo was targeting the casual crowd. You might as well have had Peter Molyneux drive up and say "Wee would like to play."

Wii and PS3 are the more casual product, because you can still sit on your fat ass and just wave a wand around.  And they largely only have 1 function.  Natal is something that requires your brain and body to do quite a bit more, and offers more longterm enjoyment imo... not to mention, since it's probably gonna require more space and more money to buy, I count it as a hardcore product... not casual.  (even though they intended to bring in a larger audience).

Let me offer another possible ability for Natal:
With HD OLED-based HMDs (head-mounted displays) coming into their own finally, it's quite possible for MS to design a peripheral that allows someone to xform a living/theatre-room into a V.R. CAVE.  A CAVE is basically a room that tracks your movements/position in 3-dimensions, integrates it with something, and then either projects it onto the room's walls or into your HMD... sometimes in 3-D.  Before Natal, all it could track was some glove, floating mouse, or your helmet, or a mo-cap suit.  With Natal, you can just fire it up and walk around like normal.  If you're wearing an HMD, it could also project anything onto your 1st-person perspective, meaning you can walk around and look at yourself in your Tier 3 gear.

Most people arent going to go that far (I will though) but it's something that the tech. can do.
Imagine doing a Raid, for real, in pretty much any genre you'd like (fps, rpg, adventure, whatever), without having to leave the house and deal with emo-LARPERS; feeling like a dork.  NOW, we can be total dorknerds w/o embarrassment!  

Anyways, the techs are totally different and MS is way ahead.  The only thing really linking them are the games that implement them, which I guess is all many people really care about.  I personally would rather have a voice/face/body recognition system and game on it, rather than just some Wiimote or PS-dildo.  I frankly dont understand how someone could prefer the latter, no matter what the market is.

Why not just create a new market anyways?

[HaemishM]

You and I are using the term "casual" in completely different ways. I'm using it to describe an audience demographic, and you are using it to describe the amount of effort required to use a product.

[Mrbloodworth]

Part of why i gave up.

[schild]

Ghambit, when discussing a product shown at E3, I typically take the stance that it is in a perfect environment and the best it will ever function. While this doesn't apply to Sony - since they're using lightballs and I don't think anyone has a glowing purple, blue, green, etc room - I will personally guarantee that the microsoft thing will not work perfectly in nearly all apartment setups and rarely in a housing setup. The tech is very pretty on paper but in action, between couches, tables, etc, it stands just about no chance of having the accuracy they managed to show in the demo. Unless you live in an ampitheater, this is just microsoft jerking around.

Also, the eyetoy, while it doesn't do facial recognition, already has games up that did most of what microsoft showed, just not as accurately, which the wand changed.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, all 3 techs are just tiny tiny steps towards virtual reality and will produce exactly zilch in amazingly immersive games. Please to be sticking to a controller and not discussing potential because it's all just a bunch of wankery.

[schild]

The answer was revealed today in Famitsu. While we're certain Kojima is going to be kept mighty busy either way, he's actually only fully involved with Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. The Metal Gear series father is serving as director, producer and game designer on the PSP title.

As for Metal Gear Solid Rising (confirmed in Famitsu to be for Xbox 360 and PS3), Kojima is serving as producer along side Kenichiro Imaizumi. He told the magazine, "I'm not the director. I'm not doing game design either. Although, I do issue complaints (laughs). But, not too much."

Heh, grats on the "win" Microsoft. Perhaps Kojima is above money? But Konami isn't? It'd be nice if MS hasn't managed to poison the well over there yet.

[naum]

No, it hasn't, and frankly, I don't think much is going to change about the PS3 sales until they drop the goddamn price into the $300 range.

Yeah, that would help get one in my living room…

[Sairon]

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, all 3 techs are just tiny tiny steps towards virtual reality and will produce exactly zilch in amazingly immersive games. Please to be sticking to a controller and not discussing potential because it's all just a bunch of wankery.

Agreed, as long as one doesn't get the physical feedback it might as well be buttons imo. Good luck coming up with a reasonably priced system delivering belivable physical feedback.

As stated before, the applications of all these devices are a limited to a very very small subset of games. The Wii have been going at it for 2 years now with almost all complaints focusing on how tacked on the motion controls feels, same goes for every attempt made by PS3 games trying to utilize the motion controls. While this might be an indicator on how shitty game designers is, I actually think it's more related to the fact that it's simply doesn't work all that good for most games.

[Hawkbit]

No, it hasn't, and frankly, I don't think much is going to change about the PS3 sales until they drop the goddamn price into the $300 range.

