Tag: e3

For the Love of E3

Notable stuff from E3 (if you haven’t noticed, there haven’t been geek tags on stuff, there’s just too much geek stuff to label):

  • Halo 3. The trailer itself is fairly standard stuff – I thought the music was especially well done, the graphics were noteworthy, and the plot might actually be interesting this time. I’ve got a lot of brewing anger from Halo 2 that Halo 3 has to resolve, so I’m expecting the world from this.
  • Sony’s Press Conference. It sucked. It sucked hard. It was definitely the most disjointed of the three – they would jump from talking about the PSP to talking about PS3 games, back to more stuff on the PSP, then about their stupid song service, and back to PS3 games. I exaggerate not. I noticed a fundamental difference in speech – where Microsoft and Nintendo called the users “players” and “gamers”, Sony called them “consumers”. Sony obviously doesn’t care – especially in the fact that their console is essentially going to cost $600 bucks. I couldn’t really care less about their assimilation of the 360 and Wii controllers, though. That’s just smart tactics.
  • Nintendo’s Press Conference. The best of the three. Not a lot of specs or details, but they’ve proven the ability of the controller, which is exactly what they needed to do. The Zelda demo looked freaking awesome, freaking awesome enough for me to buy it at launch come this November.
  • Microsoft’s Press Conference. Surprisingly good, aside from Peter Moore’s incessant clapping and complete failure to maintain dignity as he got a tattoo for freaking GTA4. Who cares? It was cool for Halo 2, so why go through the trouble? Beyond that, there were a handful of possibly nifty games, but nothing spectacular. The whole idea of connexting the 360 and the PC, though, was cool. It’s definitely part of their anti-Mac and anti-Linux campaign, by setting down a “games for Windows” tagline, but, so long as they keep it otherwise open, it’s just gravy. I’m still not sure how I feel about Vista, but, we’ll see.

That’s pretty much it for the moment. Today may bring some interesting things, or it may not.

Left, Right, Cut, Back, Down! (O.o)

I have opened begun a post almost every day this week, and just, got distracted. What have I been doing, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you!

Tuesday I went to Crosswalk with Daniel, and afterwards went over to his house for a couple hours. Went to Bible Study, spilled strawberries RIGHT in my lap, embarrassing innuendo followed.

[geek]

The entire purpose of this week, the sole purpose, the only reason this week exists, was E3. I honestly did next to NOTHING this week but watch over 5 hours of press conferences, game demos, and trailers from E3. I stated that I was firm in my faith with the Xbox 360. I am here to tell you that it is not such any longer. The PS3, has by far outclassed the Xbox 360 in hardware, and if some of the rumors are true, games. The sheer power of the PS3 is astounding – they ran a full demo using the Unreal 3 engine flawlessly. The 360 definately can’t do that. However, the 360 carries multiple franchises I am attached to, and several upcoming games I am interested in. The deciding factor here? FFVII. Sony demonstrated a tech demo of astounding quality, of the first scene in FFVII. Rumor has it that the cutscene was a part of the remake. No announcements have been made thus far. Speaking of FFVII, Advent Children is scheduled for September 13th. w00tl4r.

Personally, I need to make myself an empirical comparison of the PS3 vs. the Xbox 360. More for me than you.

PS3:

      ++ Automatically a/b/g wi-fi enabled

 

      ++ Approximately 2x pure processing power w/Cell

 

      ++ Broadcasts up to 1080p

 

      ++ Comes in black, looks nice

 

      + Heavenly Sword

 

      ++ Final Fantasy

 

      + Killzone 2

 

      + Metal Gear Solid 4

 

      ++ Significantly more powerful GPU

 

      + Utilizes Blu-ray

 

    ++ Utilizes Unreal 3 Engine

— Akward controller!
— Fewer good franchises/hopeful games

Xbox 360:

      ++ Automatically online enabled w/Live (which is probably better than other online services)

 

      ++ Better controller

 

      + Blue Dragon

 

      + Comes w/remote?

 

      ++ Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

 

      + Fable 2

 

      ++ Halo 3

 

      + Ninety-Nine Nights

 

    + Perfect Dark Zero

— Half as powerful on the proc side alone
— Less powerful GPU than the RSX
— Semi-ugly appearance

At the moment, PS3 looks to be ahead. We’ve got a few months until November. We’ll see. As a side note: Gothic III comes out this year, as well. I’ve posted a couple random movies I enjoyed on the server. And by the way, that Killzone 2 demo is not reflective of what the game is actually like. In most senses of the word, it’s not real-time.

