Maybe bitter disappointment is a bit harsh, but I can say I was not impressed with Sony’s efforts at E3. The announcement of MAG was pretty neat. Whether something of that magnitute can be pulled off is another issue. There was the usual Killzone 2, Fallout 3 and Little Big Planet(will this ever get released??) talk, and Sony’s popular franchise, God of War, got some airtime. However, when I mean airtime, I meant they showed a movie. When I mean showed a movie, I literally mean an intro movie. Maybe I was expecting a bit much, but I don’t consider an intro movie a worthy ‘announcement’. You release teaser trailers like that when no one is expecting a game, NOT when everyone is aware it’s coming out. It screams a bit of ‘oh crap, quick throw something together with Kratos so we look alright’. A little gameplay or, well anything at all would have helped immensely, but hey, what do I know?

I think the most annoying thing is that even for a teaser, it’s pretty poor. It wouldn’t tell anyone that has finished God of War 2 things they wouldn’t know, and it shows essentially nothing. Well, thats not true. Here is a list of what I take from the trailer:

• God of War 3 involves Kratos
• Kratos looks just as angry as ever
• He still has knives
• It rains in Greece
• Greece has trees, rocky areas and crumbling structures

I’m sure I’m not the only one who is not impressed by Sony jingling their keys to distract people from the fact that they don’t really have anything to show.

*sigh*

It’s E3 time and being something of a fence-sitter with consoles, it’s always an interesting time for me because I see fanboys flaming each other with huge arcs of heated, uninformed and opinionated banter supporting their own purchases. I also really enjoy the chess like strategies employed by the console giants. Although Nintendo are sitting at the kids table, plugging away and dominating the ‘fun’ market, watching the heavyweights slug it out brings out the kind of sadistic satisfaction I get from watching idiots hurt themselves.

Today it was announced that Final Fantasy XIII was not going to be a PS3 exclusive, resulting in a big cheer from Xbox fans and the sound of millions of cotton threads stretching as Sony fans tugged at their collars. Xbox360 owners can gloat that they no longer need to get a PS3, FFXIII fans can now choose the cheaper console if they want and Sony have to pull out something big in their conference to keep up. Whether the employees of Sony are soiling their collective pants, or if they are kicking back with cigars blowing misshapen rings of smug into the air because they know something we don’t, we will find out shortly.

The kajillion dollar question is: What could they do? A God of War 3 announcement would surely help, but showing footage or trailer of one of the best games in the franchise does not even get close to the level of acquiring an entire franchise. Well, when I say entire, I say most likely all the games from here on in. Having only played FFX and a few hours on the earlier games, I can’t say I’m a huge fan, but after looking at the trailer, I’m sure I will give it a run.

Note the PS3 only note at the end.

I’ve been sitting(stewing) on this for a few days now. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, Midway released a trailer for Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe at E3 this year:

I’m still not impressed by such a blatant grab for attention, but it look like they might actually pull this off. Not completely mind you, but it’s starting to look like I will be less embarassed about buying this than I originally thought.

Things to note from the trailer:

Stages

• stages have been taken from both sides of the spectrum, I’m not quite sure what this says for the future of stage fatalities, but rooftops are always handy *thumbs up*
• you can fight in hell *thumbs up*
• appear to be somewhat interactive *thumbs up*

Characters

• Superman
• Batman
• Catwoman
• The Flash
• Sonya
• Sub Zero
• Scorpion
• Shang Tsung

Random thoughts

• The busty women have tight, physics defying outfits *thumbs up*
• The fight between Superman and Shang appears to be different to the regular kombat. It’s a lot closer, the blows are targeted and Superman parries *raised eyebrow*
• Air fighting - looks slow, clunky and has never really impressed me *thumbs down*
• Scorpion’s flamer fatality *thumbs OMFG up*

I wonder if Midway had actually learned it’s lesson after the huge backlash from the Mortal Kombat Armageddon fatality system and pulled it back to the traditional ones. I can imagine the Kreate a Fatality system being in place for the DC Heroes(limited to strikes, not rips), who are rumoured to have a ‘beatdown’ finishers instead of fatalities, because true heroes wouldn’t commit such violent acts.

I’m already looking forward to the next trailer and hopefully a bit more info on the gameplay. If it’s anything like this I might even look over the fact that the reason for worlds colliding was “magic”.

Okay, I’ve been hitting up Viking a lot this week and I’ve put Dragonball Z on the backburner. My list of tasks were:

• Free X Vikings
• Find stuff
• Kill stuff
• Summon the dragon

Now you get the hints and parts of the dragon quest quite early on, so I got annoyed I didn’t find it sooner. It’s just a huge tease to mention it so early on and then leave it till just before the last battle. Anyway, I’m starting to get a little annoyed with the game. There are certain sections that can only be done by using stealth(see video). Actually, I’m sure they can be done, but the moment you are discovered in the camp of the enemies, you get attacked relentlessly. Just when I thought I had fought my way out I was swarmed again and killed.

The big battle scenes are quite epic, the amount of fighting going on is just insane. I learned the hard way that you shouldn’t let the bloodlust take control because in the slaughter if you slay too far from your army you go down quickly under a hail of blows. Unfortunately the dragon isn’t fighting with you in real time. In a way I don’t know how they could have done it without taking friendly fire into account. Even if they used the same ‘get a rune, tell dragon to attack this spot on the map, return to battle’ and had the dragon flying around in the background it would have felt a lot more rewarding. They tried to say that it only does what you say when you acquire dragon runes(taken from shamans and big gribbly dudes) so story-wise it works, but it seems like a cop out.

Anyway, you fight a big guy at the end, and you don’t get to finish him off, then go to the next land. Im not sure if this game could hold my attention unless they really increase the killing move types in the next area. But without further adieu, here is the next vid in my adventure: