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E3, the best Electronics Entertainment Expo in years, mostly

Greetings Readers!

As promised, I am here to share my thoughts on this year's E3.  I'm not going to address every game that was talked about, but more of my thoughts from the main press events, so here we go.

Lets start off with Microsoft.  This event was mind blowing!  I found myself sitting in my chair several hours after the event still saying "holy crap!"  The past couple of years have been a rather big disappointment from all of the major companies but this even alone makes up for all of it.  Before I address Project Natal, which was the main "holy crap!" moment from the event, lets talk games and Xbox functionality.  There were a ton of great titles that were announced at this years Microsoft press event, including Forza Motorsport 3, Halo Reach, Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Metal Gear Solid Rising and even a Beatles version of Rock Band.  These were great announcements as many of the major titles including Halo Reach, Left 4 Dead 2 and Metal Gear Solid Rising were completely unexpected.  In terms of games, it looks to be a very bright year for the Xbox 360.  They also announced some great new additions to Xbox Live including Last.fm, Facebook and even Twitter integration.  This will do wonders for making the 360 become apart of your social network life.  They also announced better quality video streaming which is awesome too.  Finally, the biggest announcement was Project Natal.  This is Microsoft's one-up on the Wii motion controller.  When this is released, you will be able to interact with your 360 and games with no controller at all, just by moving your body.  If that wasn't cool enough, it can react to voice commands.  I cant say enough about this, so head here to check out the demo of it.

Nintendo was the second person to present at this years E3 and it made for a great opportunity to take a nap.  After the stellar event from Microsoft, Nintendo could have put just about anybody to sleep.  The major problem with Nintendo's press event was that it was largely old news and not the announcements that people were hoping for.  They spent a fair bit of time talking about the Wii Motion Plus which they announced and showed at length last year but doesn't come out until this week.  Nothing spectacular was shown with this, just another demo of Wii Sports Resort which was also announced last year.  The Wii Fit was also talked about at length and they announced a new expansion for the Wii Fit with some new exercises and stuff for those that still use the Wii Fit, all 2 of you.  Other than those disappointments, this year was the year of Mario.  A number of new Mario titles were announced including a new Super Mario Bros which allows up to 4 people to play at once and Mario Galaxy 2.  Other than Mario which didn't seem to overly excite many people, the only other major announcement was a new Metroid game.  While it looks interesting, I am not a Metroid fan so I can't say it had my jumping up and down and it didn't seem to get that big of reaction from the crowd.  There was no news about a Zelda game or anything that people were expecting other than after the event, one of the Nintendo people said one was in the works.  Generally, it was a complete snooze although a 4 player Mario does look interesting.

Finally, the last to present was Sony.  Unlike Nintendo, this one was pretty exciting too although just slightly below the Microsoft event.  They demo'd a bunch of major new games that nearly all look amazing including Assassins Creed 2, Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker and even my personal favorite, God of War 3.  There were a ton of great looking games announced but they took a back seat to the two major announcements, the PSP Go which I have already blogged about here and here, as well as their own version of motion control that looks like the Wiimote's uglier, more powerful cousin.  While it kicks the butt of the Wii motion control, its not quite as impressive as Project Natal.  Overall, they put on a great event.

Between Microsoft and Sony, this was an amazing year at E3 which Nintendo gave everybody a great nap opportunity.  This certainly looks to be an exciting time for gamers over the next year and I can't wait to play the many games that are coming out.  What did you think of everything that happened at E3 this year?

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-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray