If only you knew the power of the Dark Side - The Force Unleashed review

Lucasarts have certainly set themselves a high bar with The Force Unleashed.  Combining cutting-edge videogame tech with a heavily scripted, canon-approved script, the game is the highest profile Star Wars release in years, and is tied into a larger campaign of toys, novels and comics just as Lucasarts did with Shadows Of the Empire many years ago.  At the heart of this however, lies the game itself.  There've been too many Star Wars games that have been all hype and no substance.  Can The Force Unleashed rise above this impression?

It certainly makes a good first showing.  Visually, you've never seen the Star Wars universe like this before.  Everything is beautifully lit and immaculately textured, and the environments immediately feel right.  Old stuff is painstakingly recreated, new stuff is carefully designed and fits in well.  It's a good job that the game looks so beautiful too, because a major portion of the gameplay involves smashing up and tearing down this remarkable vision.  Much has been made of The Force Unleashed's revolutionary technology, in particular the Digital Molecular Matter tech which causes the environment to deform in realistic ways.  I couldn't begin to tell you how it works, all I know is that it does, and it looks astonishing.  Metal bends, glass shatters, wood splinters and all hell breaks loose as the environment is radically altered with extreme force.  Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the game's bravura prologue, in which you take control of none other than Darth Vader himself.  Tasked with clearing out a Wookiee village, and armed with your lightsaber and a full complement of turbo-charged force powers, incredibly fun havoc ensue.  The entire level is an onslaught of  satisfying destruction, throwing massive boulders through treehouses or blasting down enormous barricades.  The opening highlights everything that is great about Force Unleashed, the impressive visuals, the visceral gameplay, the outstanding environments and the overall 'Star-Warsiness' of the experience combining to deliver a showcase of gaming at its very best.  Sadly, it's sort of downhill from there.

This is what we like to see

The first problem occurs when the game proper begins and you take control of the main protagonist, Darth Vader's secret apprentice Starkiller.  Running into the first room, you get ready to let slip your astonishing force powers, only to discover that most of them have gone.  It's not so much the Force unleashed as the force mildly contained, and l

leads to a huge overreliance on  throwing boxes around, making the game feel like a lightly more polished version of Psi-Ops.  You can also attack with your lightsaber, but again, you've got practically no combos at this point, so it descends into mindless button-mashing.  The idea of a 'look what's possible' teaser is good in concept, but translates to a letdown in reality.  The idea of stripping you of your powers is to implement an RPG style 'level up and choose your talents' progression, which again is interesting in theory but redundant in reality, since the game itself will only dole out new powers at certain points and some upgrades are noticeably more useful than others.

Combined with the lack of power is the creeping feel of uninspired level design.  Though immaculately detailed, level design tends towards the repetitive, often falling into the dreaded 'series of rooms and corridors'. The large number of level set in starships/space stations/industrial facilities doesn't help either. Furthermore, realising that your powers make you nearly unstoppable in small scale skirmishes, the developers have chosen to instead throw dozens of enemies at you at once in huge battle chambers, often reducing the situation to a 'kill everything to get out' model.  Though this is rarely difficult (in fact the game generally is slightly on the easy side) it can be hugely frustrating, particularly when later enemies either resist your powers or can keep you a long way away with uncannily accurate projectiles.  Combat is particularly wearisome during boss battles, where the camera inexplicably assumes a locked perspective that is rarely ideal.  Nowhere are the failures in design highlighted batter than the infamous sequence where Starkiller pulls a Star Destroyer out of the sky.  What should have been the game's defining moment instead becomes an exercise in frustration as you're constantly interrupted from the spectacle by irksome enemies.

