Technologizer

A collective haze fell over the Los Angeles Convention Center on the last day of E3. No one can handle any more neon lights, throbbing subwoofers, booth babes and shoot-em-ups, yet we continued because there was always one more game to try.

I’m nursing a binge video gaming hangover that has nothing to do with alcohol, but here’s what I remember:

Brink: In a “hands-off” presentation, we saw an ambitious first-person shooter that lets you change player classes and objectives mid-level. The ability to hurdle over obstacles by holding a button is promising, but there’s much work to be done before next year’s projected release.

Brutal Legend: The 30-minute demo included hacking away at cultists, driving in a hot rod and lots of humor. I’m on board if warring publishers can settle their differences.

CrimeCraft: Part of the MMO shooter wave, this game combines twitchy action with leveling up and character customization, with players organizing into gangs. Still, I’m not convinced that the “persistant worlds” of CrimeCraft and other games are a vast improvement over simple menus.

God of War III: I do not understand the fuss over this game. Production values don’t get any better, but isn’t this just your average blood-and-guts beat-em-up?

Huxley: This game made a splash years ago by promising persistent-world massive multiplayer shooting, but only the shooting part was playable at E3. The action itself is standard; it’s what we didn’t see that I’m curious about.

MAG: Organizing strategy in a 256-player game doesn’t happen in a 10-minute demo. I liked the sprawling battlefield, even if I only saw a portion of it.

Saboteur: Art direction shined in this hands-off demo. Muted grays of Nazi-occupied France give way to brilliant color in areas where resistance is growing. I’m reserving judgment on the mix of stealth and action.

Saw: The movie franchise was all about escaping sinister death traps, so this idea is long overdue. Puzzles — such as escaping a razor-laden head clamp and digging through drug addicts’ needles to find a hidden object — show promise, but the hand-to-hand combat looks weak.

I will now attempt to navigate a PSP Go hands-on article without using any puns related to locomotion.

Let’s start with the specs, which were known even before Sony officially announced the new model. It’s 40 percent lighter and 50 percent smaller than the existing PSP-3000, the company says. A 16 GB flash drive is on board, and there’s a Memory Stick Micro slot for expansion up to 16 GB. There’s no UMD drive, so games and videos are downloaded directly onto the device.

Maybe it’s the lightness, but the PSP Go miraculously works despite its small size and cramped layout. The controls slide down from the bottom half of the device, so holding it is decidedly different than grasping the sides of the PSP-3000, and a bit awkward at first.

Still, the Go rests comfortably in the hands. Keep in mind that the ones I tried were firmly shackled to a kiosk (seen below), with a metal guard in place to keep the controls open, so I couldn’t hold the device in different ways or get a true sense of the weight. Even so, a nearby PSP-3000 was markedly heavier.

The analog pad, which is now depressed into the handheld’s surface, is easy to reach, even if the thumb irritation from using it hasn’t gone away since the last model. Face buttons can be pressed with accuracy, and triggering the two shoulder buttons required no extra effort despite resting on different parts of my fingers.

I played LittleBigPlanet and Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier during my time with the Go. The console has a smaller screen than the PSP-3000 — 3.8 inches compared to 4.3 inches, respectively — but I didn’t have any trouble discerning what was happening.

As for software, the PSP Go uses the same media bar as the PSP-3000. Kotaku reports that Sony is working on a solution for PSP-3000 owners to transfer their UMD games and wants to have something in place before launch.

Like any handheld, your mileage may vary in the comfort department. Most of what I heard from other reporters is positive, but gripes with the design are inevitable; it’s all a matter of taste. If the $250 price tag doesn’t scare you, I’d still recommend trying the device instead of impulse buying on October 1.

If the banner covering the top of the Los Angeles Convention Center is any indication, Brütal Legend is a big deal. For Activision, which once held the game’s publishing rights, its the subject of a lawsuit.

The AP reports that Activision is suing Brütal Legend developer Double Fine to “stop the release” of the game. The publisher claims it has sunk roughly $15 million into the project and still has a valid publishing contract.

The issue is, of course, knottier than that. Brütal Legend was part of the line-up Activision dropped during the Activision-Blizzard merger, after it acquired Sierra in 2008. Electronic Arts reportedly took the reins as publisher, and here at E3 the game is a top critical pick.

Starring the vocal talents of Jack Black, Brütal Legend follows a roadie who winds up in a mythical Age of Rock. Tim Schafer, who created The Secret of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango, among other critical darlings, is the game’s creative director.

The game showed a lot of promise in my hands-on time. It’s more action-oriented than Schafer’s classic adventure games, but I’m told that a lot of genres come into play, including the puzzle-solving that put Schafer’s earlier work on the map.

