E3 2010: Final Thoughts

The 2010 edition of the Electronic Entertainment Expo has been over for a few days now and we had the chance to think a bit and form some opinions about what the biggest companies in the video-game industry showed in the four days of the convention. I'll talk both about which conference was my favorite and about the games that got my attention.

While the Internet is raving about Nintendo's announcements, Sony's conference has been right down my non-Nintendo core gamer alley. While I was really skeptical at first about motion control (and still am a bit), Sony was very smart to pitch PlayStation Move for both traditional and casual audiences. The stellar line-up that will support Move really makes me consider it as a nice alternative to the DualShock 3. The breadth of games Sony has shown was really impressive and it was nice to see a company staying true to the customers that brought it where it was.

E3 was also quite nice in terms of the games that were announced and the epic trailers that have started circulating on the Internet all week. A few titles really stood out from the crowd for me: Portal 2, Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Crysis 2. All of them have the potential to change the way we look at video games. Valve seems really adamant about expanding and improving every element that made Portal great. Even the simple trailer that was presented during Sony's conference really showcased how good the developer was at promoting its products, even when using such limited vehicles as a few words spoken by GLaDOS.

While I'm not a fan of Kojima Productions, the sword mechanics of Metal Gear Solid: Rising may finally deliver something that players have long awaited from developers: realistic sword gameplay. Crysis 2 also looks great and Crytek's philosophy of combining linear storytelling with sandbox gameplay is really something worth looking at by other developers.

Sadly, I would've expected to see much more gameplay footage from the most promising MMO in development, Star Wars: The Old Republic, but it seems that BioWare is still not keen on explaining exactly how this title will play out. I'm really curious to see how all of the promises that have been laid out at this year's E3 will or will not be fulfilled by the industry in the following months.