E3: The Activision Conference 2006

The number two publisher had some goodies for us at the start of E3 week, including Spider-Man 3, Call of Duty 3, Tony Hawk's Project 8 and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

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While Pre-E3 briefings such as Nintendo's are a fanboy party complete with frenzied camera crews trying to get the best possible video coverage of the event, briefings such as Activision's - the first event of E3 week, which took place at the Marriott hotel in Downtown Los Angeles - feel a lot more like an actual, proper job for attendees, with rows of tables assembled in front of a stage with notepaper and bottles of chilled water to look sophisticated with. Just the right atmosphere then, to learn about this serious publisher's ambitions for the next generation.

Activision's conference kicked off E3 week on Monday

The company began with a swift introduction positioning itself as the "clear number two publisher", also reporting the number one game on Xbox 360 with Call of Duty 2, and committed to the next generation with a line-up of titles for all three platforms. Although vitally Call of Duty 3 was not shown at the event, it was mentioned at the start with Activision promising to "take you closer to the frontlines than ever before, in one of World War II's most epic battles, the liberation of Paris" - and you can also get a look at the game in our upcoming ultimate video coverage. Needless to say, this trailer is completely stunning. Call of Duty 3 will come to all three next-gen platforms, as well as PS2, Xbox and PSP.

The publisher went on to talk about its announcement from earlier in the morning, that it had won the rights to the James Bond franchise - a significant deal considering the 30m units of 007 titles already sold under the direction of rival Electronic Arts.

A rather more sensible affair than the firstparty briefings

The briefing got underway with a Spidey flavour - the "number one superhero franchise" - with the premiere teaser trailer for Spider-Man 3 - depicting a slick, allegedly realtime close-up of the impeccably well textured Spider-Man suit, complete with bump-mapped plastic surface and the iconic, silver, chunky 3D 'web' patterning, all looking nice with the surrounding lighting. We'll have to wait until May 2007 for the game on next-gen platforms, as well as the film.

The first major game demonstration was for Marvel Ultimate Alliance on PS3, a title coming to all platforms but designed specifically with next-gen consoles in mind, bringing 140 of the "most famous characters of all time" together - twenty of which are available for you to use in a four-man team to save the world.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance boasts 140 Marval characters

Activision showed some realtime PS3 gameplay from a build which quite obviously still needed some optimisation - this was running as low as 15-30fps in our estimation - although the game itself actually looks pretty compelling, with decent attacks and use of super powers, and mind-capturing level designs and themes, such as stages miles high above a city with fire effects all over the place.

--> PlayStation 3 Screenshots

The team also showed off an underwater level, which boasted a nice vibrant aesthetic as the colourful characters kicked each other up on the seabed. Another skyscrapers type level was shown, spliced with a couple of quick cut-scenes, revealing the gigantic mega-boss character Galactus, who towers all the way up to the 100th-floor sort of level where your characters battle, despite being firmly grounded on the street. This is one bad-ass dude.

Most impressively, the dev team then showed us a CG cut-scene with all the characters together, in an T2-like war setting with airships and explosions. All the character voices were how you'd expect them to be, and the personality, smoothness and musical score of the whole sequence was basically awesome. The scene ends with Captain America, Spider-Man, Thor an Wolverine after a heated battle, Wolverine emerging from the final scrap to say to the others, "what are you girls looking at?" - in his 'Sawyer from Lost' sort of attitude.

Xbox 360 Screenshots

This video was simply gorgeous, but we couldn't help but feel that a year ago, this is what we were believing in-game graphics on PS3 should look like, and just as we alluded to back in February, the genuine visuals of titles like this is a very different story. Nonetheless, that feeling is nobody's fault other than Sony's, and doesn't reflect on the potential of games like this one - we're certainly looking forward to tracking progress of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

Tony Hawk, which has generated $1bn in sales, has been built from the ground up for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and is also coming to the Wii in a unique edition called Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, which was the next game to be demonstrated. It's a downhill skateboard racing game from the developers who worked on Madagascar, and was shown off in a demonstration which for many attendees, would be the first time they'd ever seen a Wii title being controlled live (a full 24 hours before Nintendo's official Wii conference, fact fans).

Wii's first ever live demo of a playable game

The controller acts as a tilt-sensing sort of steering wheel, with a sudden shake of the controller to 'boost' forwards. By tilting the Wii controller the player balance their grind. Players can also tilt the Wii controller to change the direction coming off of sticker slap, and to clear large obstacles, players can move the Wii controller forward to boost off of jumps -- the Wii controller allows precision turning for avoiding obstacles. The demo is graphically best described as a 1.5-generation affair, with a 4:3 aspect ration running at 60fps.

Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam for Wii and Nintendo DS

One of the event's longest demonstrations followed for a title called World Series of Poker, a poker title that "stays true to realism, and to what the $10m championship is like this year". Now you might think, really, what could be more boring to watch than a game of poker, but these guys are offering characters that are lovingly detailed, based on the real-life contestants with likeness, voices and individual play styles all incorporated. Real-life AI takes care of how each player would react in specific scenarios, making it clear that this is a title with great care and attention to detail being invested by the team.

World Tour of Poker takes... poker to a new level

Surprisingly this was the first presentation to actually get questions from the press afterwards, perhaps because it was starting to wake up, maybe because it was feeling less shy, or maybe just because it was the first title people had questions about. What we learned here was that this is going to be a full price $39.99 title, and no, you won't be able to play for real money on Xbox Live, because that would be gambling in the eyes of ESA, something they're totally not keen on, it was stressed.

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