E3 "review"


bast525

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Dec 4, 2004
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Well just got back from Day 1. My oppinion in a nutshell? This years E3 is easily the most BORING E3 I have ever attended. You read that right... BORING.

Here's my summary... it's long... you've been warned. Oh, and one note, we didn't get in until late, about noon... took a long time to get processed to get in, so I basically almost RAN thru the whole place (it's very BIG) to see as much as I could as quickly as I could. So... this is more a preview, just first impressions from looking w/o doing much stopping. Please keep that in mind.


Sony - Sequel upon sequel upon sequel. And what few non sequels there were that I saw looked so similiar to other things I've played that they might as well have been sequels. This wasn't just Sony though... this E3 may as well be called Sequelfest '05....

The big story, PS3, was hardly a story at all. I waited in a 45 minute line to be herded into a small theater where they presented us an 8 minute video that is basically the video clips many of us have already seen at Gamespot or IGN with the tail end being short clips of upcoming games. *yawn* After that they let us out onto a little ledge area where there was one display of 4 PS3's and one controller on a rotating stand encased in glass. We were allowed to take pics, and that was it. No real hardware running any demos, nothing playable, nothing. No third parties had any PS3 work's in progress on display either. 45 mins in line plus 15 mins got you everything there was to see of the PS3 at this years E3. *yawn* MMMM but watching those game demos on a 20' large HDTV was nice... the Unreal 3 Engine and Killzone 2 trailer looked SOOOO much more amazing than when streamed off the internet. I truly hope it's really gonna look that good.

PSP... also dissapointing, there were only a couple games on display that we haven't already seen or heard or known about since way back before the US one launched... MOST of the playable PSP's were running games that are already available. The only notable games I saw that WEREN"T out yet were Viewtiful Joe and Coded Arms... they both looked good, at least, though I couldn't get too close to Viewtiful Joe due to the large crowd. None of the cool accesories that were shown at last years E3 like the camera or keyboard were on display this year, nor any of the different colored PSP's. So basically everything there but a handful of games was old news. *yawn*


Nintendo - Their booth was mostly DS stuff this year. For Gamecube, there was little that looked interesting. A couple new Mario sports titles, a Mario DDR, a couple RPG's... whatever. Most of the DS stuff looked bland as well. Mario Kart looked VERY nice though, better than the N64 version, and was lots of fun to play multiplayer. The "New Super Mario Bros." was also a lot of fun and interesting... though growing into super sized mario seems like a bad gimmick, the game itself plays well and I'll definately pick that up. Animal Crossing was playable, and looked pretty good. I missed the Konami booth some how so didnt' see the new Castlevania. Tommorow I'm priortizing tracking that one down.

For GC, Zelda Twilight Princes (or princess of twilight I forget) was either not there or was behind closed doors. :angry: I was fully expecting that one to be playable... very dissapointed.

The big story, Revolution... again... behind closed doors as was expected. However, the line to see whatever THEY were showing was well over two hours wait, and I didn't have the time today, but will try to check that out tommorow. There were a few people walking around I caught bits of conversation and what I gathered was that whatever they were showing of the Revolution was not that impressive.

The OTHER big story... or... the very little story... the stupid-as-fuck GBA Micro... whoop-dee-doo. It's... very small. Yeah it looks cool... but it is seriously flawed in that, the screen is VERY tiny, we're talking sub-N-gage size here. I was trying to play Donkey Kong Country on it, and seriously there were moments when I was having trouble making out what was going on... the screen is very tiny like 1 inch by 1.5 inch or like 2.5-3.5 cm I guess? Very small. The backlit screen is nice, same quality as the DS... but who cares when it's just THAT tiny??? They should have kept the SP and made THAT backlit. Much as I love handhelds and love COLLECTING handhelds I am VERY uninterested in this Micro. The changeable face plates are about the only thing I thought was really cool about it. *yawn*


Microsoft - ohhh microsoft. well... I hope you guys who will be holding onto your xbox's til the bitter end like FPS's... because I'd say that was at least 50% of what they had for Xbox 1. The cream of the crop was a playable version of Half Life 2, which just like Doom 3 before it, looks to be coming along VERY nicely and very close to matching the PC version graphically. Otherwise, nothing really caught my eye. Though I will say I wasn't looking too hard, my priority was getting a look at the 360. I'll try to look a bit more at Xbox 1 stuff tommorow.

