The deluge of news during E3 has brought about some kind of stasis to my posts, but I was thinking about something yesterday. You may have read comments from Nintendo’s opponents about Wii’s place in a gaming household. Peter Moore had this to say:

“People are going to buy two. They’re going to buy an Xbox and they’re going to buy a Wii … for the price of one PS3.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the schoolyard, Sony’s Phil Harrison said this:

 ”I think Peter Moore is exactly right. I think Nintendo will be the second system consumers purchase after PlayStation 3.”

Now, correct me if I’m wrong here, but if both Sony and Microsoft concede that Wii will be the second console, doesn’t that make Wii the first console? Regardless of where your loyalties—or budget—lie, it’s an interesting situation. I’ve got my 360 and I will be getting Wii, so right now the prophecy holds true.

—quotes from the Washington Post and Gamasutra.

I decided to spend this weekend actually playing games, instead of just writing about them. I am sorry about the single post on Friday. That was probably just fallout from posting so much during E3.

Having discovered that Zero Suit Samus was one of the new characters in Smash Bros. Brawl, I decided it was about time to pick up Metroid: Zero Mission. So I bought it Friday for ten bucks and I’m glad I did. Zero Mission is a nice elixir for the wrongs of Hunters. I do like Hunters, it’s just not the same thing. It wasn’t intended to be.

Metroid is basically my favorite series alongside Castlevania. The exploration/upgrade/more exploration formula is just about perfect in my opinion. It just feels right, you know? Zero Mission is no exception. However, any complaints you may have heard about the length of the game are probably accurate. I’ve spent a good three hours on the game thus far and am almost at the Ridley fight, to give you an idea. I can only assume this Zero Suit is in there somewhere. The idea of a helmetless Samus with an energy whip/sword thing was enough to make me buy the game, so it better be in there.

On top of Zero Mission, I have been playing Hunters, both games nestled comfortably in my DS. I’m almost finished with Hunters and I’ll start checking out some online matches soon. I haven’t really touched Tomb Raider in a couple of days, as my 360 has been better served by E3 media. I really have to commend Microsoft for all the content last week. So, um yeah, good job Microsoft. 

E3 is over. I promise that once I have finished my cornucopia of games, I will give you all the benefit of some (long overdue) reviews. In the meantime, go soak up some E3 afterthoughts, relax, and wait for November.

I grabbed the demo off of XBLM yesterday. Right now, I’d say that Lost Planet serves as the perfect example of what I’ve been talking about lately. I saw the trailers for it before, thinking it looked okay, but not great. Now that I have actually played the game, I can tell you it’s pretty fun. There are two missions available. I’ve only played one, so I can’t tell if you play as opposing factions of humans or if you can play as both humans and aliens, which would be sweet. As it stands, Lost Planet is a third person shooter. It’s of the old-school variety, which I like. There are lots of insect enemies popping out of pulsating holes in the ground. If you want to stop the flow of insect baddies, you have to destroy the hole. It gives the game a Gauntlet-like sense of urgency to it. Adding to this Gauntlet theme is your ever decreasing life bar. There isn’t any documentation with the demo, but I believe this is your life support slowly draining. Why is it draining you ask? Because you’re in a frozen wasteland silly! There is also a temperature monitor on the HUD, which I think affects your energy’s rate of decline.

 The gun play is standard stuff. Mildly ineffective machine guns, one-shot-kill shotguns, and the ubiquitous rocket launcher. There’s also a grapple which I didn’t get much time to experiment with. But the big daddy of them all is the chaingun wielding mech. This bad boy can jump, dash, and of course lay ruin upon the land with a big damn gun. I could swear I was also prompted to “pick up” something while using the mech, but I was forced to eject before I could find out.

The game is a lot of fun, but the demo lacks checkpoints, so I’ll have to go at it again tonight. I’ll give you a full report when I finish the whole thing.

Please note that I still trust Silicon Knights to make a good game, but I’m worried about Too Human. I downloaded the trailer last night, and I’ve seen the offscreen gameplay video circulating the internet. Right now, it doesn’t look too compelling. I’ve read decent—if brief—accounts that say it’s pretty good, but the trailers definitely don’t show it. I fear this may be the developer’s inability to make a good trailer though. Just like movies, great games can have bad trailers and vice versa.

That got me to thinking last night. You always hear people saying that trailers or commercials should show more gameplay. That’s BS. If you want proof, just look at any message board mentioning MGS4 and see what you find. There hasn’t been a single screenshot of actual gameplay yet, but people are frothing at the mouth to play MGS4. Why? Because the trailer sets the mood. That’s more important than most people realize. Check out the original teaser trailer for Too Human. Now watch the new gameplay trailer. Tell me which one you’d rather play.

I realize this is just semantics. It’s a good game or it isn’t. I personally believe that Silicon Knights are going to make a kick ass game. I’m just talking about mood here.

I just watched Cliffy B’s E3 playtest of Gears of War. I have to say I wasn’t impressed. For the 360’s supposed “killer app”, Gears of War just wasn’t doing it for me. It may be fun to play, but it was boring as hell to watch. It didn’t help that Cliffy B. appeared to have God mode turned on. Watching the main character’s blood spatter repeatedly with no consequences wasn’t exactly thrilling. Not to mention the incredible amount of lead pumped into each enemy before it fell. Cliffy literally went through clip after clip to dispatch single enemies. Even with a shotgun at close range the baddies took two or three hits.

