As crazy as it may sound, if we had to draw lines between E3 2010 and any other event, it would probably be a wedding. No, the casual games haven’t rotted our brains--sit a minute and hear us out. Like at any traditional wedding (we’re not talking about the crazy Vegas drive-through kind here), there were classic elements at play on the show floor. There was something old--in this year’s case reboots of long-forgotten, or cherished-but-unheeded, franchise refreshes such as Driver: San Francisco, Mortal Kombat, Twisted Metal, and Donkey Kong Country Returns. But unfortunately no new Police Quest or Road Rash games reared their heads. Boo.
It might look quiet, but inside is a hub of noise and video games.
Not surprisingly for a tradeshow like E3, there were plenty of new games, and almost every major publisher demonstrated, or at the very least talked up, its efforts in the 3D space. Like current 2D games, not all of them will be winners, but you’d certainly be in the minority if you suggested the industry wasn’t embracing the opportunity to do something different and establish early footholds as the technology pushes towards mainstream adoption.
Of course, while some embrace new ideas, it never hurts to copy first place, and as a result there were plenty of borrowed concepts. While Nintendo has already built an empire and reaped the rewards of motion-sensing gameplay, Sony and Microsoft both beat their chests as big supporters of new and more interactive gaming experiences.
What would a wedding be without blue? And there was plenty of it in the faces of the demo staff manning booths, playing repeatedly through the same slither of ultra-polished gameplay and fighting for eyeballs at the schizophrenic E3. All that said, ultimately E3 2010 boiled down to three major pillars:
Casual games:
Dan Chiappini:
Casual games were one of the key ingredients of E3 2010, and while the companies behind them continue to grapple with the issue of how to best communicate them to a predominately core gaming media audience, they did a reasonable job. That’s not to say it was entirely embraced by the press, and frankly, trying to sell games where you wave your arms around in front of a television set at a show like E3 is a bit like bringing a grapefruit to a gunfight. That said, there did seem to be a very conscious effort to tap new markets and make gaming more accessible. Regardless of where you sit on the issue--that casual gaming brings new life to a tired industry or that it's a blight on the loyalist landscape--it does get otherwise nontraditional gamers through the door and playing games, and in the end is that really a bad thing? No developer is pinning all its hopes and development dollars on creating the next FarmVille, but plenty of them will use similar concepts to get their foot in the mindshare door. You can bet they’ll also have something to bridge the gap and ease the transition between casual and hardcore games when the audience is ready to make the move to more traditional game offerings.
Laura Parker:
I didn’t play Kinect, but I was there during the renaming “ceremony.” As if Microsoft’s tasteless marketing techniques weren’t enough of a deterrent, I also had to watch a bunch of helpless saps do their best to keep their balance while playing with Kinectimals and Kinect Adventures inside Microsoft’s bubble booths. They didn’t look impressed. To say that this year’s show was very casual-heavy would be a gross understatement. Was I the only one scratching my head when Ubisoft came out with its weird breathing exercise “application”? Was I the only one swearing softly under my breath when someone proclaimed loudly during one of the press conferences: “Playing video games is supposed to be fun. We want to make you get up and move you around.” What? Playing video games is fun. Flailing your arms about wildly and working up a sweat isn’t. And here lies the problem of this year’s E3. Microsoft and Sony may be chasing the same casual market hussy that Nintendo has been making love to for the past few years, but the way they’re going about it is all wrong. It has all been done before. I’m saddened by the fact that neither publisher had the balls to try something innovative or remotely challenging.
In my eyes, the whole point of pursuing a new audience is not to dumb down what games can do. Rather, the opposite. To take what we core gamers already know--that games can be wonderfully immersive, thought-provoking, and beautiful experiences that can teach and inspire us--and make more people aware of it.