The big story.... xbox 360... well for any big MS fans please don't read any further because this next bit will have you crying 'fanboy' and I really dont' feel like arguing it. Well first off... I was very surprised, being as Xbox 360 is mere months away (they said it was due before thanksgiving), I expected there to be a LOT of playable Xbox 360 kiosks and games. Haven't MS been saying that they're gonna have this huge launch with all these games right off the bat? Well... I saw all of FIVE F'ING GAMES in the 360 area. That was it. There was a new Need for Speed, a new Medal of Honor, a Sega car game that looked like Crazy Taxi only with blowing stuff up, and a couple other games that did not even look interesting to me. And here's the part where you MS fans will cry fanboy. I'm sorry but... the games on display did NOT really look THAT great. I mean graphically. I mean, Xbox 1 has amazed me, with games like Riddick, and Doom 3, and Forza.... it is a VERY powerful system. But I was playing the new Need for Speed, and yeah there's a lot of little details that caught my eye right away... the car reflections look great, and particle effects like sparks flying and stuff when you scrub the walls... but I mean... it didn't look just SO much better than the current Xbox. The biggest improvement I noticed was the draw distance, you could see much further ahead of you, and the buildings and stuff did look nice. I'd say it was like Xbox 1 power times 2 or 3, not times 15. The Medal of Honor game didn't look any better than the most recent PC game of the same franchise running on my friends midrange gaming PC. Oh and on both games the framerates SUCKED... I was expecting smooth 60fps but they both seemed to be chugging REALLY bad dropping below what I think was like 30fps many times while I was playing them. I am NOT impressed, and if Sony isnt' lieing thru their teeth with their hardware specs and the game footage (the Killzone 2 footage is still debatable I guess as far as if it's real or not but at least we KNOW the Unreal Engine 3 footage was real and there is no debating that demo looked AMAZING) then these early showings definately are making the 360 seem to be not even CLOSE to the PS3 in terms of power. I know it's all very early so am holding my own final judgement and really dont' want to compare what seemed to be nearly finished 360 games to a demo reel for the PS3 when we know Sony does like to hype their new stuff up quite a bit. But if the REAL PS3 games end up looking close to what I saw of the 360 games than NEITHER of them will be very impressive to me at all.


Other games that caught my eye? Not many. Katamari Damacy is getting a sequel called We Love Katamari. There's a new Spiderman game coming out based on the Ultimate Spiderman comic series instead of the movies that looked REALLY good though there weren't letting anyone play (this is a very common theme this year... so many games that they wont let you play). The Shadow of the Collosus (by the same people who did Ico) on PS2 was GREAT from what short time I played it... DEFINATELY getting that one.

There was just SO many FPS's and PC games were also a lot more common this year as well... neither interest me so I really just breezed thru the whole thing very quickly.


So there you have it... IMO... the suckiest and most boring E3 I've ever been to. And that's just crazy considering there were THREE new systems debuting this year... but damn... all behind closed doors or with very little to show... what was there to be excited about? It SHOULD have been the biggest E3 ever. I've GOT to get into the nintendo closed-off thing hopefully tommorow and see what they're showing for the Revolution. Otherwise I dunno... I was going to go all three days but I think I'll be done after tommorow. I'll try to take my time tommorow, we're goign to get there right at opening time and stay as long as we can stand it :) So I'll hopefully come back here with some better or more interesting info.
 
Cool, I like FPSs. Too bad the 360 sucked so bad. Oh well, 1 year goes quick, the PS3 will be here before you know.
 
DaveC posted on May 19 2005 at 02:41 AM said:
Cool, I like FPSs. Too bad the 360 sucked so bad. Oh well, 1 year goes quick, the PS3 will be here before you know.


ehhhh now wait a second I am NOT saying it 'sucked so bad'. I'm just saying that, as many of us had said before, that it does not appear to be the huge leap above the current Xbox, graphically speaking. Based on five of the first games that are being developed for the system. Who knows at what percent of the 360's true potential these first few games were running? I don't.

When the first Xbox debuted at E3 a few years back I remember seeing Halo and thinking "my god this game looks like shit... this thing is supposed to be more powerful than PS2??? I don't believe it" but now look at it... it very clearly blows PS2 away, graphically. So... who knows.
 
