E3 - Rune's Annual Sojourn

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Rune Lai
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E3 - Rune's Annual Sojourn

Post by Rune Lai »

So... I'm going to E3 again this year... and since I've been asked elsewhere to do my annual report, I figured I'd de-lurk here and make the same announcement. Which is... I'm going to E3 again this year and I'll take a look at anything I find cool and unusual and report back here. And you'll also hear about how tired I am and crashed in my car for the hours I'm not working the booth for my day job. (For the newbies on the board, I work in the game industry and I will be at E3 as an exhibitor.)

In years past I would sometimes go to the show on Monday and Tuesday to help with setup, but not this year. (Well, I might head out early tomorrow, but probably not...) So I likely won't be at the show until the exhibit floor opens on Wednesday.

If anyone has any suggestions for what they want me to look for or look at, I'm certainly interested in keeping my eye out for things I might have overlooked. My current list of things to see are:

Phantasy Star Universe
Rogue Galaxy
Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade
Neverwinter Nights II
Persona 3 (if it's there)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner
Metal Gear Solid 4 (just because)
Okami

I also plan on seeing the Wii... because no matter what the heck is up with that name I'm really intrigued to see what Nintendo came up with. The DS beats the pants off the PSP as a gaming device, graphical prowess notwithstanding, so it'll be interesting to see what the Wii can do.
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Post by GhaleonOne »

Zelda is my main thing. I haven't kept up with news at all lately though, so I don't really know what's being shown. I'm certainly interested in the Wii, moreso than the PS3 and 360 stuff, mainly because I think it'll be interesting to see how that controller works if they have anything out for demo. (which I believe they do?)

Perhaps see if there's any surprise Suikoden VI or something, even if that is probably wishful thinking, so close to V's release. It would be nice to see them release I and II for the PSP though. I'm sure if it's not at E3 this year, we can probably write it off though.
-G1

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Post by Sonic# »

I can't argue with that list, Rune. Since it looks like you'll be by the Sega booth anyway (PSU, yay!), could you also look a little at the upcoming Sonic games? If not, I'm sure the spattering of images and such will be on the internet. ^^;;;

Otherwise, I really have nothing. I'm not sure how the industry works, so I'm not sure if asking for a Mother 3 domestic release announcement would be relevant.

I look forward to the summary!
Sonic#

"Than seyde Merlion, "Whethir lyke ye bettir the swerde othir the scawberde?" "I lyke bettir the swerde," seyde Arthure. "Ye ar the more unwyse, for the scawberde ys worth ten of the swerde; for whyles ye have the scawberde uppon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded. Therefore kepe well the scawberde allweyes with you." --- Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory

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Post by Rune Lai »

You're not the first person to ask me to look out for Mother 3, Sonic#, so it's now on my list. :) I'm not media so I don't get the press releases, but if it's on the show floor and not locked away in a conference room I probably can find it, given enough time. If any new Sonic games are playable there I'll give it a look. But I warn you I'm terrible at those games so any gameplay impressions should be taken with a grain of salt. :)

I doubt Suikoden I and II is coming for the PSP, but I'll look for that too. Suikoden V felt like it came out really fast to me, so I wouldn't put it past Konami to already be working on a Suikoden VI, but it seems unlikely that series would debut its new installment there.
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Post by GhaleonOne »

Suikoden VI was a long shot. I mainly said it because of how fast V was announced. But weirdly, V was so amazing and IV was so crappy, yet the development time for V was less than IV.

BTW, I'm also kinda interested in any of the Mana titles, but more just interesting in seeing how they turn out. You don't ahve to check for it if you don't want, though I do believe Children of Mana was on display.
-G1

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E3 - Day 1

Post by Rune Lai »

[General Day 1 Report, rest to follow]

Well, the first day of E3 2006 is over.

This year the convention started a little differently. Normally the floor opens to everybody at once, but this year the show opened at 9am for the media, and everybody else got in at 11am. Since I was working this morning shift at my booth that meant it was surprisingly less hectic that usual for the majority of my shift. If only the entire convention could be as crowd-free as those first two hours of the show were!

But I fely sorry for the rest of the convention goers who had to wait to get into the exhibits, especially given how crowded the convention center gets. Backtracking a bit, this is the first year that they sectioned off part of the parking garage for valet parking. Normally I get a plum parking spot three or four rows from the door to the convention center. This year I got bumped back another four rows because the place I would normally park was now valet parking. I was a bit annoyed, but my space was still pretty good compared to the alternative. Getting late to E3 can mean parking blocks away and paying $50 just to park!

So! My shift ended and I eat a quick lunch because I was dying of hunger. Then I started to cruise through South Hall, which is where my booth is located, so it seemed the best place to start. I spun by Electronic Arts first, since it's the big behemoth, and didn't see any Sims games, which was a surprise. I did see Superman though, and come to think of it, I'm not sure how you can make a good game when Superman is almost invincible, but I'm sure there's a way.

I stopped by Activision shortly thereafter, but didn't find anything of interest. The same with THQ and most of Vivendi. I really wanted to see Eragon at Vivendi because I'd heard so much of the books, but Eragon was only being shown in a theater and I didn't want to wait in line to see it because I wasn't sure they would only be showing the game or the movie trailer or both. Mainly I wanted to *play* the game and if it wasn't going to be playable there would be no point to my standing in line. I was a bit amused though that the Eragon banners hanging around the convention center depicted the human cast members only with nary a dragon in sight, which is a real contrast to the book covers which only feature dragons.