For a junkyard, the world of Raxus Prime is astonishingly atmospheric

Despite all the griping however, there is a very fine game within.  Although the environments can often be uninspired, they are never less than beautiful.  The junk planet of Raxus Prime is a superb example of how to do an apocalyptic wasteland right, its mustard sky and rusted landscape an oddly beautiful setting.  And once you crank your force powers up a few notches, the game regains some of its blood and thunder and becomes massive fun to play.  Throwing screaming stormtroopers into an abyss or blasting rancors with force lightning is a pleasure every time, and the terrific feedback that the game world gives never gets old.  There's a few big surprises as well, the first being how replayable the game is.  Your powers and abilities carry over to a new game, so you can monster the early levels with maxed out force powers, and while the game is totally linear, the unpredictable nature of the battles mean that every new fight is fresh.  Hidden holocrons unlock goodies such as new costumes and lightsabers, giving an item hunt aspect to old levels.

The other big surprise is the story, which is deep, interesting and surprisingly relevant to the rest of the Star Wars universe.  It's fair to say that what happens in the game adds a significant dimension to the events of the original trilogy.  Bar the predictable and predictably rubbish love story, the narrative is strong and the voice acting excellent.  There's old faces aplenty (including one gleefully out of place cameo) and a few great new characters.  Special mention goes to PROXY, the Apprentice's loyal droid sidekick who has been programmed to try and kill him at every available opportunity.

In summary then, it's a missed opportunity, a flawed gem.  The game reminds me a lot of Assassin's Creed - technically superb, and with moments of genius, but ultimately held back from greatness by failure on some of the most basic levels.  There's no excusing some of the poor design in Force Unleashed, nor the frustration and repetition involved therein.  Equally, there's no denying how fun it is at it's very best.  The deep and through integration of the Star Wars universe earns it an extra point from me, but at the end of the day this is an entertaining toy rather than the new dawn we were hoping for.

[7]

'A little bit of magic' - The themes and mysteries of Braid

Braid has provoked more talk and discussion from the community than any title in a long time, partially over its fascinating and deliberately ambiguous themes. In this post I'm going to poke into them a little. Obviously spoilers are rampant after this point, ye be fairly warned.

SPOILERS

Although none of the themes of Braid are entirely clear, the most obvious one to me seems to be a commentary on the linear nature of time, and how humans do not necessarily perceive it as such. This is rooted in the game's basic mechanics of course, exemplified in its time manipulation gameplay, but is also highly prevalent in the surrounding text. Many passages talk of how time appears different to Tim than to others, and the text that opens the first level (world 2) in particular ruminates on how a less strictly linear progression would allow learning from mistakes without punishment. Directly attached to this is the idea that time progresses differently according to perspective, a theme which underpins the game's unique conclusion of course, but is also very clearly exemplified in World 6, where the ring which Tim carries is both a gameplay device but also an item of great emotional significance in the plot. Ultimately, the entire game hinges upon the concept of time and how it shapes our perception of those around us.
A second theme that I personally see within the game is an understanding that appearances are often deceiving. The 'princess' Tim is searching for may not actually even be a physical person, but rather an emotion or ideal, and in any case, she is actually actively fleeing from him. Remembering that the events of the final level take place chronologically before anything else in the game, so the Princess has already fled, and the entirety of your quest is futile, though you obviously don't know it until the end. Perhaps the most telling moment occurs at the end of world 6, which chronologically is the last moment in the game, where the dinosaur that emerges confesses that he has never even met the princess, before he asks the killer question 'Are you even sure she exists?'. The correct answer is of course 'No', since the princess has long vanished from the game. Her absence can be seen in the progression through the levels which become increasingly dark and damaged as you play through, possibly in direct correlation to the increasing distance of the princess. Of course, you'd be totally aware of this deception if you had seen the game's chronology correctly, which leads back to the idea that time is perceived differently depending on person and viewpoint.