Randolph Ramsay:
As several stand-out titles on the Wii's back catalog have shown, just because a game uses motion controls that doesn't mean it's a casual game. Unfortunately, Sony and Microsoft haven't seemed to cotton on to this, with the vast majority of games they showed at this year's E3 in their motion-control push being the type of sports and party game compilations already so prevalent on the Wii. Apart from titles like SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs, games for the PlayStation Move and Xbox 360 Kinect don't look to offer too much that’s different to the shovelware you can find in game store bargain bins around Australia. Kinect in particular failed to impress, and apart from the trippy-looking Child of Eden, there were few Kinect titles that would excite the traditionally very core Xbox 360 demographic. So at this year's E3, motion controls definitely equalled casual, family-friendly, uncomplicated gaming, the vast majority of which really didn't offer anything new or exciting. It's ironic, then, that Nintendo--the company who started this whole motion-sensing, casual game frenzy of recent years--actually had the most core games on show. And yes, most of those had motion-sensing controls.
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Core games:
Dan Chiappini:
Even with the huge social and casual push, core gamers should still feel like they walked away from E3 as winners. No matter what your flavour, there was something on show to whet your appetite for the rest of this year and further ahead. Shooter fans had the likes of Bulletstorm, Killzone 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Halo: Reach, Rage, Fallout: New Vegas, and Crysis 2 to name just a few. Racer fans had the car porn of a new Forza Motorsport project, a revitalisation of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, and the finally dated Gran Turismo 5 to get their engines running. Massively multiplayer online game lovers were anything but starved for content with a plethora of free-to-play and subscription games in the works. For all the talk that this year’s E3 skewed young and family, digging a little deeper revealed a diverse and exciting range of titles for hardcore gamers. Every holiday season promises to be bigger than the last, but there are definitely some major titles waiting in the wings, and all are vying for your dollars.
Laura Parker:
Despite being the arbiter of motion controls, Nintendo did very little waggling at its press conference this year and delivered a very strong lineup of core properties, to the delight of pretty much everyone. No controller-free gimmicks, no wise-cracking celebrities, no remakes of 1980s handheld infrared laser tag games. Just a good old-fashioned press conference where people talked about video games. And pretty good ones at that: Donkey Kong, Kirby, Zelda, and Kid Icarus. Thankfully, there was no mention of the Vitality Sensor--probably because Nintendo sold it to Ubisoft for use with its breathing game.
Nintendo wasn’t the only source of good core titles this year. While the big franchises were all there (Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Fallout), publishers were careful not to neglect the core market in the midst of all the crazy motion controls and 3D action. Sony presented us with the return of the beloved Twisted Metal, as well as titles like Killzone 3 and Little Big Planet 2. Even Microsoft decided that dedicating its entire E3 lineup to Kinect was probably not the best idea, giving us a better look at the highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Fable III.
But as is the case with E3, some of the most surprising and impressive games come from somewhere outside of the big three. Who can forget the impression that Scribblenauts made during E3 2009, taking out countless awards and becoming one of the most hyped games of last year? This time around I saw some impressive things in the smaller booths on the show floor. I was particularly taken with Rage, a first-person shooter set in a postapocalyptic world much like Fallout and Borderlands, created by John Carmack and the rest of the people who brought us Doom. It was beautiful to look at it and just as fun to play--memories of playing Doom came flooding back, partly because I knew it was made by the same team and partly because there was a very similar feel to this game. Other honourable mentions go to Epic Mickey and its very humble and loving creator, Warren Spector, and to Portal 2, whose announcement at Sony’s press conference made me clap, sing, dance, and hug random people.
Randolph Ramsay:
Despite the abundance of coverage on Kinect and Move, core games were still the stars of E3 2010. What stood out most was the increasing tendency for publishers to resurrect old games and series for a modern audience. This trend isn't new, but it was clearly evident this year. Nintendo led the charge, bringing back old favorites such as Donkey Kong Country, Kid Icarus, and our Game of the Show, Kirby's Epic Yarn. Sony jumped on the bandwagon by bringing back David Jaffe and the much-loved Twisted Metal series. And one of the most successful returns was Ed Boon and Mortal Kombat. Taking a leaf from Capcom's Street Fighter IV, this new Mortal Kombat goes back to the roots of the franchise, with Boon saying the game is a spiritual successor to MKII and III. From what I played, it's extremely reminiscent of those games, with many of the moves you'd remember from those classic characters being integrated in the same way. Nostalgia is back in a big way. Here's hoping for a Pit-Fighter remake sometime soon.