The part of Vivendi that was of interest to most people was of course the Blizzard section where they finally revealed the new Alliance race for World of Warcraft. After being prepared by my coworkers for a cheap-looking night elf with a tentacle face and tail, I was pleasantly surprised to see it doesn't look all that bad... at least from certain angles. At any rate, I'm glad for the Alliance players because my problem with the Alliance is that they're all the standard fantasy races; human, elf, dwarf, and gnome. At least having some blue-skinned monstrosity walking on cloven feet, with tentacles bears and a tail will shake things up. Blizzard also had some high level armor sets on display, but those don't really interest me. My WoW-addicted coworkers could appreciate though.

At this point I somehow managed to miss the Ubisoft and Namco Bandai booths, even though I walked right by them, so I'll probably hit them up tomorrow. Instead I went to Konami next.

Konami never fails to get my attention each E3, if only because watching the latest Metal Gear Solid trailer has become an annual ritual. They usually don't take themselves too seriously, and come with a joke at the end, so they're a lot of fun even if I'll never play the game. This year's trailer had a couple good jokes (you see Snake start to go into an elaborate stealth mode and then when the enemy robot comes into view all it sees is a cardboard box saying "No Place for Kojima" on it), but the majority of it was very serious and perhaps even comtemporary, despite taking place in what seems to be the not-do-distant future. The placing of the conflict (the Mideast) and privatization of much of the military feels like Kojima is aiming the game at a future that could reasonably happen (minus all the crazy attack robots which our technology is not even close to doing). But anyway, it was a good trailer. I imagine it'll surface on the web at some point if it hasn't already. Oh, and Raiden comes back. That could be good news or bad news depending on whether or not you liked him in MGS2.

Also at Konami I played the new Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for the Nintendo DS. I was a little disappointed with it though; perhaps because it felt too close to other Castlevania games. Even though there are two main characters and you can have them fight cooperatively at the same time, it still felt like more of the same, which is both good and bad. The partner AI is decent and will do its fair share of killing things, but one time I was dropping down levels and made a quick left turn at the bottom and the partner AI got stuck on the level above me. The demo was also very short and featured no story elements whatsoever so I was disappointed with that too. Given that Portrait of Ruin is supposed to take place during WWII (and in that respect seems to be a follow-up to Castlevania: Bloodlines) I had hoped to see something that indicated the era of the game or relevance to the time period. Castlevania: Bloodlines took place during WWI and had one level in a munitions factory, which I thought was pretty cool. Portrait of Ruin seems to stick to the standard castle format, so I don't know if taking place during WWII will actually mean anything.

There was no sign of Suikoden I and II for the PSP so I doubt Konami will bring it stateside.

Swung by Capcom, meant to check out Okami, but didn't want to wait for a free station, so I moved on to Square Enix. There I wanted to play Dirge of Cerberus, but again I didn't want to wait (my first day is used for scouting the floor so I know what I need to do on later days) so I moved on through the booth. I saw Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, which I was tempted to play just because those slimes are so darn happy. Also this is the first of the Dragon Quest slime spin-off games to come to the US, but I couldn't quick get myself to pick up a DS a play it, so instead I played Final Fantasy III for DS. For a DS game it looks very good, but for some reason the load times were noticeable. It's a cart game! I shouldn't have load times. I came in the middle of someone else's game so I don't really know how the story starts, but the main character seems a bit of a good-natured chump (not the brighest bulb in the box). The combat system is very standard; attack, magic, item, etc. The production values are good though and it will probably end up being the best RPG on the DS when it comes out.

Oh, and Square Enix was giving away more of those Dragon Quest keychains from when they had run the DQVIII demo champaign. So I got a couple more keychains.

Sega of America was an ecletic mix this year as the company is still going through some transitions, but they're starting to get their feet under them. By far the biggest thing in the booth are the new Sonic games. There's the one simply called Sonic the Hedgehog, which is for Xbox360 and PS3. StH also features the introduction of a new hedgehog, Silver the Hedgehog, who is a silvery version of the existing Sonic and Shadow. I also thought Silver might have been a girl, but apparently not... :P There is also Sonic Wildfire coming for the Nintendo Wii. There was a third Sonic game there as well, but the name eludes me at the moment.

I played Phantasy Star Universe as well, but I'm sorry to say my enthusiasm for that game is flagging. If it had come out last year as expected I probably would have been fine, but now it looks like last year's game and it plays almost exactly like it did last year! I do know some of why that is (through an industry contact), but the reason makes me sad.

On a bright note, I saw the trailer for the new Golden Axe game, and considering how much I enjoyed the original I look forward to this action-RPG reimagining of the franchise.

At Microsoft's booth I didn't see much of interest except for the Ninety-Nine Nights trailer. I was pretty intriguied by it and wanted to play the game, but the way the booth is arranged does not make it convenient to look over someone else's shoulder (N3 was in a sort of pod-shaped display so you could only watch someone from outside the pod, to the side where they would climb in) and again I didn't want to wait.

At this point my wanderings were broken up by a meeting, but the timing was good, and afterwards I went to West hall for the rest of the big boys.

The Atlus booth pretty much bowled me over as soon as I had opportunity to let everything I saw sink in. I don't even know where to start for the hardcore RPG fan, because it seems all things unusual and RPG come from them these days, and there are a lot of games there that they hadn't announced prior to the show!

They also display the NIS America games, so the first thing I really noticed was Disgaea II. Then I saw Blade Dancer, the PSP RPG that NIS is bringing over. but wait, there's more! NIS is also bringing over Spectral Souls II, which sounds interesting in that you switch between three opposing main characters to advance the storyline, and Ar tonelico, which I've never even heard of but sounds interesting with its island in the sky in danger of falling down doomsday scenario.

Then I wandered into the Atlus half of the booth and about had a conniption when I saw "P3 Persona 3" plastered on the wall. I'd watched the gigantic 17:25 minute trailer when it came out on the web, but because the first two Personas were not great sellers and because of the suicide imagery in the third installment, I didn't dare to hope that Persona 3 would come stateside. After a little more poking around I found a playable and started a new game. Unfortunately the game was entirely in Japanese and my Japanese is pretty rusty. I skipped a lot of the opening cinematics that I would have liked to view if I was at home, but fortunately I'd already seen most of them in the online trailer.

Persona 3 is supposed to take place over a year in high school, and I started with the main character being the new student settling into his dorm. Then I got to go to school, look up my class assignment, and well, actually go to school. Time would pass by, but it seems to happen in chunks based on the needs of the story. I only went through one day of school so I don't know how this works into the storyline if you're going to school everyday, but so far I like what I see. As far as the hidden 13th hour when everything gets weird and the demons come out, I didn't get that far because after I got back to the dorm after school my Japanese failed me and I didn't know where to go next. I really wanted to try out the combat system though.

I'm definitely going back to Atlus tomorrow. For one thing, Kazuma Kaneko, the art designer for the majority of the Shin Megami Tensei games, will be autographing lithographs of the latest SMT game Devil Summoner. For another, Atlus has a load of DS games that I didn't have time to touch, but I'd like to play! Among them are Contact, which I've heard intriguing things about; Touch Detective, which seems like it might be a bit like Phoenix Wright but with more puzzle-solving; and Deep Labyrinth, which has scenario design by the same guy who did Chrono Trigger as well as music by Yasunori Mitsuda! Given the pedigree of Deep Labyrinth I can't help but be curious regarding what it's about or how good it is.

After Atlus I hit up Sony, and passed on the gigantic line of people who wanted to play PS3 games. I did play Rogue Galaxy though and found myself a little disappointed. I didn't know much about the game beforehand, but I thought it might be line Skies of Arcadia, except a little more sci-fi rather than age of discovery. It really didn't like sci-fi at all (though maybe a smidge of steampunk) and the battle system was a lot like Star Ocean 3's, which means real time with you controlling only one character instead of the full party. Perhaps because I'm not used to Star Ocean's style of combat, I had a lot of trouble running around the battlefield fighting guys. One of the enemies would be auto-targetted for me, but I couldn't figure out how to change it, and until I realized what was happening I had no idea why I would be facing one guy but flying off in the other direction to get at some guy off screen whenever I pressed the attack button. This game has dropped down on my wait-and-see list, but I think ultimately I'm going to end up passing on it unless it gets some rabid reviews.

I went to Nintendo last, knowing that the line for the Wii would be something scary, and it was. The line for the PS3 was a joke compared to the line for the Wii. I didn't bother. I have the morning off tomorrow so the plan is for my coworkers and I to run into West Hall before the show opens tomorrow (we're exhibitors so we can go in early ^_^) and get in line before anyone other than the other exhibitors can get in. One of my coworkers had done this with great success last year, being the fourth person in line for Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess one morning. Wii will probably be more crowded than TP was, but still, if we get there before the show opens there can't be that many more fellow exhibitors in front of us, can there?

I guess I'll find out. :) I covered most of the floor today, including a side trip to Atari to see Neverwinter Nights 2 (not impressed, though I wasn't with the first one either, and I later thought it was the best D&D game I ever played on the computer), so tomorrow I plan to hit the places I missed or didn't spend more than a passing glance at.

[LunarNET Specific Comments]

I did see the trailer for Dawn of Mana, and it looked pretty good, but I'm not familiar with the Mana games so I can't compare how it stacks up with the rest of the series. Children of Mana was probably there, but since I don't play the Mana cames I didn't notice. :) I'll try to take another look since I'm going back to Square Enix either tomorrow or Friday anyway.
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Post by Aquaignis »

I really wanted to see Eragon at Vivendi because I'd heard so much of the books, but Eragon was only being shown in a theater and I didn't want to wait in line to see it because I wasn't sure they would only be showing the game or the movie trailer or both. Mainly I wanted to *play* the game and if it wasn't going to be playable there would be no point to my standing in line. I was a bit amused though that the Eragon banners hanging around the convention center depicted the human cast members only with nary a dragon in sight, which is a real contrast to the book covers which only feature dragons.