As to the more specific details of the plot, I'm pretty much as clueless as anybody else. It's possible the entire idea of the narrative is as a Macguffin to carry the themes, a theory seemingly supported by comments made by creator Jonathan Blow. I'm not convinced, and I think that although the plot by no means has a traditional coherence there is more to it than a series of random statements. Based on the close, near obsessive nature of their relationship as described in the texts, plus the creepy nature of the final level (man waits outside womans bedroom, then chases her as she tries to stop him), I'm going to suggest a possible Tim-as-obsessed-stalker scenario. It explains his undying infatuation with her, as well as hinting at the 'mistake' that he made that he's striving so hard to eliminate. What if his mistake was merely meeting her? It also explains why he believes they had such a deep and meaningful relationship while she runs immediately at the sight of him, and the way that the game is a delusional 'quest' for someone who is already long gone. Theres plenty of holes, but it carries a certain logic and certainly adds a dark undertone.

The other common theory is that the entire narrative is actually an allegory for a real life event, namely the creation of the atom bomb. There's certainly plenty of evidence for this idea, most prominently the flaming city that opens the game and ultimately closes it (a set of twin towers is clearly visible from the attic, suggesting it's New York) as well as the direct quotes pulled from the epilogue. This idea recasts the role of the Princess not as a person but rather as an idea, a concept that seems within reach, but always keeps escaping at the last moment. I like the proposal, and it's certainly a bravura idea, but it also seems a little loose and takes no account of the text given outside of the epilogue.

Both of these ideas fail to take into account huge chunks of the game, and no explanation I've yet seen can do so. For example, what is the meaning of the four paintings built from the jigsaw pieces, which seemingly are totally disconnected from the plot in any sense (clearly the person in them is different every time, and is not Tim). The flags at the end of each world are apparently naval signals, what do they say and how do they fit into the levels? What, if any, is the significance of the dinosaurs? Nobody knows, and this is part of what makes Braid so fascinating. Like Lost, it's inscrutability provokes debate, and allows each player to create his own personal context and motivation for the game. Until Jonathan Blow reveals the purpose, if ever, Braid remains an mystery wrapped inside an enigma, and that only enhances it's lustre.

EDIT: Apparently, finding all the hidden stars in the game unlocks an alternate ending, which, suffice to say, seems to corroborate the 'bomb' theory. It certainly fills a major piece of the puzzle in.

Time and Mystery - Braid review

Braid is probably one of the hardest games to pin down in a long, long time. In short, it's a 2D-side scrolling platformer, except that it isn't. It's actually a fiendishly intricate puzzle game, a series of self-contained challenges. A puzzle game that is, however, themed around a fairy tale search for a princess, in the best traditions of an epic quest. But that seemingly simple story is in fact an allegory for the fleetingness of time, the contradictory nature of love and the creation of the atomic bomb. Then again, everything I've said may just have been total bollocks.

All of those statements are open to debate to a certain degree, and this is the fascinating and yet frustrating thing about Braid. It is maddeningly ambiguous, from it's play style to it's story and it's themes.

Let's start simple then. What is undeniable is that Braid is a very pretty game. It's drawn from a traditional 2D perspective, but uses a thickly daubed lineart style, with the backgrounds being washed out watercolours. Rendered in HD it's utterly gorgeous, and is complemented perfectly by the music, a selection of classical string quartet pieces.
Things only start to get difficult when you try and describe the gameplay. At it's root it's pure Mario, move from left to right and jump on things to kill them. The only major difference here is that you have a 'rewind' button, allowing you to turn back time Prince of Persia style. That's where the similarities end however. The first major difference here is that your rewind power is infinite and unlimited. Death therefore becomes simply a minor inconvenience. This in turn leads to the major point of the game. 'Completing' the levels is not difficult, but the point of playing is to collect the jigsaw puzzle pieces that lay scattered around the environments, and these often lie in seemingly inaccessible locations. the only way to obtain them is to use your time-bending powers to manipulate the environment to your advantage.
This then, is where the puzzle aspect lies. The game introduces several ideas that alter the game's timeflow, but the most basic is the idea that objects outlined in green are unaffected by your rewinding power. So in a very basic example, you can use a key to open a green outlined door, then rewind so that the key is in your hand again, but the door remains open. From this basic concept the game spins some of the most astonishing puzzles ever imagined, with concepts so insane you'll have to wring your brain out to solve them. These are often accompanied by changes in the world in which you're in, for example the world in which time stands still when you do, advances when you move right and rewinds when you move left. It's important not to understate the ferocity and brilliance of the puzzles, they really are amazing and had they been incorporated into any other game they would have been the standout feature. But not here.

