Biggest disappointments of E3

I walked away from E3 2010 rather excited for the months to come in the video game marketplace. With incredible experiences to be had, such as the impressive Nintendo 3DS, Sonic the Hedgehog finally returning to his roots, and Rock Band 3 gearing up with the keyboard and “pro” settings, there was certainly plenty to be excited for.

However, not everything was sunshine and rainbows on the show floor. For every glorious step forward in a bright direction, there seemed to be the dreaded two steps back into the muddy ichor of “me too” shovelware. With reactions ranging between saddened letdown and homicide-inducing rage, this is the journal of an Icrontic reporter’s retelling of what was the biggest disappointments to be had at E3 2010.

8. Activision’s pre-E3 press event concert

Activision, why is Eminem here? Seriously.

I’ll start by picking on Activision. It’s no secret that the company has been something of a whipping boy over the past few months, a popular target for ranting and raving about how they are killing the good games (the Modern Warfare 2 and Infinity Ward fallout comes to mind). Keeping this in mind, I didn’t really have much of any expectations towards them, and frankly didn’t really care about what they would be showcasing.

However, what really was a letdown was Activision’s official E3 press event. Occurring on Monday evening, the day before the show floor opened, the Icrontic team was hoping Activision would kick things off with an impressive lineup of their upcoming games. Their event was housed in the Staples center, a giant Colosseum and home to the LA Lakers. Even with so much capacity, the event was treated as a fairly exclusive event.

We had heard that Activision was throwing a rock concert, so we were expecting famous groups to rock out in honor of some new Guitar Hero game, followed by announcements, gameplay, and trailers for other future release games. What we received was wave after wave of various artists. While it was interesting to see famous idols such as Usher and Eminem come on and rap about a game company, there was precious little attention given to the games themselves. What was expected to be an amazing debut of games to look forward to was nothing more than a smoke and mirrors show to wow us. Compared to other press events, color us unimpressed.

7. Square-Enix had nothing up its sleeve

While the famous RPG maker Square Enix certainly had a few titles that excited me, it still wasn’t nearly as much as I had hoped for. For starters, Final Fantasy XIV wasn’t quite as diverse from its XI origins as I had hoped. While it did play a bit differently, it still really did feel like its predecessor—something that I was hoping would not be the case.

However, while the latest Final Fantasy MMO didn’t excite me, the real disappointment to me was the lack of any major announcements. A rumor about a major development has been circulating, originating from Tetsuya Nomura himself. While it may color me as too much of a fanboy to expect Square Enix to remake Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation 3, I was hoping for at least some form of answer to the fans. No Chrono Trigger sequel, no official word on Kingdom Hearts III, nothing. Just more of what we already knew. I admit it was probably too much to ask for, but I have to remind myself that the Squaresoft I remember from the 90’s simply is no more.

6. Epic Mickey wasn’t so epic

What happened to this creepy vibe?

Speaking of Disney franchises, as cool as Epic Mickey looked, it still left me with a slight bittersweet taste in my mouth. When the previews of Epic Mickey were just rolling out, they were filled with rather dark steampunk-like renditions of classic Disney locales by Fred Gambino and Gary Glover. Some sketches were downright nightmarish, with disturbing robotic denizens that inhabit the twisted land.

While I was fully prepared for the incredible shock I was going to be in for, the visuals of Epic Mickey I was presented with were nothing like these dark premonitions. Gone were the mechanical terrors, replaced by softer happy-go-lucky scenes of Mickey bouncing around a small town, talking with villagers and washing out palm trees with paint thinner. The game looked fun, no doubt, and there’s plenty of room in the game for it to open up to darker territory. However, no matter what is in the final game, the ambiance I was presented with was nothing like what had originally excited me as a truly remarkable detachment from classic Mickey cuteness.

