E3 Report

I’m two days into my first E3 and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. There is too much to talk about in just one post. There is a ton of money being thrown around by all these companies attempting to get geeks to part with their hard earned money.

I’m going to start with the most ridiculous. Vivendi is putting out a “Scarface” game, in which starts with the climactic scene from the movie. I know what you are thinking- doesn’t Pacino get killed at the end- like very, very killed. Well, in the game, you can survive the attack on the mansion- and must rebuild your empire. The game’s big innovation is that you build up “cajones” points- no seriously, I’m not kidding, “cajones” points. You get rewarded for having big balls. You gain these points by taunting opponents during fire fights, and if you build up your “cajones,” you go into blind rage mode, in which you are invincible, have unlimited ammo, and cannot miss your targets. Through the game, you kill rival gangs in order to rebuild your cocaine empire- the anti-game violence crusaders are going to have a field day with that one. But the Jack Thompsons of the world shouldn’t afford “Scarface” such publicity, because “Scarface” is a intensely retarded “Grand Theft Auto” rip-off. Clearly, the game’s creators would love nothing more than to generate the same kind of angered response that “GTA” has. To prove how much of a stir they wanted to create, Vivendi showed a promotional presentation for the game was given in a recreation of the mansion from the film- as good a metaphor for the extravagance of E3 that you will be able to find.

But it wasn’t all bad. “Okami” for the PS2 looked beautiful and innovative- the game looks like a moving painting, and it even has a cool paint brush game mechanic- you can paint bridges to cross or even use paint strokes in battle. The game looked beautiful and strange. “Dead Rising” looked like a blast- it’s basically “Dawn of the Dead” as a game- zombies invade a mall and you must survive for 72 hours. It looked hilarious and gross, a perfect combo, and it’s the kind of thing that is appealing enough to me to make me want an X-Box 360.

But this year, everything else pails in the shadow of Nintendo. Ladies and gentlemen of the world, I got to play with the Wii. I touched the Wii, and as Nintendo has taught us with the DS (oh, how I love you DS, how I adore you,) “touching is good.” I waited in line for nearly three hours to get into the Wii presentation and was able to play demos of a couple games. When I played a match of “Wii Sports: Tennis,” I began to swing the Wii-mote (yes, that is officially what Nintendo is calling it) as if I were swinging a real racquet. From my few minutes holding the Wii, I could imagine endless possibilities. It seems so intuitive and just plain fun- this is a video game system for everyone. The new name for the system sounded so silly at first- when I first read that it was the Wii, I wasn’t even sure how they meant us to pronounce it. But now it makes sense- the Wii is for all of we- for us, for everyone. The idea of the machine is to bring us all together- casual gamers, core gamers, and pre-Wii non-gamers alike- and for all of us to actually have fun with games again. That is Nintendo’s pitch, and even though it seems corny, it makes sense.

Maybe I’m an idiot who has just fallen for their marketing. Or maybe (and I don’t want to sound too optimistic) the Wii will solve all of the world’s problems.