Braid has been much compared to Portal, and the comparison is extremely valid, not only because they are both extremely clever puzzle games that used a dimension (space and time) in a new way, but because both offered more than that - namely a tangible narrative that connected players to the experience beyond the technical. Braid's is told through a series of textual excerpts at the beginning of levels. These are long, and use clever and elaborate language, often asking interesting questions and raising valid ideas, but they are also clunky and come off as rather pretentious. Much more effective is the gradual tonal shift throughout the levels, as they gradually become darker and more gothic, and the subtle hints given through the narrative that all may not be as it seems. These ideas only really pull together in the final hour, leading to one of the best final levels ever seen in games, and that is not an exaggeration. The elaborate dialogue is junked in favour of a chapter told entirely through the gameplay, with a shocking twist leading to an impossibly tragic conclusion. It's a mark of Braid's mastery that it not only manages this bravura slice of innovation but also manages to evoke more powerful emotions from a 2D platformer than from almost every 'cinematic' game ever made.
What follows this incredible ending is a beautifully baffling conclusion that fails to provide any sort of closure or any answers at all, ultimately leaving you (literally) right back where you started. In many ways this seems to be the point. The game deliberately makes it's point vague and non-specific, and it's unclear whether the story is genuine, partly imagined or entirely allegorical. It's a story which leads and captivates through intangibles such as mood, curiosity and emotion. And despite it's great technical and aesthetic achievements, that is perhaps what is the most amazing thing about this wholly remarkable game.

9/10

Welcome back to the stage of history - Soul Calibur IV review

Soul Calibur has always been my favourite series of fighting games for a number of reasons, namely the wonderfully unusual setting, and the gameplay, perfectly balanced between hardcore and more relaxed. By conservative estimate I poured more than a hundred hours into the original and also put in a fair share of time with the Gamecube version of Soul Calibur II, so the franchise and I have history.
First impressions of the title are good. It's graphically stunning, with the characters redesigned and remapped into amazing high-detail models. Backgrounds, clothing, weapons and animation are all top notch, and there's some genuinely clever level design, such as the circus level, set in a cage that can be gradually unfolded.
It's looking upon the character roster that doubts may initially set in. Soul Calibur III's character roster returns in full, when it arguably could have used some trimming. There's only two completely new characters, though they're both good. Pike and sword wielding fraulein Hilde brings an unique style to the table, while final boss Algol avoids the problem of badly balanced super-enemies (Jinpachi Mishima in Tekken 5 anyone?) and proves both powerful and fun to play.

