E3 2008: A Governor, Lego Batman and a Ramones Cover Band

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Jul. 16 11:54 PM by Terry Terrones

On tap for this post are two E3 keynote speeches and some quality time with Sega, Warner Bros. and Konami. Here's day 2 in pictures.

A politician was the E3 Keynote speaker. A politician? Yep. Texas governor Rick "Don't call me Luke" Perry is a gaming advocate, someone who sees the benefit of having the gaming industry as a partner. Spooky.

Sega - Sega was showcasing Sonic Unleashed (sonic boost simulates speeds of 300mph, perspective shifts between 2/3D, day time play is traditional Sonic, nighttime play features a slowed down Sonic the Werehog) and Bayonetta (a cool looking fighter with some nice special kills - guillotine, iron maiden). But the best looking games at Sega were Stormrise and Mad World.

While I don't normally get into RTS games, the simple control scheme and close in view in Stormrise were very appealling. Ninety percent of the controls can be done with the two thumbsticks and one button. Even though the mechanics are simple, there was plenty of strategy to make the game complex. It'll be coming out in 2009. Mad World, a black and white action game for the Wii, looked sweet. In the game you can kill enemies by using the environment (street signs in the skull were cool) or using weapons. It was super violent, which is unusual to see in a Wii game, but the Frank Miller-esque look and gory kills (the only color you'll see is red, and plenty of it) will make it a hit.

Warner Bros. - At Warner's I watched a playable demo of Project Origin, the sequel to F.E.A.R. The AI was well developed with bad guys rolling around when I lit them on fire and picking up better weapons they found. The destructible environments were a nice touch and the kill animations were pretty funny, in a gruesome way. No release date has been set yet.

I also got some hands on time with Lego Batman. Its double the size of Lego Indiana Jones and offers about 20 hours of gameplay. There are suit changes that give your character special abilities, you can use the batarang, and gamers can play as classic Batman villains as well. The game doesn't follow the plot of the new movie or any of the comics but the storyline stays true to the franchise. It comes out September of this year.

After Warner Bros. I headed out to listen to ESA President Mike Gallagher's State of the Industry address. He stated a lot of the obvious - the gaming industry is doing great, our audience is widening, etc. etc. But he never got into the reasons why some companies have left the ESA or what he plans to do about it.

Konami - The last press conference of the day belonged to Konami. They showed a trailer for Castlevania: Order of Ecclesion on the DS and showed off some game play for Castlevania for the Wii, both are due out this fall. They also announced a Metal Gear Solid 4 online expansion (available Thursday is the Gene Expansion with 3 maps and 2 new characters including Meryl for $11.99 and the Gene Expansion Plus which includes all that other stuff and one more character for $14.99), and had a walkthrough of the very creepy looking Silent Hill Homecoming which featured a new free look camera and a dialogue tree. It was pretty intense.

The most interesting part of the conference was the Rock Revolution demo. A Konami rep, whose name I didn't catch, came out and briefly talked about the game. Then she introduced The Sheena's, an all woman Ramones tribute band. The weird thing was the Konami rep then strapped on a guitar and joined the band as they played Blitzkrieg Bop. After the song the rep then went over to a Rock Revolution guitar and failed the same song in the game. The presser then abruptly ended. I looked up The Sheena's and it looks the Konami rep is really a member of the band. I guess playing the game guitar is tougher than playing in real life.