Armed with leaflets and picket signs, the Salvationists Against Virtual and Eternal Damnation or SAVED for short, protested outside of the LA Convention Center during E3 on Wednesday. They were their protesting EA’s adaptation of Dante Alighieri’s The Inferno, the first part of three in the epic poem The Divine Comedy. They held signs that read, “EA =Electronic ANTI-Chirst”, “Play Dante’s Inferno, Go to Hell”, “Hell is not a game”, “Trade in your Playstaion for a PRAYstation”, “My high score is in Heaven”, and my favorite “JUST SAY infer-NO!!!”.
The group even has their own website to protest the game. WeAreSavedGroup.org outlines the groups message as to why you should not play Dante’s Inferno. But the site is the quintessential ’horrible site’ with no document title, varying text colors and sizes and lots of animated GIFs. And of course the site and the cheesy posters made many wonder if these protesters were actually real.
Unfortunately according to the AP, the protest was staged. Which leads us to ask the question, If a protest is staged are the protesters lying? And if they are lying, will they go to Hell?
In an interview with Shane Kim, Microsoft’s corporate VP of strategy and business development, Gamasutra was told that it would be simple to go back into a game and adapt it to work with Project Natal, Microsoft’s upcoming Motion Detecting Controller.
Hopefully publishers will look at it and decide they want to do that… Whether they’ll enhance existing games or use them in games going forward.
To show an example of how a game could be adapted to use Natal, Burnout Paradise was shown. With Project Natal you could simply hold your hands out like you were holding a steering wheel. Kim mentioned how they adapted the functionality into the game,
It’s a great example of just how simple it is to adapt a game… It’s not like we went into the source code (of Burnout Paradise). You can take an existing game, and make it work.
This would defiantly be a huge selling point if developers went back to their games and added Natal support. It would also help companies revitalize past games that may have lost their buzz.
The latest trailer for the latest game in theNeed for Speed franchise, Need for Speed SHIFT, was released this week at E3. The game being developed by Slightly Mad Studios, is a ’shift’ from the Need for Speed games that you know and love. EA marketing boss Keith Munro told Eurogamer,
The urban underground was a manifestation of style in some past Need for Speed games for sure, but Shift focuses less on these style cues and more on mirroring the driver experience, that athleticism of being in a wickedly-intense race, and what it really feels like to be behind the wheel
The goal of Need for Speed: SHIFT was to be much more like Gran Turismo, to move away from the exagerated driving and try to become as real as possible. One of the major features of the game according to the official description and a representative at E3 is the first-person cockpit view,
Players are thrust into the heart of the action with immersive and exciting features including a stunningly realistic first-person cockpit view camera and an all-new crash mechanic, providing an unrivaled sensation of the speed and feeling of racing a car on the extreme edge of control.
Slightly Mad Studios did not do a bad job with this game, it works well, but it just isn’t Need for Speed. And for my money I would rather buy a game like Project Gotham Racing, Forza, or Gran Turismo. There is a point where a game can become too real. In Need for Speed: SHIFT, when you crash, depending on the severity of the crash a few things will happen. If you are in a light crash your view will turn black and white, and if it is a larger crash your vision will become blurry. This is just annoying and makes it difficult to recover from a crash. Now this wont be a problem for players that are good, but for those casual gamers that just like to go as fast as they can and bump into other cars and walls this game will not be fun.
Again this is not a bad game, it just is not the game that is going to revamp the Need for Speed franchise.
Gametrailers.com has a set of there videos where Chris Lee of Freestyle Games shows off the upcoming DJ Hero with Jamie playing the table. The videos show a detailed view of the turntable controller as well as what it looks like to play through a song. The third video shows how you can use a guitar and the turntable at the same time.
In Konami’s upcoming game Saw, you play as Detective David Tapp, where you wake up in an abandoned asylum in one of Jigsaw’s games. You will have to interact with other people that will either help you or try to kill you. You will be fighting for your life while trying to find a way out as well as find out the identity of Jigsaw.
The walkthrough shows us some of the traps and puzzles you will encounter. As you search through Jigsaw’s maze you will find clue about why you are there as well as ‘relics’ of past victims.
Nintendo announced today at their pre-E3 conference that coming this fall, you will be able to upload photos you take with your DSi to Facebook. This is a great because we now no longer need to use our phones to upload photos to our Facebook pages.