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Thanks for the preview bast, it was informative and lengthy (in a good way). Too bad this E3 was so damn dissapointing... looks like I'm stickin with my xbox and ps2 for another year or 2

on an off topic note- God of War is fucking awsome :ph34r:
(sorry, just got it in the mail today)
 
bast525 posted on May 19 2005 at 03:30 AM said:
Well just got back from Day 1. My oppinion in a nutshell? This years E3 is easily the most BORING E3 I have ever attended. You read that right... BORING.

Here's my summary... it's long... you've been warned. Oh, and one note, we didn't get in until late, about noon... took a long time to get processed to get in, so I basically almost RAN thru the whole place (it's very BIG) to see as much as I could as quickly as I could. So... this is more a preview, just first impressions from looking w/o doing much stopping. Please keep that in mind.


Sony - Sequel upon sequel upon sequel. And what few non sequels there were that I saw looked so similiar to other things I've played that they might as well have been sequels. This wasn't just Sony though... this E3 may as well be called Sequelfest '05....

The big story, PS3, was hardly a story at all. I waited in a 45 minute line to be herded into a small theater where they presented us an 8 minute video that is basically the video clips many of us have already seen at Gamespot or IGN with the tail end being short clips of upcoming games. *yawn* After that they let us out onto a little ledge area where there was one display of 4 PS3's and one controller on a rotating stand encased in glass. We were allowed to take pics, and that was it. No real hardware running any demos, nothing playable, nothing. No third parties had any PS3 work's in progress on display either. 45 mins in line plus 15 mins got you everything there was to see of the PS3 at this years E3. *yawn* MMMM but watching those game demos on a 20' large HDTV was nice... the Unreal 3 Engine and Killzone 2 trailer looked SOOOO much more amazing than when streamed off the internet. I truly hope it's really gonna look that good.

PSP... also dissapointing, there were only a couple games on display that we haven't already seen or heard or known about since way back before the US one launched... MOST of the playable PSP's were running games that are already available. The only notable games I saw that WEREN"T out yet were Viewtiful Joe and Coded Arms... they both looked good, at least, though I couldn't get too close to Viewtiful Joe due to the large crowd. None of the cool accesories that were shown at last years E3 like the camera or keyboard were on display this year, nor any of the different colored PSP's. So basically everything there but a handful of games was old news. *yawn*


Nintendo - Their booth was mostly DS stuff this year. For Gamecube, there was little that looked interesting. A couple new Mario sports titles, a Mario DDR, a couple RPG's... whatever. Most of the DS stuff looked bland as well. Mario Kart looked VERY nice though, better than the N64 version, and was lots of fun to play multiplayer. The "New Super Mario Bros." was also a lot of fun and interesting... though growing into super sized mario seems like a bad gimmick, the game itself plays well and I'll definately pick that up. Animal Crossing was playable, and looked pretty good. I missed the Konami booth some how so didnt' see the new Castlevania. Tommorow I'm priortizing tracking that one down.

For GC, Zelda Twilight Princes (or princess of twilight I forget) was either not there or was behind closed doors. :angry: I was fully expecting that one to be playable... very dissapointed.

The big story, Revolution... again... behind closed doors as was expected. However, the line to see whatever THEY were showing was well over two hours wait, and I didn't have the time today, but will try to check that out tommorow. There were a few people walking around I caught bits of conversation and what I gathered was that whatever they were showing of the Revolution was not that impressive.

The OTHER big story... or... the very little story... the stupid-as-fuck GBA Micro... whoop-dee-doo. It's... very small. Yeah it looks cool... but it is seriously flawed in that, the screen is VERY tiny, we're talking sub-N-gage size here. I was trying to play Donkey Kong Country on it, and seriously there were moments when I was having trouble making out what was going on... the screen is very tiny like 1 inch by 1.5 inch or like 2.5-3.5 cm I guess? Very small. The backlit screen is nice, same quality as the DS... but who cares when it's just THAT tiny??? They should have kept the SP and made THAT backlit. Much as I love handhelds and love COLLECTING handhelds I am VERY uninterested in this Micro. The changeable face plates are about the only thing I thought was really cool about it. *yawn*


Microsoft - ohhh microsoft. well... I hope you guys who will be holding onto your xbox's til the bitter end like FPS's... because I'd say that was at least 50% of what they had for Xbox 1. The cream of the crop was a playable version of Half Life 2, which just like Doom 3 before it, looks to be coming along VERY nicely and very close to matching the PC version graphically. Otherwise, nothing really caught my eye. Though I will say I wasn't looking too hard, my priority was getting a look at the 360. I'll try to look a bit more at Xbox 1 stuff tommorow.

