The summer season is in full force and once again another Electronic Expo Event has come and gone. For those keeping count, this was the 16th expo to take place and it was held at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Once again, we got a chance to see the heavyweights like Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft show off what new surprises they have in store for the video game fans. Nintendo gave us our first introduction to the Nintendo 3DS which is Nintendo’s brand new 3D powered portable gaming device. Sony spoke more about their plans to advertise the playstation Move and also discussed their intentions to create a brand new paid-subscription service for the playstation network called ‘Playstation Plus’. Microsoft would not be left out of the sensor discussion as they hyped their own user-sensory device – Microsoft Kinect. All the major developers were on hand and they showcased the latest games to come out this holiday season as well as some new surprises which won’t be on store shelves for another year or two. Here’s a few of the games that caught our eye at the event…

-Rage is a first person shooter from id software. The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world after an Asteroid crashes down and kills everything in sight. The survivors of the crash are humans who hid in pods buried deep beneath the ground and have now awaken to find themselves in a desert-like atmosphere. Of course, what would a post-apocalyptic world be without mutants as the enemies trying to kill all of the humans. This game will be running on a brand spanking new game engine called id Tech 5. Unlike other first person shooters, this game will feature a strong racing element to the game as the developers worked hard on trying to add racing combat as a main plot element in the game. Gamers will be able to drive dune buggys and also try to kill each other online with vehicles as the racing will be a strong multiplayer component of the game as well.
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The video game industry is a billion dollar business. For every great video game, there are 10 bad ones that are left sitting on store shelves or are tossed into the bargain bin and are never to be heard from again. The way in which we interact with video games has drastically changed as well. The old method of buying video games was to simply head on over to your local retailer, purchase the game, pop the cartridge or disc into your machine and begin to play the game. Nowadays, games have become more complicated with larger instruction manuals and the game aren’t ever really finished thanks to new updates from developers. Some new innovations such as the internet have allowed gamers to try and beat each other’s high scores or allow them to play against each other in competitive battlegrounds. Other new video game trends have  not been as kind and are only increasing the frustrations and anxiety of video game users to the point of an almost certain backlash. Here, we take a look at a few bad gaming trends that we hope are modified for the better or are completely annihilated in the near future.

-The first bad trend on our list is an obvious choice to any person that has ever played a video game before. A linear game forces gamers to follow only one path when trying to finish a video game. Some examples might include invisible walls where gamers see an interesting area on a map but aren’t allowed to go and explore that area since the video game developers didn’t make that area an active part of the map and don’t want the video game developer to venture off from the task that they’re supposed to complete. Video game testers are often left shaking their heads when they need to write down about being stuck in a glitched wall or can’t explore a part of the world that is inaccessible to them. It can be very frustrating when a user has difficulty trying to find something in a game that is obvious to the developers but isn’t as clear for the user. We are proud to say that many video game developers are trying to open worlds up  that will allow you to explore different parts of the game without being punished if you go offtrack a bit. Still, this is an issue that pops up year after year and can be quite frustrating for a gamer and take them out of the experience of the game.
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We refused to write a recap of E3 2008 as we felt that it was simply a rehash of E3 2007 without much fanfare. We were glad to see that E3 2009 went back to the basics with more of a large-scale event compared to the previous two years where they stripped much of what made E3 fun out of the event. The games were always present like usual as well as more booth babes which is never a bad thing at an E3 Expo. E3 2009 was a great year for hardware device add-ons as we saw numerous hardware gadgets at the show including the introduction of the motion sensing device known as Project Natal from Microsoft as well as the Wii Motion Plus addition for the Nintendo Wii. Sony introduced their new PSP Portable device called ‘PSP Go’ and there was plenty of games now taking advantage of hardware additions including the new Guitar Hero ‘DJ Edition’ which includes a turntable device and Tony Hawk’s new skateboarding video game which will include a skateboard to use while playing the game.

Nintendo also had a booth showcasing some more stuff for their Wii Fit brand but we don’t think showcasing exercise equipment to a bunch of overweight reporters was the best marketing campaign for the company and hope to see the device being marketed more in places where people might actually use one like at the gym. It wouldn’t be an E3 if we didn’t talk about some great new games that are on the horizon and luckily for us there was some solid games at this year’s event. Here’s a quick rundown of 5 games that we expect will do well this holiday season.