Everyone's favourite pink blob made a triumphant return at Nintendo's press conference in a brand-new game.
3D gaming:
Dan Chiappini:
3D will undoubtedly be one of the lasting memories of E3 2010. While the technology is still in a state of infancy, almost everybody we spoke to acknowledged it as being more than a technological fad. But while everyone seems to have something multidimension on the boil, the overarching sentiment was one that 3D for 3D’s sake is just not going to fly. Gaming experiences should only be enhanced by the use of 3D. It shouldn't be shoehorned in to existing properties simply to ride the popularity wave. Even with some of the wind taken out of its sails by announcing the product early to head off media preemptively letting the proverbial cat out of the bag, Nintendo put on a huge showing with its 3DS handheld. Undoubtedly the biggest talking point of the show, the glasses-free 3D is amazingly crisp, while the first- and third-party software support is already looking incredibly strong. The likes of DJ Hero 3D, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D - The Naked Sample, Resident Evil Revelations, Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition, and FIFA Soccer all getting the 3D treatment is impressive, but let’s not forget the titles coming out of the Nintendo stables: Kid Icarus: Uprising, Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, Nintendogs + Cats, Paper Mario, and Star Fox 64 3D. Even with Nintendo releasing a new DS every year, the interest in the product hasn’t waned. This is a surefire money printer, and we’ll be following it and its impact on the wider industry with a huge amount of interest.
Laura Parker:
There was a lot of hype about 3D gaming at this year’s show. Unfortunately, time restrictions meant I couldn’t try everything out, but I did take a few minutes to head over to the Nintendo booth and try out the 3DS (partly because I didn’t want to feel left out when everyone started raving about it). It was certainly impressive. I have to admit I was sceptical of the concept: 3D imagery without the aid of glasses? But hell, it works. I tried out the Metal Gear Solid demo where Snake crawls through some long grass in a jungle filled with butterflies and, aptly, snakes. During the demo I played around with the 3D depth slider, but I always found myself leaving it at full blast. Sometimes the demo would switch to a first-person view, and that’s when the 3D came into its own. I felt I could almost reach out and grab that pretty butterfly hovering overhead, or snatch that piece of rope dangling from the bridge. The graphics were amazing, so much so that you tend to forget it’s a DS you’re holding in your hands. Walking away from Nintendo’s booth, I couldn’t stop trying to work out what powerful sorcery this was. It reminded me a lot of those lenticular cards you’d get in a candy shop as a kid. The technology appears to be the same--a lenticular lens on top of various layers of the same image gives the eye an illusion of depth. I noticed that just like on the old-school cards I’m talking about, the images on the 3DS screen did not appear in 3D from all angles. Viewed from the side or from anywhere that wasn’t directly above it, the image was flat, and the three layers it was composed of were clearly visible side by side (like the image produced by a TV set with a bad reception). Still, I was smitten. There’s no denying that I will probably rush out to buy one as soon as I can.
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Randolph Ramsay:
I went into E3 2010 unconvinced about the merits of 3D gaming, but I came away almost converted. The reason? Nintendo's 3DS. All scepticism I had evaporated within minutes of seeing the handheld in action, and from the tech demos Nintendo had on show, I'm extremely excited about the new gameplay possibilities the 3DS may unlock. Of course, when it comes to console 3D gaming, I'm still more than a little sceptical. As a bespectacled man, having to wear 3D glasses over my normal pair has always been an uncomfortable experience, and there was nothing visually mind-blowing enough on show to convince me that I would be willing to put up with that discomfort for an entire gameplay experience (not requiring 3D glasses is one of the major pluses for the 3DS). But one thing was clear--while not everyone made announcements about 3D gaming at E3, it will definitely be a major force in gaming for next year's show. But after that? We'll have to wait and see what the reaction is from the first generation of 3D titles before we can say 3D gaming is here to stay.
For a full list of all the biggest games from this year's show, check out our full coverage here and watch our Best of E3 2010 Editors' Choice Awards video below. You need a javascript enabled browser to watch videos.
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