Yeah, that would help get one in my living room…

Same here.  I'm 99% getting one in the fall, but if it were $100 cheaper that would be nice.  I think dropping to $299 would really help to break down the price barrier that a lot of people can't get past. 

[Fabricated]

So far the only thing this e3 has made me do is turn my Wii on for the first time in many months to download FF4:The After and play it for about an hour. Progress. Maybe one day my Wii with be worth the $250 I paid for it.

[schild]

Until they put the whole thing on the PSN or XBL in one download, rite? >_>

[Fabricated]

Well, I'm a triple-sucker then. Right now there's a painfully easy firmware hack for the Wii that'd let me download everything I want for free and run other homebrew, so I could've avoided giving Nintendo any money twice.

[NiX]

I thought Sony mentioned a price drop on the PS3 or was that for the PSP?

[schild]

PSP dev kit.

[Venkman]

but neither of these devices is going to draw in a whole bunch of Wii expats into their realm.

You missed my point. The Sony demo wasn't trying to target Wii expats. It was targeting its core audience. The MS demo was targeting the casual crowd. You might as well have had Peter Molyneux drive up and say "Wee would like to play."

Definitely agree on the Milo demo. So not the thing to show at E3. Sony knew their audience there better.

But you missed my point too. It's not about the tech. This applies to Natal, EyeToy and all the crap we used to see in the basement of Kentia. They could show freakin' cold fusion at E3 and that wouldn't mean dickall to the gamers once they left the show. Because these are after-market purchases and that market has always sucked. That fun little sword and shield demo and bow and arrow means exactly nil until Ubisoft makes proper use of it in Assassin's Creed 2, or one of the Final Fantasy's do, or some real powerhouse developer takes a real interest in it. THEN it's properly targeting their core audience.

Until then, it's like a press release for a new MMO.

[NiX]

PSP dev kit.

Oh, right right. I was hopeful. Possible they're waiting for Christmas?

[schild]

Well, it's a pretty big drop. Just under $1500, so basically, it'll cost about the same to make iphone apps soon. Well, THEORETICALLY not counting employees. It's a good price drop.

[naum]

Well, it's a pretty big drop. Just under $1500, so basically, it'll cost about the same to make iphone apps soon. Well, THEORETICALLY not counting employees. It's a good price drop.

Uh, no. Not even close.

$99 (a corporate deal is a little more, but really not needed unless you're doing an exchange type app). Price is just to sell in the AppStore. Developer kit and tools are free.

[schild]

Well, it's a pretty big drop. Just under $1500, so basically, it'll cost about the same to make iphone apps soon. Well, THEORETICALLY not counting employees. It's a good price drop.

Uh, no. Not even close.

$99 (a corporate deal is a little more, but really not needed unless you're doing an exchange type app). Price is just to sell in the AppStore. Developer kit and tools are free.

$99 is for the application.
$550-$750 for the mac mini.
$229 for an ipod touch.
Mac OSX + Whatever software you'll use, mostly if you don't already have a mac (like I don't).
On the marketplace you'll be doing your own marketing and shit unless you get tied up with a publisher - with the PSP you HAVE to have a publisher of some sort, there is no app store (so they'll take the cost of that, and most likely burden some of the development).


All told, for a single user at home to make iPhone apps, at the bare minimum on mac hardware, you're looking at $1200-$1500.

The Computer + PSP that make up the PSP dev kit is $1500. An iPhone setup is the closest comparable thing. So uh, yes, very much close.

[Margalis]

Just got back from show.

A lot of people seem to think that MS "won" the press conference war but objectively speaking Sony beat them up badly on the show floor. The Sony area was packed with huge crowds for GOW3 and decent crowds for Uncharted, Ratchet and MAG as well as random other stuff. The MS area had some lines for a Halo ODST presentation (trailer screening maybe?) but that was pretty much it. As far as those two go there seemed to be a lot more people and excitement in the Sony area.

At some point today I'm going to make a post with impressions of what I saw. (Which was a lot)

[schild]

A lot of people seem to think that MS "won" the press conference war

A lot of people think lolcats are still funny.

[Hawkbit]

As someone who watched all three on G4, I'm saying Sony beat the shit out of MS and Nintendo.  When the Sony presser finished I thought they could have gone on for another half hour+ showing games that they only teased in the montage.  Just my lonely opinion, though.

[Velorath]

Just got back from show.