Not broken, honest

The roster is bulked out by five characters designed by prominent anime artists, all of whom, are net designs, but use other characters movesets, so don't really count. Finally, there's the controversial inclusion of the Star Wars characters. Now look, I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and I haven't played the PS3 version, but Yoda and the Apprentice simply do not feel right here. Yoda is ridiculously difficult and ungainly to play, while the Apprentice is utterly broken and in the right hands (ie the AI's) can simply attack spam you to death.
Leaving that particular controversy behind, once in the ring the game plays beautifully as it always has. Minor tweaks have been made to improve the flow, and the brand new Critical Finish attack is both spectacular and useful, preventing turtling and encouraging a more open and attacking play style. Great for button-mashers but deep enough for dedicated players, the vast variety of styles mean the game is exciting to watch and to play.
One of the things I've always personally liked about Soul Calibur is that it has possibly the deepest and most interesting story and set of characters in the fighting genre. Many cast this aside as unnecessary, but I like anything that gives context within a game and thus was very fond of the elaborate story-cum-mission modes in the previous games which culminated in Soul Calibur III's hugely elaborate Tales of Souls mode. Unfortunately, these aspects have been slimmed down considerably, with Story mode being reduced to an extremely short series of battles and the new Tower of Lost Souls mode being nothing more than a glorified survival mode. There's little of the inventive objectives that made the originals' Mission mode so compelling, or the insight that Tales mode provided. In some sense, this is made up for by the generous online play, which works well. Lag is kept down, although obviously response time is nowhere near offline levels, and matchmaking is excellent, producing good battles.
There's one final ace up Soul Calibur IV's sleeve, and that's it's lavish character creation mode. You can either edit existing characters or create entirely new ones based on preassigned styles, and the breadth and depth of the customization options is huge. There's a ton of costume parts available from the outset, with more unlockable as you progress through the game, and everything from finely detailed armour to jester costumes are available, enabling your avatar to be as noble or ridiculous as desired. The character creation adds literally hours and hours to the game's lifespan, and it's flexibility is remarkable, as evidenced by some of the creations already out there.
Overall then, this is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary step for the series. Though it occasionally feels oddly under-featured, the core gameplay remains an untouchable strength, and the excellent presentation means that it's very enjoyable to play. Unlikely to hit the heights of perfection as the original so regularly did, it remains the best fighting game around.

7/10

Let There Be Rock

So I finally gave in to temptation and picked up Rock Band, the whole shebang. It's ludicrously overpriced, but fantastic fun. Having played it a lot round a good friend's house, I can safely say that it becomes more fun the more people you have. On your own it's basically an enhanced Guitar Hero but even then, that's hardly a bad thing. One thing I'm very impressed by is the DLC, with a huge variety of tracks, weekly updates and good integration into the main game. I won't post up a review because it's pretty much review-proof, but I'm enjoying it a great deal, and considering the announcement of full compatability with it's sequel, it may have been a wise investment.
One thing that I will certainly be reviewing is Soul Calibur IV. I own the original and played it to death, and have also sunk a fair old bit of time into Soul Calibur II, so I was extremely interested to pick this up. I'll be posting up opinions very soon, perhaps even later today.

A Trick up your Sleeve - Devil May Cry 4 review

Devil May Cry is a hugely divisive series in videogaming. Many love it for it's old school score-attack mechanics, intricately gothic design, deep and complicated fighting style and outrageous camp, and predictably, many hate it for those exact same reasons. It hasn't helped that the series has been so wildly inconsistent, with the excellent original followed up by an awful sequel and a third game that was so infamously hard it was re-released just to neuter the difficulty. So combined with the shift to new hardware, this fourth game marks something of a rebirth for the series, and oddly enough it does this by ditching one of it's most appealing aspects, it's cocksure antihero Dante, recasting him as the game's antagonist. In his place is a new protagonist named Nero, a younger, more serious and angry character. This shift is mirrored in the general tone of the game, which adopts a far more serious, epic and artistic style than the moody darkness of previous DMC's, with ancient temples and demonic towers replaced by snowbound castles and sun-dappled forests. The visual design is spectacular and when allied to a powerful graphics engine the result is a game which is often stunningly beautiful, both statically and in motion
Nero doesn't just revitalise the look and feel of the game, but it's whole style of play as well. Although his sword 'n' gun attacks are similar to Dante, his moveset is reduced in favour of a new toy, his possessed arm, known as the Devil Bringer. This allows long-range grabs and powerful close quarters throws, meaning combo chains can be kept going for longer and the guard of enemies can be more easily broken. Although it initially feels cheap, with time and the introduction of harder enemies the balance is just right, and combined with the new 'Exceed' system, which allows Nero to rev up his sword for extra damage, it can lead to spectacular chains of attacks in trained hands. By the mid-point of the game, controlling Nero feels instinctive and exciting, with the player effortlessly dishing out huge combos and epic juggles. Which is why it's such a shock when it's all suddenly taken away.
Without wishing to get too spoileriffic, it's fair to say Nero suddenly becomes incapacitated, which means Dante, who up until this point has appeared only as an enemy, suddenly takes over as the main playable character. The stylistic shift is not total, but it takes a good while to get used to. As in DMC3 Dante has four separate styles of fighting, Swordmaster, Gunslinger, Trickster and Royal Guard. Each accentuates a different aspect of combat, and each adds a different set of moves on top of Dante's basic skillset. The net result of this is that Dante has huge variety of moves available to him (and we're not even considering the alternate weapons yet), and combined with his obvious lack of Devil Bringer attacks, he's a much deeper and more difficult character to play as. For a while - quite a long while actually - this irritates as you're forced not just to relearn movesets but to retailor your entire fighting style. But gradually, another feeling emerges - the feeling that the training wheels have been taken off. There's a lot more variety available with Dante, as well as the ability to mix up your styles for more grandstanding kills. Further sweetening the pill is Dante's ludicrous selection of weapons. The undoubted show-stealer is Pandora, a cursed briefcase that transforms into a variety of other forms, such as rocket launchers and laser cannons, and ultimately into a giant floating missile platform that rains spectacular death on nearby enemies.