I really wanted to see it too, but I couldn't go to E3.
They showed previews of both, but the game wasn't playable.
http://www.shurtugal.com has pictures of the movie and screenshots of the game!
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E3 - Day 2

Post by Rune Lai »

Today I had late shift so I actually was able to get out on the exhibit floor right at the at the start of the show--even beforehand actually. Knowing the vast crowd that would form at the Nintendo booth for the Wii, my coworkers and I entered the West Hall about twenty minutes before the show opened. Being exhibitors, we were able to get in before everybody else. Somewhat unfortunately we were not the only exhibitors with this idea in mind. The line was already in the ballpark of 40 minutes long by the time we got in line. Keep in mind, this was *just* fellow exhibitors. When the show opened at 9am we saw crowds of people blitzing past us to get in line, only to find out just how far around the corner the line actually stretched! One guy even commented how all the people already in line were all exhibitors. I suppose that sucks for the non-exhibitors, because even the fastest, earliest of them, still had to get in line behind all of us, but, that's the way it goes.

So I got into the special Wii exhibit and played Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess... on the Wii. I have to say that using the Wii is pretty unique and does not come without a learning curve, which strikes me a bit strange because the idea behind the Wii is to market to the general audience. I wonder if it's just because I'm too used to using a control pad. But anyway, I played Zelda with the nunchuck controller, which is where you have an analog controller in addition to the "remote." I used the analog stick to move Link around, and the remote for all the other fuctions. The B button is on the underside of the remote, and was used for Link's sword attack, which felt a little strange at first, but I got used to it pretty quick. Aiming with the bow and arrow was more interesting though. I would push down on the d-pad on the remote to zoom into my aiming mode, and then I would actually move the remote to aim the bow. Releasing the d-pad would cause the arrow to fire. Like the sword attack, it took a little getting used to at first, but I had a Nintendo rep on hand to help me, so when I overdid my aiming (I didn't realize how sensitive the controller was and sent my camera careening into a vertigo look a the sky when I moved the controller too far too fast) she was able to get me back on track. Using the boomerang with the Wii controller was pretty impressive though. It took my a long time to correctly perform my first throw, but I imagine that in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, it can be a lot of fun. Basically, the player can lock in on multiple targets with the boomerang, and it's very easy to do when using the remote to aim, and then let go and Link's boomerang will track and strike all those targets. Oh, and when you pick up a box to throw, it's no longer pressing a button to let it go. Instead you give the analog controller a shake and Link will throw the box. Also, if you move the analog controller in a circle at the screen while pressing the B Button on the remove, Link will do his spin attack. This I found before difficult to do, and it made my arm tried when I tried it in rapid succession until I eventually pulled it off. I'm not sure if that's just that I need more practice, or that Nintendo still need to work on motion recognition for that one.

Though I didn't play any other Wii games, I did look at the others. I actually thought Sonic Wildfire for the Wii looked better than the StH for the PS3 and Xbox360. It's a different game, so it might just have a better design. I'm not sure. From what a friend of mine at Sega told me, Sonic Wildfire only uses the tilt functionality of the Wii, so it's not as Wii dependant as other games. Given that the PS3 now has tilt functionality (hmm...) I think it's possible that it could eventually be ported. In the meantime though it's Wii-exclusive. And for everybody who liked Trauma Center on the DS, there will now be Trauma Center for the Wii, coming this year. There was no playable, but there was a trailer at the Atlus booth.

By the time I departed the Wii exhibit, it was past 10am and I broswed around the rest of the Nintendo booth. I took a look at Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, which is horribly cute. It's not very RPGish, what I played of it, and hopelessly silly, but I think that's some of its charm. For those who have asked, there was no sign of Mother 3.

Sony was right next door to Nintendo, so my coworker and I headed there next (we'd lost our other companions to the Wii and they wanted to stay and play some more). We decided to check out Disgaea 2, and though it's difficult to see much of a strategy/RPG in a demo, I'd have to say the humor is still intact and the translation looks good. Prinnies were in abundance, and it's hard to argue with exploding penguins.

The rest of the Sony booth was fairly blah though (except for Guitar Hero II). Neither of us really felt there was anything spectacular there that couldn't be found in another booth. Sony is known for their hardware, but they're not a game developer in the way that Nintendo is and Sega was. Their best and most memorable stuff has largely come from third party companies. So we ended up leaving pretty quick, and ended up at one of the boondock exhibits run by a game developer group from Australia.

They were promoting a game called Unleashing the Fury, which seems to be a MMORPG without the exploration and adventure. Their slogan was "No ganking. No grinding. No whining. No waiting." I know this slogan because my coworker and I bumped into a compatriot at that booth who was keen on scoring a t-shirt for some swag. The catch being that she actually had a win a match of this fantasy RPG-themed capture the flag. She said her random team members sucked so she wanted us, her coworkers, to play with her. So we did. There were only three of us so we ended up with a stranger for our four team member, but we beat the pants off the competing team, and somehow I got named MVP of our group. (I think it's because the rep who was helping me play really liked that I asked questions about hwo to play the game and how it worked.) So in addition to getting the t-shirt for winning, I got a 60-day free subscription to FilePlanet. (Big whoop. :P) It was an interesting diversion, though I still don't think I deserved the MVP. I played defense the whole time and never captured a single flag. My coworkers pointed out though that the enemy never even got our flag, so I must've been doing a good job at defense. I don't know. I still think the guy just gave it to me because I was asking questions.

At this point we had an early lunch (trying to beat the crowds) and went back to South Hall where the majority of the exhibits are. I got another box of slime keychains at the Square Enix booth, and got a ticket to enter a contest at Natsume's booth (I'll go back to participate tomorrow), but before I could get any more gaming in, I had to head back to South Hall for the Atlus booth. It was almost 12:30 and the Kazuma Kaneko autograph session would start at 1pm. I had no idea how long the wait would be, considering that Shin Megami Tensei has a niche following at best, but I wanted to be early so I could get back in time for my shift, which would start at 2:30.

