Back to the Future?
Having been to the older editions of E3, I was surprised by the sense of sobriety at E3 2009. The videogame industry’s flagship trade event has matured and seems to have taken on a more statesman like attitude.
The first day of the exhibition officially kicked off at 12pm. Our team headed to the traditional first stop at South Hall. EA, as usual, had the biggest screen on their floor and this year the booth had the feel of a large auditorium. Look out for MEGAMERS’ coverage of EA titles, especially Brutal Legend. I’m not just saying that because I am a huge fan of Tim Shafer.
SEGA was next where we got chance to check out Alpha Protocol, which is looking sweeter than the last time I saw it. Coming from the guys who made Elder Scrolls, I am seriously looking forward to this modern day action RPG. Aliens vs Predator, had one of the largest crowds with the SEGA crew showing demos of playing the Predator. Bayonetta, from Platinum Games in Japan, is looking luscious. The most common comment you hear from people when they see this title is “it’s like Devil May Cry”. I think thats a positive thing and kind of gives an idea of the imspiration that the studio draws upon.
I had to break away from the group to go do one of those “top-secret” industry meetings looking at some really cool future technology, which when launched, is going to make a lot of hardcore gamers happy. Enough said!
We regrouped with MEGAMERS’ own Mike Priest and Charged magazine’s James Francis at the SouthPeak Games stand. SouthPeak has been keeping, what could possibly be one of the industry’s biggest surprises, Section 8 relatively under wraps. It is now on the SouthPeak stand and seems like a lot of fun to play. Instead of the traditional spawn points in a multiplayer shooter, you randomly “burn in” in mid-air and free fall to the ground.
Our final stop for day 1, was also the first of our 5 scheduled visits to the Activision Blizzard booth. The booth consisted mainly of some HUGE high definition screens playing trailers of Modern Warfare 2, Guitar Hero 5, DJ Hero, Band Hero, Tony Hawk RIDE, BLUR, etc. I got a chance to meet Todd Hollenshead backstage at Activision. WOO HOO!!! I was there to get a sneak peak at Modern Warfare 2 and have a chat with the producer. MW2 looks absolutely gorgeous and i am sure that every person in that room was dumb struck by the demo.
Due to the size of Activision’s line up, we have to go back 4 more times to take everything in. Tony Hawk RIDE, with its new board peripheral looks quite cool. BLUR looks quite exciting and I caught quite a few people drawing comparisons to Project Gotham Racing.
Day 2 is going to be hectic and I hope I will have the time and energy to post this evening. Might even put up some photos.
Stay tuned!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 2:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
