E3 2008 has passed and now we have plenty of games to discuss about! I’ll just recap here what were the conferences about and linking some videos, for the full coverage i recommend you the official site.

Microsoft

Microsoft did exactly what everyone would expect from a videogame expo: showing off games. Not many new games announcements with Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 and Fable 2 but everyone of these titles had a great gameplay video and most of them are coming out this year.

The shock came with Square-Enix announcing Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox360 with a glorious HD trailer way better than the one they showed last year. Armors, swords, chicks, badass bullies and ships in the sky like it’s always have been. Poor sony fanboys. I think they feel like Nintendo fanboys when the new Banjo & Kazooie was announced as well.

For their system, Microsoft though of a new dashboard, a bit complicated at first but really enjoyable, and a new (really?) network community, based on full-body avatars like Miis or the PSN that will allow users to share every media they have on their Xbox HDDs. FacebookLiveBunchofcommunities FTW!

Nintendo

From the Industry-leader since 1986 you’d expect tons of new games for their fans but it wasn’t quite what they prepared. I’m sure they have got big hits for the next year but for now we know they’re still targeting the family with their games (you can’t say the Famicom was a bad idea). First, they showed a snowboard game for the Wii Balance Board.

Following the guitar hero stream and aiming to the whole musical audience Miyamoto presented WiiMusic, a game that allows you to “create” your music, instead of just following the notes on coloured bars (a drummer performed solo with incredible precision. I can’t guess how he managed to use the nunchuck like that).

The next news was a WiiSports follow-up: WiiSports Resort. It’ll feature wiimote-based sports like his precursor but set on a tropic isle. What really changes the approach to the game is a new peripheral for the Wiimote that increases his accuracy in detecting rotation and target position. Many of us though that a “slice-for-real” Zelda is on the way because of this.

Another peripheral was announced: a microphone to be placed on top of the sensor bar to communicate worldwide while playing the new Animal Crossing: city folk. yes, voice chat is finally coming to the Wii but I don’t think it’s a good thing to let anybody hear your mother screaming “Dear, dinner’s ready! Your soup’s chilling!”. I want a headset. Period.

Sony

Sony just presented his lineup. Sony fanboys are the most certain about their future at the moment and at least they know what to save money for. A big bunch of games is coming for the three Sony platforms at the moment. Here’s a quick list with video links:

God of War 3, Killzone 2, Little Big Planet, Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, LocoRoco 2, Patapon 2, Resistance: Retribution, Super Stardust Portable, Fl0wer and Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest For Booty.

We don’t own systems but we know our business

Square

Square conference was unusual. Yoshinori Kitase and Shinji Hashimoto sat at a table and listened to the answers from the attendants about Final Fantasy XIII. I think this is also what a press conference is for

Final Fantasy XIII will be still developed for the PS3 first and then it’ll be ported to Xbox360. The game will require just one disk thanks to the blue-ray technology but we’re uncertain about Xbox360’s support at the moment. Currently there’s no footage but it’ll be available soon and the battle system will be and evolution of the classic ATB system.

Capcom

Lost Planet’s movie is on the way, featuring the producer of the first two Spiderman movies and the voice of Solid Snake. Capcom wants to continue its movie ports successes after the big hits Resident Evil and…. Street Fighter (yes, they actually said that).

Megaman 9 (with pixelated graphics) is going to be released for the XboxLive, WiiWare and PSN. Am I the only one excited about this? Well… I like pixels…

Konami

Konami did the same as Sony, it showed its lineup for the year and let the images speak for themselves. In 2008 you’ll get Silent Hill: Homecoming, many DanceDance games and a couple of Castlevania for the Wii: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia and Castlevania: Judgment.

Sega

Another lineup list: Empire: Total War, Golden Axe: Beast Rider, Madworld, Samba de Amigo, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, Sonic Unleashed, Space Siege and Stormrise.

EA

New teasers, new demos and new games announced for EA: SimAnimals, Sims 3, Mirror’s Edge, Dragon Age: Origin and Left 4 Dead.

Out of time

Not mentioned during the E3 conferences or just before or after it we still have a couple of trailers that will make you wonder. Enjoy Wario Land: Shake It! and Mirror’s Edge animated story trailer. Sonic & the Black Knight and Pikmin 3 are also under development but we don’t have media at the moment.

Today Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, annouced a new entry in the Ds family. The Nintendo DSi is the response to the recently launched iphone. In fact, the DSi will have a 3 megapixel camera a SD card slot to save music of pictures, it’s thinner and it has wider screens. It’ll also benefit of a new DSWare service similar to WiiWare ant it’s connectivity with the Nintendo Wii will be enhanced. The downside are the removal of the GBA slot and a less durable battery.

Personally, I’d like to see which games are going to support these new features, because (as always) I’m not going to pay for something that doesn’t offer anything new compared to what I already have. Let’s hope for the rumored Metroid Dread or a new 2D, top-view, Zelda like Four Swords. Only time will tell.