A lot of people seem to think that MS "won" the press conference war but objectively speaking Sony beat them up badly on the show floor. The Sony area was packed with huge crowds for GOW3 and decent crowds for Uncharted, Ratchet and MAG as well as random other stuff. The MS area had some lines for a Halo ODST presentation (trailer screening maybe?) but that was pretty much it. As far as those two go there seemed to be a lot more people and excitement in the Sony area.

At some point today I'm going to make a post with impressions of what I saw. (Which was a lot)

A lot of the 360's bigger exclusives presumably wouldn't be featured in MS's area.  Mass Effect 2 (assuming it stays exclusive), Left 4 Dead 2, and Splinter Cell: Conviction I assume were being shown off at other booths.

[Margalis]

A lot of the 360's bigger exclusives presumably wouldn't be featured in MS's area.  Mass Effect 2 (assuming it stays exclusive), Left 4 Dead 2, and Splinter Cell: Conviction I assume were being shown off at other booths

The only Bioware I saw on the show floor was a canned presentation of Dragon Age in a screening area, if Mass Effect 2 was there at all it was hiding.

Splinter Cell: Conviction was shown on the floor but not as a playable, only as a narrated walkthrough. (From what I could tell)

Left 4 Dead 2 was playable with four machines networked together. By comparison Uncharted 2 probably had at least 20. I couldn't even find L4D the first time passing through that area.

Anwyay I'm about to start posting up my multipart impressions in a dedicated thread.

[Margalis]

So I went to E3, saw a bunch of games, paid attention to a few things I thought people here were interested in. Here are my impressions. Organized by show floor area to help spur my memory. This is your best resource for honest opinions about what was at E3. No hype, no BS. (And no games from certain companies due to conflict of interest) Didn't check out many portable games as they don't demo well in that environment, other than the line for Spirit Tracks which was one of the longest lines at the show. (And the videos looked great)

I didn't check out any games where you have to go into a special room and they give you a canned presentation. That includes Halo ODST, Modern Warfare 2 and Dragon Age.

Ignition Software
Who? I know them as the company Shane Bettenhausen went to after leaving 1UP and that's it. Impressive booth right at the front of West Hall. Your home for 2D gaming goodness.

Muramasa - The Demon's Blade - Wii
Graphically it looked very neat, especially in action moments. Kind of reminded me of Legend of Kage with beefed up graphics. Big trees in the immediate background, high jumping, etc. Don't know much about the gameplay.

King of Fighters Eleventy Billion - 360?
Video and screens, which look great, don't look as great as it does when playing. The characters are massive, animate well and look fabulous. The best looking 2D fiighter I've seen. (And I've seen most) Gameplay-wise it's pretty similar to other KOF games. I saw a couple new things going on (characters flashing different colors etc) but couldn't really decipher why. Also I got stuck taking over for someone else using characters I'm not familiar with so I had no idea what I was doing either. (Kyo was the version with the fireball, not the one with the rushing punches)

THQ
Didn't have much to show other than the Red Faction that was just released.

Activision
This was a strange one. Huge area, multiple giant video screens and no games. There was a DJ station and a huge screen devoted to it but the guy wasn't playing a DJ game, he was just...DJing. Activision is one of the biggest publishers in the world but from this you'd think they were small timers.

Tony Hawk Ride -360/PS3?
This did not seem to demo well at all. Next to each of the two stations was a dedicated employee who used the standard controller to navigate menus and explain how to play. There was a *lot* of loading before starting a mission and a ton of mission restarting. I couldn't tell why they kept restarting - if the player was failing or if the mission was only 20 seconds long or what, but it was literally a restart every 20 seconds. The controls didn't seem intuitive at all, the staff had to constantly explain everything and pantomime motions. There were numerous times that the motion the player made didn't seem to match what was happening onscreen. It was hard to tell how much anyone was enjoying it. Graphically it seemed really rough.

Nintendo

Red Steel 2
(Remember this is by area, not publisher.) Hate to say it Haemish but it looked pretty cool. I liked the very clean minimalist art style and it ran very smooth. (60 FPS?) Hitting guys in different spots to knock off their armor seemed to be very functional and it looked like people were enjoying it.

Wii Fit Plus, Wii Sports Resort.
Both very popular, I didn't see much of either one. Wii Fit looked more gamey than before though that might have just been what demoed better.