5. Microsoft’s Project Natal/Kinect and Sony’s PlayStation Move

There is an interesting debate going on whether these new motion controls are going to pay off and make the gaming world a better, more diverse environment for creative interaction with electronic media… or if it’s just a huge waste of investment on something that will not yield anything more than casual game after casual game.

The problem here lies not in the technology itself, but what game developers are going to do with it. While Kinect and Move are quite neat in how the camera tracks your body’s movements while you watch a virtual form of your self dance along, what good will really come of it? I cannot imagine anything coming along that is more than barely a mid-range budget title. Can you really see a AAA-level title, with all the budget it would require, coming out for a peripheral that only a small fraction of system owners will purchase? Kinect alone costs $150, or half the price of a brand new Xbox 360.

The Wii has already shown me that I’d rather sit down on my couch and enjoy a game with two analog sticks and a few buttons rather than play yet another casual game shovelware that some game studio coughed out without a second thought (Wii Party, I’m looking at you). The 3DS might have gimmicks like 3D displays and motion sensing capabilities, but at least the entire package is decent enough to warrant expectations of big-title games to head its way.

4. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn

LEGO men in their natural habitat

A problem I have always had in the gaming world is when game studios choose to use 3D just for the sake of a game being in 3D. I honestly miss the days of the Super Nintendo when games were forced to be pretty while remaining two dimensional with bitmap sprites. They looked fine and I could still tell what I was looking at, even if they were all small. That kind of pixel-perfect artwork is completely lost when a game is thrown into 3D while only having limited polygonal capabilities and low-resolution textures. I’ve seen plenty of current handheld games remain two-dimensional and look wonderful, and even more try for 3D and look terrible.

The Golden Sun series is just one example. While the Golden Sun games were nothing to shout from the rooftops about, it was indeed a fun JRPG to play through and it offered an innovative system of magic which is often used in the field to solve simple (and sometimes outright complex) puzzles to progress through the landscapes. The story was nifty and the characters were better than the cardboard cutouts I’m becoming increasingly used to. But on top of it all, the game looked quite good for a Gameboy Advance game. The backgrounds and character sprites were richly colored and had enough details to really appreciate.

And then they had to go and ruin it all by shifting the latest installment into low-resolution 3D on the Nintendo DS. Way to go Camelot, you’ve made the conscious decision to take a series that I was actually happy to learn you’re going to continue and make the entire experience bittersweet. The reason why many games from the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 days are being re-made and upgraded in better 3D is because the limited 3D capabilities made everything look muddy, whereas today’s consoles don’t have those limitations. I’ll still play Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, and the entire time I’ll be saddened that what could have been marvelously hand-drawn sprites are nothing more than LEGO blocks with some eyes painted on them. (ed. note: modern video game LEGO men look WAY better than those Golden Sun pukes…)

3. Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals

The level design bored me to sleep

Lufia was a series on the Super Nintendo that I just happened to never try back in the day. I hear from many fans that they were a real classic, and a gem every JRPG fan owes it to themselves to go back and play someday. Because of this, I was delighted to hear that Natsume is picking up the series and continuing it. When I saw it on the E3 show floor, I was delighted to pick it up and try it.

The first problem I had with it was the same argument I made above. Everything was in 3D, with blocky characters and an even blockier world. Everything just had a murky look to it, and the game suffered from sudden pop-in of 3D objects that would appear only when I get close enough. However, since I hadn’t played its predecessor, I was able to look past this.

What did really let me down about the game, though, was the general gameplay. The demonstration let me roam around a mazelike strip-mining operation. There was nothing but dead ends and a random monster or two to beat up. The level design was unintuitive and uninspiring. To top it all off, your party members would not shut up. I was always under a verbal barrage of random spoken dialog from the characters. While it was all in Japanese, I can only begin to imagine how annoyed I will be at the English voice actors if they were to shout “hurry up!” and “the enemy is over there!” again and again.

2. Valve and the Half-Life series

Here at Icrontic, we are little short of die-hard, unapologetic fanboys of Valve. Being one of the few companies that makes genuinely good games, and will not hesitate to delay a game until it is ready, we love what they do. From the rarely seen storytelling in the FPS Half-Life 2, to the incredibly fun and endlessly updated Team Fortress 2, Valve really knows how to hit that sweet spot and really let the community be a part of their decision-making process.

However, at E3, we couldn’t help but feel like we were walking away empty-handed. None of us really feel anger, but there was something of a feeling of neglect going on. To start, we made plans to go to L.A. a day early to attend their Portal 2 event, which was canceled just days before E3 began. The primary reason for the cancellation was to take the announcement of Steam on the PlayStation 3 and add it to Sony’s press event, rather than keep it to their own Valve event.

We were also highly anticipating news about Half-Life 2 Episode 3. While screenshots or an estimated release date would have been nice, anything would have been helpful. At this point, we would have been satisfied with confirmation that the project is still underway. While the viewing of Portal 2 gameplay was nice, it just wasn’t enough to sate our appetites for Valve’s gaming universe.

1. GoldenEye 007 for the Wii

I thought squared guns died off in the 90's

It’s been established that there have been a number of disappointments at the E3 Expo this year. But few of them are as maddening to me as the coming of the GoldenEye to the Wii by Activision. I will boldly say it right now: GoldenEye has no business being on the Wii. Period. I would be happy with it being on any other system, PC included. Any other system is drastically more suited for the classic milestone of first-person shooters for the controls, the graphics capabilities, and the online multiplayer infrastructures.

I am fully aware of how many fans were excited by the confirmation of a direct GoldenEye remake. The Nintendo press event flooded with cheers, and those that tried the game in person were delighted to play as Oddjob once again, and fling deadly hats at their opponents. I, on the other hand, am all too reminded of a little story of how GoldenEye originally was going to be available to the Wii and Xbox 360 Live Arcade. When relations soured about how proceeds would be split, the project was temporarily scrapped. The fact that it came back as a fully rebuilt game, but only for the Wii, I was infuriated.

Don’t get me wrong, the game does look like a lot of fun, and I’d be more than happy to revisit the old GoldenEye haunts. But every screenshot I’ve seen so far is an unnerving reminder of what the game could have looked like if it hadn’t been hosted by the featherweight of the current platform generation. The Wii does a decent job of making games with proper art direction look decent; however it falls flat on its face every time it tries to go for photo-realism. GoldenEye 007 for the Wii is one great example of this: the visuals look blocky, gritty, and unrefined; a compounded pixelated mess that deserves no praise and only and endless parade of guilt.

Before anyone starts, I am not necessarailly a hater of the Wii as a system. I firmly believe in the right tool for the right job. The Wii shines in certain ways, and it falls short in others. As for other systems, I don’t care where else they should have taken the game. Hell, it’s the exclusivity to the Wii that grinds my gears—had they made it multiplatform for everything short of the N-GAGE, I would have been fit as a fiddle.

To add insult to injury, Activision (and more likely, United Artists) “features” Daniel Craig as the James Bond flavor of the day. While I have nothing against Mr. Craig and rather enjoyed his role as everyone’s favorite secret agent, GoldenEye is Pierce Brosnan’s gig. I wouldn’t mind him being one of the selectable characters in the multiplayer mode, but to use his likeness in the story campaign is nothing short of sacrilege.

The Wrap-up

In reflection of this year’s E3, the whole thing felt a little bit muted. There was certainly some news and shiny new toys that floated around for everyone to see, but at the end of the day there was certainly more than its share of disappointments. I’m hoping that 2011 has some more uplifting stories to it, what with the end of days happening just a few odd months after it in 2012. Perhaps by then polygonal games on handheld devices will look halfway presentable and we’ll all be drunk on the jolly news that Half-Life 2 Episode 3 is actually more than just a speck on the horizon.

As for me, I’ll be hiding under a rock and playing Lufia one and two on the Super NES.