The big story.... xbox 360... well for any big MS fans please don't read any further because this next bit will have you crying 'fanboy' and I really dont' feel like arguing it. Well first off... I was very surprised, being as Xbox 360 is mere months away (they said it was due before thanksgiving), I expected there to be a LOT of playable Xbox 360 kiosks and games. Haven't MS been saying that they're gonna have this huge launch with all these games right off the bat? Well... I saw all of FIVE F'ING GAMES in the 360 area. That was it. There was a new Need for Speed, a new Medal of Honor, a Sega car game that looked like Crazy Taxi only with blowing stuff up, and a couple other games that did not even look interesting to me. And here's the part where you MS fans will cry fanboy. I'm sorry but... the games on display did NOT really look THAT great. I mean graphically. I mean, Xbox 1 has amazed me, with games like Riddick, and Doom 3, and Forza.... it is a VERY powerful system. But I was playing the new Need for Speed, and yeah there's a lot of little details that caught my eye right away... the car reflections look great, and particle effects like sparks flying and stuff when you scrub the walls... but I mean... it didn't look just SO much better than the current Xbox. The biggest improvement I noticed was the draw distance, you could see much further ahead of you, and the buildings and stuff did look nice. I'd say it was like Xbox 1 power times 2 or 3, not times 15. The Medal of Honor game didn't look any better than the most recent PC game of the same franchise running on my friends midrange gaming PC. Oh and on both games the framerates SUCKED... I was expecting smooth 60fps but they both seemed to be chugging REALLY bad dropping below what I think was like 30fps many times while I was playing them. I am NOT impressed, and if Sony isnt' lieing thru their teeth with their hardware specs and the game footage (the Killzone 2 footage is still debatable I guess as far as if it's real or not but at least we KNOW the Unreal Engine 3 footage was real and there is no debating that demo looked AMAZING) then these early showings definately are making the 360 seem to be not even CLOSE to the PS3 in terms of power. I know it's all very early so am holding my own final judgement and really dont' want to compare what seemed to be nearly finished 360 games to a demo reel for the PS3 when we know Sony does like to hype their new stuff up quite a bit. But if the REAL PS3 games end up looking close to what I saw of the 360 games than NEITHER of them will be very impressive to me at all.


Other games that caught my eye? Not many. Katamari Damacy is getting a sequel called We Love Katamari. There's a new Spiderman game coming out based on the Ultimate Spiderman comic series instead of the movies that looked REALLY good though there weren't letting anyone play (this is a very common theme this year... so many games that they wont let you play). The Shadow of the Collosus (by the same people who did Ico) on PS2 was GREAT from what short time I played it... DEFINATELY getting that one.

There was just SO many FPS's and PC games were also a lot more common this year as well... neither interest me so I really just breezed thru the whole thing very quickly.


So there you have it... IMO... the suckiest and most boring E3 I've ever been to. And that's just crazy considering there were THREE new systems debuting this year... but damn... all behind closed doors or with very little to show... what was there to be excited about? It SHOULD have been the biggest E3 ever. I've GOT to get into the nintendo closed-off thing hopefully tommorow and see what they're showing for the Revolution. Otherwise I dunno... I was going to go all three days but I think I'll be done after tommorow. I'll try to take my time tommorow, we're goign to get there right at opening time and stay as long as we can stand it :) So I'll hopefully come back here with some better or more interesting info.
sony fanboi :p
 
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Cheers Bast! Look forward to tomorrows report! Better than gamespot, you are!
 
:D
declaration posted on May 19 2005 at 01:27 PM said:
The only fanboy around here is lubidog.

He's a Bast fanboy :p


Bast=Best!!! He's tops!!!
 
