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E3: Show Wrapup
As I'm writing this, E3's over. Yup, that's right - the biggest gaming event of the year has come and gone, seemingly faster than most single hours during a normal, boring day go by. Given the sheer amount there was this time around, I thought I'd give some brief impressions on the more important stuff. After years of silence, Nintendo's finally crawled out of it's shell, and their showing was impressive indeed - Hands down, I'm more excited about the GameCube and it's software than anything. The overall impression I got of Luigi's Mansion was one of a kiddie-ghostbuster Mario, but aside from that, everthing else Nintendo had showed plenty of promise. Waverace looks set to surpass it's N64 predecessor (Which, for the record, I played more than I did Mario and Zelda combined), Eternal Darkness continues to draw attention with dark, brooding atmosphere, and Pikmin, 's pet project, stole the title of most fascinatingly weird game from Relic's Sigma. 2nd parties look just as prepared, with Retro working hard on Metroid Prime and Raven Blade. And although Rare was less spectacular than usual (Perfect Dark 2, while confirmed, was absent), their lineup was more than worth a look. While PS2 may already have taken the #1 spot, Nintendo proved at E3 that it still has what it takes to survive in an increasingly competitive industry. A half a year after the PlayStation2's commercial release (And a year after it's initial E3 appearance), the system's actually being exactly that - One big PlayStation sequel. The majority of the good looking third party games (SSX, Madden, Tony Hawk) are going to Microsoft and Nintendo as well, and the same franchises that were the exclusive stars on the PSX - Metal Gear, Gran Turisimo, Final Fantasy - are the stars all over again. Sure, these rehashes will probably wind up being good, and one could even argue that Nintendo's also relying on sequels (Although judging by the E3 lineup, not nearly to the same extent), but the PS2 will probably never provide the kind of innovation and new ideas the Dreamcast saw in it's relatively short lifespan. As far as the Xbox goes, I'm still not sold. Oddworld looks interesting, Raw Is War will wind up being a must for wrestling fans, but what else is there? They've got plenty of third parties signed, but like I said above, most of the worthwhile third party software is multiplatform to begin with. And Halo (Which reportedly crashed during a demonstration), that game everyone's been raving about for the past two years, looks and sounds like a scaled down version of what Bungie had originally planned it to be. Then there's the PC. Aside from Homeworld 2's absence, no real disappointments here. Max Payne looks incredible, Age of Mythology and Myth III should be worthy successors to classic RTS games, Wolfenstein's back, Planetside looks set to out-Tribes Dynamix, and 3Drealms finally lifted the lid on Duke Nukem Forever again. And PC role playing fans can be as happy as ever - we've go Arcanum, Neverwinter Nights, Torn, and others are all coming by the end of the year. Well, that's it. Enjoy the rest of the weekend, and if you're going to a post-show party, don't get too drunk. --Marty Weisenburger wonders how many people have a headache from the noise.
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