Monday's Report | E3 Rises From The Dead

Like A Lovecraftian Horror, E3 Returns!

You can almost smell it in the air; the fresh scents of nerd sweat, booth babe perfume, and shiny new electronics - E3 2009 is here. Technically it'll be here at 10:30am PST, when Microsoft gives the keynote address to really kick things off, but the point still stands. Normally, the presentations put on by the big three of the console world are supposed to deliver thrills, surprises, and incredible hype - fail to do any of these things and you're labeled an out-right failure. So why is it that all the big news has largely been spilled already? In 2009, moreso than ever before, companies have either already made many of their big announcements public or had their big news leaked and then forcibly confirmed (hello, slim PS3). It's a bizarre way to do business, to be sure, and almost takes the wind completely out of the sails of the Expo. What's the point? The biggest disappointment is that I have the sneaking suspicion we're going to get almost nothing in the way of that one big "OMG!" moment from any of the big three. We'll natually get the things the companies want to be those big OMG moments - but those when they're along the lines of something like Nintendo's somewhat depressing reveal of WiiMusic, they tend to fall flat, if not just create a meme that surges through the gaming universe like thunder. I can see that same thing happening when/if Microsoft and/or Sony unveil their suspected motion controllers and releated software. Such announcements seem deflating - especially when they're coupled with software that the audiences knows full well will be underwhelming at best. Word on the PSP Go! and slim PS3 are sort of weird for me since revised versions of hardware rarely if ever generate any sort of excitement for me - and since the slim version of the PS3 is supposedly NOT coming with a price drop, what's the point aside from saving Sony some production cash? I'm more than fine with my big and chunky 60GB PS3, even more when I remember that I have a version that still is able to play PS1 and PS2 games before the feature was unceremoniously torn from the guts of the later SKUs... One of the small benefits of early adoption, I guess. Even still, I can't help but hold out hope that something big is looming just out of sight - something that has managed to remain undetected by the seething internet horde and from shoddy corporate obfuscation. I have no idea what such a secret would be, but it's got to involve software. A big first party game that has been kept locked away from anyone not directly involved in its development - even within its own company. For me, my big money is on...well, hell with this, let me just get to my predictions. That's what we're supposed to do when we talk about E3 anyway, right?

MICROSOFT PREDICTIONS:
The Era of "Xaggle": One of the worst-kept secrets was Microsoft's keen interest in capitalizing on the Wii's unique motion control that anchors the entire development of the console's catalog. The idea of Microsoft introducing such waggle-based gaming has been swirling for at least a year, and if they're ever going to make it official, I think it's got to happen this year. Still, and I have to make this completely clear, it's a terrible idea. The Xbox 360 has its own audience, and while Microsoft is obviously trying to cater to the Wii crowds and mimic Nintendo's strategies in many ways, this one will be an absolute failure. Be careful what you wish for, Microsoft, you may want to be like Nintendo, but for every success like the Wii or DS there's also a Virtual Boy or R.O.B. - and this one might just be yours.

Casual Living: Acting as a bookend to the motion control, I'm betting Microsoft is going to "show off" a host of new casual-style games that run through XBLA, probably utilizing avatars and helmed by Rare. They're going to be party games - and that means a shit load of minigames, which have long since worn out their welcome on the Wii.

The Circular Tease: Bungie might be walking away from Halo after ODST, but that doesn't mean Microsoft is going to let their most popular and iconic franchise go out like that - expect an extremely short teaser clip showing absolutely no in-game footage for the next chapter in the proper Halo series, developed internally by Microsoft and aiming for a holiday 2010 release. They're going to try really hard to nail the viusal style of Bungie, and they're going to fail. It's going to look like a weird mish-mosh of those glossy metallic colors Bungie painted everything with colliding head-on with the dirty grime of, say, Gears of War.

Power In Your Hands: Microsoft probably won't announce a new handheld console ala the Portable 360, but I suspect that the new Zune will tie directly into your Xbox Live account and possibly even allow you to play some or maybe even ALL your XBLA games. That would be bad-ass.

SONY PREDICTIONS:
Gods Die Earlier: I'll just get this out of the way because it's what I hope for the most out of anything at E3 this year, but I'm hoping and praying that Sony announces a 2009 release date for God of War III. Traditionally, GoW games have arrived in March, putting the newest chapter of Sony's greatest saga in 2010 - and thereby making me sad. But I'm holding out hope that Sony is much more interested in making a direct impact in a holiday season that's oddly lacking any real competition from the usual likes of Marcus Fenix or Master Chief.