When I got to the booth I wondered if I shouldn't have come sooner. I really DID have no idea how many Shin Megami Tensei fans there would be. I'd gotten there over twenty minutes before the signing would start and already the line wrapped halfway around the Atlus booth. Right when I got there they were bending the line to run through the booth (and even later it would wind its way back out again like some kind of crazy snake). So I sat and waited, but I was in good company. The other fans around me were pretty chatty and because we were in such a weird position where the line bent, we had a bonding experience over how often we would be asked where the end of the line was. Though the line started moving reasonably fast once Kaneko-san arrived, it still was a bit of a wait. One of my coworkers who knew how early I'd left to get in line was surprised to find me still in line at 1:30. But by about 1:40 I got to Kazuma Kaneko and got my autographed lithograph of the Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner game. Only later as I dropped my stuff off in my car did I realize there were a finite number of these. I got 133/250. Assuming he signed them in order, that means by the time he got to me he'd already signed over half the lithographs he had available. I know from my position in the line that more than half of the people in line were behind me, maybe even two-thirds... so I have a feeling the last twenty or thirty people might not have been able to get anything at all, and that would have sucked. It was eventually a freakishly long line. Kazuma Kaneko was only supposed to autograph until 2pm, but there were still so many people in line even when 2pm hit. I had entered a drawing for a Devil Summoner poster, also autographed by him, but because of my 2:30 shift I had to leave before they even got around to the drawing. :(

I waited as long as I could though, and watched someone else play Devil Summoner. I don't know that I'll get to it tomorrow, though I'll try. Like Persona 3 it was also untranslated, and it seems to have a real-time combat system, which bothers me, but I might be able to overcome it for the ambience. Devil Summoner takes place in 1920s Japan and it seems the main character is a police officer who is uncovering a conspiracy that could affect the entire nation. I doubt it would have the same humor as the Shadow Hearts games, but I relish the thought of playing another period piece fantasy RPG. Also, unlike Shadow Hearts, the characters do appear to be wearing period appropriate clothing.

Also at the Atlus booth I played Contact, which seems like a very quirky game. I'm not sure I'd call it an RPG, though it seems it would appeal to RPG fans. It starts with the player making contact with another life form; with their stylus. The game opens with a professor-type character minding his own business in his lab... until the player pokes him on the head and the prof realizes that there's other life out there. Basically, with this game, there's the feeling that the fourth wall will be broken all the time, with the player directly interacting with characters that know there is a force on the other side of the DS screen. But after the amusing opening, the game started getting confusing from there. I wasn't sure if the Terry sprite that appeared on screen was supposed to be a virtual version of me or not (the player's default name is Terry for the deo whether they like it or not) because the prof would ask me to look out for Terry while also calling my Terry! The combat system seemed a little strange too. I would press a button to enter combat mode, then button mash to attack, and then eventually the enemy would die? It was very weird.

I was going to play Touch Detective as well, but it was entirely in Japanese, and I didn't feel up to it with the limited time I had available.

After I started my afternoon shift there wasn't much else going on, though I bumped into an old coworker, now at Vivendi, who was able to get me a VIP pass into the Eragon theater. Since I hadn't wanted to wait in that line yesterday that was a bonus, and so I used my break time to run over there with another coworker who has also gotten the VIP pass.

The Eragon theater contained a trailer for the movie (which is not running in theaters yet), which was kinda neat, but there weren't any good close up shots of the dragon; just a couple quick fly-bys where she went by so fast you weren't even sure that was really a dragon. I guess the movie's still in post-production so she's not done yet. The game is being done by Stormfront Studios, which makes me a little leery because I haven't been impressed by their work in the past. Remember Legend of Alon'dar? If you don't, you didn't miss anything, but it was a PS2 RPG, and dropped into the bargain bin amazingly fast. The backgrounds for Eragonlooked gorgeous, which I'm not surprised by, given what I know of Stormfront, but I'm not sure the gameplay is there. Granted, what they showed us would have been a very early build, but it could have been better. Actually, the dragonriding segments of Eragon looked really good in comparision to Eragorn fighting on foot. When Eragon is fighting on foot he can call his dragon (forget her name) to help out, but it's nothing like what Caim did in Drakengard. When Caim called for Angelus on a melee level, he'd leap on her back and she'd rain hell on those hapless enemies below. When Eragon calls for help it can only be done when a big blue dragon marker appears over an obstacle (which really breaks the mood of the game) and then his dragon sails in and performs a move specific to that obstacle. So if his dragon can break a bridge to send enemies plummeting to their deaths, she will, providing the marker appears to left the player know she can do that. Obviously, if the game designers do not specifically tag a bridge for breaking there will be no breaking to be done. Conveniently, the only bridges in the game with this feature had enemies on them so they could conveniently plummet to their deaths. But the aerial sequences were better. They look more like a rail shooter a la Panzer Dragoon, but the dragon has a tail whip attack as well, and Eragon can shoot arrows while dragonback. (Even though I've never read Eragon, I love dragonriding in video games, so I'm interested in seeing how this one turns out.)

