Gearheads of War

As Blankman wrote up yesterday, E3 was a hell of an experience for the first time.  I really wanted to go in large part because I wanted to meet some of the folks behind the sports game categories but because Take Two isn't exactly rolling in dough, they didn't really have a presence there and Peter Moore was no where to be found.

It was great to be able to hang out with Blank all day long.  And I got to meet MDK for the first time, which was a pretty cool experience.  Both he and I have lost a tremendous amount of weight so we both kind of looked like different people.  I think between MDK and myself we've lost about 125 pounds.

For me, it wasn't really the swag-fest that I expected.  Everyone talked about how freely the swag was flowing in years past, but for whatever reason, it just wasn't there in abundance this year.  I had a big bag but basically came home with something like three tee shirts and one of them being Red Steel 2 (anyone a fan of this franchise who might like it is welcome to it).  Blank also noted that there was a lot more space to walk around than in years past.  

I think one of the coolest elements of the show was being able to just see so many new games that I've discussed for seemingly years (God of War 3, Prototype, Assassin's Creed 2) in one place.  I only got to go hands on with really three games.  Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Prototype and Uncharted 2.  Blank got his hands on Shadow Complex and the new Gears 2 content as well.  But I've got to say that of the three things I played, Prototype was the game that had me smiling from ear-to-ear.  And it wasn't because it was exceptionally beautiful (it's kind of brown, drab and depressing), but it was the gameplay that just completely rocked.  Dropping flying elbows on tanks seemed like it would never get old.  And I've always talked about the one thing that would always make a game appealing to me was the level of badassery.  Prototype definitely kicks it up to an 11 because it's just about ridiculous amounts of destruction.  I beat the crap out of anything in my way and I looked like a freaking animal doing it.

Uncharted 2 multiplayer was a lot more enjoyable than I expected.  I've been a pretty big naysayer on shoving MP in a single-player oriented game, but the minute I picked up the spinning mini-gun and mowed down a bunch of fools, I was pretty sold on it.  I wound up killing the most dudes on my team and game (eight).  I then used that as the excuse as to why I suck at most online games.  I told Blank, "If only I had the time to practice, I might be able to keep up with these kids like Infidel."  Heh.  I also really liked BC 2, but I will say that the new control scheme that they have (a lot of stuff is mapped to the d-pad now) really screwed me up for the first half of my game.  I couldn't find the gun I liked and I couldn't seem to locate the gun-mounted grenade launcher that was so effective at blowing holes in the wall in the first game.  And in MP, you just don't have time to ask how to do certain things.  

Sadly I never got to see Assassin's Creed 2 in motion, which I really wanted to do.  It's easily my biggest contender for my personal game of the year along with Modern Warfare 2.  I saw plenty of Splinter Cell: Conviction and it really appears like they're going for a Jason Bourne vibe to it which actually holds appeal for me.  I was never a big fan of sneaking games in the past because it appeared like if one person saw you, the whole game was messed up.  But it looks like there is a myriad of ways to play this game.  Still, I will probably withhold whether or not I actually buy it until the reviews come out on it.

I really wanted to also see MW 2 in person, but it was cool enough to meet Robert Bowling, aka fourzerotwo.  We had a good laugh over the ass kicking they gave us last year as Blank mentioned.

I realized that I never spent a single moment at the Nintendo booth at all, so I can't give you any insight on them.  I still haven't actually even seen their press conference.

Other games I saw at the show that sparked my interest are Singularity, Split Second and The Saboteur (the demo at the EA press conference was so freaking cool).

Oh and God of War 3 looked absolutely beautiful and gorgeous and remarkable.  I'm so stoked to play that.  Already in early 2010, it sounds like we're going to have God of War 3 as well as Battlefield: Bad Company 2.  Thank goodness some of this stuff got pushed off.  As for my takeaways from the show, my head was essentially ringing from all the noise.  It's incredibly loud and there's a ridiculous amount of sensory overload.  

By the way, one of the PR guys for EA was telling me that Mass Effect 2 has a much better shooting mechanic and that it looks like it will play a lot more like a shooter with RPG elements to it.  That makes me a bit more interested than I was before because I hated the shooting in the first Mass Effect.  So much so that I wound up quitting on it.

Halo: ODST does look pretty cool.  The line for people to play it was pretty huge and I didn't really want to wait in it, but it looked like it had very similar mechanics to everything in Halo so those that love those mechanics will love it.  Those that don't, probably won't.  I don't know if it's me alone on this, but there's something about Master Chief missing from the game that makes it so much less interesting to me.  It isn't like the MC is some outstanding developed character, but I grew attached to the big green guy over the course of three games.

As of right now, coming out of the show, my top five most anticipated games this year are:

1.  Modern Warfare 2:  IW just knows how to make a killer first person action game with the perfect controls and feel.  They are the standard.

2.  Assassin's Creed 2:  One of my favorite franchises now.  Altair was a bad ass and Ezio looks like he's a step above what Altair was with much more to do to get the job done.  Interestingly because of the PSP Assassin's Creed game, I might switch consoles on this one and get the PS3 version instead of the 360 one.  I love this franchise and want everything surrounding it.

3.  Uncharted 2:  I loved the first game, but this one is possibly the prettiest game on consoles I've ever seen.  And if the multiplayer lasts more than a week, I think it has a chance of being pretty damn good (although the map we played on was very small and straightforward which was probably good for a demo, but not good over the long haul).

4.  God of War 3: Good lord, they amped up the brutality in this series.  It was freaking incredible and amazing to see Kratos as Mr. Bad Ass literally ripping a guy's head off in slow motion.  They might have to tone this down to get an M rating because, well, wow.  Still, the pacing of the demo looked fantastic.

5.  Prototype:  This game is so much fun.  My only question is, will this game have lasting appeal over 12 hours or so of gameplay?  Or will it pull a Wolverine and die on me half way through?  I hope not because I felt like such a bad ass playing this.

I've probably got more to share.  But one thing I will share is that David Ellis is pretty much a king among men.  I loved meeting him and I hope to hang out with him and have beers sometime in the near future.  He's a fantastic person who helped me score my way inside.  So I wanted to publicly thank David for that all access pass he got me.

Oh and for FFF this week, I'm up for whatever.  Maybe we could even get a few Gearheads who got the Uncharted 2 code to play a little bit of that later on? I don't know if you can party up as I haven't played it yet.  But definitely some Gears 2.

Sorry for the extra long post, but sign up below and maybe I'll catch you tomorrow night at around 9 p.m. PST.