The Princess Has Arrived: Sony will announce that as soon as their presentation is over, Fat Princess will be released on the PSN. My head explodes with delight. The end.

The Era of SixAxis 2 "Saggle": Motion control - it's like a plague of bad ideas that's eating all the crops. The SixAxis never really took off, no matter how much Sony would like to imagine otherwise, and to introduce yet another version of it, even if it's packaged in a new peripheral is nuts. Like Microsoft's trip into waggle-ville, expect Sony to package with a suite of poorly thought-out party games that will keep your interest for roughly 42 minutes and never touch it again.

Dave Jaffe Is A Liar: I don't know that to be true, but I'm hoping he's a liar. He's on record saying that his new company has no announcements to make at E3 this year, which (in theory) could include info on a new Twisted Metal game. Like the God of War in 2009 prediction, this has less to do with fact or even a gut feeling so much as it does pure wishful thinking. It's been almost ten years since the last proper TM game, and my mind wanders when I think how much the new leaps in technology and growth in online play could make Twisted Metal into a truly incredible online experience. *sigh*

NINTENDO PREDICTIONS:
From The Clouds, He Comes: How long have people wanted a Kid Icarus game? It's been a few years, easy - and then when Pit showed up in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it was like the floodgates let loose and Kid Icarus mania swallowed the fanbase whole. Sadly, Nintendo doesn't seem to share the same level of glee over the property, and anything regarding a revisit of the material has largely been internet lies rumor. But, like Microsoft's waggle controller, I suspect that if there's going to be big Kid Icarus news, it's got to come this year - it's just a feeling I have.

WiiBoring: Nintendo seems preoccupied with their casual catalog, and while WiiMusic was the failure that maybe WiiFit should have been, we all know Nintendo's got a fuzzy learning curve and a taste of casual cash fresh in its maw. Expect something incredibly lame - WiiWhistle or WiiBreathe or some other mundane, everyday activity perverted into a motion-controlled batch of minigames featuring the Miis. F@$%in' minigames...

The Big Guns: To bring back some of the steam the Wii has lost in the last few months, Nintendo needs to bring in the services of its #1 employee and global mascot - Mario. And I'm not talking about Mario showing up in a sports game or some other tangent title, I mean a real Mario game. Mario Galaxy was one hell of a title, and normally I wouldn't expect some sort of follow-up to arrive so soon, and perhaps an announcement will simply foreshadow, but don't be shocked if a new honest-to-god Mario game is shown. The same can be said for Link. While Spirit Tracks is inbound, I wouldn't be surprised if a Wii tie-in is announced - to make it more interesting, I'm guessing it'll return to the Wind Waker visuals the handheld titles have used for a couple years now. As for the third part of the holy trinity, Samus will be missing this year. With Retro done with Metroid, the best we're going to get is the Metroid Prime Trilogy - which doesn't offer much of anything to those who played all three games before aside from some fringe goodies I cannot get too excited about. But to each their own...

OTHER PREDICTIONS:
So Dark The Con Of Duke: This is like 1,000,000:1 odds, but there has been more than one person suspecting that the whole 3D Realms implosion earlier this year was actually part of an elaborate scam - the finale of the industry's biggest joke, if you will - and that E3 will be where they and Take Two not only show off but out-right announce a firm Fall 2009 release date for Duke Nukem Forever on the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3. I think a lot of this idea comes from people who have been deeply wounded by the DNF experience and cannot believe the way the whole train wreck ended, but if this were to actually be true, it would have to be the grestest prank ever played on the community. It would be astounding - and frankly, I do not believe that a company that took 12 years to make a FPS could ever think up and then properly execute such a con. But I've been wrong once or twice before...

Plasmids Inbound: I hate when games are seemingly forced into putting multiplayer in a game. Not only does it seem to simply not fit some games, but more often than not the online portion is horrible and no one plays it anyway - including all the people that cried for it to be included. I hate those people. Even with that being said, I imagine Bioshock 2 not only showing off the game's online portion, but having it blow people away. It would be a fitting revelation for a game that I whole-heartedly believe doesn't need any sort of online component.

Alright, that's all I got for now. Don't forget to check out all those live blogs out there this afternoon when E3 gets underway so you can all witness how little I actually know about anything, and also don't forget that America's part in the 1 VS. 100 beta begins at 10:30pm EST tonight on Xbox Live! Play it and I'll hopefully see you there!