Hope you're all enjoying the E3 2008 coverage as much as we are. After hearing from Nintendo and Sony on their up and coming title releases here are some of our impressions of future releases discussed their respective press events E3.
So far during Nintendo's press event they have provided us with a few neat surprises for the Nintendo DS. "Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades", I need a nap just saying that title, has a very cool song sharing feature. If you have the original DS version and a friend has the newer Decades version, you two will be able to play each other's songs with or against each other. Very cool idea! Expected launch date of September 2008"Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" is not the best looking of the version of the game coming out, but it still manages to bring the action of being able to bring major Sith pain to anyone that gets in your way. The new stylus control system looks a bit intimidating, especially since all the other versions will use a more classic controller style to control you're Sith apprentice (except the Wii...which is pretty cool). I'll bring you my final verdict after September when the game drops."Sim City Creator" was not a title I expected to hear coming to the DS again. While city creation sounds like a good idea on the go, the screens might be just a tad too small for the new title. This time around, they are bringing a new concept: managing your city through different age periods. I'll admit, I'm curious to see how it will actually play out later this year.
Sony looks to make the early 2008 non-believers of the Playstation Portable (PSP) platform eat their words with a strong set of titles this year.
"Resistance Retribution" was the biggest surprise for me. My past experiences with first and third person shooters on the PSP has been hit or miss, but I'm a fan of Resistance, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this one. Seriously, if it plays half as great as it looks, this could be a surprise hit for the PSP!"Star Wars: The Force Unleashed" gets double billing, as it looks great on the PSP. Extra points for being able to smite, well, pretty much anyone and everyone you run into (or through as the case may be) on the go! September is going to be expensive!"Star Ocean: First Departure" has my attention as the Star Ocean series has delivered a great story with solid RPG gameplay. Adding the anime cut scenes to the mix for this PSP outing is simply icing on the cake. The only way this bombs this October is if they completely mess up the RPG gameplay...and I really don't think that's going to happen. There are some other cool non-gaming feature add-ons for the PSP that we will report about shortly but trust me these will truly make you think twice about *not* owning a PSP.
Alejandro K. Brown