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Horscht posted on May 19 2005 at 08:48 AM said:
One thing tho: the Xbox 360 games didn't run of a 360 console. That console was just a display. The games ran of Alpha-Kits, that were hidden behind the desks. So the Games just ran with 1/3 of the original power of an xbox 360. Just to point that out :p

see here:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=398913



I thought this might be the case. It makes perfect sense. There were actually no Xbox 360 units being displayed at the kiosks where you could play the games, the controllers were wired into the back of the kiosks (yes WIRED, not just tethered but an actual wire connecting it to whatever unit was hidden in the kiosk!)... The only 360 system actaully on display was over at the ATI booth.

Isn't that odd though? I thought the 360 hardware was 100% finished?

You know, the same thing was said when Xbox 1 debuted at E3 a few years ago... I actually asked one of the MS reps why Halo ran so choppy and didn't look as good as what they were hyping... he said it was because they were running on units that were not up to the full xbox spec, that the video hardware was not finalized and they were running on an older GPU. Funny, when I finally played retail Halo... it didn't look much better than when I played it at that E3.

Well again... who knows, I'm not making some big judgement off just what I saw there. Like I said, Xbox 1 failed to impress me at it's first E3 as well and I still rushed to buy one of those (and pay quite a bit more than retail because I didn't reserve) to get one on launch day. I'm still excited to see the finished product. I'm just a bit worried though that MS had so little to show for a system due in about 6 mos. I mean come on... 5 games showing out of a projected 25-40 launch games?
 
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bast525 posted on May 19 2005 at 03:09 PM said:
I mean come on... 5 games showing out of a projected 25-40 launch games?

There are always things like that floating around, and it NEVER happens.
 
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bast525 posted on May 19 2005 at 02:30 AM said:
(the Killzone 2 footage is still debatable I guess as far as if it's real or not but at least we KNOW the Unreal Engine 3 footage was real and there is no debating that demo looked AMAZING) then these early showings definately are making the 360 seem to be not even CLOSE to the PS3 in terms of power.

People don't seem to realise that Gears of War for the x360 uses the Unreal 3 Engine aswell and looked just as good.
 
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yeah man, the 360 will be a beast as well. PD0 is getting awesome first impressions by ign/gamespot, and the games displayed were running on inferior alpha dev kits.
of course i'll have to get a ps3, too as i'm not an fps only gamer
 
Personaly, I can't tell which will be better. Why? Because I haven't played either console, and so did anyone else here. The xbox 360 games at E3 don't run on a full spec system, so you can't tell how they will look when they run on retail hardware. We shouldn't argue on which console will be better graphicswise or processorwise or gamewise, as NOONE can tell until they have played both. I think M$ won't take the lead this time, but will sure win a few costumers with their headstart.
 
bast525 posted on May 19 2005 at 02:09 PM said:
Horscht posted on May 19 2005 at 08:48 AM said:
One thing tho: the Xbox 360 games didn't run of a 360 console. That console was just a display. The games ran of Alpha-Kits, that were hidden behind the desks. So the Games just ran with 1/3 of the original power of an xbox 360. Just to point that out :p

see here:
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=398913



..
You know, the same thing was said when Xbox 1 debuted at E3 a few years ago... I actually asked one of the MS reps why Halo ran so choppy and didn't look as good as what they were hyping... he said it was because they were running on units that were not up to the full xbox spec, that the video hardware was not finalized and they were running on an older GPU. Funny, when I finally played retail Halo... it didn't look much better than when I played it at that E3.




The retail version of Halo wasn't choppy though. So maybe they did improve the framerate from the dev boxes.

I remember seeing a demo tape at Toys R us a few months before the release of the Xbox. Every game was a choppy mess with a terrible framerate. Then when the system was actually released those same games ran very smooth (Halo being one of them). So maybe there is hope, 6 months is a good amount of time for games to be tweaked, we will see.

I will end up getting a 360 as I won't be able to wait 6 months for the PS3. I will get a PS3 when it comes out.
 
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Pefect Dark 0, the only reason I can see for getting an xbox360 so far. Funny though, I read a preview somewhere and the makers were saying "theres more than 25 guns" (just like Perfect Dark on the 64), and "there's a gun that makes you invisible (again, just like the 64 version...), and "location based damage on enemies" (Again, just like the 64). I just wonder how original its actually going to be?
 
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