Super Mario Brothers Wii
Lots and lots of screens dedicated to this, always busy. Not cooperative, but passive-aggressive competitive as in Zelda: Four Swords. You can help each other but also hurt each other. A Blizzard employee kept swallowing me with Yoshi for no reason so on his last life I killed him with a red shell. As a single player game it doesn't seem to have quite the same depth as something like Mario 3 or Super Mario World but multiplayer it was an absolute blast, everyone was really enjoying it. Probably the most fun game I played at the show.

Dead Space Extraction
Great graphics and ran great, especially compared to the Resident Evil gun game that chugged a bit. Great UI similar to that in Dead Space. At certain parts you would see other people on board the ship moving around and talking, it looked great and added a lot to the atmosphere. The big downside here was that as I was watching the people playing got to a part where one had to wire something using the Wii remote while the other player fought off the enemies. Great concept but that player just kept failing over and over. He was frustrated, I was frustrated just watching him, and it seemed *way* too sensitive in general. (Or he was a crack addict) Graphically this was one of the best Wii games, if not the best.

Sin and Punishment 2
There were *four* stations set up for this. (Which is a lot) It was awesome. S&P is great but the controls always felt weird to me, this was so much better. I thought the graphics were stellar and it also ran very smooth with lots going on onscreen. As a fan of the first I was happy to see this getting a lot of deserved attention.

Silent Hill something-or-other
I'm a huge fan of Silent Hill but I didn't like the combat-heavy direction of 5. This goes in the opposite direction and it was one of the biggest surprises to me. The Wiimote control of the flashlight worked great, it cast nice stencil shadows (nerd stuff), another game that ran very smoothly, and when I played with headphones on the sound was fabulous. The motion controls when the enemies attacked you also worked very well. If they attack from the front shove forward to push them off, if they attack from the back pull backwards to throw them off, etc. When I ran into an enemy I actually got pretty creeped out despite the fact that I was on the middle of the show floor. (In parrt because I knew I couldn't just use my leet fighting skills to make the enemies trivial) Can't say much about the plot or overall game structure but I really want to play more of this. In an age where every "horror" game is more and more 3rd person shooter this was refreshing.

Madden
Mentioning this only to say that it doesn't look the way you would expect given the move to a more stylized presentation. It was fairly subtle. I thought it looked good, though I don't remember what the previous Wii Madden looked like. Didn't look kiddie or cartoonish.

[schild]

Mass Effect 2, Left 4 Dead, and Splinter Cell Conviction will all be a better experience on the PC though. I mean, the only games in the MSFT catalog that are truly console exclusive - at least for a while are the Halo series and Crackdown. I guess you could call them bigger exclusives but I find it hard to believe that at least Conviction and L4D2 won't sell more on the PC, PARTICULARLY the latter. Also, unless it involves money hats, I see no reason why EA would keep Mass Effect 2 an exclusive. It just goes against all logic (would still buy it for PC).

Also, I'm not sure how much the show floor matters. Sony had more playable stuff from first parties than Microsoft and I'm not sure the press really cares about digging until a Halo before they get to play it at home, whereas Sony delivered a good deal more shock and awe. Particularly in the "swimsuit" category.

That said, I've been thinking about the PSP Go and the price tag.

My iPod Touch has 4GB of memory. I'm buying this thing for an MP3 player as much as I am the no-doubt better gaming it will provide than the touch. Though, I'm still hoping Sony pulls a rabbit out of their hat, releases an SDK and an app store. They won't, but that's the only way to really enter the space they seem to be angling for (in a way).

Fake Edit: Margalis, there's no reason to make another thread. It serves no purpose.

Edit: Sorry, Margalis, merged - you made the new thread as I was editing this one.

[Velorath]

I guess you could call them bigger exclusives but I find it hard to believe that at least Conviction and L4D2 won't sell more on the PC, PARTICULARLY the latter.

L4D on the 360 came in at #7 in the December NPD's with 629,000 and #4 in the January NPD's with 243,000.  It may very well sell more on the PC, but it's still a very strong seller on the 360.  Mass Effect 2 will probably do strong sales on the 360 simply because people like me who went out and bought the first one on 360 rather than wait for a PC version will want to use our saves going into the second one.  Splinter Cell isn't a series I follow at all, but my mind has always connected it with consoles.  I have no idea whether or not the series has a strong following on PC.

[Velorath]

Also, unless it involves money hats, I see no reason why EA would keep Mass Effect 2 an exclusive. It just goes against all logic (would still buy it for PC).

I don't know.  Shortly after EA bought Bioware, there were conflicting statements I think regarding Mass Effect's exclusivity and I haven't paid much attention since then.  I don't doubt that EA and Bioware could release Mass Effect 2 and 3 on the PS3, but does MS still have the publishing rights for the first game, and if so, would Bioware want to go ahead and just release 2/3's of a trilogy on the PS3?

