E3 ’09 Roundup

June 7, 2009 7:31 pm Sir Haxington Game Development

Ahhh… E3 is finally over. It was a huge E3 this year which was great. I missed the classic pig party feel of E3 and I’m glad it was back. Anyway, here’s how my week went.

I flew in on Virgin since it was the cheapest fare a week before the beginning of E3. Now I’m officially a Virgin convert. It felt like flying on a limo and the price was right. Very choice. I caught “Slumdog Millionaire” on the way down from Seattle, which was a bomb-ass movie.

I met up with my buddy who lives in downtown LA. He does contract art from home in his sweet loft apartment. Ahhh, the good life. It’s also great because he lives within walking distance to the convention center, near great places to eat, and near lots cool hangouts. If you’re hungry, I highly recommend Bottega Louise (7th and Grand). It feels like you’re walking into an elegant European restaurant. The place has amazing food and it isn’t pricey.

I got my sweet all access pass for the Microsoft media briefing on Sunday then headed over to the Kotaku Party at the Golden Gopher with some Activision friends. We hung out there for a few hours, even after the free drinks dried up. I got a chance to meet some of the Kotaku guys as well. Mike Fahey was sitting in the back of the bar like the Godfather of the joint. He was super cool and always gave fair reporting on Treyarch, which I appreciate a lot. Good times were had by all, even if I was getting drilled about what I was working on and what Microsoft was up to. No about of alcohol will make me spill the beans though, I’m a human lock box! Although they knew about “Reach” the day before the briefing… hmm.

We ended up going to a rooftop party at the Standard Hotel later that night. I unfortunately arrived in cargo shorts, which apparently broke the dress code. I had to run back a few blocks to my buddies apartment (not fun after heavy drinking), put on jeans, then run back. It was all worth it though as many “game celebrities” were there who are always fun to see out and about. I met some really interesting people that night, had some good conversations, and when it was over, I realized I had to wake up at 8 am the next day for the mega-Microsoft announcements. Oh joy.

We get to the press briefing on time, but the event is chaos. The “people directors” are all stressed out, there are lines every where that go nowhere, lines keep changing… argh! I signed my buddy up as a guest and got a confirmation email letting me know it was all good for him to get in, but we waited in line for his pass and they didn’t have him on the list. So he gets put in the “maybe he’ll get a pass” line, but luckily I got an extra pass from someone from work, and we ended up getting right in. Whew!

The briefing was an amazing experience. What an awesome way to start E3. Seeing the Beatles Rockband opening on a giant screen will full theater sound was mind-blowing. Microsoft brought out their fair share celebrities as well, including Yoko Ono, and half of the real Beatles, Paul and Ringo. The games shown are amazing as well. Modern Warfare 2 looks awesome, Splinter Cell: Conviction looks awesome, Alan Wake looks awesome… heck I’m even excited for Joyride and Shadow Complex (even if there were some technical hangups… sorry Cliffy). Oh, did mention Final Fantasy XIII and future Metal Gear games are coming to the 360? I still don’t have a PS3, and I’m holding out as long as possible. What awesome news for Microsoft, and those were honest surprises to me. Also, Facebook and Twitter on the 360? Sweet! More reason to sit on my couch and less to go to my PC.

Left for Dead 2 was another surprise. So soon? Valve usually stretches out releases, but I’m guessing they’re trying to quickly capitalize on L4D’s success. L4D was an awesome game.

Then there was Natal. Finally I get to talk about it! When I first saw it, I was blown away and extremely skeptical. But, after hearing other people’s experiences with it, I think there are bunch of people who see Natal’s potential, and a ton of other people who are underestimate what it is. I think that’s a very good position to be in, because I can’t wait for games to start rolling out for it. It’s too bad Natal had that glitchy intro. Everyone knows about the “Bam!” shoe meme now, since the first actual showing of Natal to the public resulted in a hilarious technical glitch. It doesn’t matter though, Natal is going to rock everyone’s faces!

Anyway, the briefing ended, I went home and watched G4 coverage, read E3 news online, and went to bed. I was still destroyed from Sunday night.

Tuesday hits, the doors for E3 officially open. The floodgate of media, executives, advertisers, Gamestop employees, and devs rolled in hard.

We checked out Brutal Legend first. The game looks sick, has fun characters and looks to be a promising game. The one lesson I learned is to not put puzzles in E3 demos. I got stuck and missed the cue how to advance, and had to ask one of the demo’ers to help me out. Embarrassing!

I saw a few Treyarch guys around… and they were wearing awesome new Nazi Zombie t-shirts! I gave them a hard time for not letting me know about them, but they only knew about them from the day before. I’m still have some connections there, so I got hooked up.