Linkage

[/geek]

Other than that, I’ve watched another whole blob of movies. I finally got around to watching the two Harry Potter movies (the second and third). The third wasn’t too shabby, though the second kinda sucked. I also rewatched portions of Revolutions, for old time’s sake. I saw Episode III last night, which was refreshingly good. I liked it better than I, II, and IV, it was quite worth seeing.

Today, I cleaned the attic. I didn’t rearrange much (a few signs, some of the chairs), but I vacuumed it up, washed the windows, ping pong table, foosball table, and the snapple machine, and fixed some of the lights, and lastly replaced some of the tacks with nails. And fixed the fan’s positions. And spot-cleaned the carpet. Ahem.

And now I must make sure I wake up tomorrow, for church, as my parents will not be here.

O.o

Yes. I know I haven’t made a real post all week. Yes. I know you don’t care about Halo 2. Yes. I know I’m obsessed. But I don’t care! EAT MORE HALO 2 ARTICLES AND FOOTAGE! The footage is minimal (only ~20 seconds) but it’s actualy gameplay stuff. THere are currently three places to retrieve this footage, but only by streaming, tiny, annoying-ness. Gamespot, IGN, and the E3 main site have it. There’s also some interviews and more articles to look at.

The E3 Main Site video is also stuck together with other game footage, but the Halo 2 stuff is at the beginning.

Footage 1 (E3 Main)

For Gamespot, scroll down to “Gameplay Footage 1”.

Footage 2 (Gamespot)

You actually have the option of downloading the video at IGN, fortunately. I’d actually rate the IGN one as best quality.

Footage 3 (IGN)

Gamespot also presented their view on Halo 2, and IGN posted two more volumes of impressions. I love Gamespot, they’re usually reliable. These two volumes are also much sorter (~one page).Woot!

Impressions 1 (Gamespot)

Impressions 2 (IGN)

Impressions 3 (IGN)

YAY!

O.o

After 6 hours of sleep, I’m back at school again…hoping more E3 stuff will be released by the time I get home. w00t! I sent Daniel (he’s off in NC, for his yearly trip to Hattera’s) the screenshots and IGN review of the demo. I forgot to add the link to that too – the IGN review has a LOT of meat to it. I think the next thing in store for E3 this week is a real multiplayer game. I hope so, at least!

IGN Article

There’s also a Gamespy review. I despise Gamespy, but it’s a read for those seeking, nonetheless.

Gamespy Article

Finally, two new links for the E3 video have been released. These two are the best quality and best resolution – but requires a 30-40 minute download wait. Stupid FilePlanet.

Video 7 (227 MB)

Video 8 (337 MB)

*spazzz*

UPDATE: A really nifty IGN interview of Pete Parsons (Bungie Employee) is up. Reall good stuff, though whoever posted it did a poor job, some questions are mixed randomly or cut off mid sentence. Still really good!

IGN Interview

w00t

UPDATE2: A picture of the Halo 2 regular and Halo 2 LE box has been shown, though not confirmed.

Halo 2 Boxshot?

O.o

Alright. I’m in E3 hype mode, forgive my Halo 2 madness. But I must give you at least a few links to the best stuff coming to the market – November 9th. In the midst of E3, Bungie.net released 10 new screenshots apart from the Real Time Multi-Player Halo 2 Demonstration. I provided multiple links for the video. All the videos are the same, but for safe-ness, I posted all easy access hosts. I doubt many people use Bittorent, but I’ll provide the link for that one too.

Videos

Video 1 (25 MB)

Video 2 (In four parts, 25 MB total)

Video 3 (25 MB)

Video 4 (Bittorent) (Higher quality, 65 MB)

Video 5 (100+ MB)

Video 6 (13.4 => 14.3 MB)

Screenshots

Screenshots

These screenshots (Excluding one can be downloaded in a much prettier form, in a .zip, too!

Screenshots (.zip)

Unfortunately, two of these screenshots were hosted elsewhere, so I have to have seperate links for those two.

Rogue Screenshot 1

Rogue Screenshot 2

In case these are pulled off the web too, I saved them to my hd, and will host them personally if need be. In my frenzy I’va also saved every signiivant Halo2 screenshot to my hd as well! WHOOOO YEEEAH! I love E3.

I’m too busy to post much else right now…until tomorrow morning…