Headshots seemed to make no difference whatsoever. In a game that’s supposed to methodical—rather than run and gun—that makes no sense to me. Granted, this was a demo and I’m sure certain things aren’t in place, but I saw nothing that really grabbed my interest here. I suppose the actual act of taking cover looked nice. There were plenty of options from cover, including peek shots, blind firing, and just vaulting over low cover. That was actually pretty neat. The gunplay left something to be desired though.

 I don’t know, maybe the graphics are mindblowing in the real world. I just wasn’t seeing the fun part. I guess I’ll find out when a demo hits.

Considering my recent SEGA rant, this announcement is like edible gold. A new Golden Axe is set to debut next year on the 360 and PS3. Maybe SEGA is finally seeing fit to resurrect all of its sequel deserving properties (Eternal Champions, please). Little was mentioned of the game, though a trailer is to be shown tomorrow at E3. I will be there (virtually) with bells on.

It’s raining outside, but it’s all sunny New Mombasa in my head. I finally laid eyes on the delicious trailer. I kept myself from watching it online at work yesterday, just so I could see it on my TV in HD. Sure enough, I got goosebumps. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can stop reading now.

First off, it’s gorgeous. The demo is real-time, using the current version of Bungie’s Halo 3 engine. Simply amazing. The music is haunting and inspiring, as we’ve come to expect from the series. It even has its own American Beauty-style piano riff now. All I can say is I’m damned excited. Say what you will, but I am a Halo fanboy through and through. I’ve played the games, devoured the books, and the Master Chief himself is currently watching over my DVD collection. I can’t wait for the next book and the upcoming Halo graphic novel.

This trailer raises all kinds of questions. Is that the Ark we see at the end of the trailer? I read a post yesterday that said the trailer proves that Cortana is going rampant. While I don’t doubt that she is, I don’t really think the trailer proves it. Whatever the case, it’s at least seven months and twenty-two days before we’ll know for sure—and that’s if the game came out New Year’s Day 2007.

Oh, it can’t come soon enough.

No live webcasts of the Microsoft conference unfortunately. As such, I won’t regurgitate what other sites are already covering. Suffice it to say, Microsoft thinks Xbox LIVE is the bees knees. It’s going to be integrated into Windows Vista and cell phones of all things. I really wish they would feature their actual games a little more prominently, but oh well. The HD-DVD drive was shown. Looks small and sleek, but no price mentioned. The camera was shown, of course. And they capped it off with a trailer for Halo 3. If you’d care to check out that trailer yourself, head over to Bungie.net. I will be waiting to get home and download it in creamy HD goodness—along with the thousand other trailers I downloaded yesterday.

And that’s all I have to say about that. If you own a 360, you don’t need me to tell you about E3 happenings. Just go download them yourself.

Until I saw a few pics from the Halo 3 trailer, I had forgotten the games ability to make my hair stand on end. I can’t tell you how many times I watched the first Halo 2 teaser trailer. I won’t even read the description of the new trailer for fear of spoilers.

Oh, this has been a good day.

—check out Joystiq’s coverage of the conference here.

SEGA has announcced that Virtua Fighter 5 will be coming to PS3 only when it ships next spring. While this isn’t exactly surprising, it is disappointing. It also serves as further proof that SEGA dislikes money—or at least American money. Why you wouldn’t port a fighting game to a console that is flooded with action titles is beyond me. Hell, the only fighting game competetition on the 360 is DOA and the next iteration of Mortal Kombat. You’d think that Virtua Fighter would clean up on the 360. But, like I said in my recent, hastily written rant, most of SEGA’s decisions confuse me these days. Most people don’t appreciate Virtua Fighter, but I stand by my belief that it’s the best technical fighter available. Oh, well. AM2 already stated VF5 won’t be online anyway.

—from Gamespot via Evil Avatar

Well, it’s nearly here. E3 starts in a mere two days. Keynotes will soon flood the internet. Announcements will be made. Awards will be handed out. The hype for upcoming games will begin. Some will rise to the occasion upon delivery, others will be miserable piles of excrement. This is the time of year when journalists look at games in development. These games will have promise. Reporters will look at them and say that the controls need work, but that the developers have plenty of time to work that out. We all know that never happens though. When the game comes out the controls will still suck. Sigh… So, what am I looking forward to? Let’s find out:

• Halo 3
• Too Human
• Any and all things Wii related
• Super Smash Bros. Wii
• Zelda (Gamecube and DS)
• Phantasy Star Universe
• Some Japanese RPGs for 360
• Nintendo sending me a free DS Lite (Please!)

There’s probably a few more things I could put up there, but that’s the big list. You may notice my lack of excitement for the PS3. Well, I’ve learned not to get too excited about Sony when it comes to trade shows, at least not when they’re talking about upcoming hardware. I’m sure there will be some real-time offerings this year, but I’ll wait and see. For me, this year is all about the Wii. It’s the only thing that’s really exciting. There are some potentially great games coming to 360, but the Wii really has a chance to bring something entirely new to the table. We all sit with bated breath to see what Nintendo is going to do.

 Ah…who am I kidding. I just want my new Smash Bros.

—oops. Fixed a spelling mistake.