Games On Net :: Editorials: The Warp Pipe

[E3 2009] The Warp Pipe - 07/06/09

By Matt Keller - Sun Jun 7, 2009 9:01am

E3 is over; the crowds have gone home and are getting some much needed rest, the booths are packed up, and people are arguing over who “won” E3. The fact of the matter is that we, the gamers, won E3. If you’re anything like me, your wanted list more than doubled over the course of the show. Many games I thought I wasn’t interested in blew me away, while the ones I was looking forward to seeing more than delivered. We’ve bore witness to many surprise unveilings, something that was lacking from the E3s of recent years. It was the first time in years where I actually felt excited watching the show unfold.

In this special post-E3 edition of the Warp Pipe, we’ll look break down the big announcements of the show, discuss the games we’re most looking forward to and check the results of last week’s predictions.

E3 2009 Post Mortem

Natal: desperation or revolution?		It seemed like the theme from this year’s E3 was motion control. *Nintendo* has its Wii Motion Plus on shelves next Thursday, *Sony’s got its 1:1 Motion Wand + Camera* supposedly due in “Spring” 2010, and *Microsoft* has Project Natal, though it has no release date. Yet in spite of all the hoopla about motion control options for each system, everybody had an awesome line-up of games for the next year and beyond. Sony and Microsoft’s motion control systems are undoubtedly a reaction to the success of the Wii on the back of *Wii Sports, but I’m not entirely convinced that they’re the best things for either system. Introducing such peripherals at this time in the life of the system risks a split userbase - you can spend all this money and resources on developing this technology, but unless it’s there from the start, its success is not guaranteed. The same can be said for the Wii Motion Plus, but the peripheral is small enough and cheap enough to be packed in with the software that needs it. A lot of pundits called this E3 in Microsoft’s favour on the back of Project Natal, but I can honestly say that it hasn’t done anything for me. What they did show looked really* early – just look at the video of Kudo Tsunoda’s attempt to show us his foot – and wasn’t particularly impressive. Nobody outside of Microsoft has been able to experiment with it; Microsoft has been abandoning most of its first party development studios, so they will be relying on third parties to get this off the ground. There seems to be a big drive behind it from high up – enough to get Peter Molyneux promoted based on *Milo. I don’t get the hype behind Milo; an internally filmed video like the one they showed could be all smoke and mirrors – it looks like a cross between Hey You, Pikachu!, Konami’s ill-fated voice driven PS2 game Lifeline, and the PSEye tech demo Eyedentify. The extent of Milo’s interactivity and the amount of content will be the true test. It seems like this technology would have best been saved for Microsoft’s next console, rather than as an attempt to lengthen the life of the Xbox 360, or pull in casual gamers. The Sony motion wand presentation was pretty painful, but I found the technology a bit more palatable at this point in time. Again, it seems too early, too thrown together, and we have no idea what third party developers are going to do with it. Sony seems unfocused at the moment; they’re trying to revive the PSP business, they’ve pulling together some big name titles internally, and they’re trying to get into the motion game. I was really impressed by the depth of their software line-up, and hope to see more from them in the future. We’re close to having Wii Motion Plus in our hands, but Nintendo didn’t push the enhancement anywhere near as much as I had expected. I was thinking we’d see a big internal push behind the project – instead, what we got was what we all wanted last year; actual Nintendo games. You can’t be disappointed about that, but saying that, Nintendo didn’t really say much about Motion Plus driven games beyond Wii Sports Resort* and EA’s offerings. Apparently there’s going to be a press briefing in Japan next week, so we might hear something then. The Wii Vitality Sensor wasn’t a big surprise for me – back in 2006 they had a project going around by the name of Wii Health Pack, part of which evolved into Wii Fit, so I think it’ll have something to do with keeping healthy.
Has Nintendo lost interest in Wii Motion Plus?

