So the big pressers of E3 have passed and just wow. There were quite a few stellar announcements made by all parties. So I suppose the best way to weigh up on them is the order they came out! Since this’ll run way long I decided to split it up into two entries. Here’s Monday’s entry!

First up on Monday was Microsoft. Started off with Call of Duty: Black Ops from Treyarch. Sure, they’re no Infinity Ward (who’s now defunct) but World at War was not a bad game by any means. Definitely looks like a lot of fun if a tiny bit stale. I’m getting all “modern warfare’d” out. Next big thing was Metal Gear Solid: Rising. Now this one got me excited. You play as Ninja Raiden and control exactly how you swing your blade. Pretty much in the style of the Afro Ninja game. Was gory beyond belief but hey you also get to cut fruit! Next up was Gears of War 3. Blah blah more of the same. Will stay play it though cause Im a nerd. 4-player co-op is interesting. Just gotta find 3 other friends who’ll play it with me. Next was a VERY brief clip of Fable 3. Showed some ship to ship action and.. well that’s about it. So far just looks like Fable 2.5.. which isn’t all that bad in my book. After that was a teaser of sword and sandals type game from the guys at Crytek. Definitely worth looking into considering the pedigree of the Far Cry and Crysis franchises. Lastly was some Halo: Reach campaign footage. Sure it got me all hot ‘nd bothered, but again just more of the same. Then they started into all the Kinect bullshit. Tech is extremely interesting but haven’t seen a game yet that just floors me. So far just casual games upon casual games. There was a Star Wars demo with a lighsaber and force powers but the video seemed highly suspect. Will have to wait on that one. And to wrap things up, Microsoft unveiled their new 360 design. Definitely sexy and would buy except for the fact that I’ve still got a working 360. Oh well.

Next up were EA’s and Ubisoft’s pressers. EA started off with New for Speed: Hot Pursuit. LOVED the old NfS’s but have hated the most recent ones with their stupid stories, etc. They’re claim they’re returning to their roots with this one so I’m very hopeful. Gameplay looks pretty awesome too. Next up they demoed the new Medal of Honor’s multiplayer on-stage with a 24-person team deathmatch. They announced DICE, of Battlefield fame, was developing the multiplayer-side of things so that’s definitely a plus. Looked fairly awesome. Sure more Modern-Warfare-esque type stuff, but still fun looking. Skipping over a few boring stuff (sports ‘nd casual) out comes The Old Republic. Not much really announced, just personal spacecrafts, but they did bring a new cinematic trailer to the party and oh my god. About had to change my shorts after watching the damn thing. Sexy sexy sexy. Next was Ubisoft. They started off with a new game from the creator of Rez called Child of Eden. Very trippy. Playable with and without Kinect. Up next was some Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood gameplay. Lovely stuff. Loved AC and AC2, undoubtedly will love this too. Next up was boring Shaun White Skateboarding, “laser tag,’ YourFitness for Kinect, some breathing “game.” Up next was the new Ghost Recon which looked like a cross between Modern Warfare and Splinter Cell. Definitely not a bad thing. Seemed a little less strategic than previous titles but still extremely kick-ass. Next biggie was the reveal of a new 2D Rayman game. His last few 3D outings werent exactly a hit so a return to 2D is much welcome. And that’s pretty much it for EA and Ubisoft.

Overall I was disappointed by these 3 press conferences. Nothing really exciting happened. There was a lot of hand-waving and jumping for Kinect which still has yet to reel me in fully. All they seem to have is casual shit to bring in the families. Where’s the hardcore stuff? Where’s Milo? C’mon Microsoft. As for the hardcore games MS did show, they were all pretty much the next iterations in already established franchises which we already knew about. So there wasn’t really anything to get excited about. The only thing remotely close was MGS: Rising since we hadn’t seen anything on it yet. It was the same for EA and Ubisoft. No real big announcements and just more of the same. Casual stuff and new iterations of franchises. And Ubi definitely dropped the ball with no Beyond Good & Evil 2 news. Made everyone a sad panda. Oh well. At least Day 1 of E3 with Nintendo and Sony pretty much brought everything from Day 0 to shame. But youll have to wait till the next entry to find out!

