I love E3. For as long as my internet connection has permitted, I have made a point of settling down in a comfy chair and watching live streams of the major press conferences every summer. I was even going to concoct an elaborate plan to blag my way into last year’s show, but then there was a big ‘internet backlash’ against much of 2006′s presentations (Giant Enemy Crabs and so on) and a lot of the larger companies threw their toys out the pram. Instead of an electric wonderland of free-to-play, unfinished games, we now just have a series of press conferences and tightly-controlled demo lounges. Of course, the old E3 was a colossal waste of time and money – the fact that random nobodies like me could realistically get in did kinda undermine its value as a trade show – but regardless of the many reasons for change, the new E3 isn’t nearly as exciting.

Traditionally, I end the week with a mental list of half a dozen titles that looked particularly interesting, and a much longer list of complaints about absolutely everything else. This year was no different. I’ll grumble about the three main “media briefings” later, but I’ll start with my nice, positive list of games that I’m interested in:

My Most Anticipated Games of E3 2008, In No Particular Order:
- Animal Crossing (Wii)
- Fat Princess (PS3)
- Fable 2 (360)
- Little Big Planet (PS3)
- Mad World (Wii)
- Beyond Good & Evil 2 (Various, presumably)
- Fallout 3 (Various)

There’s a few omissions that might upset people – I’m terrible at Resident Evil games, so I can’t say I’m that bothered about the latest sequel, for example – but this is a personal list of games I want to buy myself, so shut up. And with that out of the way, I can get on with criticising everyone in turn:

Nintendo

Nintendo lost E3 this year, as far as I’m concerned. The Internet seems to be describing Nintendo’s briefing as a shameful abomination, but I think that’s a little unfair. Gamers (or which the net is obviously rife) seem to have this strange misconception that E3 is for their benefit. The fact is, it’s a showcase event for games companies to put their products in the news – that awful, oft-used phrase “media briefing” sums it up succinctly. Sure, the specialist gaming press are also there, but those guys write about games every day. It doesn’t surprise me at all that Nintendo spent their whole presentation talking about middle-of-the-road junk for ‘non-gamers’; E3 is their biggest chance to make a splash in the mainstream media. If you want to hear about the inevitable new Zelda project, just wait a few months and there’ll be an interview about it. And I wish people would stop being so mean to Cammie Dunaway! It’s hard to stand up in front of an audience and pretend to care about trivial nonsense.

As for the actual content… well, Animal Crossing Wii looks like Animal Crossing DS, but with the kind of extra online stuff that I hoped they would put in. I’m a bit confused about how they’re integrating Miis into it (or not), but then Nintendo seem to have developed a dislike of Miis generally, for some reason. Wii Music looks like a totally pointless waste of time. Miyamoto says that this makes it better than a regular game; I imagine that would be true for some people, but not for me. The drumming demo was as cringingly bad as Sony’s pitiful Warhawk sixaxis demo, two years ago. The MotionPlus adaptor appears to be a hardware patch that gives the Wii remote the kind of functionality it should have had from the start, with end users picking up the bill. THANKS, NINTENDO! Truly, we are blessed.

Microsoft

Yes, yes, Microsoft did a massive about-face and have radically redesigned the 360 to be more like its  competitors… of course, the rumours about this have been going around for months, and it’s hardly a surprise. It is, however, a bit of a disappointment. My only real complaint about the 360 dashboard is that it doesn’t cope very well with having different gamertags signed in on different controllers; I think the new UI is ugly and inefficient, and I think avatars will just add an uneccesary layer to user idents. Partying up in the dashboard sounds good, but I wouldn’t be surprised if only a few games used it. The movie streaming stuff would be great if it was free, but I doubt it will be, assuming it even rolls out over here.

As for the games… well, I’ll be all over Fable 2, obviously.  I thought that ambient co-op orb thing sounded ridiculous, until I noticed the orbs appear to move around to reflect the player’s current position in their own game; I now think it is brilliant. Gears of War 2 looks almost as dull as its predecessor, although I’m sure I’ll play through with a friend sometime. I can’t say I care much about the Final Fantasy XIII announcement – it’s hardly surprising from a business perspective, and I’ve come to think of the whole Final Fantasy multimedia franchise as a relentless engine of shallow, self-indulgent fanservice. Geometry Wars 2 looks the business (although I’m still struggling to wrap my brain around the original game), but the imminent release of Castle Crashers makes every other Live Arcade game look fairly redundant at the minute. Yes, including Braid.

Sony

For my money, I think Sony’s presentation was the best this year. Admittedly, the highlight was the announcement that they would be bringing the PlayStation Network close to XBox Live’s level of functionality, but that’s basically all the PS3 ever needed. Now that sales are slowly starting to pick up, we might start seeing some decent third-party games? Their Little Big Planet powered stats and graphs made my inner economist go all gooey, and nicely showed off what could be achieved with the game.

The PlayStation Network games overshadowed all the full-price titles they had on show. Little Big Planet, Fat Princess, Ragdoll Kung-Fu, sequels for LocoRoco and Patapon, and the random stuff like Flower and PixelJunk Eden, all looked far more interesting than the new Killzone and Resistance and the absurdly-named MAG… speaking personally, I think TF2 renders all other FPS games obsolete. The Gran Turismo TV channel looks like a brilliant idea, although I can’t see myself watching it. I can kinda imagine Hideo Kojima setting up a Metal Gear TV channel, screening military history documentaries, 80′s action films and The Gadget Show.

Conclusion

Much like last year, I didn’t think there was very much to get excited about. Nintendo continued to ignore dedicated gamers, but third-party games like No More Heroes should be enough to put people off selling their Wiis. Microsoft did an incredible amount of back-pedalling, which kinda upset me because I was counting on them to stay the course and be ‘the hardcore gamer’s choice’. I guess they’re just desperate for a slice of Nintendo’s new market? And as for Sony… well, two years after release, I think I’m just about ready to buy a PS3 and complete my console collection. It’ll have to be a second-hand 60GB model of course, with their backwards compatibility and all.