The Games

As important as the motion control stuff seemed to everybody else, to me, this E3 was all about the games. I haven’t felt this good about games coming out of E3 for a long time. Every format seems to have at least one title that I’m now really hanging out for, on top of an impressive load of multiplatform content. I must admit that I am surprised at some of the games that have me excited, particularly because they’re mostly sequels to games that weren’t that good. *Assassin’s Creed II* is a big one – I hate the original, but the sequel looks amazing; the renaissance era setting, the Da Vinci-inspired gadgets and the increased variety should make it a heck of a lot better. *Just Cause* is a guilty pleasure of mine, a game with some good ideas, but stuck in that generational change which left the technical aspects sorely lacking. *Just Cause 2* looks to fix that, and make the over-the-top action of the first game even more insane. Check out some of the walkthrough videos around the net. *Uncharted 2: Among Thieves* looks to top the first one in the action stakes – the video at the Sony conference really blew me away – if they strike up a good balance in the gameplay and make the gunplay a bit less flimsy, it’ll be a contender. *Red Steel 2* also deserves a quick mention – I dig the samurai western kick. Nintendo brought the goods this year with the two new Mario games and the *Team Ninja-developed Metroid* game. *New Super Mario Bros. Wii* looks like it brings something that I’ve wanted for a long time – a co-operative platformer. Some have criticised *Super Mario Galaxy 2* for being more of the same, but that’s exactly what some of us want – the first is still one of the standout games of this era. *Metroid: Other M* looks like a bold new direction for the series in terms of narrative and more action focused gameplay. Hopefully the Itagaki-less Team Ninja can focus on bringing an enjoyable game, rather than an unnecessarily difficult mess like their last effort. I’m pretty excited about the new projects *Konami* announced at the show, though part of me would have liked the formats of the *Metal* *Gear* projects to be switched around. *Portable Ops* was a good game, but it was a little too tricky to control – I never felt fully in command of my actions, so naturally I am worried about that aspect. I’m expecting the Raiden game to be a massive departure from the core Metal Gear gameplay. The new take on *Castlevania* is very exciting, but I can’t help but think of what’s happened to Koji Igarashi, the guy when it has come to Castlevania for the last 12 years. Has he moved on? One could go on all day about what else was on show – other stuff I’ll be keeping an eye on over the next year includes *Alan Wake, Shadow Complex, Modern Warfare 2, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, Left 4 Dead 2, Halo: Reach, the three Dragon Ball* games, *Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time, Wario Ware: DIY, Dark Void, Sin & Punishment 2, The Last Guardian, Dead Space: Extraction, Heavy Rain* and many more.		Being excited about this seems wrong
		Mario goes back to his roots, but with a neat four player mode

Prediction Results

A quick sequel seems out of character for Valve		There turned out to be more than one Metal Gear project, one of which concerned Outer Heaven and another about Raiden, so the prediction was mostly right. Konami did, however, have a few surprises up their sleeve, namely *Castlevania: Lord of Shadows. Rare* didn’t show anything, apparently they’re working on Natal stuff. *Perfect Dark* is heading to Xbox Live Arcade though, so I was half-right. Almost all of my Nintendo predictions were wrong. Wii Motion Plus didn’t feature as much as I expected, they didn’t show much of *Wii Fit Plus, and there’s no Virtual Console for handhelds. They announced a bunch of actual games that people want instead, which is better. Capcom’s presence was crappy, but I couldn’t find any information about their second surprise game, so they probably decided to show it later. No Half-Life 2: Episode 3* news. Instead we get the surprise *Left 4 Dead 2* announcement. Microsoft’s conference did have an executive making an arse of himself in front of a motion camera. Show us your foot Kudo! Games didn’t dominate the conference, but *Alan Wake* did show up. There is a new Summer of Arcade, but it didn’t show at the conference. Pretty much spot on about safe sequels and less downloadable titles. I was wrong about Sony – didn’t expect their motion business, no PS3 price drop, but the PSP Go did feature prominently. Square Enix didn’t really announce any second string RPGs – there’s Final Fantasy XIV Online, and the new Front Mission is an action game. Sega’s presence was pretty minimal – they announced Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing before the show, and we heard virtually nothing else from them. No big name defections, and hardly any bitter tears. Good show!
Milo: What’s all the fuss about?