E3 2004: After Show Wrap & Photos

Kikizo finally wraps up its exhaustive E3 2004 coverage, with a look back at the event that brought us new hardware and an exciting outlook for E3 2005.

Click here for all E3 2004 Coverage

Following a number of smaller gaming-related events descending upon the Los Angeles area, the Electronic Entertainment Expo has once again made its monumental impact on the gaming industry. The shockwaves that radiate from the show floor set in motion events that will help to drive the industry in the coming year.

To be at the center of this kind of event is amazing indeed, as you've hopefully had the chance to vicariously feel through Kikizo's extensive E3 video coverage. During the exposition, it's next to impossible not to feel wrapped up inside chaos. After a few weeks of reflecting we're ready to wrap up the show ourselves, from the outside. Join us for our look back at E3 2004.

Tough Talkin'

Each year before the show, the giants of the industry hold separate press conferences to lay down the cards they've held so close for so long. Company executives take the stage while bass-heavy music plays in the background, talking their company up and showing what could be described as mad disrespect for their opponents. It's almost as if they're swaggering middle-aged front men for angry multinational rap groups.

The main differences being that corporate 'bling' comes in the form of sales charts and ten year plans, and rather than professing to have had carnal knowledge of a rival's wife, Microsoft insinuates they've installed units all up in Sony's online user base. There's also very little freestyling involved, unless you count creator Shigeru Miyamoto enthusiastically wielding a replica Master Sword while unveiling the more grown-up look of the new entry in his Zelda series.

While it's true that Xbox Live has acted as potent pimp juice, and Miyamoto exhibits a potent nerdish charisma that has led fanboys to deify him as a digital god, vulgar displays like these aren't the point of E3. It's the vulgar displays on the show floor that count. It's thrilling, in a way, to see an image of the new handheld gaming platforms - Sony's PSP and Nintendo's DualScreen - projected onto a hundred foot video screen, but it's much more thrilling to meet it in person.

New Births

The thought of wrapping one's hands around a new piece of hardware gets us all going. Unlike last year's show where nothing was new but the games, two handheld platforms were publicly shown, with Sony finally stepping into the ring with Nintendo, the undefeated champ of the handheld arena. Both proved to be quite interesting and desireable. A new, trimmer version of the N-Gage was present as well, but by comparison, the hybrid cell-phone/console remains in the flyweight class. Nonetheless, we'll have a hot feature to update you on Nokia's gaming position shortly.

The PSP is, more or less, a smaller PlayStation 2 capable of playing games, movies, and music in one format. Sony is hoping to slip the smart-looking console into pockets of resistance belonging to adult gamers who may be too self-conscious to whip out a Game Boy in public. It should be noted that the single analog stick slides nicely, and that Metal Gear Acid is in fact a tactical strategy game. Slightly interactive elements like adjusting a game's camera were available, but no actual games were playable.

Nobody is conclusively sure what DS stands for (Developer's System, Dual Screen, or both?), but from our experiences with the device, Nintendo DS does give you a new way to play games. The sleek unit, not yet a production design, houses a stylus. Various demos let you use the wand to slice flying vegetables, chat with your friends, or bang the screen mercilessly (and quite stupidly) to fire at locked-on opponents in the rather sloppy Metroid Prime: Hunters. But these demos basically stood in as the potential for better things to come.

Staring Down the Barrel

Big sequels are an inescapable fact of gaming, and wary publishers continue to lean on established properties as a crutch. This year, we hardly need to point out that many of the biggest titles of E3 2004 were all sequels to the biggest titles of years gone by. It's what gamers have all expected, if not hoped for. Halo 2, Resident Evil 4, Gran Turismo 4 and Splinter Cell 3 are all games that are so ridiculously high profile they're disqualified for explicit discussion in a wrap up. Mech Assault 2 is another big name worth checking out, if only to see guys in little power suits latching onto the back of a huge mech and trying to hack his way in to control it.

The new round of big PlayStation platformers is all-sequel this year. If you'd like to know more about Jak III, just imagine the mascot doing every generic gaming activity known to man, and then imagine it again with baditude. The new Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal looks to me very similar to previous installments of the trigger-happy platformer series with the addition of several eight-player online modes. This is one of the major moves Sony is making to put some oomph into their online game, and of course includes vehicles and all that good stuff. Sly 2, if it's lucky, can build on the modest commercial and fairly enthusiastic success of the first title by adding two new thieving characters and mixing up gameplay.