And that wrapped up my day. So tomorrow is probably going to be demo-mania since I still have yet to play Dirge of Cerberus, Okami, and yet more Atlus games, but hopefully I can still wrap that all up with time to spare. Gotta go play the Harvest Sprite Casino game at the Natsume booth too. I want to win a plush sheep. :)
You have taught us the pity to live.
But I will not forget the beauty of life itself.
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Rune Lai
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E3 - Day 3

Post by Rune Lai »

Third and final day of E3. I woke up to sadly find myself still sore from the day before, but not much helping that. I got to the convention early, as expected, only to find out that they increased the number of spots they set aside for valet parking, forcing me to park another two rows farther back than I had before, though oddly enough, I managed to get the closest space to the lobby in the parking garage that was not in valet parking. I'm not sure how these other people who were there ahead of me missed it, but I guess it was better than being even farther back. At this rate, next year I won't even be able to park in this particualr parking garage. It'll just be valet everywhere. :P

I had morning shift, but I met a lot of friends from different companies so that made the time pass more quickly. One of my coworkers, knowing that I was trapped at the booth for the morning, got me a ticket to the Square Enix theater for later in the afternoon. I also knew that being the final day I would have to make the most of what time I had available. I might not have succeeded, but I gave it a fair shot.

After lunch I grabbed a bag to carry stuff in and headed over to the Natsume booth so I could turn in my ticket to play the Sprite Casino game and try to win a prize. I love the animals in Harvest Moon, and so far I have the plush cow and the plush dog. This year they were giving away plush sheep. They had been given away as Harvest Moon: Magical Melody pre-order bonuses, but I didn't know about them at the time so I didn't pre-order. I figured this would be my only chance to get one outside of eBay. I met up with another Harvest Moon fan from work and the two of us stood in line together while commiserating about how much we wanted the cute plush sheep. Fortunately, according to the guy standing in line behind us, Natsume was more inclined to give away prizes today than the other two days. Originally it was very hard to win because people had to go through two games to win anything other than a magnet. Now the first game would just be a formality. Our guess was that being the last day, Natsume probably had too many leftover prizes and was trying to clear them out.

So we played the first game which involved throwing gigantic fuzzy dice. Rolling higher than the Harvest Sprite (one of the Natsume employees wearing a sprite hat) would allow one to continue to the second game. I rolled a one, but the Harvest Sprite took pity on me and kicked the die so it was a six. ^^; My co-worker behind me at first tied the sprite and then won in the roll-off. So we moved on to the second game.

The second game was a memory game (like Old Maid), with nine magnets on a whiteboard. Turning over a magnet would reveal a possible prize. Matching one magnet's prize with another would allow one to win that prize. The first magnet I turned over revealed a magnet, which I found extremely disheartening. No one in line ahead of me had turned over a magnet prize and the magnet is the defautl prize anyway, so getting that was a waste. Then I turned over my second magnet, which was a plush sheep. At this point the two magnets were turned "face down" again and I was allowed to pick two for my second try (only two tries allowed). Also at this point, the people who didn't know better would do something like pick the one they already knew was a sheep first and go for the unknown second, which is a silly idea. If you know two magnets are say a t-shirt and a plush sheep, you'd want to pick your unknown first, so if it was a shirt or a sheep you could pick your second magnet to match the first with the certainty of getting a prize other than the booby prize.

On a hunch I picked one of the unknowns for the first magnet of my second try. Much to my delight, it was a plush sheep! So I matched it with the sheep I found on my previous try and got my plush. It's entirely too cute and I consider it the best thing I picked up the entire show. :) The only thing is my coworker behind me ended up getting her second t-shirt (she'd played earlier during the convention) so I'm probably going to have to watch my back when I get back to work on Monday or I may find myself sheepless. :)

After parading the sheep to my other coworkers still stuck at the booth (I had to let everyone know I got the one piece of swag I wanted more than anything else this show :P), I went over to the Square Enix booth. I still had some time before I was supposed to show up for the theater so I played Children of Mana. I am not familiar with the Mana series at all, so I can't really say much about it one way or the other. It's very bright and colorful, and right off the bat I was given one of three characters to start playing with, so it looks like there's some variety. There was no story to the demo though, so I don't know anything about these characters or what they are trying to accomplish. The game mechanics were very similar to the Shining Soul games as far as I could tell, except that I could switch between different weapons by using different buttons.

Then I played Dirge of Cerberus, which is probably my biggest disappointment of the show. Oddly enough, it was also one of those I was most excited about at the show, even after being disappointed with the demo, but that's getting ahead of myself. What was possibility my biggest problem with the demo was that I couldn't figure out how it worked. For a so-called gun-RPG, I never once managed to fire my gun. I could get into something that looked like a sniper mode with the targetting reticle on screen, but I couldn't get the aiming down, and even if I could, I couldn't figure out to fire! And, well, if firing a gun is that complicated I don't know how I could possibly play through the game. It did not help that the demo was tutorial light. The demo opens with Vincent doing spying of some sort and some guys sneak up behind him and start shooting. I tried to fire back, but eventually gave up and tried running, which it seems I was supposed to do from the very beginning since after I started running I actually picked up some bullets, which might explain why I wasn't able to fire on those guys when I first spotted them. It would have been nice to know that before I wasted two-thirds my life trying to fight them. However, even after picking up the bullets I still couldn't figure out how to use my well enough that it made ranged attacks preferably to melee. My Vincent took everybody out with his claw. But because the game is not designed for melee, I ended up dying before I could really get anywhere in the game. Oh, and the default camera is pretty stupid in places. You can move the camera manually, and that will probably be necessary because there were a lot of camera angles where I couldn't see where I was going. Basically, if this was not a game starring Vincent Valentine (with Reeve in what appears to be a strong supporting role), I would not bother with it. I will probably buy it eventually, but it could've been a much better game.