[Margalis]

Merging is fine. Anyway part 2:

Sony Online Entertainment
I specifically checked out DCUO just for Triforcer. What a swell guy I am! Overall this was pretty anemic, mostly filled with browser games and old games.

DC Universe Online - PS3
This looked really rough to me. A lot of the effects and animations appeared to be placeholders. For example you are hit by electricity and skid backwards. Only you don't animate much, there are no skid/dust particles being kicked up, the electricity looks weird, etc. There was a rather large display set up for this, probably 6 or so stations, but it wasn't getting too much traffic. I can't say it looked bad as much as it looked early. Early enough that I'd question the wisdom of showing it to the public.

The Agency - PS3
Was only shown in video form, also looked early. When a character walked towards the camera there was a weird jittering on her clothes for example. Didn't look like an MMO at all, I think they've stopped calling it one and started calling it something else.


Capcom

Lost Planet 2 - 360 (and PS3?)
I got a very Monster Hunter vibe from this. The setup was 4 networked machines with 4 players working to take down an epic boss. There was a TON of specular highlighting on everything. In a generation of shiny this is the shiniest game I've seen. Everything had bright white highlights on it - water, slimy rocks, cliff faces 200 yards away. To me it was visual overload and had a subtle jitter to it, a sort of swimming that you got in the Actraiser mode 7 stage starts. (This sort of specular highlight swimming was also noticable in RE5) Apart from the overly busy graphics it looked pretty cool, but not too similar to Lost Planet 1. Characters looked different, environment was totally different, no heat collection. To me it looked like a beefed-up Monster Hunter with guns, but maybe that's just because the stage people were playing was the boss battle.

Dark Void - 360?
At first I thought this was Ghostbusters until I realized that didn't make any sense at a Capcom booth. (Big backpack) The "vertical cover" mechanic was cooler and less gimmicky that I would have guessed. There was only a single station set up for this.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom - Wii
I did Capcom a small favor by choosing Doronjo and Mega Man and then doing combos and supers and stuff to try to showcase something other than Ryu and Karas randomly flailing. People who care about this sort of game are probably already familiar with it so - it exists, it's in English, it seemed to have everything intact.


Sony
Very popular area.

Zombie Apocalypse - PSN
Felt like it needed one or two more gameplay elements to be interesting for more than a short length of time. I found an exploit that made my character invincible which didn't help.

God of War 3
Yep, it's God of War 3. There weren't any major gameplay changes evident, just minor things like using the chains to attack harpies while also riding them as shown in the Sony conference demo. As someone who liked GOW1 a lot and got bored a third of the way through God of War 2 I wasn't excited.

Uncharted 2
Graphically this was probably the best game of the show. Great detail in the foregrounds, multiple levels of depth in the background all rendered nicely, great looking sky and smoke. Gameplay-wise it seemed a lot more combat-focused than exploration, even in single player.

MAG
Looked a lot like a PC shooter to me, with a HUD that had a lot of liney graphics and text on it.

Ratchet and Clank
Kind of strange in that the graphical style is a bit skitzophrenic. There were enemies riding dinosaurs that were shaded in bright, flat colors and looked like they could have come straight out of WindWaker, as did the smoke. There were breakable rocks that were also essentially toon-shaded. Then there were also enemies and environment objects that had higher detail textures and a style closer to Pixar than hand-drawn. I though the more cel-shaded stuff looked vibrant and awesome but the rest of it had the same sort of vaguely washed-out look that the PS2 games had. Gameplay-wise it seemed very similar to other Ratchet games. You could rollerblade but I couldn't figure out how.

Fight Night Round 4 - PS3/360
I expected to hate this game. It looks hilariously dumb when other people are playing. But it was a lot of fun, I have to give it credit. It still has the same problems a lot of these sorts of games have - a tendancy to devolve into rock-em-sock-em robots, hard to tell if you've been hit, blocked or dodged, general muddy feeling gameplay. I much prefer fighting games with more pronounced hit impacts, hit sparks, etc. All that said, it was still really fun to play. To me it felt a lot better than the new UFC game as far as striking goes. The blocking felt more reponsive, it looked better, the weaving was cool, etc. This is probably the second most fun game I played (behind SMBW), which says a lot considering I normally despise these types of games. I didn't play FN3 so I can't compare it to that.

[Margalis]

SEGA!!!

