E3 Extravaganza
My experience this year at E3 was way better than last's. I attribute this to three things:
1. I'm developing an immunity to sex, violence, and pounding rock and rap, thanks to the GDC and E3!
2. My iPod. I found that by creating my own soundtrack to the experience, I was better able to sift through all of the bright and loud crap that inundated the senses upon entering the convention center.
3. Unemployment. Man was I booooooored!
The good news is, by the end of day 3, I realized I had actually seen everything. Wow, did I geek out! And I can now speak with way too much proficiency on the whole expo. But the truth is, once I was able to sift through all the bright and loud crap, I found out there was actually a lot of fun happening, and some pretty neat games, too. Here's what I found blog-worthy:
Trauma Center: Under the Knife
Mentioned already by Aaron, this game seemed to be what everyone was buzzing about on the Nintendo DS floor. It reminded me of one of the first PC games I played back in highschool(which I was suprised no one else made the same remark - all my friends were into surgery PC games for some reason at the time), with an added sense of humor.
A great game for the DS, since performing surgery with a stylus is a lot of fun. Also, because the success of the operation is time-sensitive, it makes for a great mobile experience when you just need that quick fix of cleaning glass shards out of an open wound on your train ride to work.
View the trailer
Game Boy Micro
How bad do I want one of these? Pretty bad. It's so teeny! But what I like best about it is the promise that I will be able to save my own video and audio to a memory card for teeny playback. I wonder what Spiderman 2 would look like on this thing?
Killer 7
Wicked style and fun controls. Didn't get to play this one much so I can't vouch for characters or story, but what seemed most interesting about this Capcom venture is the control schema. The character runs along a fixed path, so you don't have to use the d-pad or analog sticks to make him go, you simply press the big green button. As I am currently stuck in my fourth dead end in God of War, I found this to be quite refreshing. You know where I need to go! Stop beating around the bush and just get me there! Less walk, more rock!
Capcom's Killer 7 Site
Indigo Prophecy
I only played the first 10 minutes of this game, but it seemed more like an interactive narrative than a game. Which is just fine by me, and I would add that Atari should look into demo-ing this at interactive media/non-gamer conferences. In the first cinematic your character becomes possessed while sitting on the toilet in a local diner. But instead of popping a Tums, he stabs another customer to death. The player takes control the moment just following the murder, and must figure out who was possessing this guy and why, without getting caught by the fuzz. I think you also play as the police at some point, but I didn't get that far. The controls weren't very intuitive to me, but I was interested in the story. There are multiple ways to move through the narrative: "think of a rubber band," was how it was explained to me. Every decision you make has an effect on the story you create, with the story relying on moments of dramatic tension. . . or so I was told. More of it was said than shown, but I'm still interested to experience the final product.
24:The Game
Yeah, well, maybe this game wasn't at the apex of innovation, but I'm a complete freak for 24 so I had to put it in here. My overview; could have been worse, but I could have done better ;-) Of course, as a fan girl, I have to say that. They were smart enough to employ the multiple-window set up of the show, and incorporated time-sensitive missions, of course. The characters looked pretty good, and I have to admit - after I had completed the task of finding all the snipers through radar and Jack Bauer was setting up on the rooftop to take them out, I was pretty stoked.
View the trailer