'Overkill' springs to mind

There remains a lot to criticise about the game, most obviously the terrible environment recycling (Dante's levels are just Nero's levels in reverse) and the archaic backtracking and forced puzzles. And while the bosses are hugely spectacular and great fun to fight, that doesn't quite justify their inclusion three times. The camera is often flawed and can't decide whether it wants to be fixed or player controlled, often copping out and offering a weak mix of the two. Yet despite these totally valid criticisms there's something inherently lovable about the the game. I mentioned near the beginning that this is a more serious, mature Devil May Cry, and that's true, but we are speaking in relative terms here, and you've still got cutscenes filmed by an anime fanboy and dialogue written by a pantomime director. Particularly once Dante enters, the game practically implants its tongue in its cheek, with several scenes in particular raising the bar for hammy dialogue (to those in the know, I'll simply say "I'm here to reclaim what is rightfully mine!").
Overall then, this is a big, brutal, lovable beast of a game. It doesn't claim to be be clever, in fact it often goes out of it's way to prove it isn't, but the core appeal still lies there. Only now, it's smart as well, it's difficulty curve perfectly pitched, it's story touching and interesting as well as funny and silly and it's core gameplay just as challenging and rewarding as it ever was. It isn't perfect, but you'll be having so much fun you won't care

8/10

E3 or not E3?

Okay, so again I lied about the regular blogging thing. Let's all just leave that behind us shall we, and concentrate on the important stuff, namely, the recent showings at E3. Or rather the lack of them. As an outsider looking in on what's now an industry focused event, I have to say that it was the safest, most predictable and most boring for many years, only just bettering last year's snooze-fest. New game announcements were few and far between, and there were few truly shattering revelations about currently existing titles. As for how the Big Three did...

Nintendo

Promised repeatedly that there would be massive announcements but honestly showed very little of substance. Biggest announcement was the Wii Motion Plus peripheral, which looks interesting but runs the risk of splitting the userbase badly. Will still probably sell gazillions. Animal Crossing Wii was seen on the horizon months ago, and it's actually quite dispiriting how little it seems to add both graphically and gameplay wise. Wii Speak shouldn't even really be an announcement, given the robust online chat of XBL and PSN. Which leaves the hugely controversial Wii Music as the only real point of interest. The demonstration was foolish and embarrassing, and early reports have indicated a game without much depth, more a toy or gimmick, but that worked well for Wii Sports and the idea remains intriguing, so this one gets a stay of execution from me. However, this was by far and away the worst showing. Nintendo seemed to forget that at E3 it's preaching to the hardest of the hardcore, namely gaming journos, and instead delivered an immensely smug lecture-cum-lifestyle course which came off as amateurish and childish. Miyamoto gets away with prancing about on stage, but take note execs, he's the only one for whom it's acceptable. D-

