First of all, I’m not at E3, I’ve been streaming the press conferences like many of you, I was going to post notes about all the individual press conferences, but as I watched them yesterday I was simply not impressed with 90% of the things that were shown. Microsoft spent far too much time pedaling Natal er.. Kinect… and frankly it seems like they’re doing all the right things with it to get the interest of people like my girl friend… the Kinect star wars had potential I guess, but it just looked like someone flailing aimlessly in an “on rails” type game.

I really liked the new 360 hardware though, if it were “whisper quiet” like they say it is, I’d strongly consider it. And the combat in Metal Gear Solid Rising looked amazing, Raiden’s sword was cutting through pillars causing balconies to drop on baddies heads… you could chose the orientation of his swing using a circular reticle on the screen which was used to create some incredibly impressive dismemberment, and some watermelon slices… I’m all of a sudden looking forward to that game.

EA was spewing more 3D at us than I would have liked, but Crysis 2 gameplay looked cool. I had my doubts about Bulletstorm, but it seemed to be as advertised “fast paced action with a wink and a smile”. I can really get behind an over the top action game that doesn’t take itself so seriously (ala duke nukem/serious sam)… Need for Speed Hot Pursuit courtesy of Criterion (of Burnout fame), sounds like a great pairing to me, I’ll be looking forward to more info on that one. They showed people playing Medal of Honor, but there was so much footage of peoples thumbs that I didn’t really get to see what was going on in the game. I mean, does anyone ever actually glean any insight from looking at someones thumbs while they’re playing video games? it was the stupidest thing I’d ever seen especially because they kept going back to thumb shots as if 1 wasn’t enough “yes! these people really ARE playing video games!”… com’on guys…

Ubisoft was disappointing, they introduced laser tag… and some heart sensor thing (Nintendo is going to be maaaaaaad). They showed some Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood but I’ve been burned by that franchise before so I’m quite skeptical at this point. They re-demonstrated the Kinect fitness game that looked like it might be ok if you’re into that thing. The also demo’d a new Driver but they were talking about shifting in and out of the car you’re in, to other cars, and mildly hinted on some sci-fi type in a comma story line shit… I dunno, it’d be interesting to check out a demo at least.

Nintendo and Sony keynotes today, I’m hoping for better or this e3 could be pretty disappointing.