Ico – Mini Review

Activision disappear further up own arseholes attempting to scare experienced businessmen

My blog is lacking in many things, primarily content and quality but hopefully the former will be rectified with my initiative to write more about news stuff! Don’t expect Newsnight, or even 8 out of 10 cats, just a few ponderings on the latest nuggets of gaming news to spring from a pile of PR bullshit. Link to the news story is in the headline…

The really late E3 awards 2009!

Because everyone does something like this be it in their heads on their blogs or in their fancy pants “magazines”. E3 was a wonderful return to form and seeing as it went so swimmingly the hype has been bigger than ever surrounding the host of sequels and innovations crawling their out of the industry’s bloated ass.

Game of Show

Let’s start with the obvious award for the best game of the show. This is a hard one to judge because different games show varying amounts at the show so it’s best if I judge games based solely on their performance on the big stage of E3. So in that case the award goes to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves which had the double whammy of an amazing live demo at the Sony Conference and an amazing trailer. All in all, amazing!

Most Embarrassing Moment

There’s going to be plenty of these given the nature of the event but something in particular takes the biscuit this year. It’s not the rushed motion controller demo for the Playstation 3 or Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr’s appearance at the Microsoft conference.  The winner is The Legion of Jedi/Nerds who entered the stage at EA’s conference for the Old Republic game. They walked their way up to the stage with cloaks and lightsabres and then just stood there as the Bioware folk talked about the game and showed the trailer. Then, once that was all said and done, they just wandered off again.  Pointless nerdiness.

E3 – Sony Conference Review

The third and final press conference kicked off with Queen’s One Vision which got the show off to a good start and fired up a great crowd. The package showed the three Playstation consoles and PSN with footage of all the things we can enjoy on them, typical show-opening stuff made better with added Queen.  Out comes Jack Tretton, one of the most likeable guys out there, to flaunt Sony’s massive and impressive screen. He talks about all kinds of things with Heavy Rain getting a big reaction out of the crowd.

Uncharted 2

First game of the evening and Naughty Dog get stuck into the action with a frantic demo. The game is very beautiful as we all knew but they way it holds up when the proverbial hits the fan is the most impressive part. It focuses around a big set piece with a helicopter attack. It’s a chase sequence with plenty of running and gunning to boot, the environment takes a beating from the chopper resulting in a whole building partially collapsing as Nathan Drake and British accomplice narrowly escape. “We were almost in that!” Drake says as the demo ends. Good showing from Naughty Dog solidifying the game as a day one purchase for many people.

E3 – Nintendo Conference Review

Nintendo’s conference finished not so long ago and luckily for my work ethic it was mainly a lifeless boring affair. It was definitely saved by a couple of big announcements though. Just like last night I’m going to start at the beginning.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii

I Missed the first few minutes of the press conference because of an abundance of streams crumbling under the weight of fanboys but I saw enough of the gameplay. Miyamoto was named here but not seen, Cammie Dunaway talked about him like he was some sort of omni-present God hidden away only to appear now and again as he pleases with a golden egg to show off. This was the game where the LittleBigPlanet influence on Nintendo started to show. It’s traditional Mario Bros stuff but with four player co-op in a platforming environment. What we saw looked good with the four players consisting of Mario, Luigi and various Toads. It looks like a very easy game for Nintendo to make and all credit to them because this will no doubt sell bucket loads. This is heading for a Christmas release and there’s little doubt it won’t make that target.

E3 – Microsoft Conference Review

Wow. I’m still piecing my mind back together after the Microsoft conference which finished not so long ago. It didn’t disappoint leaving me a lot to talk about in the coming words. I’ll start, rather aptly, at the beginning.

The Beatles Rock Band

The show kicked off with the opening video from the game which was a great stylised video of the Beatles with a few songs and all you would expect.  Out comes someone to tell us who The Beatles are which was nice of him but they soon got on to the demo. They played Day Tripper and it was all rather nice, I noticed that the drum set looked a lot more like the Guitar Hero World Tour set with what appeared to be four symbols. Then out came someone I assume is related to George Harrison followed by Yoko Ono. Crowd sighs but as they leave Ringo Starr (he’ll always be called that) and Paul McCartney  appear to a great response. Microsoft must have had quite a whip around to get those two to the party. They had no idea what to say but it was quite funny because they clearly couldn’t care less. The segment is finished off with the announcement that “All you need is Love” will be 360 exclusive and full albums will be released as DLC starting not too far from the release date of 09/09/09.

E3 – Sony Conference Predictions

For the past two years Sony’s conference has been the most important of the three for the company holding it. This year is no different but this time the already confirmed lineup of games is impressive enough to make the conference on the whole a very exciting prospect. Sony’s lineup in the coming year is easily the most impressive of the three.

E3 – Nintendo Conference Predictions

The only people Nintendo have left to win over are the hardcore fans. The “casual” audience that makes up most of the massive Wii user-base will lap up anything Nintendo puts in front of them and with Wii Sports Resort on show at E3 and likely to take center stage, it won’t be that hard for the Big N to please them. It’s no surprise then that the one major rumour regarding Nintendo is the arrival of a new Mario or Zelda game for the Wii.

E3 – Microsoft Conference Predictions

E3 is a lot sooner than I thought it was. Today I realised I only had the better part of four days before the megatons start falling and sighs start echoing around the internet. In my next three posts I’ll have  a quick look at the speculation, rumours and what we’ll almost certainly see in each of the main conferences. I’ll start with Microsoft who will be kicking off the extravaganza on Monday.

Fifa 09 – Mini Review

Ahh the beautiful game. The king of sports. Home of over-paid poofters. Football don’t half make a good game though and after years of Konami dominating the turf with Pro Evolution Soccer, EA have finally cemented their game as the king of the kickers.