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    E3: The Journey Kicks Off

    posted @ 7/11/2007 01:28:00 AM by Ninjasistah
    NinJaSistah here with the jump off of E3, and I have to say, it was interesting.

    If you don't know what E3 is, I'm not exactly sure why you are visiting this site as you are obviously not a gamer. Allow me to extend a branch of friendship to you. If you are a fan of Anime, think of E3 as you would AX. It is holy and to be cherished. Or at least it was, until the "invite only" revamp this year. That being said, you awesome readers and listeners made ESH popular enough to get invited to many of the festivities surrounding the new "exclusive" [in the not happy-time in the pants way] expo. Tonight's' fare dropped NinJa off in the land of Microsoft, and boy were they happy to see me. At least I think they were happy to see me, they lit up all green and whatnot.

    Anywho, I'm going off on a tangent and I have lots to share with you.

    The night started off cool. The venue was the Santa Monica High School drowned in the familiar neon green of the XBox brand and a kick-ass tent like thing that was setup to spew Microsoft folks onto the stage before the crowd. The whole idea was to show us in the crowd enough "cool" and "wicked" stuff [Peter Moore's words, not mine] knock our socks off. I personally had one sock knocked off of me, so they sorta did what they set out to do. Knocking a ninja's socks off is impressive, even if it's only a single sock. Digressing again. Before Peter comes out to speak, the massive screen that nearly engulfs center stage displays a "screensaver" for lack of a better term, that creates a nexus type of deal by connecting lines between random gamertags that float by. [I just want to say that my gamertag did float by on the screen and I took it as a personal shout out to me from Peter Moore and Shane Kim.] They definitely get an "A" from me in the "good ambiance" department. Hell, they gave me a butt cushion y'all!

    Normally this would be the part of the article where I recounted who came on in what order and what they said, quote the folks who obviously had been drinking the XB360 kool-aid a bit too much, and then piss and moan about not having E3 credentials. I would be well within my rights to do so. What I thought would be a better idea though was to share with you the few of the things that left lasting impressions on me, and what I took away from the night as a whole.

    Game numero "A" that got my juices flowing to the point that I thought I might be in need of a towel was Rock Band. Pandalicious and I have made no attempt to hide our lust, nay, obsession with Guitar Hero 2... so it shouldn't come as a surprise that Rock Band would be high on my "must have" list. What surprised me was the live demo the audience was treated to. Peter Moore himself suited up with the fine folks from Harmonix to play a song by the Hives I think, and it just rocked... the game, not so much Peter. Peter needs to work on his hammer-ons a bit. But the demo seemed to go off without a hitch. Well, Peter kept accidentally pausing the game, but it was forgivable, almost cute in a way. What struck me was how much of a "get together" game Rock Band potentially could be. If the peripheral controllers don't cost an arm and a leg to get at the same time as the game, I could really see people buying the whole set to host some impromptu jam sessions.

    Next up to bat was the trailer for a title that blatantly was going after the Mario Party people, Viva Pinata: Party Animals. It's a party game people. A party game based off of the "Viva Pinata animated series... in it's second year of broadcasting." The way that line was delivered it made me immediately think that MS Game Studios really wanted to distance this game from the existing Viva title on the XB360 as it did not do as favorably in sales as MS would have liked. It struck me as odd though. Viva didn't suck out loud. Those that did buy it completely enjoyed it, so why the need to declare the new titles affiliation with such an obscure TV show. One of the reviewers sitting beside me asked the guy to his right if it was really true that the cartoon was still on the air. Another reviewer in the row ahead of me didn't even know that there was a Viva cartoon series. Just odd.

    Lastly, what hit me were the missing demos. For all the talk about the new XB360 titles being delivered in 07, [and there are a shitload folks] it seemed to me that there was a huge lack of BioShock, DMC4, or even Fable 2 footage. There was about as much video evidence of the existence of these games in video we were treated to on average as there was for Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. Fable 2 is no small release for MS, and yet there wasn't even a section set aside to run the trailer we saw last year. I only know that BioShock exists because there was some pre-rendered video that did make it's way into a video montage that we saw. Because you gotta have-a MONTAGE!! But there was a longer clip for DW:Gundam in that same montage than footage of BioShock.

    But anyways, it's late and I'm sure you just want me to complete my thought and go to bed, so I will. [You guys are awfully pushy tonight.] I kinda left the gathering tonight feeling as though I had been sitting in on a state of the union address. A lot of information was put in front of me. Some demos worked while others had some technical difficulties. That said, important person after important person came out onto the stage to tell me that these games were good and these games were cool, and that millions of people were going to want to play these games, and I'm sure that they are right, but the lack of focus on the other games that are known "blockbuster" titles for MS gave me pause. Being surrounded by a gaggle of gamers like myself it was hard to not get caught up and drink the kool-aid my damn self, but I think I made it through day one with my integrity still in tact.

    It's not like they gave me a free XBElite to replace my busticated XB360 or anything cool like that.

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