E3 2010: The Third Parties – EA and Konami

I caught most all of the Electronic Arts, Konami and Ubisoft press conferences from E3, and in a timely manner no less, so here’s a little two-post roundup thing.

Electronic Arts
Clearly they aren’t speaking to me with this stuff. Besides the sports games which I’ve never cared about, Medal of Honor, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Dead Space 2 and The Sims all washed right over me. EA’s social network, Gun Club, seems cool but if it revolves around their online shooters it’s also a wash for me. I can’t wait to see what EA Sports Active 2 for Kinect is like, Crysis 2 and Bulletstorm are both right up my alley, and maybe I’d still get into APB if my PC can even run it. Of everything they showed, Criterion’s reboot of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (watch above) was the only game to ping my radar. And even that didn’t look all that fun, but it’s still early and they already nailed the exotic-cars-in-interesting-locations vibe of the original.

Konami
While I agree with the consensus that Konami’s presser was the “Train Wreck of the Show” I came out more excited for several of their games than I was going in. The localized version of Otomedius Excellent was a great surprise and I’ve always wanted to play a ‘-dius’ shooter that didn’t require importing a $90 cartridge. Adrenaline Misfits gets a pass only because there’s a slim chance that a kart-style racer might be fun using Kinect and I’m still open to Castlevania: Lords of Shadows somehow being fun.

What really won me over was Iga’s presentation of the other Castlevania, Harmony of Despair but I talked about that already. Metal Gear Solid Rising looked zan-tastically datsu-m (sorry) with controller-based sword play that seems more precise and fun than all that cludgy junk on the Wii! A break from the traditional Metal Gear Solid gameplay while still getting to hang out in that world seems perfectly timed for me. I wasn’t all that crazy about Ninety-Nine Nights 3 before but after Tak Fujii’s awkwardly casual intro and his fantastic dreadlocks I’m willing to support anything the guy does. But even his play for applause wasn’t as uncomfortable as the DanceMasters presentation.

DDR Producer, Naoki Maeda and Thomas Nagano pretty much pretended to play the game as a video of it was displayed on the screen in front of them. At several points you see shots of them in the game and they’re wearing different clothes than they are on stage! They did let people play it on the show floor so I’ll forgive the deception but mostly because Naoki is amazing engrish man (VERY EX’CISE!!) and I never got to play ParaParaParadise.