Three Wise Men

E3 2010 – Post Mortem wrap up

A little delayed wrap up of E3 is in order. Games, gadgets and entertainment, they were all there. Rigor mortis is gone and everything is starting to decompose, so we will get on with out impressions about the event. Teaming up with Nixie Pixel turned out to be a great success (make sure you also check her E3 Highlights) and the amount of swag collected in just three days was amazing. Headphones, keyboard cleaners, Power balls, Dog tags, T-shirts, sweaters, press kit USB drives and DVD discs, and so on and so on.

Let’s duplicate

Three major things happened at E3. Sony Moved, Microsoft Kinected and Nintendo has gone to 3D. All three players on the console market simply had to come up with something sort of new. First Sony decided to duplicate Nintendo and they created new controller which looks and feels like an advanced version of Nintendo Wii remote. The bonus is that it has a prettier ‘light bulb’ on top of it and can be used as a fake ice-cream. To try out Sony Move you had to make an appointment and Sony was booked for three days. We didn’t get to try it.

Microsoft also decided that they need to do something new. Project Natal was announced a while ago and on the grand opening, which happened two days before E3, they told everyone that it will bi called Kinect. Yay, for kinetic connection or wherever they were going for with the name. To tell you the truth, Kinect is an improved version of Sony’s Eye Toy that was available years ago for PlayStation2. Waiting lines, we decided to call them queues just to sound a little nerdier, were up to two or three hours long. Because our team was limited to three people and only one dedicated to TWM, we decided just to take pictures of people jumping in front of the camera, flailing with their arms and kicking with their legs trying to play Kinect games.  They looked ridiculous, but they seemed to be having fun. Kinect was everywhere on E3. Dancing, exercising, running, jumping, …

So who did Nintendo duplicate? Microsoft? Fortunately, no! Nintendo, again, made something genuinely new. They upgraded their Nintendo DS into Nintendo 3DS. Still in its prototype Nintendo 3DS is a first console that can reproduce 3D images using a special method called autostereoscopy. Since the waiting queues for Nintendo 3DS were even longer than Kinect queues, we decided to skip testing the prototype. People are reporting mixed feelings about the whole thing, so we will have to wait until 2011 when they scheduled the initial release.

Games

All in all, this was an entertainment expo and we were eager to see the games. There were some great titles announced and this time we got to play with few games. We were really looking forward for Fallout: New Vegas. Truth be told, there was a little disappointment since all we got to see (and play) was Fallout 3 with new wasteland and orange-colored user interface, instead of the traditional green. From the interview with Bethesda people we gathered that you will need to get skilled in hand-to-hand combat and smuggling. Guns are forbidden in casinos. Level cap will be at 30. Main story line, side quests and the rest of the things will stay pretty much the same. No footage or pictures since we were not allowed to take any. The highlight of the whole Bethesda visit was bumping into Felicia Day. :)

We were also shown a presentation of Rage, the upcoming game by Id and published by Bethesda. Again, we had to put cameras on stand by. Decent graphics and fairly good game play. But the bitter taste stayed behind when we were leaving the closed presentation: “Another running around the wasteland RP game” …

Kaos Studios and THQ as a publisher made a really good impression with their marketing campaign for Homefront, new first person shooter where United Korea invades USA. Fly a North Korean flag on your car and park for free, good call! We also got to see trailers for the upcoming Warhammer 40.000 Space Marine and the Warhammer 40.000 Dark Millennium Online a lot of promising things published by THQ.

We also couldn’t get past the Magic: The Gathering Tactics. Mainly because it was on the entrance to the West Hall. The Gathering Tactics is a slightly modified version of the popular card game. It will be available for PS3 and PC and published by Sony Online Entertainment. Online play will be supported and there are rumors about ability to buy additional cards, trading and auctions. The more you pay, the better you play?

Tron Evolution: The Video Game by Disney studios is showing a lot of promise if you like mixes between third person shooters married with platform jumping Ratchet & Clank a-likes. We played PS3 version of the game and the first impression was great. If we can get our hands on a new customized Tron themed PS3 controller then the mood setting will be perfect.

Gadgets

There is no entertainment without all the gadgets. Portable steering wheels with seats, fake gun-like controllers, joysticks, flightsticks, giant hamster balls, power-glove like devices, headsets, microphones and at last and definitely least, removable crosshairs stickers for your monitor. You will simply rule in hardcore modes of your favorite first person shooter. Two gadgets left an impression. The ForceTek power-glove like controller with its interesting concept of controlling a jet. People simply could not get to control the aircraft with their arm, but once you get into the feeling it is really easy. The lin … err … queue started to form behind us, so we kindly left before our airplane crashed.

The second gadget was the removable crosshairs sticker for your monitor. The impression was not all that great, it was more of a jaw dropping and banging the head against the wall impression. what can we say? There is market for almost everything as long as it has the ‘gaming‘ label attached to it. What you can buy is a transparent sticker that you stick to the center of your screen and it will aid you with aiming when you are not looking through the iron sight or scope of your gun. We think they promised a decrease in reaction time in percent. Almost as seen on TV. :) Sorry, no picture this time.

Booth Babes

Words are unnecessary here, we will just post few pics in the gallery below. Some thinking is in order, because Nixie was already asking herself if booth babes will help and revive the E3.

Under The Line

E3 was a hyper-packed, content rich and eventful expo. Next time we are visiting, we are going there with a plan. Not just any plan, but a cunning plan. At least three people are required to cover the event fully since so many things are going on at the same time. Three days – eight hours of expo, ten hours of after parties and three hours for commuting and meals, yes we were left with about three hours of sleep per night. Jet lag helped a lot.

Related posts:

1. BarCamp Ljubljana 2, post mortem
2. E3 2010 – Expo Coverage
3. Sony is dedicated to 3D stereoscopic experience for 2010