Doubledrive - 11:59

This really isn't going to make sense if you read the Vegas post first. I'm actually posting this one afterwards, but dating it earlier. I'm tricky like that.

We decided not to go to E3 this year, and this might have been my last chance to do that. Looking at the academic calender for next year, I'll be taking finals the same days that the convention is going on. I wouldn't be able to make it to the show, much less the press conferences a couple days earlier. Crappy, but school is more important than vacations.

Last year was a ton of fun, because we weren't as focused on the show as we were being out and about in Los Angeles. Rainbow bar & grill, Roscoe's chicken & waffles, Sunset strip, Hollywood & Highland, etc. It was good to be able to forego the scantily clad strippers for a couple days, and instead see the sights. Los Angeles is such a great place to visit, and I honestly couldn't tell you why I like it so much.

On the topic of this year's E3, though, I'm glad I didn't go. Not only did I have a great time in Vegas, but reading reports by others that did make it to the show this year is kind of depressing. Everyone went in with such high hopes of a great show. This was going to be the year that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo were gonna burn the mf'er down with all of their new systems, and games.

Instead, it was pretty tame. Sony showed off some CG of what they think PS3 games, could look like. What they hope to achieve. They showed off a console that's half as big as Ken Kutaragi, and nearly as ugly. But don't worry, it has 6 USB ports. As if any person in the past 5 years ever used the USB ports or Firewire port on the revolutionary PS2. You'll also get a blu-ray DVD player, nevermind the fact that not even a single blu-ray DVD exists yet. You can also use a controller that loosely resembles something you'd get from an adult novelty store. All of this is coming to a TV near you sometime in 2006. Don't mention the PSP, btw, Sony sure didn't.

Microsoft wasn't much better. I remember reading something once, and I can't remember who at Microsoft said it, that they learned their lesson with the Halo 1 showing at E3 2001. People go to the show expecting to see five minutes of highly polished gameplay demo'd for them. You can have the extra 2 hours of game, but if you can't blow people away with a short snippet of the game, then you've failed. Evidently they must have gotten rid of whoever said that, because half of the 360's games at the show looked like revamped Xbox 1 titles. They completely swept Perfect Dark Zero under the rug, and all of their games were still running on dual-dual PowerMac G5's, with a 360 in decoy mode.

Finally there was Nintendo. I'm sure that their business model is great, because it seems like they're always making money, but it's sad to see how far they've fallen. Every person in America used to know what a "Nintendo" was. I bet 80% of them couldn't tell you who the hell makes a "Gamecube" now. How does Nintendo fix that? By releasing 4 new Mario games, of course! Mario Soccer, Mario Baseball, Mario Dance Dance Revolution, and Mario Party 7. As if we haven't had enough Mario in the past 10 years, we now get four more games to satisfy the 12 and under demo. Then they show the Gameboy Micro...a portable game system so small and akward, that only the tiniest of hands could appreciate it. We'll see if Nintendo makes a killing by selling it to 11-15 year old boys, and petite college girls. I'm guessing not.

Anyway, that was the show from the perspective of someone sitting at home, waiting to catch a plane to more entertaining destinations. After all of this, I'm sure I'll still play games as often as I ever have. That would be about 1 hour a week anymore... :P

Labels: games

0 Comments: