E3 2011 Day 0

It's the day before the main floor show begins but this when we find out the majority of the new information as the major companies hold press conferences. Today there is Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft and Sony. The tomorrow morning before the main floor opens is Nintendo.

Microsoft got everything started with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. I'm not really a Call of Duty fan, it's just not my type of game, but the graphics do look nice. Then there was the new Tomb Raider. I seen plenty of footage over the years but I've never actually played any of the Tomb Raider games. This new version is a reboot (it's happening in games now too!) re-telling the origin of Lara Croft. It looks interesting I might actually give this franchise a go this time around. New Mass Effect 3 footage looks excellent but there's not a lot of it. Voice commands in the XBox/Kinect version I'm not so sure about, but I'll be playing the PC version anyway. The rest of the Microsoft briefing was downhill from here. Like last years it's all too focused on the Kinect and XBox 360 exclusives. Ghost Recon will Kinect looked silly, Star Wars Kinect looked cheap and unresponsive, "Lightsaber ON!" LOL. The addition of You Tube to the XBox Live dashboard is probably a good thing though. On the other hand I have no need for a Halo 1 remake thanks.

EA were up next and was probably the most important to me. While EA do publish for all platforms they 're probably the biggest publisher in the PC sector. They opened with a Mass Effect 3 demo. It was longer than what was shown at Microsoft and is looking superb. At this point though I don't think I want to see much more. I'd rather experience it for the first time when I'm playing it and we now know that will be March 2012. EA/Bioware are also behind Star Wars: The Old Republic, another game I'm looking forward too. There's still not a lot of information about this and they're still being very vague about a release date. What has been shown though, is looking promising. Of course EA Sports had a large section but I have no interest in that. I'm not all that bothered about Need for Speed either. I do like the look of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning though but with big names like R.A. Salvatore, Todd McFarlane & Ken Rolston behind it can it live up to the hype? I'll certainly be keeping an eye on it. EA ended with a look at Battlefield 3. It's another war shooter which I'm not really interested in, but their new Frostbyte 2 graphics engine looks awesome.

I didn't expect much from Ubisoft and that turned out to be a correct assumption. Farcry 3 looked okay, as did Assassins Creed: Revelations. However other than that it was pretty uninspiring.

There is less crossover between the PS3 and the PC compared to XBox so I was less interested in what Sony had to offer in terms of games. Uncharted 3 looks ok but I've not played the others. The big Sony announcements where hardware related with their new 3DTV which has interesting split screen capabilities and of course the new handheld PlayStation Vita. However as a PC gamer and DSi owner, although they looked like interesting technology, I probably won't be buying them.