E3 2010 Day 2

So late last night (UK time) was the Ubisoft press conference. They had a 'comedian' presenter who I didn't really like so not a good start. They've had a few knocks to their reputation this year with all the DRM issues. Unfortunately this conference didn't do a lot to repair it. They didn't really have anything to show that I'm interested in. There's Assassins Creed: Brotherhood & Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Solider which are the really big names which look nice for those types of game but they just don't appeal to me personally. There was Driver: San Fransisco a franchise I'd completely forgotten about but I do vaguely remember playing some of the first one years ago. Shaun White: Skateboarding not interested at all. The had more fitness stuff for the 360 Kinect system but that was basically a repeat of what was shown at the Microsoft conference. They had an odd Battle Tag laser game system with actual guns and sensors which seemed a little odd. Though I can imagine younger players being more interested in such things. Raving Rabbids had a really cool trailer but still not my type of game. One interesting thing they had was Mania Planet an content editor system which has possibilities.

Then today before the floor show starts were to final two major conferences. The first of which was from Nintendo. They started with the new Zelda game for Wii, Skyward Sword, which looks great. I've never actually played a lot of Zelda but I have watched a lot being played by other people, this one looks like it should be good installment. They had some more sports and mini-games with Mario Sports Mix and Wii Party which is typical Wii stuff and not very interesting. There was Just Dance 2 to which I will just say, No! Big news for a lot of people is a brand new version of GoldenEye, an old classic. I always played Perfect Dark more than GoldenEye in the past but this looks kind of cool. Disney Epic Mickey looks like an interesting concept for a new platformer but is Mickey Mouse really an important character anymore these days? Kirby Epic Yarn has a crazy cool art style though of course many people will say it's too cutesy. Nintendo's biggest news was of course the 3DS, the new 3D version of their handheld which can do 3D without glasses. A 3D handheld is not something they could easily show in a large auditorium so we've still not seen any game play for that. Hopefully there will be some write ups from the floor show about that tomorrow.

Finally there was the Sony conference. This was probably the best conference in terms of presentation but at the same time the least interesting to me as I don't own a PS3 or a PSP and I don't really plan to. They're heavily pushing the new 3D system to go with their 3DTV's but again they can't show that on the live web stream. They demoed the the Move system, PS3's answer to motion control. It actually looks like it's the most accurate of the three. I think I'll do a separate post about all the controllers another day. A lot of new PSP games had trailers but non which interested me. For new games there was Killzone 3 which I'm afraid just looks too generic. There was Sorcery for Move which actually looks quite fun. Portal 2 for PS3 was a big announcement but I'll be playing the PC version. Gran Tourismo 5 has been in development for a long time and has finally got a release date but as I've mentioned before I'm not bothered by racing games for the the most part. Sony's big secret this year was Twisted Metal a crazy car combat game. That's a sequel apparently but I don't remember ever seeing it before myself.

That's it for the conferences and new it's time for the floor show. Most of the news now is reviews and screenshots. That's where I'm more likely to find more information about the smaller or less famous games which I'm more interested in. Although I am a little surprised there was no mention of Dragon Age 2 at the EA conference but hopefully they'll have something about that at their booth.