So I’m hoping Activision doesn’t prevail in this lawsuit. When it was rumored in February that Activision would cause trouble, EA offered some fighting words: “We doubt that Activision would try to sue,” the company said. “That would be like a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy.”

That’s what it looks like from here, with Brütal Legend earning a nomination from IGN for Best of Show. Expect EA to defend its hot property.

Press conferences are exciting and all, but E3 is no good if you can’t indulge in all the games everyone’s waiting to play — and all the sensory overload that comes with them.

Here’s what I tried today:

The Beatles: Rock Band: This is just what you’d expect. Music gaming meets rock legends, with fancy peripherals and vocal harmonies. I played guitar on “I Am the Walrus” and contributed the “Woo!” in the chorus, all while trying to admire the psychedelic background images.

Bit.Trip Core: The retro music game doesn’t have the immediate appeal of Bit.Trip Beat, which took Pong to the extreme (download it through WiiWare if you haven’t). Still, the act of matching controller pad presses to an onslaught of incoming dots mesmerizes the senses.

Fight Night Round 4: The last game made me realize there’s more to video game boxing than Punch-Out. Round 4 feels even more like a real boxing match, with smoother and faster slugfests. Droplets of sweat on the boxers have even more detail.

Red Steel 2: After a cool reception to the first game, Red Steel is banking on the Wii MotionPlus for redemption. The game itself is an enjoyable first-person hack-and-shoot, but I can’t get over how a flick of the wrist isn’t adequate for sword attacks. MotionPlus makes you work.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 (Wii): Forget golf, I wanted to use the game’s MotionPlus capabilities to play frisbee golf. Backhand and overhead tosses worked as expected, and the strength of the throw really makes a difference. And golf? It was fun, but you can still shoot one-handed.

WET: It’s popcorn shooting in the style of Kill Bill and The Matrix. See: Stranglehold.

Wii Fit Plus: Suprisingly, I enjoyed myself, but thats because of a distinct focus on entertainment this time around. There’s snowball fighting, ball-sorting (which works by simultaneously shifting weight and tipping the Wii Remote) and my personal favorite, the obstacle course, which has you running and jumping in place.

When NCsoft showed me a demo of their soon-to-launch, massively multiplayer fantasy game, Aion, at the E3 show, I saw a lot of reworked themes common to this fairly mature genre: A pair of at-odds races, each vying to wipe the other from their common home planet; user interface elements familiar to anyone who’s played any of NCsoft’s titles; and a persistent world that’s as dangerous as it is beautiful.

But what I didn’t expect was a discussion about the game’s launch in Asia, which happened some months ago, and how rapidly the game has caught on and expanded in China.

The game’s International Development Manager (international, that is, for South Korea-based NCsoft), Yong Taek Bae, explained that the game’s initial launch broke all kinds of records. On Aion’s Korean launch day, beginning at 6am local time, when the company switched on servers and began allowing paying customers to join the game, 11,000 players signed on each hour. By noon, the company had to turn on four additional servers — in addition to the 21 running at launch–to accommodate the crowd. Each server is capable of supporting 7000 simultaneous players.

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In the world of competitive videogaming, speed is everything. So Iron Will Technologies, a gaming hardware maker, decided to bring in some pros to show off its one-of-a-kind input device, the Peregrine. The device is similar to a glove control device currently under development for the military, according to Iron Will CEO Brent Baier.

The left-hand glove is made of thin, stretchy mesh material, and its most immediately obvious feature is the Tron-like circuit traces embedded in the fabric. Essentially, the traces inside the glove act as electronic circuits, called Touch Points. Players can close a circuit by making contact between a touch point and one of three grounding spots — two on the thumb, and one planted across the palm. The first four fingers have five touch points, and the pinky finger has two. A magnetically-connected USB dongle attaches the glove to a Windows PC.

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On the floor of E3, gamers are getting a chance to try a stereoscopic 3D video game for Xbox 360.

Invincible Tiger by Blitz Games is, ironically, a 2D fighting game in the style of classics like Kung Fu and Double Dragon, but with the help of 3D glasses and a compatible HDTV, the various planes of artwork suddenly become much more distinct.

I caught up with Blitz Games’ Chief Technical Officer Andrew Oliver, who laid out where he thinks the technology is going and how his company will be involved.

Basically, the kinds of graphics-intensive games that dominate the show floor are a ways off from working with 3D glasses and TVs. That’s because graphic artists usually “cheat” with special effects like smoke and fire, drawing them in two dimensions. When playing in 3D, the trick becomes more noticeable, in a bad way.

