So, after 4 four days E3 comes to an end. I managed to see about 3 hours of live coverage by Gamespot. The coverage included booths by Atari, which seems to be working on multiple re-makes of their older games from the Arcade era on the newer consoles, mainly the Wii family. One of the games that was allowed to be filmed was Caterpillar infestation. Console players here might recognize it, I really don't have any experience with the franchise. It was for the Wii. Another game was Terra Online. The person in-charge touted it as the first MMO that won't have generic click-auto-attack sequence, but rather a cross-hair that can be controlled with a mouse, akin to the Witcher's OTS mode. The combat is basically based on the type of button that you press, so "it's based on the skill". Apart from that the game has a political system, through which a player can be crowned controller on a region, after the other players have voted in your favour, and if you made the proper promises to them.
There was a coverage of Rusty Hearts too, which, unlike traditional MMORPGs, won't let yo build a character from the ground up, but rather give you one of the four pre-designed characters to choose from. The game can be played with a Gamepad, and is also based on a combo-based combat, that doesn't include auto-attacks. The Anime-esque gamestyle was really cute. It's closed Beta is coming late July.
Another game that caught my eyes in the Stage show was Spiderman: Edge of Time. Here, spidey actively goes around following the instruction of the Spidey from 2099, through time, and thus prevent the future spidey from dying. An example was that while fighting the future spidey mistakenly bursts open 3 toxic containers and starts to die from the chemicals. Now he sends a message to the older spidey, across time nonetheless, to contain these vats, so they don't explode. With the help of PiP, you can see the future spidey breathe a little easy, literally, as you go about re-enforcing the above mentioned vats. The combat is quite fast-paced. But then came the bad news for me. It's scheduled for a release on the PS3 and XBox, no PC!
Some other games that looked interesting was X-Men Destiny, Bioshock Infinite and Tombraider. In X-men the character being played had these pick-ups from the enemies that fills a bar that is used for special attacks. Once the bar is completely filled, it grants a bonus orb, or ward for the RPG minded, that can auto-attack nearby enemy. The Wards' number can be upgraded too. The character shown was using lightning attacks, and the animation and graphics for it was beautiful. Even the sound sounded like real lightning going off, with all the chirping and bursting you'll associate when a ball of lightning hits an enemy.
Bioshock Infinite looked quite gorgeous, but since I don't have much background so cant really comment.
Other games didn't interest me that much, maybe because I wasn't familiar with the series. Games like Harvest Moon. It had a dungeon crawler MMO where you could pet the monster you defeat and use them to work for you in mines or fields.
But the best booth in my opinion was that of IndieCade. It featured all the indie game and also new ideas by independent developers, like Skulls of the Shogun. The concept of the booth was to act as an intermediate for developers and publishers and give some exposure to new game ideas. There was many games that were college projects, and that came out to be full-fledged games, like a game with ideas from Portal mechanics but is a dungeon crawler. One of the new additions to the booth was games based on the You as a Controller concept. One of them was a sensory deprivation game, that will have you wear a helmet that blocks your vision, only giving access to sounds. Your input will be your breathing and your movement. The game will have you thrown underwater, and you have to navigate using the mentioned controls. It's kind of like a torture routine straight from a thriller!
Another have you kissing for your control. A magnet in one's mouth and a sensor on the partner's cheek will be the controller. Just like the Gamespot presenter said, "taking you as the controller to a whole new level!"
Anyways, though this year's E3 was lacking some publisher, it did turn out to be quite nice. With many new things being announced. That being said, there seems to be a game to forward to for everyone, in the coming holiday seasons and the Q1 of next year.
Oh, btw for the ME3 fans, do check out the ME3 booth coverage by Gamespot. It has some extra infos too!
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