E3 2006 console gaming

An E3 of this magnitude doesn't come very often. Two new consoles made official playable debuts, while a third finally hit its stride. All told, though, there was plenty to complain about; being a three-year E3 vet, I've learned to see the bad in the greatest gaming show on Earth. To that end, I've compiled the biggest mistakes of the biggest compa ... Read more
As a six-year E3 veteran, I've seen it all--from the moneyed excess of the Sony party to the yearly appearance by the Scottish development community. That being said, I was still not prepared for a $600 PlayStation 3. Tossing in that little bon mot at the end of a two-hour press conference, just before the lights came up, was akin to calling your p ... Read more
Nintendo unquestionably stole the show at E3, with some of the hardest hype as well as the longest lines the show has seen in years. Visitors endured hours of waiting in line just to try out the Wii. Big N's little console might not have the best graphics in the world, but the great new control scheme and the sheer number of exclusive titles really ... Read more
Amid all the space-based shooters and sword-and-sorcery slash-fests on display at E3, one of the quirkier standout titles was Viva Piñata. Microsoft is planning a major push for this family-friendly Xbox 360 exclusive. Taking notes from sandbox games such as Animal Crossing and The Sims, the whimsical setting of Viva Piñata is a garden wh ... Read more
Activision secured its reputation with comic book fans by bringing everyone's favorite mutants to life in the action RPG titles X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends 2. If a dozen or so superheroes was good, the thinking goes, then 50-plus comic book characters must be great--and the upcoming Marvel: Ultimate Alliance brings together a huge roster of her ... Read more
The hard-core Nintendo fan base is not one that takes kindly to perennial sports franchises. It's no surprise, then, that EA's GameCube support has been rather spotty when compared to its more adept online competitors, the PS2 and the Xbox. Those expecting a retread of half-assed support may be surprised when they see the Wii version of Madden in a ... Read more
If there's any publisher that's living in the future, it's Ubisoft. While a couple of its titles will be available on the PS2 and Xbox, every one of the games on display in the company's booth are being developed, first and foremost, for the PlayStation 3, the Xbox 360, and the Wii. Assassin's Creed was probably the best game available in the Ubis ... Read more
Logitech has introduced two new steering wheel peripherals: the high-end G25 Racing Wheel for PC and PS2, and the DriveFX Axial Feedback Wheel for Xbox 360. The G25 is an elaborate peripheral that consists of three sections: the wheel itself, a six-speed gearshift, and a weighted foot pedal base that sports an accelerator, a brake, and a clutch. Th ... Read more
The biggest news from Square Enix at E3 is that Final Fantasy XIII is being developed. The role-playing game will have three different versions: two for the PS3 and one for cell phones. Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3 will be a traditional FF-series role-playing game, while Final Fantasy Versus XIII will be a more action-oriented adventure. Final Fa ... Read more
At the pre-E3 Microsoft Press Conference, we got some hands-on time with Gears of War, the eagerly anticipated third-person shooter for the Xbox 360. The live game looked as good as the video clips presented earlier in the week, and the buzz surrounding it makes it one of the standout games of the show. Despite the massive artillery, huge explosi ... Read more
To say this isn't Namco's--or as it's called now, Namcobandai's--E3 on the console front is a bit of an understatement. Namco's lineup of roughly a dozen games can be broken down into three categories: mech-based games, cartoon licenses, and substandard racers. The best Namcobandai console title is, surprisingly, a Mario Kart rip-off called Pac-M ... Read more
Capcom hasn't thrown any curveballs this E3, but it's still churning out interesting games, including two big Xbox 360 titles that should put some kick into the next-gen platform's not-so-spectacular game library. Lost Planet is a sci-fi shooter where the player must fight for his life on a harsh icy wasteland of a planet. It might seem like a sta ... Read more
Nintendo still hasn't released a specific launch date or retail price, but it's unveiled lots of new games for the Wii. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and WarioWare Smooth Move were confirmed before the show, but they're not the only titles coming straight from the House of N. Nintendo's poster boy is coming to the Wii with Super Mario Galaxy. ... Read more
At first glance, the two biggest console titles at EA's booth seem to be par for the course for a company that's often derided for unoriginality. One could argue that Army of Two is just another of the countless futuristic war shooters--as an aside, where's my Revolutionary War FPS?--while Superman is yet another licensed game set to suck alongside ... Read more
Snake has a lot of work ahead of him. Not only does he have to deal with Metal Gears on the PlayStation 3, but everyone's favorite commando-spy also has to recruit an elite commando unit to foment an uprising and beat the stuffing out of Nintendo's most beloved mascot! Besides a new trailer and some behind-the-scenes information, Konami is keeping ... Read more
Everyone has seen the analog-stick nunchuck, but it won't be the only attachment for the Wiimote. Nintendo hasn't finalized designs yet, but I managed to get a look at a near-final version of the classic gamepad attachment for the Wiimote, along with a clip-on Wiimote gun handle. The Wiimote will have a conventional gamepad attachment for use with ... Read more
I managed to get inside Nintendo's booth and experience the magic of the Wii at firsthand. Big N had more than a dozen different titles for people to try, but its booth was more crowded than the show floor itself. As it was, I got some quality time with Legend of Zelda and Red Steel, two of the big-name release titles for the Wii. Legend of Zelda ... Read more
Sony had quite a few first-party titles for its next-generation PlayStation 3 console on the show floor, most of which, thankfully, did not require the same mind-numbing wait necessary for Nintendo's Wii lineup. Perhaps the biggest showcase for the PS3 was Warhawk--the only one of the seven Sony titles that incorporated the controller's newly ann ... Read more
Pity poor celluloid hero Indiana Jones--very few matinee idols have been adapted for game screens as often, but the results have always been, to be generous, rather mixed. LucasArts takes another stab at this evergreen property in a new game, currently saddled with the working title Indiana Jones 2007. Intended for next-generation consoles, the p ... Read more
