BatRastered's E3 2009 journal

By BatRastered — October 5, 2009
Tags: E3 e3-2009 microsoft press-conference sony

Copied from the old gouki.com, my E3-2009 journal.

E3 2009 Day 0 (MS Press Conference)

Microsoft really knows how to put on a press conference. No charts, graphs, or sales figures, just game announcements, trailers and live demos.

The surviving Beatles take the stage for The Beatles Rock Band cool to see them. Exclusive track for the 360, All You Need is Love, proceeds go to charity.

Modern Warfare 2 looks amazing. It’s multi-platform of course, so not sure why they chose the MS press conference for this.

Final Fantasy 13 and Metal Gear Solid are coming to the 360. God of War is now the only PS3 exclusive that I give a shit about.

Halo 3: ODST looks just about what I expected (which is a good thing) and it releases this September with a bonus; each copy includes an invitation to the new Halo: Reach beta. Sign me up.

Alan Wake, again? And it’s not even coming out this year, which means we will see it again next E3. F.

Facebook on Xbox Live, FTW!

Project Natal, Microsoft’s motion tracking video camera system was demoed at the end. If this works, it will be revolutionary; if it doesn’t it will be the Eye Toy part 2.

Nice work slamming Nintendo for the preset waggles. Preset Waggles is my new favorite saying.

E3 2009 Day 1

9:00 am - We started off by watching the Nintendo press conference. I couldn’t have been more disappointed. The only thing that looked any good was the new Metroid co-developed by Team Ninja, which won’t be released this year.

There is a new Mario Bros. game set for the Wii that is 4-player simultaneous. There’s no hint of being able to play it online, and the graphics look like they could be on the SNES.

Also, there will be a sequel to Mario Galaxy, which looks like a 1.5 release to me, as I saw nothing new. This will not make it this year either.

11:00 am – The Sony press conference begins… after 10 minutes of the announcer saying there’s still seats available. Most of what they show is 3rd party games that are also available on the 360.

They wasted a bunch of my time talking about the PS2 and giving charts and figures that nobody cares about.

Interesting PS3 only titles: Final Fantasy 14 (online) but not till next year. God of War 3, but we knew that going in. Finally, Mod Nation, which is a surprisingly good looking Mario Kart type racer that allows you to create tracks, impressed me.

Not interesting: A motion controller that still is a controller, and another PSP SKU.

2:00 pm – At last at the exhibits!

Gouki and I got into the press area of Bethesda software and got a first look and hands on demos of Point Lookout (DLC for Fallout 3), Wet, and Rouge Warrior. Wet looks decent, Rouge Warrior’s AI seems pretty dumb at this point. It releases in Q4, so there’s time to fix it, but not much.

I got to play the new Ghostbusters game. It looks amazing, the controls are a bit touchy, but that might just be me not being used to the PS3 controller.

I also played Marvel vs. Capcom 2 using the Street Fighter 4 fight stick. Feels much like the arcade, though that was so long ago for me that I’m not sure anymore.

Notable absence: No Kentia hall this year!

5:00 pm – Where’s Jimmy?

E3 2009 Day 2

Day 2 at E3 and I’m usually more interested in finding someplace to sit down than anything else. We went to see the Modern Warfare 2 demo that had a countdown running for it, but it turned out to be nothing more than the trailer we’d seen a week ago. (I don’t understand why that’s not just up there in the mix with all the other trailers on Activision big screen.)

Speaking of the other trailers, the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen game looks amazing. Hopefully it plays as well as it looks. Hopefully we will get some hands on with this on Day 3.

Quick notes:

Ubisoft has the best overall booth babes (and a ton of them)
Batman: Arkham Asylum is in every other booth.
Where is Bioshock 2?

E3 2009 Day 3

The last day of the Expo. My feet hurt. Didn’t really see anything new. Jimmy dressed up as Akuma and got lots of attention.

Afterwards we went to the Dodgers game and watched them lose to the Phillies. Cole Hamels pitched a complete game shutout throwing less than 100 pitches. Ridiculous.

Alan Wake