E3 has begun!
Wednesday May 12, 2004 at 1:28 am | Filed under Gaming
It’s that time of year when all the crazy game news comes out! We already found out about November 9th being Halo 2 day, but what would Tuesday bring? A lot.
I watched both the Microsoft and Sony pre-show presentations. Microsoft’s Xbox presentation was a bit more appealing to me mostly because it was a lot more fun. Sony was blowing their own horn (as they should) all through the thing about sales and numbers and it was just a big pat on the back powerpoint deal. Microsoft took the the less stuffy “we’re gamers just like you” approach which worked, I think.
I suppose I was a little let down that the game I’m most anticipating on the PS2, Gran Turismo 4 — which also comes out in November, was only briefly mentioned. While Halo 2 was fully demonstrated in it’s multiplayer mode, and looked great in the Xbox show. Sony had some good news in that it has dropped the price of the PS2 (with the hard drive and the network adapter no less) to $149, which is the same price the Xbox (which comes with those same options) has been for a couple of months now. Sony’s show would have been better if they would have stopped yammering on about their new portable gameboy type deal. It’s cool and all, but it shouldn’t have taken up half the show.
Microsoft put their emphasis on the games. They talked about Xbox live and the new capabilities (web cams and voice chat and other bells and whisltes), building their library, and more “casual” games to win over a more diverse crowd (which Xbox surely needs to do). Then they showed this demo called “Crash” that I need to find a link to because it was freakin unbelievable. I’m not sure if this was actual gameplay footage they were showing, but if it was… holy moley. It had two fancy pants sports cars accelerate to top speed heading toward each other and BLAMMO! They hit and fly into a million pieces. Actual Body damage that was dependent on how the cars hit. But I can’t do it justice in words. You have to see this. They claim stuff like this is possible now that they’ve developed a new development standard called XNA that they’ll be using on both PCs and Xboxs. Ahh, here’s a link to the one with one car in it.
Microsoft Highlights:
Xbox still seems to have the combat games down. Their “Full Spectrum Warrior” looks to best Sony’s “SOCOM” in the online group warfare genre. And the obvious Doom 3 and Halo 2 are Xbox exclusives. An interesting tidbit was a game called Forza Motorsport that is being compared to the Gran Turismo series, I don’t think it’ll measure up in the end, but it’s got a damage model, which Gran Turismo has yet to employ. Xbox LIVE continues to grow, not sure if the features are all that exciting since you can do all that on a computer, but voice chat during gameplay and invitations are always a cool thing. I read this, but it still counts. ESPN 2k5 Football for the Xbox is no longer a port from the PS2. It’s been re-modeled from the ground up and will take advantage of a lot more than it did last year, so if you have both platforms, you may wanna go Xbox this year for this title.
Sony Highlights:
I don’t care if they only showed a few seconds of it, Gran Turismo 4 looks amazing and will be in my hands shortly after it’s released this fall. The Ratchet and Clank series get a new game and this one has some interesting multiplayer online options. There’s gonna be a new Final Fantasy game based on the characters in FF7, no footage was shown. The next Grand Theft Auto game will be called San Andreas (California themed) and will be exclusive to the PS2 this fall.
Comments are closed.