E3

I spent a good part of my morning/early afternoon yesterday downloading videos (the later half of my day I spent in the theater watching Ratatouille and Transformers). The Marketplace was running about as fast as a dial-up connection, not making the experience much fun, but Gametrailers had some great HD content up. Some impressions on what I have seen so far, in no particular order.

- I missed the Microsoft Press Conference because I was in the Police concert (the concert was great by the way). I was disappointed that Microsoft didn't really have any surprises or announcements. No rumored price drop, nada. But they did have a lot of great games.

- Call of Duty 4. The live demonstration was amazing. I have yet to see a HD version of the video, but even with the low quality one I saw, the footage was fantastic. This game definitely has that "next-gen" feel down. All of a sudden, it is one of my most anticipated games.

- Halo 3 - The video montage they showed, which had the first real taste of the single-player campaign, failed to really impress me. I have no doubt that the game will be amazing, with some fantastic set-pieces, great A.I., and the best multiplayer available, but the video did very little for me.

- Assassin's Creed - Going into E3 this was one of my most anticipated titles. After the live presentation, I am a little concerned though. The game looked far, far rougher than it did last year. How is that possible? It was glitchy and nowhere near as polished as the last live demonstration shown. The interaction with the crowd looked very rough, with poor collision detection and the entire demo just lacked polish. The city looked fantastic and seeing your character climb up buildings looked phenomenal, but the game still has some way to go. I hope they are able to pull this one off, because I have high hopes. I didn't like the voice acting and cinematics in the demo very much either, or the fact that your character speaks (I did not want him to speak in this game for some reason).

- Mass Effect - This game continues to impress. Story looks strong, fantastic voice acting, and the graphics are gorgeous.

- Nintendo - Man, the Nintendo Press conference was boring as f*ck! Blah-blah-blah, we're still sold out, blah-blah-blah, we've expanded the market, blah-blah-blah, we rock. The biggest announcements were the Wii Zapper, a release date for Smash Brothers, and Wii Fitness (which is not even a game per say). Gotta hand it them though, they really are expanding the market and to this day I still cannot walk into a store and buy a Wii, but nothing they showed really got me excited.

- Resident Evil 5 - The trailer shown (which is supposedly in real-time) was fantastic! The graphics were simply amazing and the game looks extremely creepy and disturbing. Can't wait.

- Metal Gear Solid 4 - Again, this game's cinematic quality and direction has no equal. The real-time trailer was phenomenal. That being said, I want to see gameplay already. I have no doubt that this game's cinematics will be the best ever. The MGS series has proven that in the past. I want to see if the gameplay has evolved accordingly, because while Snake Eater was a great game and I thoroughly enjoyed it, the play mechanics felt very dated. This game better show a revolution of the series' traditional control set-up and gameplay.

- Rock Band/Guitar Hero III - I'm throwing both of these in together because they are cut from the same cloth. Both these games will always fail to impress by just watching videos of them. You need to grab those instrument controllers and jam. That being said, I am soooo looking forward to Rock Band and playing drums!!! Plus, Rock Band announced that they are going to be offering a music service, releasing new songs EVERY WEEK! Not only that, but they will be offering entire albums to download. Entire freakin' albums!

- Army of Two - I saw a low quality gameplay video and the game has potential, especially with all the co-op opportunities, but I was not blown away.

- Gears of War PC - The game looks identical to the 360 version (from what I could tell) and apparently it was being played with a 360 controller, because you could see the button icons on the screen like the console game. The game is supposed to have a bout 5 new chapters, including a battle with a Brumak (giant Locust with rockets attached to its back). They showed part of that battle. I am really hoping that they release those new chapters as a download on the Marketplace, because I would love to try them out.

- Killzone 2 - I was actually pretty impressed with the real-time trailer. I know you weren't, but looking at it closely, it is a pretty damn gorgeous game. I heard there was a live presentation and I have not seen that. I will try to download a HD version of that tonight. Granted, it does not look as good as the CG trailer, but in reality, I did not think they were going to be able to match the trailer. Hell, Motorstorm didn't come close to matching its trailer, but it is still a pretty good looking game.

Like I mentioned, I went to the movies to see Ratatouille and Transformers, so there is a lot of stuff that I missed that I will have to watch tonight. Both movies were good by the way, will have reviews on those soon. Ratatouille was by far better. The animation was simply sick. Sick. Pixar animators are geniuses.