Blitz Games is starting small with Invincible Tiger, which might see a release in the third quarter, and hopes to work up to feature-length games next year. But even then, the studio will stick to cartoon-style games that go easy on special effects. There’s a reason why films are also sticking to that art style, Oliver said.

Of course, there’s also the issue of bringing the 3D peripherals into the mainstream. Glasses and a special TV aren’t cheap, and not all manufacturers are on board. Even then, they’re all working with different standards, and Blitz has to spend about two weeks making each television compatible with its games.

Personally, I want to see this technology integrated with the motion tracking cameras we’ve seen from Microsoft and Sony. Invincible Tiger was cool to look at, but it’s hard to shake the idea that it’s just window dressing. But moving around in a 3D space to play a 3D game? That would just be awesome.

Oliver’s excited about that, too. When I asked him if he’d be interested in working with motion tracking, his eyes lit up. “Absolutely,” he said.

In my mind, I was readying a trend piece on how this year’s E3 was all about broad appeal from the big three console makers. That plan was scrapped after Sony’s press conference, which was tailor-made for the college male demographic.

This was no more evident than in Sony’s motion control demo. The unnamed project used a handheld device with buttons, like the Wii, but tracked it in 3D space with a camera, like Microsoft’s Project Natal.

But while Nintendo continues to push its family-friendly image, and Microsoft strives to prove that Natal will make the Xbox 360 accessible to all, Sony’s tech demo included first-person shooting and swordfighting. Movement on the screen synced perfectly with the demonstrator’s actions, even as he walked around with a virtual gun in hand. To be fair, Dr. Richard Marks, who presented the technology, said Sony’s tech will afford casual experiences as well, but he also dedicated a fair amount of time to what he called “gamers’ games.”

It was a rough demo — far less polished than what Microsoft showed yesterday — but Sony Computer Entertainment of America CEO Jack Tretton said it will launch in the Spring of 2010.

Sony also gave lots of screen time to shooters and action games, including Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Assassin’s Creed 2, God of War III and MAG, which boasts 256-person online multiplayer.

The company also thrilled the crowd by announcing Final Fantasy XIV (the 13th game is still in production) and showing a trailer for The Last Guardian, by the makers of the critically-acclaimed Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Both will be PS3 exclusives.

For balance’s sake, Sony tried to fit in a couple of plugs for a Hannah Montana bundle with a pink PSP. It drew guffaws from the audience at every reference.

First, the bad news: Sony’s Playstation 3 will continue to sell for $399.

Next, the sort of bad news: the PSP Go, a smaller, lighter handheld dubbed “the worst-kept secret of E3″ by Sony’s Kaz Hirai, will cost $249 — far more than a Nintendo DS or an iPhone.

But hey, maybe the handheld will pay for itself if its 16 GB flash drive and downloadable games prove cheaper than the UMD purchases. Sony didn’t say, so we’ll have to wait until the October 1 release date gets closer for details.

The PSP Go announcement complimented a lengthy segment in Sony’s press event on the Playstation Portable. The company announced a handful of big-name games — already known about, thanks to that leak — and stressed that 2009 would be a big year for the console, which lags behind the Nintendo DS with roughly 50 percent less worldwide sales.

We saw videos of a PSP Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, plus mentions of LittleBigPlanet, SOCOM and Jak & Daxter games for the handheld. Sony also said that its video service will be available directly from the PSP, meaning users won’t have to download the content onto a PC first.

Importantly, Hirai stressed that support for the current PSP model won’t go away. “Let me very clear, the PSP Go will not replace the PSP-3000 or the UMD,” he said. With the PSP-3000 selling for $150, Sony’s set up a tough decision for people looking to buy in.

Nintendo didn’t look like a trendsetter at its E3 press event today. Instead, we got an earful of cockiness.

The Wii and the Nintendo DS have the broad appeal that Sony and Microsoft can’t capture, and Nintendo knows it. Today, the theme was “everyone,” with the slogan “everyone’s game” repeated several times throughout the presentation.

But with all the innovation out of the way, appealing to everyone just isn’t that exciting. Most of the topics discussed were already known about, and even the breaking news wasn’t surprising.

There was a feeling before the show that Nintendo would unveil new Zelda and Mario games, but only the latter came to fruition. Mario will star in two Wii games this year and beyond: New Super Mario Bros., due this holiday, is a classic two-dimensional platformer with four players at a time (this is not revolutionary, despite Nintendo’s insistence) and Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a straightforward sequel to the 2007 hit.

