Okay, so the week isn’t even over yet, but they’ve announced some pretty cool things at E3. I’ve been browsing reports, and here are the items that jumped out at me.
- Project Natal
Project Natal for the XBox 360 seems to be taking the idea of the Wii remote and improving it by using a camera rather than a controller. Will it work? I don’t know. Holding your arms upright for long periods to steer a car using an invisible steering wheel could quickly get tiring. I guess I could envision it replacing a mouse interface on consoles, enabling RTS games to work better than they ever have by creating a Minority Report kind of interface. Also, maybe some kind of dance game that uses your whole body rather than just the dance pad.
- Mario Galaxy 2
Hooray! This is actually awesome. I loved Mario Galaxy, and I welcome more of the same. This game adds Yoshi, and Yoshi gets his own freaky power-ups to match Mario’s freaky power-ups.
- The Last Guardian
We’ve known for a while that Team Ico, who developed Ico, and then Shadow of the Colossus, has been working on another game. Today we found out that the game is The Last Guardian. It features stealth gameplay, which excited me quite a bit. There’s also some weird feline dragon thing.
- Left 4 Dead 2
In true Valve style, this game seems less a true sequel and more of an expansion on the original. Which is not a bad thing. New characters, new setting in New Orleans, and five new level maps. I wouldn’t be shocked to see new infected appear at some point.
- DSi photo sharing to Facebook
This fall, you’ll be able to share photos from your DSi directly to Facebook. Maybe no big deal to some people, but I’ve never owned a phone that had this capability. To me, it’s the future. There’s also a Facebook connect for XBox 360, but since I don’t own one, I find it to be no biggie.
I know there are things that I missed, but these were the things I saw that interested me the most.
I have a slightly different list of things I’m excited about
Natal does look very impressive, I’d like to give it a try. The motion stick thingy that Sony unveiled with their Eye camera looked cool too. I’d like to see some actual games using it.
Golden Sun DS has me all worked up to buy a DS. If you never played the originals on GBA you’re missing out on one of the best handheld RPGs ever.
PSP stuff galore. Gran Turismo, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy VII, Soul Calibur, Metal Gear: Peace Walker, Assassin’s Creed, LittleBigPlanet, Motorstorm, and many others. Jebus, how am I going to find time to play all of these? I wasn’t so excited by the PSP Go reveal, the form factor doesn’t appeal to me and I kinda like owning hard copies of my favorite games. No UMD= No yuo!
Last Guardian. Great to finally see more of Project Trico. I’m still trying to find an affordable copy of Ico and I’d like to play through it before this game comes out. I’m sure I have plenty of time.