Well, I spent Thursday and Friday at the world-famous E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo). For those not in the know, it is a huge annual event where everyone slightly involved with the video game industry get together and reveal their products for the coming year. I enjoyed it. There are lots of games and peripherals coming out this year, but it’s primarily more of the same. Lots of sequels and reinventions of what you have already seen. I was excited to see the new multi-platform Ninja Turtles game that comes out in October. It is an action adventure fighting game like the older turtle games, but now in 3D with very nice cel-shaded graphics. It isn’t anything especially original, but as a turtles fan, it is nice to see a new good game on the horizon. If the turtles aren’t your thing, you can buy the almost identical Batman/Sin Tzu game instead. Metal Gear Solid 3 is also on the way. From what I gathered, it takes place in the jungle in the 60s. Apparently Snake is a pretty old guy. I also saw a vampire game for the GBA which comes with a sensor that interacts with the Sun. You take it outside, let it soak up sunrays and it powers up some of your weaponry. Whether the game is any good remains to be seen, but I have to give them some props for their originality (although it is a bit gimmicky). Another interesting gimmick is the Eye Toy. It keys the player into the game so you actually appear on screen and interact with the environment. While neat, it needs lots of refinement before it becomes anything truly interesting. Now that I live in L.A., I hope to return to E3 each year. This was my first attendance and from what I’ve heard it was smaller than usual. New consoles should be hitting the market in a few years, I figure those will garner the most impressive E3 exhibits in the coming years. There were lots of other things to see like the numerous models dressed as fetishy characters, the huge exhibits, etc. This isn’t really a video game website, so I’ll leave the rest of the reporting up to the pros.
Oh, as an interesting side note:
Thanks to Shok (FDA, Sillygoth), I met Tom Fulp (Newgrounds) and Synj(synj.net).