Nintendo’s confidence continued with the announcement of Wii Fit Plus, a sequel to the Balance Board game that has dominated sales charts since its US release last spring. The expanded collection of exercise games is sure to keep those sales alive when it arrives this fall.

I hoped to see some clever use of the Wii MotionPlus — an accuracy-boosting Wii Remote extension due this month — but instead Nintendo merely demonstrated Wii Sports Resort, a collection of minigames that’s been known about since last year. Nintendo didn’t discuss any MotionPlus games from other publishers besides those we already know about, including Red Steel 2 and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10.

And then there’s the Nintendo DS. I won’t dwell on the facile attempts to draw in female audiences with games like Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion and Style Savvy, but the audience was chuckling.

It wasn’t all bad. The announcement of Metroid Other M — a return to third-person shooting for the classic franchise — tickled this long-time fan’s heart. And at the end of the show, I spent a few minutes fencing in Wii Sports resort, and I had fun as expected. But the lack of any bombshells at Nintendo’s press event was a letdown.

I imagine that all the talk of broad appeal is exciting to analysts and investors, but for a journalist that came to see some cool stuff, well, it was just dull.

At the Nokia Theater in downtown LA this morning, Nintendo’s E3 press briefing for its new lineup included the expected cast of characters for its Wii and DS platforms. Among the announced products were more than one new Mario game, a new Metroid game, and a new feature for the DS which allows you to edit photos and upload them directly to Facebook. But the most interesting — and least discussed — new announcement was about a hardware accessory for the Wii which provides the platform with the ability to literally take the pulse of the player, while playing.

As shown in these incredibly blurry photos taken at the event, the device that Nintendo execs are calling the Wii Vitality Sensor, looks like a small plastic sleeve into which you slip an index finger. A cable connects the Vitality Sensor to the Wiimote controller.

The tease for the Vitality Sensor explained that it would give Wii developers the ability to design games that use this type of input—games which can read the player’s physical state in a way that no current-generation console can. In theory, said Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, such an accessory could be used in, for example, a game designed to help the player relax and control his or her heart rate.

While this kind of biofeedback in games isn’t exactly new–especially so for Nintendo, which released a short-lived biofeedback sensor with a game for its Nintendo 64 platform years ago — the timing of the announcement is interesting, when you consider that the other two members of the console maker’s club are expected to announce point-at-the-screen game controllers like the Wii currently uses.

I don’t think Nintendo intends to recreate The Journey to Wild Divine for the Wii, but it isn’t hard to see how, combined with the Wii Fit controller, a heart rate monitor would make a pretty useful fitness gaming accessory. A number of developers have been working on games that use biofeedback to train players to relax. A version of something similar for the Wii — which has already brought huge numbers of casual gamers into the console market — would open up the market for so-called relaxation games to a much broader audience.

If fancy gimmickry’s a ways off and social console networking doesn’t catch on, at least Microsoft’s E3 press event had some good old-fashioned games to fall back on.

And yes, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were there to lend a hand. More on that later.

Maybe it’s because I’m green on the E3 battlefield, but it seems that Microsoft is making a big push for exclusivity in its line-up. Of the dozen video games announced at the presser, more than half will only be released on the Xbox 360, and in some cases the PC. All of the games had some element of bragging rights for Microsoft.

That started with The Beatles: Rock Band, which will be released for all consoles. Xbox 360 owners, however, will get to download “All You Need is Love,” with the proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders. To mark the announcement, Sir Paul and Ringo indeed showed up, even if their one-liners and lack of musical performance was a letdown.

Additionally, the much-anticipated Modern Warfare 2 will release two map packs that will go to Xbox Live before reaching the Playstation Network.

In another slap in the face to Sony, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima took the stage to announce Metal Gear Solid Rising for the Xbox 360. The series has long given preferential treatment to the Playstation brand, with Metal Gear Solid 4 considered a PS3 system seller.

The other exclusives weren’t surprising. Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Forza Motorsport 3, Halo 3: ODST and yet another Halo game called Halo Reach all have Xbox 360 predecessors. And we already knew that Microsoft had locked up Splinter Cell: Conviction and Alan Wake.

But as a whole, the games segment of Microsoft’s press event is a testament to the console wars. Exclusivity has little benefit to gamers, but it’s not going away.

One last thing: Microsoft apparently didn’t have time to announce this during the press conference, but it will offer full-length games for digital download. You know it was a monstrous E3 briefing when news of that caliber didn’t make the first cut.

Microsoft wasn’t shy about its intentions during today’s E3 press event: It’s trying to branch out beyond the typical gamer set. Project Natal is one piece of the puzzle, and so is Xbox Live, for which the company revealed five significant additions and improvements.

