christiangamer

I was not there; except via the power of the internets.  Here’s a brief synopsis of some of the bigger announcements:

- Star Wars: The Old Republic will be the first MMO where the story is all up in the player’s face.  The game from Bioware will feature full voice acting for every playable and non-playable character in the game.  Yeah – that’s A LOT of voice-overs. The trailer that was shown for this game instantly evaporated any coolness and calmness I may have been wearing and my inner geek exploded to life…  If the trailer and the hands-on impressions I’ve seen are any indication – this game will bring Star Wars back to life to many a jaded Star Wars fan.  The word is that if you liked Knights of the Old Republic; you’ll love this.

- Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker was announced for the PSP; but a decidedly more monumental announcement was that a new game in the franchise called Metal Gear Rising (which is a Raiden game) is coming to Xbox 360 (gasp) and PS3.

- Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 is looking great in single-player mode, and features tons of snow in the level “Cliffhanger.”  No Multiplayer was shown that I am aware of (WHY?).

- God of War 3 is gross; and apparently is God of War in hi-definition (as in not much is different – but most fans won’t care).  And it’s really gross.

- Dante’s Inferno is gross; and apparently is God of War in hi-definition and on Xbox 360.  It features an action game based on a literary classic and it seems that some game journalists are worried that the blockbuster action title is trivializing its subject matter.  Pardon the skepticism but we’ll have to wait and see if Dante can play the role of angry-action-super-hero guy…  Plus I heard that the developer has included unbaptized infants in the evil monster line-up… Wait what?

- Nintendo’s press conference was the snoozer of the week.  While they did announce some exciting games (New Super Mario Bros. Wii – 4 players, a new Metroid game, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 were the big ones), they did it very slowly, with lots of words…  There was a fair amount of yawn-enducing bragging from Microsoft and Sony as well – but Nintendo excelled at it…

- Microsoft and Sony both showed off new motion-sensing technologies that they are working on – and both of them looked like they have great potential for the future.  MS’s Project Natal is camera-based and controller free; Sony’s ‘wiimote’ is very promising and they both looked like they actually work; which is a plus.  Speaking of plus; Nintendo also talked about new motion-sensing technology (Wii Motion Plus) which was also talked about last year at E for All.  Hmmm.

- Halo ODST was demoed; looked great.  Halo REACH was announced which would have to be a prequel to the first Halo and has it’s own novel to draw from HALO: Fall of Reach.

- Peter Molyneux showed off the downright freaky Milo – an artificially intelligent ‘game character’ that uses Microsoft’s Natal project to recognize real people in real time and talk and interact with them.  Amazing as it was; all kinds of scary sci-fi stories popped up in my head… Hal 9000, Skynet, SHODAN, the Matrix and WarGames anyone?

- Oh yeah, and there was this little announcement made about The Beatles: Rock Band game.  And it’s quite funny that the most awkward part of Microsoft’s press conference featured rock legends Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr being paraded around and obviously not knowing what they were doing there or talking about…

There were so many games mentioned at the show that it’s very difficult to absorb the amount of info that has been circling around.  I’m gonna try and make a list of the ones that I think will be noteworthy… But for now I need to simply conclude that 2009 and 2010 will be a lot like 2008 – great years for gamers…