Today Gran Turismo for the PSP was announced at Sony’s pre-E3 conference. Gran TurismoPSP contains 800 cars and 35 tracks. Since there are so many cars, if you work with a friend (Ad-hoc is supported but there was no mention of online play) you can share the cars that you have collected.
Gran Turismo is set to launch on October 1st this year.
During the Sony pre-E3 press conference today the more details of the PSP Go were released. We now know that it will be launching on October 1st in North America and will cost $249, the same price as when the PSP first launched. We also found out that going foreword all PSP games will be distributed digitally through the PlayStation Network as well as on UMD in retail stores.
This morning Nintendo Everything posted some images of E3 banners with a black sheet over them. This is nothing out of the ordinary as publishers want to try to contain as much information as possibly to make the reveal that much more exciting. However you can almost see through these banners to see what appears to be a title on one banner and a Goomba and the Fire Flower that turns Mario into Fire Mario.
We wont know for sure if this is actually a Mario game until the show starts today but we will post anything we find out. Be sure to check back for updates on this and all other games coming out of this year’s E3.
Ubisoft’sAssassin’s Creed 2 is one of the games that I am really looking forward to at this year’s E3. In the second installment of the extremely popular game Assassin’s Creed, you play as Ezio, an assassin in 1486 Venice, Italy. The trailer does not show any gameplay but it does show your new weapon, a firearm.
When we get anymore details on the game or if we get a chance to play a demo at E3 we will post our impressions here.
Today the trailer for Codemasters‘ DiRT 2, the followup to DiRT(Colin McRae: DiRT) which was actually the sixth racing game in the series. DiRT 2 will feature 9 countries, 100 events, and 50 drivers featuring Ken Block, Tanner Foust, Dave Mirra, and Travis Pastrana.
The first half of the trailer hardly shows any driving, and most of the second half appears to be pre-rendered. However this game is expected to have stunning graphics since it will be using an enhanced version of the EGO engine, the same engine that was used in GRID.
The game is set to release this September and you can expect our impressions of it in our ongoing coverage of E3 09 all this week.
Back in May we reported on some leaked images that were said to be the rumored motion controls for the Xbox 360. Today it is official, ‘Project Natal’ as Microsoft calls it, will be giving users the ability to play games without a controller using only the movements of their body. While it is hard to see in the image from Engadget, you can notice the similarities to the leaked image which was most likely a prototype.
The motion sensing will allow you to use items around your house in the game and will not require any controller. When it becomes available it will be able to work on all Xbox 360 consoles, past and future.
We will post more information here when it becomes available so be sure to check back for information on any announcements out of E3.
If you are a fan of Music and you have an Xbox Live Gold Account you will be in luck. The popular online streaming music website, Last.fm will be teaming up with Microsoft to put the music service on the Xbox 360.
From Engadget’s live blog of Microsoft’sE3 Press Conference: “Schappert: ‘Today I’m proud to announce that music is coming to Xbox Live” thanks to a partnership with Last.fm. And best of all Last.fm will be available to Xbox Live gold members later this year for no additional charge.’”
Check back later for updated information on this game as well as all other E3 announcements.
During Microsoft’sE3 Press conference Halo Reach was announced. The game was announced afterHalo 3: ODST. THe game is set to launch in 2010 but when you buy Halo 3: ODST you will get an invite to the Xbox Live multiplayer Beta. Major Nelson on his live blog said: “Joe says when you buy Halo 3: ODST, you’ll get an invitation to the Halo: ReachXbox LIVE multiplayer beta!” The game is developed by a team at Bungie, who initially made it seam as though they would not be making another game in the Halo franchise.
Check back later for updated information on this game as well as all other E3 announcements.
With the start of this year’s E3 only hours away news and rumors are popping up everywhere. One of these rumors comes from one of the many giant banners hanging around Los Angeles. As Joystiq points out, the banner for Ubisoft’s upcoming game, Splinter Cell: Conviction, displays the Xbox Live logo along withe the Xbox 360 logo, but the PlayStation logo is nowhere to be found. This omission more then re-affirms the rumor that the game would be an Xbox exclusive.
This banner is just one of many that are around the downtown area of Los Angeles for E3. The banners are just a small big sign that this year’s E3 will be a large focus for publishers, compared to last year’s E3 which to many was considered a ghost town.
