Well, that was certainly an interesting show… wasn’t it? Interesting in the fact that is passed without almost nothing interesting happening at all. Which I suppose is in some ironic way interesting, though personally I’m not that surprised. Ever since the ESA decided to re-tool the show’s format and not only exclude thousands and thousands of fans but also decide which journalists get to go people have wondered about the viability of the show.

While in attendance last year I spent most of the show thinking the same thing myself. I mean, it was empty, sterile and boring. It was also spread all over Santa Monica and made it a goddamn nightmare to get from place to place. Luckily they fixed that problem and brought it back to the Los Angeles Convention Center but they made an even more detrimental mistake… they moved the show from May to July, thereby guaranteeing that we’d see no new important announcements. By July all these companies have their holiday plan in motion, and there’s no way in hell they’re going to wait until the middle of July to drop a bomb on us.

Watching those press conferences nearly put me to sleep, and I left before two of them finished. With the exception of Final Fantasy coming to the 360 and the Netflix thing, we barely heard anything new worth hearing… unless you count that dumb fucking You’re in the Movies game for the Xbox. Nintendo talked about how much money they made and Animal Crossing: City Folk is apparently how Nintendo plans on satisfying the core market. Sony had a ton to talk about but we knew almost of it going in. They launched the video service, which is cool and all, but not exactly jaw-dropping.

And for the record, I realize it’s probably easier to get work done without so many tertiary people there (i.e. the fans that snuck in a’la old E3) but guess what, getting rid of them not only got rid of the excitement… you got rid of thousands of people that would’ve given you more word-of-mouth than any blog. My first E3 I flew out and went just as a fan, not as a journalist. And when I got back I constantly got into conversations talking about what I saw and how excited I was for this or that. As they say, you can’t buy publicity like that.

Nowhere was this more obvious than at the press conferences. All 3 of them had pauses built in for applause, and while there was some polite clapping here and there…. a room full of journalists aren’t going to scream and yell. The people that do that aren’t welcome anymore.

I’m starting to believe that E3 is not only a shadow of it’s former self, it’s on life-support. I don’t think the companies put much stock into it’s importance anymore, and figure the show isn’t worth wasting a big announcement on. Obviously I could be wrong, but just look at Bungie. They were supposed to have an announcement and pulled it at the last minute, saving it for a better time.

Now you can certainly counter-argue about specific titles, and there are certainly things coming down the pike to be excited about. Left4Dead, Gears 2, Mirror’s Edge, Resistance 2, etc. But how much of it had we seen or heard about already?

With the numerous defections of companies out of the ESA, I don’t think I’m alone in my assumption. The very members of the ESA seem to feel the same way.

One of my biggest gripes about Nintendo this generation has been the complete lack of Pikmin. It’s the best IP they’ve introduced in the past decade and couldn’t have been more perfectly suited to the Wii and DS. Yet somehow, there hasn’t been a peep about a new version. There hasn’t been a peep… until now.

As reported on Kotaku;

At tonight’s E3 2008 Nintendo Developer Roundtable, Shigeru Miyamoto quickly and casually confirmed that a new Pikmin title is under development. His words? “We’re making Pikmin.” The long version of that answer, when asked if the team was planning on revisiting that particular franchise was far more verbose.

“We continue investigating all types of games,” Miyamoto responded. “When it’s time to announce such a title, I’ll announce it.” Then he did. “We’re making Pikmin.”

Nintendo is quickly proving to be an idiot savant at E3. Their moment in the spotlight was full of non-information, but as the show goes on more and more fantastically exciting tidbits keep slipping out.

Man-o-man talk about violent… and this is on a Nintendo system?? Easily one of the most unique-looking games on the horizon, the stark black and white make the blood look all the more visceral. And there are buckets of the stuff. Buckets.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Mad World, and this below clip just kinda reinforces what we’ve already seen. Still, looks cool.

Never one to let a perfectly good franchise lie too long without a sequel Activision announced plans to release Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion. According to Xbox 360 Fanboy the big catch this time around is the ability to fuse different super powers together to create your own Super Frankenstein.

I know around these parts we’re all big fans of co-op play and the first Ultimate Alliance delivered on that in spades. The Gold Edition of that game is definitely worth picking up and giving a spin with some friends, either offline or on. We’ll keep our eye on this one and let you guys know more when we do!

I’m a little behind the times, so don’t spoil anything for me — but as I write this I’ve just finished watching the Nintendo press conference and I’m none too impressed. Sure GTA: Chinatown and WiiSports Resort have some potential, but overall I’d rank this one right up there with yesterday’s Microsoft show. Actually — it was even worse.

Why? Because as much as Microsoft didn’t have anything to offer, at least they didn’t let me down.

WiiMusic is something that was teased at E3 two years ago when the Wii debuted, and it looked like it could be fucking phenomenal. The idea of conducting and creating your own music and playing rhythm games with the wiimote sounded too good to be true. And from the mind of Miyamoto? How could it fail?

It’s important to remember that these are just my impressions from the press conference. As time goes on a lot could happen that could put egg on my face for this post. As it stands now though WiiMusic appears to be nothing more than air guitar for dozens of instruments with no real creativity, challenge, or preset goals in front of you. There’s no carrot on the stick.

And yes — they all looked like assholes demoing it. Miyamoto games always have great stories behind them that seem to start “One afternoon I was…” Pikmin for example, started “one afternoon I was working in my garden.” I can see how WiiMusic would go: “one afternoon I was playing Guitar Hero and thought about how much better it would be if there was no guitar and no point.”

Congratulations Miyamoto, you may not be infallible after all.

With all the hype of big announcements, leaks and speculation it makes sense that it’s also a good time to slip in some bad news here and there. The company that was founded with a bunch of folks who created Warcraft 2, Diablo and Starcraft has been forced to shut down and send its employees home with 30 days of pay directly out of the pockets of its executives.

This news comes as little surprise when you realize that the studio’s main attraction, the Diablo-esque dungeon crawler Hellgate: London, was almost completely a failure on nearly every level. Personally, I really wanted to love this game and when it worked, I had a lot of fun with it. Unfortunately the game forced a BSOD on my computer every time I opened my inventory. That was frustrating enough to walk away from the game forget that I had it installed.

The fate of Hellgate: London and the highly anticipated free MMO Mythos are up in the air as the rights to those IPs are owned by a bank. We’ll have to wait and see what happens in the coming weeks.

There’s been a lot of talk about Mega Man 9 and where you’ll be able to play it. First it was WiiWare exclusive. Then it wasn’t. Then it was again. Then it wasn’t. Now courtesy of the official trailer coming out of E3 it looks like we can confirm that it will appear on WiiWare, Live Arcade and the PlayStation Store.

Yeah, this news has been out for a couple of days — but hey — it gave me an excuse to post this kick ass trailer. Part of me wants to hate this one, but seeing MM9 in action (how cool is the elephant??) keeps my loins at their moistest.