Indie games. Sometimes I hate them; sometimes I love them. The ones I hate are usually all the clones out there. Tower defense, Geometry War clones, hack n’ slashers, etc. But occasionally there are a few gems that peek out through the rubbish. Most recent are Braid, Plants vs. Zombies (yeah it’s a tower defense but its just so charming), VVVVVV, and Explosion Man. Ones that are upcoming: Super Meat Boy and Unfinished Swan.

The one I’m talking about today is of course The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom. It’s a puzzler akin to Braid but different in its own awesome way. It’s pretty hard to explain so check out this trailer for a bit of an explanation. Suffice it to say it is extremely fun and definitely worth checking out if you’re into puzzlers.

Also worth noting is its presentation. It definitely one of the best indie game soundtrack out there. I’m always a sucker for ragtime-esque piano. Hoping that it’ll be released or made available for download. Check out the trailer above to hear a bit of it. The visuals/art style are equally impressive. Each world has its own poster which I would purchase in a heartbeat. The game just has this je ne sais quoi about it that oozes style. Anyway if you’ve got Xbox Live and $10, check this little gem out.
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By now every gamer worth their salt has heard of the game Mass Effect 2. I loved the first game to pieces despite the flaws it had. There’s just something about epic space odysseys that I can’t pass up. So I’ve been eagerly awaiting it’s sequel which is now finally here. Well it was here. After almost 40 hours of playing, I finished pretty much every mission, side quest, and upgrade there was in the game. I’m sure there is some stuff I missed but I’d like to believe I at least got 95% of everything.

In interest of keeping things short and simple, overall I really, really, really liked it. Story was awesome, graphics were superb, and hell, killing aliens and synthetics was awesome. So why didn’t I love it? In an attempt to make the game more of an action RPG than the first, a lot of the awesome RPG elements were stripped out. The sequel only has four-six stats that you can level up while the original had around fifteen. Also you no longer get XP whenever you kill something. All the XP is is given to you at the end of the mission. This gets rid of the satisfaction of seeing “+15xp” pop up whenever you killed something in the first game.

Despite this, Mass Effect 2 is still an awe-inspiring game. Bioware hit it out of the park again after Dragon Age (which I may write about later). It just makes me sad that it’ll be another 2-3 years till we see the conclusion of this space trilogy. I suppose I’ll have to keep replaying the first two entries in the mean time. I still haven’t done the “Renegade” side in either game.

Oh and another thing that disappointed me about Mass Effect 2. In the original you could only romance your co-marine Ashley Williams (Kaidan if you were female) or the asari Liara T’soni. I was disappointed the other female alien party member Tali’Zorah wasn’t a choice as well. She’s the one on the right in the picture above. Not sure why I gravitated toward Tali but she was probably my favorite character out of the whole game. She was in my party pretty much 100% of the time after she joined my crew. Knowing me it has to be something cute. Probably was her cute voice since you never see what she really looks like. Anyway back on track, I was ecstatic when I read that she was going to be joining your party once again in ME2. And I was even more ecstatic when I hear that she had a romantic subplot! Naturally I went that route immediately and what transpired was probably one of the most innocent romantic subplots in a video game ever. Well maybe not Persona 4′s Chie (omg just realized, short hair) but you get the point. Once Tali discovers that you also share romantic feelings for her, she curses her life-protecting environmental suit and sets out to find a way to bolster her immune system so she can spend the night with you sans the suit. So I was all like, awesome! We’ll finally get to see her face. So before the final battle when the romantic subplot comes to fruition, Tali joins Shepard in this quarters and says she loaded up on antibotics. So things unfold and Tali begins to get flustered (cutest thing ever… jeez I need help) and Shepard slowly removes her mask. Tali then jumps on Shepard kissing him. Then.. fade to black. Ahhh bastards. What a tease. Guess we’ll have to wait till Mass Effect 3 if we want to see Tali’s face if at all. They’ll probably end up not showing her face just so they don’t let anyone down. Aaand now I’ve spend the majority of this entry writing something creepy again. Horray. But still Tali rocks.

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No, that’s not a placeholder title. It’s the name of a recent indie platforming game. Just finished playing the demo and had to say I had a fun time with it. Adored the 2600-esque visuals but especially loved the music. Really wish they’d offer it up as a download or something. Anyway definitely check it out. The demo can be played over at Kongregate. And if you like it enough you can buy the full version at their website.

Update: So yeah after like 30 seconds of searching looks like they do have the music for sale! (more…)