-It’s not too often that the words ‘Batman’ and ‘Video Game’ get people excited but it’s looking like we may finally have a great Batman game on our hands. The reason that movie video games have done poorly in the past is that developers have often been given limited development time in order to release the video game at the same time as the movie’s release date. This video game has no story arc with any Batman movie and was therefore given the proper development time that it deserved in order to make the game better. It’s a pretty simple plot. The Joker fakes being captured and sent to the asylum only to lock Batman in Arkhym with every single bad guy that he’s helped to capture in the first place. The game features some beat em up action as well as some stealth and plenty of gadgets to play around with. The PS3 version will even allow you to play as the Joker so there’s an extra incentive for all those PS3 owners to pick up the game and play it on the PS3.
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This year marked the first year that the E3 Expo would be in Santa Monica and not at the Los Angeles convention center in LA. The switch came at the request of game publishers and developers who felt that they were devoting too much of their time and money trying to one-up each other at each event and not spending nearly as much time focusing on finishing the development of their games. This year’s event would mark the first of many future events which would be more subdued and not as flashy or spectacular as in year’s past. This would mean no booth babes, no flashy lights or loud noises and tighter restrictions on who would be allowed to attend the event. Based on the compilation of opinions that we’ve read from insiders in the gaming industry; they felt that this year’s event was better for publishers and developers to market their games which were a little more polished than in previous years but were annoyed about having to walk long distances to get from game booth to game booth which were separated between a Santa Monica airplane hangar and the hotels surrounding it nearby.Others still wish that the event went back to its roots and kept all the things that were mentioned above which made the event such a success. Of course, games will always be the focus at an E3 Event and this year was no exception with some truly groundbreaking games. If you read our 2006 recap, you will have already noticed that a lot of the games from last year returned again this year in an almost completed format then what we saw from them before. Rather than repeat ourselves, we’ll show you a few of the games that weren’t previously shown on the floor from last year’s event and give you our opinion on what we’ve thought about those games so far (This year’s list is in no particular order).

Killzone 2

-We included Killzone 2 in our 2006 list but didn’t talk much about the game since all we had was a movie trailer to speak of. Well, that movie trailer was no movie and from all indications is the actual game play footage which is looking pretty sweet at the moment. The opening demo level features the same game play footage that was featured in the trailer where you and some army buddies get thrown into a hot zone to start the game off with explosions and killings all around you. It seems that weather will be a big focus in this year’s game with either rain/snow playing a factor during game play but we still don’t have many details to go on just yet. Seeing as this is one of Sony’s big titles we expect big things from this game when it finally makes its way to the PS3.

Starcraft 2

-It’s taken nearly a decade for a sequel to this game to finally be in development. We don’t think that the fans will mind at all since they’re still loving the original with millions of fans lining up to play the original at Blizzcon every year. The game features human Terrans, the Zerg aliens, and the Protoss in a battle for space supremacy. Many fans consider this to be the greatest Real-Time Strategy game of all time and while the stakes to repeat that success are pretty high; we feel that the game will meet the fans expectations as Blizzard has yet to pull a stinker with one of their famed franchises so far. (more…)

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We’ve done 2/3 next generation video game systems so far and finally we complete our video game system review with the winner of the past video game generation: The Playstation 3. It’s easy to see why the Playstation system did so well before. It came out at a time when consumers were looking to purchase affordable DVD players and had easy programming for video game programmers which helped to create a large amount of high quality video game characters and franchises. Since then, the XBOX 360 has stepped in early trying to beat Sony to the punch when it comes to high end technical gaming with new technology and strong graphics based video games. Let’s start with the highs and lows as usual.

Highs:
-Blue Ray Drive.
-Backwards Compatible with old playstation games.
-High end hardware makes it future-proof.
-High end graphics with 1080p capabilities.
-HDMI Input.

Lows:
-System is massive
-Price.
-No force feedback controller.
-System smudges a lot.
-Different price structures are missing certain key elements.
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