Sony

In typical Sony fashion, promised great things but delivered not much. Clearly seeing this as an opportunity to consolidate rather than forge ahead, most of the focus was on already announced blockbusters like Resistance 2, Killzone 2 etc. There was lots of talk of figures and lifecycles, but the main pillars of the presentation were once again LittleBigPlanet and Home. LittleBigPlanet was charmingly and cleverly used to demonstrate some facts and figures in the form of levels built into graphs, and the abundant possibilities and firm release date of October mean that the possibilities are still bubbling under nicely on this one. Home on the other hand is getting old alarmingly fast, and Sony's inability to release what's essentially a glorified Second Life is concerning, especially considering it isn't really a game in and of itself. Sony are leaning rather heavily on it, and that's not a good move in my opinion. In Sony's defence, a strong lineup of PSN titles was also shown, including new announcements Ratchet and Clank:Quest For Booty and Fat Princess alongside highlights of standouts such as Pixeljunk Eden and Flower, both of which demonstrate the kind of clever alternative software that could never end up on XBLA. The announcement of the video store was also a vital bit of news, and should only enhance the PS3's reputation as an excellent media box. Speaking of boxes, the new hardware SKU was thoroughly unremarkable and also raises fears that the final of the back-compat units is going to die.
Games demoed were rather short on the ground, with Sucker Punch stealing all the credit for an excellent showing of inFamous. DC Universe Online was shown to interest, but the lack of game footage meant that the buzz was only moderate. Arguably the show stealer, even though it was inevitable, was the official announcement of God Of War III, complete with ultra-corny trailer, which pleased all and sundry. And finally, the unveiling of MAG was an interesting move towards a genre that's lain dormant for a while now, but the spectre of PlanetSide still hangs heavy over all massive online shooters. We'll have to see more of this one before judgment is passed. Overall, a solid performance from Sony, but no surprises, few real points of interest, and a creeping sense of deja vu means they'll have to try harder next time. C+

Microsoft

Made by far the biggest splash this year, but it was a highly schizophrenic press conference. Had games in spades, with demos of 360 exclusives Gears of War 2 and Fable 2 and exclusive demos of Resident Evil 5 and Fallout 3. All demoed well and added much needed buzz, and the announcement of exclusive DLC for Fallout 3 shouldn't be underestimated. Gears 2 especially looked far far better than it's initial showing and with both it and Fable 2 locked for winter releases Microsoft is ensuring it has a solid Christmas lineup. Rock Band 2 also appeared, and it's time limited exclusivity is a big coup for Microsoft. All went a bit wrong when they veered into casual territory. To be fair, the dashboard update would have caused a much bigger stir if it hadn't been leaked months ago, and the NetFlix announcement is great for US customers, but overall it felt staged and very much a combined rip-off of Nintendo and Sony. Lips too seemed overhyped, being what looked like a perfectly good Singstar clone, but hardly a massive genre-redefining title as it seemed to be bigged up as. Of course, Microsoft still had their massive bitch-slap to Sony to end on, and it think it's fair to say the Final Fantasy XIII announcement was the most sensational turnaround in many a year. The actual effect on the game has yet to be seen, but as a crucial one-up over Sony and a demonstration on the Xbox's position in world gaming it could hardly have been a stronger statement. It was a solid and interesting showing by Microsoft, and though they didn't show just exclusives, the stuff on show made it the best bet of the three B+


Mirroring the Big Three, very little happened outside as well, with most publishers opting to show off what had already been seen or announced. Probably the biggest news was not even given in a press conference, with John Riccitello confirming that Knights of the Old Republic III was in development, by BioWare, and was an MMO. I'm not going to go over all the other announcements made, but suffice to say E3 was a slightly damp squib this year. My personal theory is that developers are keeping their powder dry for the autumn events, namely Leipzig for the western publishers, while the Japanese always have bombshells to drop in Tokyo. We'll have to wait and see how that pans out.