Bayonetta
Out of all the 3D brawlers this is the one I am most excited about. When I first saw trailers I was cringing at things like the camera zooming between her legs but the game is very tongue-in-cheek. For example she summons a giant hair monster and uses her arm to cover her breasts while facing the camera with a goofy look on her face as if she knows she's posing for the camera. Or when you lock on (?) to shoot she shoots with one hand while she does a supermodel walk with other hand on her hip. Before I thought it had juvenile sensibilities but at least it knows that. The difference between this and God of War is that in God of War you look like a badass when you do a QTE, here you look like a badass any time you do anything. There was a part where you could jump onto a wall and then the screen would rotate as the wall became the floor that was pretty neat. Overally it looked like a solid Devil May Cry style game that is a little fresher than a sequel. Also the booth babe dressed up as Bayonetta was fabulous, her costume was crazy and she was nailing all the poses. (While wearing full body skintight leather)

Aliens vs. Predator
The cool parts of this were cool. Watching the Aliens crawl along structures using Predator-vision was neat and the Aliens were well animated. Some of the environments looked great. But it had some framerate issues and some of the environments were bland. Also the Predator screen had red lines all along the sides that made the screen feel much smaller than it was. Seems like they were going for a Metroid-prime visor effect but missed a bit. Not sure when this is coming out, looks like it needs more time in the oven.

Alpha Protocol
I watched people play/demo this for a while but all I saw were cutscenes and character customization stuff. I can't even say what the actual game is like at all other than that you play a dude and walk around. Is it action? Menu based? No idea.

Ubisoft
Wasn't much here. Didn't see Assassin's Creed except in movie form. Splinter Cell was being demoed but was not available for play, and the people demoing it were way over the top and unprofessional to the point where it turned me off to the game. No More Heroes 2 was not seen by me. The booth babes seemed nice.

Microsoft

Darksiders
This game looked surprisingly good. Graphical stye like an action WOW with a lot of oversized shoulder pads and exagerrated geometry. I thought it had a fresh look in that genre and the overall presentation was nice. What I saw was mostly platforming bits so hard to say how it plays but it looked pretty swell.

Brutal Legend
This game looks rough. The combat portions look basic and the visuals in those bits are weak. Very sparse but not in a clean, smooth and aesthetically pleasing way like a game like Red Steel. The combat looked like a PS2 game running at higher resolutions. On an SDTV I'm not sure you would be able to tell the difference between it and a PS2 game. The driving bits had some framerate drops and hiccups and there didn't seem to be much to do in them. Lots of mugging for the camera by the Jack Black character. Maybe this is the type of game where a few pieces that aren't stellar still combine into something wonderful but to me it looked very dated in gameplay, visuals and overall presentation.

Left for Dead 2
I'm not sure if this was at the MS booth or the EA booth. It looked a hell of a lot like Left 4 Dead 1. Daytime setting, characters were wearing brighter colors and the rendering style on them was slightly more cartoonish. I watched people play through 2 levels and didn't see a melee weapon, so if that's a major part of the game it was disguised pretty well. Not sure what to say about it, it's pretty much Left 4 Dead 1 with new campaigns from what I could tell. By the way, anyone who complained about the "racism" in RE5 should be complaining about this. Start the mission, walk out into the street, and you're confronted with a crummy urban ghetto filled with trash before being assaulted by black katrina survivors zombies.

Eidos
The only thing I'll say about Eidos is this: Batman was friggin' everywhere. Tons of stations at the Eidos booth, some stations at a WB booth, plenty of stations at Sony. There were an insane number of Batman booths total and they were getting pretty steady play. I did play the game but I'll withold my personal opinion on it other than that I hope it makes lots and lots of money.

Harmonix
I forget what the deal is with Harmonix. Published by EA? Had a big area devoted to Beatles, didn't seem too popular. If Lego Rock Band comes with the three blond models that demoed it then it's a great buy.

[Margalis]

Random other stuff and stuff I forgot to put above

Torchlight
This is the Diablo 3 looking game. Looked pretty far along. Was digging the clean graphics style.

White Knight Chronicles
Nice graphics, some minor tearing and framerate issues. Seemed pretty cool I guess...turning into a giant dude is neat. Seemed like it took a lot of hits to kill the enemies, which combined with some long animations made it a bit tedious. But we might not have been using optimal techniques. I dunno....I feel unqualified to say anything meaningful about this.

I saw other stuff, if someone wants impressions of something I didn't mention or more in-depth on something I did just ask.