If you're looking for a different kind of platformer, perhaps you're interested in a game controlled with bongo drums starring Donkey Kong. Or perhaps you'd just like to see two gorillas beating the hell out of each other. Either way you owe it to yourself to read up on Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat.

Meanwhile, Rare's latest offerings were looking really tight. Kameo, on its third E3 showing, has been completely overhauled in visual terms, offering some great looking bosses and a fantastic lead character, while Conker: Live and Reloaded impressed everyone with its multiplayer showfloor demo.

If you like your RPGs progressive, Jade Empire and Fable are two ambitious western developed titles that bode well for the future of the genre, with hands-on combat and the ability to make a noticeable impact on the world looking very promising. The follow-up to Knights of the Old Republic, KOTOR 2 is headed in a similar direction. Final Fantasy XII was actually shocking and perhaps disturbing to traditionalists, mirroring Final Fantasy XI in many ways by eliminating separate world maps and battle screens. We can dig it, though.

One more thing, Sega, which always shows at least a handful of games worth getting excited about (the racer OutRun2 probably got the most play out of this year's Sega lineup), planned to make a big announcement. Officials close to the company had said that it would be something completely unexpected, that we could never, ever guess - one that would rock Sega fans everywhere. The announcement turned out to be Sega's deal to publish The Matrix Online, which having been revealed to the press a couple of weeks beforehand, had already seen its modest amount of hotness almost completely dissipate. Sega's real "Explosive Announcement" came about a week after the show.

Don't Shoot Too Soon

There was much ado made about Sony's first-person shooter Killzone, which is marked by fantastic graphics (considering it's a PS2 title), an oppressive visual design, and the promise of twelve player online play. I get the feeling that Killzone may only be a major title within the context of the PS2's limited online offerings. It looks pretty good, but despite what it has going for it, a rather shocking number of fully competent games in this genre were on display no matter where you turned.

Star Wars: Republic Commando, which makes a valiant attempt to keep the license out of the dirt with fast-paced, context-sensitive squad command and the pulse-pounding Men of Valor, (we're not going to mention Halo 2 again) being two of the most notable new shooters. Even Midway's Area 51 felt surprisingly decent, aside from an insane difficulty level. And Metroid Primw 2 is unsurprisingly slick.

Blink and Miss 'Em

There are always a few titles that inevitably miss out on the attention, Prince of Persia and Beyond Good and Evil being last year's best example. This is by no means comprehensive, but regardless... We'll start with Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans! - these two titles are best described as open ended games that have just a bit in common with Grand Theft Auto. In Mercenaries, the title characters use cash they make from apprehending terrorist leaders to have tanks airdropped and call in a bunker-buster air strike from the United Nations. Destroy All Humans! sees an alien with telekinesis, mind-control, and incredibly destructive sci-fi weaponry running loose in the 1950s. Great fun.

And finally, Devil May Cry 3 and God of War - for anyone who wrote off Devil May Cry after being let down by part two, you may want to take another look when DMC3 rolls around. Very stylish, much tighter controls, and an overall feel that better matches the original. God of War also bears Devil May Cry's influence, with a pale character swinging a mean pair of bladed chains in a psychotic combo system.

Of course, there were many more, but you'll just have to check Kikizo's Complete Coverage for those, won't you?

Merely a Warm-Up...

This year's E3, while introducing exciting new hardware and adding yet another wave of incrementally superior, top quality games - both original and existing IP - is but a warm up for E3 2005. All three firstparties discussed their next home consoles openly, in one way or another, at their Pre-show Media Briefings - and next year, at least one, and probably all three, will debut in some form.

And as our latest next-gen progress report points out, it's going to be brutal, dirty and downright exciting, with Microsoft and Sony scrapping for your living room - the former buzzing on software and the latter on hardware, while Nintendo aims to regain its footing by Revolutionising the way traditional gamers play their games.

Join Kikizo again next year as we bring you more top-notch coverage.

Justin Speer
Contributor, Kikizo Games

Photos by Kikizo Staff

Video Coverage (Latest Videos & Video FAQ)
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The Kikizo E3 2004 Video Mix Must-see video mix added to the Ultimate Video Coverage - six minute montage of the hottest babes, gaming legends, big announcements and best moments. Includes PSP and DS stuff. (640x480, 1.6Mbps)	6.21m	75.4 MB	WMV
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