Take-Two Conference
Day three started off with people hoping to see more of GTA: Chinatown Wars at the Take-Two Press Conference as well as Konami revealing a new Metal Gear game at theirs beings as Sony didn't say anything at their conference the day before. People were also hoping for more on Final Fantasy XIII from Square Enix's conference as well.
It all started off at 10:45am PST with the Take-Two conference, it was shaping up to be an exciting start to day three of E3 considering they weren't going to talk about a movie for an hour (I'm looking at you Capcom). With the announcement of the Grand Theft Auto series coming to the Nintendo DS, it seemed as though Take-Two would have more information unveil about this and maybe some other games that are under development for the company.
All in all the conference ended up being very boring and very dull. Some of the highlights from the show included the kid friendly Dora the Explorer games and new-clips surrounding 2K's NBA and NHL franchises.
First up was NHL 2K9 which was demonstrated for the Wii by Jeff Thomas, a VP at 2K Sports, Some new features to be included in the game will allow players to drive the Zamboni (Sweet!) and to use Wii-mote as a hockey stick.
Next up was NBA 2K9 which had a demo on the 360 and not much in regards to features where discussed but the game looks polished and the crowd reactions seemed lifelike. Some more dull games were also announced like Carnival Game: Mini Golf, which will be released fall 2008 for the Wii. Dora the Explorer will be making her Wii and DS debut with a brand game entitled, Dora Saves the Snow Princess. No date was set for its release. Then the interesting part of the show started with an announcement that Bioshock for the PS3 will be getting exclusive downloadable content.
Another game called Borderlands was announced this is an MMO shooter, which also had a demo and was shown by the fine people at Gearbox. Apparently there are a ton of weapons to use within the game. A few examples of the weapons include a green gun that has acid effects and melts the face of your opponent and the blue gun that electrocutes the bad guys. Then finally an extended clip of Midnight Club: LA was shown, but as I said, this conference was very dull and boring. (Oh well).
Square Enix Conference
Then Square Enix held its E3 2008 press conference at 12:30pm PST and it had a rather unusual format. Well, unusual for E3.
More like a sports press conference than a staged game conference, this was more like an extravaganza/laser light show, game producer Yoshinori Kitase and Square Enix's Shinji Hashimoto sat at a table and answered questions from the media.
The majority of the chatter was, of course, about Final Fantasy XIII since it is no longer a Sony exclusive and will, instead, be released for both the PS3 and Xbox 360.
The guys at Square Enix said “Final Fantasy XIII is no longer exclusive to Sony so we can bring the experience of the game to as many fans as possible in the world.” They also said “Final Fantasy XIII may or may not require more than one game disc (with the implication that Blu-Ray allow for more space, therefor if the game is multi-disc, it may not be for PS3).
They went onto answer more questions like this one “FFXIII is being developed for the PS3 first, will be released in Japan first and then ported to the Xbox 360 while the PS3 US Version is being localized (read: translated into English). The Xbox 360 and PS3 release will be simultaneous in the US, followed by Europe.”
Final Fantasy XIII is being developed using Crystal Tools. But no footage was shown but they said some would be available “in the near future.” And that the battle system will be “an evolution of the series traditional ATB”, this ended Square Enix's press conference (Well Q&A).
Konami Conference
The last press conference of E3 2008 same from the well known Japanese company Konami Digital, their conference started at 2:30pm. If I could use a phrase to describe Konami's press conference it would be, “ It started with a bang and ended with a thud.”
Konami already had a solid lineup to unveil to the masses with two new Castlevania games and Silent Hill: Homecoming and were well on their way to being the bright spot when it came to third party pressers for the event. The conference began with news about Metal Gear Online and the new Elebits for the DS.
From that point on some great information, gameplay and demos from the Castlevania and Silent Hill franchises and then not so much. Rock Revolution premiered last as Senior Product Manager, Lauren Facadomo, brought her all-girl cover band to play The Ramones, Blitzkrieg Pop. Talk about bad Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny Ramon are all spinning in their graves right now. (It only got worst from there.)
First it was announced that the “Gene Expansion Pack”, for Metal Gear Online would be released on July 17th, 2008 (Available Now). The pack will come complete with new characters, maps, and modes, along with a few other surprises. Next up was Silent Hill: Homecoming, which will be released on Xbox 360 and PS3. Followed by Castlevania: Judgment (Wii) and Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS), both of these will also be released this fall. (All crap games)
Then Creator of the Castlevania series, Koji Igarashi, unveiled a new trailer for Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and looks pretty dull. He also played a demo of Castlevania: Judgment, which he claimed, was a, “3D vs. action game.” I don't care how you try to slice it Mr. Koji, that game looked like a 3D fighting game.
The only characters to be revealed for the game so far are Dracula, Simon Belmont, Richter, Alucard, and Maria. The plot of the game involves a character that's attempting to destroy the thousand-year timeline of good (Simon) Vs evil (Dracula), which in turn brings together characters from different period's withing the Castlevania franchise.
Igarashi delves extensively into Judgment, revealing that you can collect items during the fights and that fighters will have keep zombies from attacking them as they struggle with their opponent. Other than the disagreement about its genre this title looks rather impressive.
Then the lights went down and a Silent Hill: Homecoming game trailer was shown and it was revealed that it would have a new camera system, allowing the player to look freely in any direction. There are no first person in range weapons, but you can look in first person to see what items you pick up and the inventory system is faster to navigate. Dialogue trees will allow the player to interact with characters throughout the story. The transition between controlled dialogue and cut scenes will be as seamless as possible. Jason Allen, a developer on the game played a demo and it showed off a boss battle that was pretty intense. (This game looked pretty neat and cool)
Then finally Rock Revolution appeared and it looked like it didn't have master tracks as the demo version of Blitzkrieg Pop on the game had a cover band singing the song (almost as bad as the live cover bad, absolutely terrible). The drum kit for Revolution has seven drum pads. Rock Revolution looked pretty disappointing as Facadomo used a guitar hero Gibson to play through the demo and then got booed by game audience.
Then Konami ended their press conference to a lot of happy clapping but also to a few boos as no new Metal Gear games were announced, which annoyed many people.
All in all I thought that some conferences were very good and others were appalling, the most I'm most looking forward to are Resistance 2 (PS3, Resistance: Retribution (PSP), Poatapon 2 (PSP), GTA: Chinatown Wars (DS).
Other games I'd like to see are Silent Hill: Homecoming (PSP), GTA IV Downloadable Content (360) and finally I'm really interested in MAG (PS3) because of the ability to play with 256 other payers over the Internet (I mean OMG, so good or what?).
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