Yesterday, or today, morning (depending on where you live) the annual Nintendo Media Summit took place in San Francisco. It was about an hour of release dates, sale data, and trailers. I’ll just list the release dates as they are, considering that there isn’t much we can do about it except saving up.

March 22 – Cave Story Wii
March 28 – Nintendo DSi XL
April 20 – Monster Hunter Tri
May 3 – Picross 3D
May 18 – Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
May 23 – Super Mario Galaxy 2
June 7 – Sin & Punishment: Star Successor
June 27 – Metroid: Other M

All dates are for American release. No european releases yet but if I am right, we should get them a week after.

Enough talking. Here’s the new Super Mario Galaxy 2 trailer, full of drilling and licking. I know you were waiting for this.

I’m still unsure about Metroid: Other M. The gameplay looks fun but the graphics just don’t do justice to the job Retro Studios did with the Prime series. I’ve been re-playing Metroid Prime Trilogy in these days and looking at the new screenshots doesn’t give me neither the “adventure” nor the “loneliness” Metroid always had. We’ll see. We definitely need more gameplay previews.

Time flies. It’s been almost a month after the last post already. I know I should have written this earlier but I had some exams to pass. I passed every one of them by the way and only three remain in October but I have the whole summer to work on those, between some Mario Galaxy and Metroid.

You may have read the latest news on game announcements at E3 but let’s recap, just to make sure what we’re going to buy and why.

Microsoft

Probably the most embarrassing conference I’ve seen, even worse than that Nintendo conference from 2009. Let’s face it, Kinect (Natal’s new name) is just an improved Eye toy and what they showed was a more multimedia box than a gaming console. Movies, Facebook integration and sport events aren’t that interactive when it comes to actually play. And about Skittles, I’m sure that the little girl enjoyed that part as much as we didn’t. You’ll see my comic on this later. There’s at least a really good news in the release of a new 360 model, with built-in wi-fi and larger HDD.

EA

Nice stuff, really. I’ve got a couple of friends overly excited about Battlefield Vietnam just for the lack of Carl Gustav and seeing Dead Space 2 in action with more quick time events was really a bang. I’ve been re-playing Dead Space lately after EA’s big sale on steam and I perfectly recall the adrenaline i felt the first time a drag tentacle grabbed me.

Crysis 2 is nearing completion and it has been optimized for slower machines while faster machines will star in Need for Speed: Hot pursuit featuring multiplayer police car chase.

Ubisoft

Ubisoft presented a handful of very interesting games, starting with Child of Eden, from Tetsuya Mizuguchi, and ending with Rayman Origins, passing by Assassin’s creed brotherhood. They also showed a new non-video-game with plastic guns and laser sensors that allows you to battle in your living room or set up checkpoint runs. I don’t know if you have ever seen this but in the 90’s there was a game called “Laser combat” sold with 2 guns and 2 chest sensors. It’s pretty much the same, even in the look.

The most interesting product is probably the UBIart Framework: a new in-house development engine. I hope they release it as free someday, like the Unreal Engine or Quake Engine.

Nintendo

Everyone that wasn’t expecting anything big after the leaks in the months before E3 got terribly shocked. Nintendo threw on screen a huge number of games for both DS, Wii and the new 3DS, finally unveiled. Goldeneye, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kid Icarus Uprising, Zelda Skyward Sword, Kirby Epic Yarn, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn and many more. I really can’t figure out precisely how much I’m going to spend within the next year.

My bad, I couldn’t see the Nintendo 3DS in action as you don’t get the 3d effect from videos but from what I’ve read it works like a window on another world. The black border around the screen helps to isolate the 3d image from the rest and your brain reads it independently. It sounds awkward but it’s possible if your eyes aren’t too close or too far from the screen and not tilted. With the amount of games revealed and awaiting us within the end of Nintendo’s financial year (March 2011) there’s no doubt they owned the show this year.

Sony

Sony’s motion control, named Move, is finally priced at $49.99 and supported by good games and not only tech demos, like Sorcery and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11. Media molecule’s Alex Evans unveiled a little more of Little Big Planet 2 and how it will be a platform for games and not just a platform game. I admire their intents but I feel that the LBP franchise would work way better on PC with external applications and a supportive community. Just look at how far Garry’s Mod made it.

The big bomb came with Gabe Newell, announcing that portal 2 will be released on PS3 too. I wonder what made him change his mind considering that coding forPS3 is actually time-consuming, despite his previous statements were jokes or not. Medal of Honor and Dead Space 2 went on the screens again with Dead Space Extraction as bonus playable with the PlayStation Move. The conference ended with a disturbing clown in an ambulance promoting a new Twisted Metal game.

The worst part was Kevin Butler, charging up the crowd  and mocking the products of other companies like Sony invented everything in gaming since the creation of PlayStation. That’s not something you do in front of people who probably owns every console on the market.