07.11.07

e3: meh. silent hill: hurrah!

Posted in games, work at 9:31 pm by Rob Fahey

Three conferences into this year’s E3, and colour me underwhelmed. Or at least, only middling-whelmed. Sony’s software line-up looks significantly more solid these days, Nintendo is still walking a fine line between appealing to a wider audience and pissing off the hardcore for once and for all, and Microsoft… Well, Microsoft didn’t really have much to say for itself actually, aside from “Halo! Woo! You all like Halo, right!? Woo!”

Actually, probably the most interesting things on display were Nintendo’s weird step-based controller, which some people are writing off as a glorified weighing scales (but which in my mind, is perhaps the absolutely perfect controller for a new 1080 Snowboarding or Waverace game…); and Sony’s casual mention that it’ll be allowing people to port UT mods to the PS3 by making them available on PS Network. Now that could be very cool indeed.

Overall, though: meh. Not exactly the thrill-ride of E3s of yore.

On a distinctly more interesting note, I got to play Silent Hill Origins last week and it wasn’t shit. In fact, it was very good:

…By the age of about 16, I was pretty much past that; unflappable in the face of the cheap scares and shocks which movies and games of the time could muster. That self-confidence and certainty is probably, in retrospect, a major part of why Silent Hill was such a shot to the gut. Beautiful, disturbing, melancholy, eerie, inexplicable and overwhelmingly terrifying, Silent Hill opened a dreamlike world of nightmares. I slept with the bedside light on for several days, although I could never have told you exactly why…

Actually, one rather good thing from E3; the new model PSP with TV-out capabilities means playing through Silent Hill Origins with other people. Huzzah.

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2 Comments »

  1. yuri said,

    July 13, 2007 at 4:22 pm

    my work colleague was saying microsoft was suppose to release something. I was puzzled… as I only saw Halo! and it doesn’t look that good either… dissapointment. COD4 and Killzone2 looks so good.

    Another dissapointment, was that compared to killzone and various other games, Metal Gear Solid 4 just doesn’t seem so appealing graphically anymore.

    I also wanted a revamped psp rather than the same, but a bit thinner… meh meh meh

  2. Keith Andrew said,

    July 14, 2007 at 2:26 am

    Microsoft: I called it ‘corporate’. Nothing new – no biceps – but you can’t really argue with that Christmas line-up.

    Nintendo: Would not stop with those news report montages. Made me a bit worried that they’ve got into this position, and now they really don’t know what to do with it. Lack of third-party games was a bit startling, and WiiFit seemed a bit gimmicky to me.

    Sony: Much stronger than last year, but the Home plugging started to annoy me after a while and they didn’t really have that big exclusive announcement I think everyone was expecting. Get this, too; me = major MGS fan, but I thought the trailer was over the top and generally pants.

    But yeah. No shocks. We were all watching for the shocks, right?

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