Not one, but two Tony Hawk games were announced by Activision this week. Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is for the upcoming Nintendo Wii and puts the world's most popular skater in a series of SSX-style breakneck races on steep courses from San Francisco to Machu Picchu. The Wii controller makes for a unique control experience, but the graphics at this p ... Read more
Behind closed doors, Sega showed off an early version of The Club. This third-person shooter for the Xbox 360 and PS3 wears its cinematic influences on its sleeve, mixing Fight Club and The Running Man with the over-the-shoulder POV made popular in games such as Resident Evil 4 and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. In The Club, gamers join a secr ... Read more
Gamers hold certain legendary titles in high regard, even if they appear terribly dated to modern audiences. Next to Goldeneye for the N64, the game most often mentioned in this context is the PC game System Shock 2, which was a first-person shooter with a deep plot and stealth, adventure, and RPG elements. Behind closed doors, 2K Games showed off ... Read more
We almost didn't attend Wednesday's Nintendo developer meeting, held after the E3 show floor closed for the night. If we had, we would have missed a great evening with some Nintendo all-stars and an important new game announcement. Surprising everyone in the small audience, Nintendo announced a new Wii title, Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The sequel t ... Read more
I had an opportunity to get a closed-door look at two of 2K Games' next-gen heavy hitters, The Darkness and BioShock. We won't see either game until 2007 at the earliest, but both were complete enough to be shown running in playable, real-time form on an Xbox 360. The Darkness is a genre-bending action shooter with some heavy horror elements: name ... Read more
Unlike its currently available console cousins, the six-year-old PlayStation 2 has quite a commanding presence on this year's show floor. As a point of comparison, the PS2 has nearly the same amount of real estate as the PlayStation 3 and the PSP, while Nintendo's GameCube and Microsoft's original Xbox are nowhere to be found within each manufactur ... Read more
The PS3 is finally playable, and I got my first chance to test-drive the new console earlier today. I played Warhawk, which is the first title to utilize the PlayStation 3's newly announced motion-sensitive controller. The motion feature worked better than I expected, allowing me to orient my onscreen aircraft for dives and climbs, as well as banki ... Read more
Bethesda Softworks may be hush-hush about Fallout 3 this year, but the company still has a ton of things to say about its upcoming titles, Star Trek Legacy and Pirates of the Carribean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow. TV and movie tie-ins tend to be mediocre at best, but these two games just might earn the coveted title of Surprisingly Good Licensed Ga ... Read more
The quirky, left-field hit Lego Star Wars has spawned a sequel, and the imaginatively titled Lego Star Wars II offers more of the same third-person action/puzzle-solving fun as the original. Concentrating on the first three Stars Wars films--which actually take place after the second three, if you're keeping count--the game offers Lego versions of ... Read more
VR still hasn't gone mainstream, but certain companies are certainly trying their hardest. eMagin's Z800 3DVisor gives gamers their own Lawnmower Man-esque head-mounted display, with twin OLED displays and a gyroscopic system that essentially turns the player's head into a giant mouse. Look up and the game aims up, look down and it aims down, make ... Read more
Building on its early-mover advantage, Microsoft today unveiled plans for the second half of 2006 and beyond. Unlike rivals Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft has no new console to unveil this year at E3, so the buzz was muted, and the presentation lacked the lead-story punch of the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo Wii. Instead, Microsoft used a highl ... Read more
The unveiling of the official PlayStation 3 controller design provided the finale of Sony's opening-night E3 press conference. As widely expected, the much-ridiculed "boomerang" controller concept that Sony had been showing since last year's E3 is gone, replaced by a design that's all but identical to the beloved analog controller of the current Pl ... Read more
Sony kicked off the 2006 E3 show with a bang on Monday by providing pricing and configuration details on the PlayStation 3. The system will be available in $499 and $599 versions in North America on November 17. The main differences between the two versions as highlighted by Sony will be the size of the internal hard drive: 20GB on the less expen ... Read more
If you can wade through an 18-paragraph HD-DVD ad, the first details of the external HD-DVD drive for the Xbox 360 have been revealed on Xbox.com. Essentially, all that's been confirmed so far is that the add-on will connect via the USB port, "enabling it to harness the power of the Xbox 360 console for the HD video outputs and digital surround so ... Read more
The May 15 issue of Time magazine includes some tasty tidbits about the Nintendo Wii. Time's Lev Grossman has confirmed that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess has full Wiimote compatibility, with the mythical wandchuck controlling actions such as sword fighting, archery, and fishing. Twilight Princess is still being released as a GameCube titl ... Read more
After an inauspicious debut for the PlayStation 3 at E3 2005, where the system's unsubstantiated "gameplay" footage was largely overlooked in favor of the Xbox 360's playable wares, Sony should be more forthcoming in providing information and demos of the PS3 in action at E3 2006. The company revealed quite a bit of information at a March press eve ... Read more
Wii's the half-word at E3, and Nintendo's going all-out with its wireless, motion-sensing, nostalgia-inducing system. The console formerly known as the Revolution will be front and center at Nintendo's Tuesday press conference and the main attraction at its booth. While Sony's going for graphics-crunching power with the PlayStation 3, Nintendo is h ... Read more
Despite the hype surrounding the new wave of game consoles, one fact remains--Microsoft's Xbox 360 remains the only next-gen system on the market, an exclusive status it has held since November 2005. While Sony and Nintendo will be the media darlings of this year's E3 show, Microsoft hopes to gradually build on its first-mover advantage to gain mar ... Read more