So I got in line for the Square Enix theater, which according to my ticket was showing a 45 minute long presentation. In the meantime I watched the trailers running on the big screen above their information desk. The Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime animated trailer is obscenely cute by the way, and if you want to see something happy and light-hearted, it's worth a good chuckle. The other trailers were for the two Valkyrie profile games, Dawn of Mana, FFXII, Dirge of Cerberus, FFVII: Advent Children (even though it's already in stores), and their mobile games. (By the way, the Final Fantasy I on mobile looks amazingly crisp and easy to read, even though the text is sooooo tiny!)

Finally, I got in the theater where they showcased primarily upcoming Final Fantasy properties (as well as the new Dragon Quest spin-off for Wii). The Final Fantasy XII was rather boring to me, having seen too much of the game already, though there were a lot of cut scenes included that I hadn't seen before. The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII was better though. It included yet more Advent Children promotion (for those few who haven't already seen it) and then moved on to the other games in the compilation. Despite having just played and been disappointed with Dirge of Cerberus, Square managed to re-sell the game to me all over again with their stunning DoC trailer set to one of the songs by the J-pop star Gackt (who I believe actually appears in the game in addition to performing music for it). It somewhat reminded me that even if a game sucks, if it has a good story I'll often suffer through it, and I liked Vincent and Reeve more than the rest of the cast of FFVII. Putting them both in the same game helps. The cut scene graphics are top notch as well, looking like it's using the same models as Advent Children.

Before Crisis had a very small anime intro to the game, but very little actual gameplay to be seen, given that it's for cell phones. I almost want to get a top of the line cell phone just to play this, which is very odd since it's probably the only thing I'd ever use a top of the line cell phone for.

The next item in the compilation shown was Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII for the PSP. This one follows the story of Zack (who was dead before FFVII even started). There are some new characters introduced and it's kinda cool to see Sephiroth before he went crazy, but I didn't see anything resembling a combat system. It was all story stuff. I think Cloud was in the trailer, just as a normal undistinguishable looking guy though, since that's what he was at the time. It looks interesting just from a backstory perspective, but I wouldn't buy a PSP for it.

Having finished with FFVII, the theater then moved on to the Final Fantasy XIII series of games, which are largely just teaser. FFXIII (with no side name) featured a FFX-2 Yuna-ish girl running around attacking enemies with a sword and a gun. The graphics are very nice, but it looked like all cut-scene to me. Even when various buttons and menu commands came on screen, they did not seem to make sense to me, because what was happening on screen looked like what would normally be a cut scene out of the player's control. I think what we saw might have been a mock-up of what they hope the combat system will be rather than what it is. Truthfully, I was rather bored with it. I like the idea of having a female main character (if she actually is the main character), but the trailer itself just looked like a graphic showcase to me; all flash and no substance.

Final Fantasy Agito XIII is another mobile phone game. It seems to revolve around a school or something. Being a cell phone game there wasn't a lot of time spent on it.

Finally came Final Fantasy Versus XIII, which is being put together by the team behind Kingdom Hearts and FFX-2. This trailer was shorter than the straight version of FFXIII, but I liked the atmosphere better. It shows a lone young man sitting in a deserted room on a desolate throne. Eventually he gets up and walks outside, where bodies line the stairs down to a throng of soldiers below. The soldiers see him, raise their guns, and fire, but their bullets deflect harmlessly off a barrier in front of the young man, who eventually creates a series of magic swords when he reaches the bottom of the stairs. I presume he then attacks and hell rains down on his enemies, but the teaser ends at that point. But what I liked about it is that the trailer made me want to know who this man is and what happened to him. Is he some kind of king? Where those his servants dead on the stairs? Is he the main character? (Usually the heroes don't get the cool buller-deflecting barriers.) If he's the villain, why is his story so important that he's the first thing Square wants us to see of this game?

Of course, it could just be a terrifically well down trailer and the game will be nothing special. I guess we'll see in a couple years or so. There was no date tied to the FFXIII games, but given that the Final Fantasies have never been launch titles we probably won't see them until late 2007 at best; more likely 2008.

After the Final Fantasy parade, I wen to Capcom's booth and playing Okami, which I enjoyed a lot. Of all the demos I played at the show, this was one of the best, mainly because it convinced me that I really want to play this game. As a silent Amaterasu (the Japanese sun goddess in the form of a wolf), accompanied by a nature spirit, the player goes around trying to help people. There are very mundane ways of doing this, such as jumping and head-bashing enemies, but there's something called brush magic that lets Amaterasu perform magic and find her way around obstacles. The river of stars seems to be dried up, so she can paint in a new river, which she can then cross to the other side. Or she might discover an old statue with a broken sword, and by using brush magic to paint in a new blade, she can awaken a spirit that had been locked away in the sword. It's unconventional, part puzzler, part action, and I like it. The art style is very unique and the story very much at home with Japanese mythology; all of which make this one of the more distinctive titles at the show.