Let’s make this nice and easy with a list:

Social Networking: Come this fall, Facebook and Twitter will be accessible through Xbox Live. A demonstration showed the usual features, such as status updates and friend lists, presented in the New Xbox Experience’s distinct windows. One feature allows Facebook friends to find each others’ Xbox 360 Gamertags.

“Live Party”: Friends on Xbox Live can watch videos or listen to music together over the Internet. In a brief demonstration, avatars gathered in front of a television (within a television, of course), watching and reacting to the content.

Zune Marketplace: As we heard when Microsoft announced the Zune HD, Xbox Live’s video service will become Zune-branded, but it’ll get at least one substantive change in the form of 1080p streaming videos.

Last.fm: Xbox Live Gold members around the world will have access to millions of songs through Last.fm, simple as that.

Netflix Improvements: My biggest gripe with the Xbox’ 360s Netflix service was the inability to select movies or manage playlists directly on the console. Fortunately, that will change, so a PC is no longer required.

While the Zune and Netflix developments are just tweaks to existing services, the other three announcements go in a different direction. Microsoft wants the Xbox 360 to be a hangout. I can almost sense this ideal of families or friends crowded around the tube, getting a dose of interactive entertainment.

But will people get into it? Live Party didn’t get an enthusiastic response at the press event, and the social networking seems a little clunky for everyday use (especially without a keyboard). I’m reluctant to make a bold prediction either way, but I’m curious to see how this effort pans out.

Kudo Tsunoda took a shot at the Wii when introducing Microsoft’s answer to motion control today.

“This isn’t a game where you end up on the sofa just kind of using some preset waggle commands,” the project’s creative director said, talking about a physically intense tech demo.

Indeed, the so-called “Project Natal” was impressive, at least from where I was sitting at Microsoft’s E3 press event. As rumored, the technology is a 3D motion-sensing camera that needs no other peripherals to operate.

Video demonstrations included a young man performing karate kicks against an on-screen opponent, his image duplicated onscreen with dead-on accuracy. In the next clip, a girl held her hands like a steering wheel and drove a race car. When she hit a pit stop, one of her family members ran up to the screen and made the motions of replacing a tire.

We also saw a couple of live demonstrations. In a full-bodied take on Breakout, a girl used her arms, legs and head to hit balls down a 3D corridor. Another demonstrator pretended to throw paint buckets at a screen and created live splatter art.

Finally, Fable 2 creator Peter Molyneux introduced “Milo,” a child that, in a video, interacted with a real woman. In the most impressive moment, she drew a picture, held it in front of the screen, and Milo took a virtual copy, recognizing the color and shape of the drawing. Milo will apparently be demonstrated to VIPs during E3.

Microsoft steered clear from any sort of release window for Project Natal. Everything shown was in prototype, and the initial video shown is “product vision” rather than real implementation. The closest we heard to a timetable is that development kits are going out now.

In my E3 wish list, I said I’d rather see  Microsoft wait until the next console cycle to bust out motion control, but a comment by Don Mattrick, the Xbox division’s senior vice president, suggests that this technology will simply extend the life of the Xbox 360. It seems Microsoft is in no rush to move on to something else.

“We can leap into a new era of interactive entertainment without having to launch a new console,” he said.

You can see the concept video on YouTube.

Marketing photos, video and details on a new Playstation Portable have leaked three days ahead of Sony’s E3 press conference.

The source of the material is Qore, Sony’s official interactive magazine for Playstation Network members, so this was either an intentional leak to preempt the other console makers or a major foul-up. We’re beyond rumor territory now, but Sony will probably keep quiet on this news until Tuesday.

On to the details: The PSP Go includes 16 GB of flash memory and no UMD drive, Sony marketing executive John Koller said in Qore’s video interview. Of course, all the PSP Go’s content will be download-only, and a Memory Stick Micro slot boosts the potential capacity. The screen measures 3.8 inches, which is a half-inch smaller than the current PSP-3000, but the new model is 43 percent lighter. Bluetooth will be included for using a headset or tethering a cell phone, Koller said.

As you can see from the photo, the controls are located on a panel that slides out from the bottom half of the device. It looks the the control scheme of the old PSP will remain in this model.

Koller blabbed about a few big-name titles in the video, including previously unannounced versions of Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. Whoops?

The PSP-3000 will stay on the market even after the Go’s fall release, Koller said. Smart move, because it’ll allow Sony to gauge the PSP Go’s success against a console that uses physical game discs. It remains to be seen how Sony will handle the release of UMD games versus digital downloads. Down the line, that ratio will probably be a good indicator of which direction Sony wants to go (no pun intended).