Split-Second looked to be a fun, arcadey racing game, where you press buttons during a race to set off context sensitive events like explosions that blow up other cars, towers that fall and change the track, and so on. Disney is making this game, which was a total surprise. They seem to be bringing their A-game.

We watched the Splinter Cell Conviction demo. Unfortunately, it was unplayable, and I found out why after watching the demo. At one point, Sam Fisher starting t-posing around and the game crashed. Ru-roh! Everything up until that point looked great though, and I love what they’re doing with projecting text, cinematics and objectives into the environment. Well done. Conviction had a lot of buzz at E3.

I got my hands on Joyride, which is the free trick racing XBLA game. It feels like a mix of Outrun and SSX Tricky, but playable with your avatar. Pretty fun, although it’s pre-alpha / alphaish so they didn’t have trick-combos working. However, the core of the game was working and fun. Boosts, ramps, collectibles, it’s all there.

Sadly, most of the stuff we wanted to play wasn’t out on the floor. Lots of games had long lines or where behind closed doors, so we mainly focused on getting a lay of the land and just looked at what was out. There sure were a lot of third person action games! Surprisingly few MMOs out, which was nice for a change. E3 usually has tons of WoW clones out and about.

We went out to the Yardhouse in downtown LA (near the Staples Center) for food and drinks. Again, another excellent place that won’t let you down. They also offer beer samplers which always has a place in my heart since many Pacific Northwest brew-pubs offer these as well. The burgers were awesome too. Everyone was happy with their orders.

Back at my buddies place, we watched more G4 coverage and saw all the stuff we couldn’t get into, such as Assassins Creed 2, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age and Halo 3: ODST gameplay. Also, lots of my friends from Infinity Ward were with us when G4 covered the extended Mw2 gameplay footage. Needless to say, it was pretty exciting stuff and it’s always good fun to give them shit about their ice climbing simulator.

We saw pretty much everything we wanted to see minus some Nintendo stuff, God of War 3 and Bayonetta. It was a good day.

The next day I went solo, but met up with my Creative Director. We went over to the Sony side of things, and he met with his old Konami friends. We ended up waiting in line for God of War 3 and finally got to play. Pretty awesome stuff there, Kratos is bad as hell. Still, not making want to buy a PS3 though! We played the new Silent Hill game for the Wii, which was decent, but man, after playing next-gen games for so long it’s hard to play Wii games.

We parted ways, I went back to my friends place, and watched more G4. Morgan Web is losing her voice and Adam is looking a bit tired. I don’t think they’re used to being live on TV for this long. Thursday, the final day of E3. We played Bayonetta which is amazing. I’m very much buying this game. Sure, it has a huge amount of sex appeal, but the “naughty” gameplay is what makes it so compelling. It’s a very femininely styled game that is extremely fun to play. I had more fun playing this than God of War 3, and I can play it on my 360!

Later, we headed over to Nintendo and played some New Super Mario Bros on the Wii with four player co-op. Very fun, but I’ve grown out of simple 2-d Mario games. I think it’ll be a huge hit with kids and more casual gamers though. Nintendo has added a new “shake the controller” spin move which is surprisingly fun to use.

We also played Uncharted 2 co-op, and was pretty unimpressed. I’m not a big fan of games where I shoot a human character in the face and he doesn’t die. Also, I couldn’t invert the controls even though the menu indicated they were changing, so it was hard to play. In general the controls were hard to get used to, then we had to solve some crazy climbing / context sensitive puzzles. Again, no puzzles in floor demos please!

What else looked great that I left out? The Last Guardian (formerly know as Trico) looks awesome, but I was one of those guys that didn’t care for Ico or Shadow of the Collosus. Hopefully it’ll be different this time around. The huge Griffin-pet thing looks incredible and the characters show so much emotion. I really want to connect with this game. The new Batman was playable and was fun to play as well. Everyone I talked to said it was pretty good, which bodes well for this game.

I got my hands on the PSP go, I’m considering getting one since I never bought a PSP and I don’t need to mess with UMDs- all the games are downloadable. Pretty neat for a portable game device, although my iPhone is pretty good for casual hand held games, so I’ll wait a bit and see what happens.

Somewhere in there we went to the KogiBBQ Korean taco cart that twitters where they will be. We got there 20 minutes early and there were already eight people in “line” for a truck that hadn’t shown up yet. We got there just in time though, because the line was around the block when the truck finally arrived. We got a good sampling of what they had to offer; tacos (spare rib, chicken, pork), burritos and sliders. I’d give it a 3.5 /5, maybe a 4/5 if you’re drunk, which we were. I’d give it a 1/5 for what it does to you the next day.

So what now? Catching up with game industry friends and preparing myself for tons of “BAM!” and Milo jokes. All in all a great E3. Hopefully next year will be bigger and better.