Finally, to wrap up the show, I went back to the Atlus booth. I played Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner, and chose the combat demo (the town demo would have been pointless given my limited Japanese) to see if I would like the real-time combat. I do like it better than Rogue Galaxy, which I played on Wednesday, since it didn't have the stupid auto-targeting making me attack monsters I wasn't facing and wasn't even near. It's disappointing to only have one support demon in my party after having a full group in Nocturne, but I guess being real time it would be harder to manage multiples of them. I'm not sure if the one demon I had with me was even doing anything, but that might have been because I was so focused on learning the controls. Despite my efforts, I did not survive the battle, though it involved what looked like a boss creature so I didn't feel too bad about dying.

Also at the Atlus booth I played Deep Labyrinth for the DS, which starts out with an anime-styled intro, which quickly melds with CG. In an odd twist, the 2D anime seems to represent the real world and the CG is the fantasy. Deep Labyrinth starts with a modern day kid riding in a car with his parents and his dog. The car appears to break down (I'm not really sure since E3 was too noisy for me to hear any of the dialogue) and the kid's dog starts growling at the weird house their car stopped behind. Naturally the dog runs off, the kid chases after the dog, right up to the creepy house, and when he opens the door to the house (which is CG), he seems to fall into another dimension. From then on, the game changes to a first person point of view and the world is CG. The boy is then warned by a traveling creature resembling a pink elephant that he is trespassing and he should probably leave before someone gets hostile towards him. He can't though, not without finding his dog and his parents. (The game switched to text at this point so I could follow the story. I'm not clear one whether or not his parents went to the house first or not.) It turns out this strange world he's in is a sort of place for lost memories that people no longer need; memories like what you might have eaten for lunch two weeks ago. Except it's also populated with talking mice who teach this boy the art of combat with a sword, and there are some basic slime enemies to practice on. Combat is done entirely in first person using the stylus. There's no reason to ever use the X, Y, A, and B buttons while playing the game. Just use the d-pad to steer and the stylus/touch screen will take care of everything else. Attacking is done by tapping the enemy, which will cause the player to lock on to them (unlocking an enemy is as simple as tapping the button called Lock Off), and then tapping them again for each swrod swing. Smarter enemies will move off the screen so you need to press the d-pad to turn and face them again, but it's really simple to do. I got stuck trying to find some shrine, so I didn't get very far, but I probably would've done better if I wasn't playing a demo on limited time. When I heard this was a first-person RPG for DS I was a little skeptical, but I like what I've seen so far so I think I'll pick this one up.

After that, I locked my stuff away in my car and prepared for tear-down as yet another year of E3 ended. It was quite a busy year this year too. Normally I manage a fair amount of dozing in my car to recover sleep, but not this time. I think I'm going to be out for a fair amount of time tomorrow morning. Actually... look at the time... I guess it will be THIS morning.
You have taught us the pity to live.
But I will not forget the beauty of life itself.
--Hyuui Riin, Phantasy Star II
-- http://www.sabrecat.net/ --

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Angelalex242
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Post by Angelalex242 »

Sorry to hear Dirge of Cerberus sucked...

Oh well...
Don't blame me, Lucia promised me lots of snuggles and cuddles if I would be her PR guy.

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GhaleonOne
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Post by GhaleonOne »

BTW, thanks for posting these Rune. It's nice to get firsthand reports like this from someone who has similiar gaming tastes.
-G1

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Rune Lai
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Post by Rune Lai »

No problem. I like doing them. :) I realize not everyone gets to go and sometimes they have a special interest the media doesn't cover. Or, maybe just my quirky taste in games brings out odd titles that people wouldn't otherwise hear about.

Since E3 wrapped up I've heard that Deep Labyrinth was originally a cell phone game, but for some odd reason that's the one DS game that I keep thinking about. :P Nobody else seems to like it though. Alas. ^_^ So I know how it is hoping someone with similar tastes will cover something you're interested in.
You have taught us the pity to live.
But I will not forget the beauty of life itself.
--Hyuui Riin, Phantasy Star II
-- http://www.sabrecat.net/ --

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Post by Sonic# »

Hmmm, where do they announce arcade games? Surely it's not as big of a market, but do they have any place for that? I don't remember hearing anything about arcade games at E3.
Sonic#

"Than seyde Merlion, "Whethir lyke ye bettir the swerde othir the scawberde?" "I lyke bettir the swerde," seyde Arthure. "Ye ar the more unwyse, for the scawberde ys worth ten of the swerde; for whyles ye have the scawberde uppon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded. Therefore kepe well the scawberde allweyes with you." --- Le Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory

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Post by PrettyGirlJean »

Shoot, I wish I'd seen this thread earlier. I heard that Will Wright gave a presentation about the new maxis game called "Spore"! There was a video online a while ago, but I was hoping to hear and/or see some new information. Ah well, maybe I've got the wrong info since you mentioned going by the EA booth but didn't see any games of interest. Surely, if Spore was there it would've caught a lot of interest (or at least I hope so) :) I heard now that it's not scheduled for release until Spring 07.

DoC ... well, to be honest I think Vincent is cool but the only reason I was really interested in the game is because of Gackt ^^; It's about time they actually just had him in the game, especially since Titus was obviously based on him :p And of course Squall (though he didn't really look too much like him) was based on his as well. It'll also be cool to hear Gackt on the soundtrack. Does he do in game music or OP and Ending themes?

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