Coasting right there along with the complaints was a building buzz that next year's E3 was going to have to undergo some mammoth changes. Just how mammoth? According to a number of well connected sources I spoke with during the show, there's considerable thought going into opening the doors, this time officially, to the public at next year's big event.

Reached for comment earlier today, the Entertainment Software Association had this to say:

"The ESA is currently in the process of receiving feedback and will make an announcement about the 2009 E3 Media & Business Summit at an appropriate time."

My two cents? I find Leipzig's Games Convention to be the best format going for large gaming events. In the big Europe-centric show you have a number of mammoth halls showing off the best and brightest gaming has to offer to the public. You also have a hall or two dedicated solely to the press where writers and reporters can have quiet meetings and interviews with developers, producers and businesses types. The best part for a working journalist? Being able to do your interviews with the movers and shakers of the industry and then walk five minutes to get a chance to talk to the people who play those games. It's like reporting nirvana.

Come on ESA, follow suit.

See Brian try to talk the head of Sega of America into launching Dreamcast 2 to take on the Wii.
Dreamcast 2? Seaman 2? Shenmue 3? Hear Simon Jeffery crush all of your Sega wet dreams.

We explained it in detail, why Aliens didn't make E3. But it's so much more soothing hearing the news come in the Anglified voice of SEGA of America's head honcho Simon Jeffery.

Still The Sims, now with a shiny 3 after it. If you're interested in all things Simlish then you probably want to take a gander at the offical E3 Sims 3 trailer, sent over to our tower fresh this morning. What does this have, Sim faithful, that would make me want to drop whatever other Sims game I happen to be currently playing?

Rumor has it that Molyneux is currently working on Denis Dyack II, which is said to feature more realistic gameplay, and possibly a dog.

Hold on a moment...I just actually read the full article instead of skimming it, and it turns out that Molyneux simply feels sorry for the flack that Denis Dyack is catching over Too Human.

"I feel sorry for Denis Dyack because you know, I think a few things were said wrong, there was that really unfortunate showing at E3 a few years ago. Everyone got on the bandwagon of saying things about Too Human. Now I've played it and, you know, it's a good game. It doesn't deserve a lot of that harsh criticism.

It all makes sense now! Molyneux of course caught a lot of flack himself when he released Fable on the original Xbox, a game that decidedly did not live up to his creative vision. You can see where I could get confused.

I kind of apologised at the end of Fable 1 about actually saying things that didn't end up in the game. I've tried to be really really careful about what I show and I think everything I've talked about in Fable 2 you can now play in there, so that was really important. But what I realise over time is that talking about a game before it's released is a dangerous game.

Sort of like writing out a news post before fully reading and understanding the source article, which I would never, ever do.

Peter Molyneux: 'I feel sorry for Denis Dyack' [Videogamer.Com]

It's really too bad our illegal street racing skills weren't up to the challenge. Sprinting through Sunset Boulevard in a Mazda RX8, then through the Hollywood hills in a late '60s Ford Mustang Boss 302 showed that, while we were thrown a couple of "REP" points here and there, we have a long way to go before actually having a respectable racing reputation.

Fortunately, we looked pretty good, even when finishing fourth.

That's largely due to the game's deep car customization system, not our (or our in-game driver's) physical beauty. In Midnight Club: Los Angeles' garages, you can spend your hard-earned dollars on new performance enhancements for your ride. Using real world name brand aftermarket parts, you can upgrade your acceleration, handling and speed via the purchase of new electronics, air intakes, nitrous tanks and more.

You'll also be able to tap into your vanity's performance, decking out your car with new paintjobs, new headlights, new doors, even new interior components. Tired of that dull stock steering wheel? Throw a MOMO on it! Those interior changes can be gawked at via the cockpit view camera choice.

I turned a rather attractive stock Aston-Martin V8 Vantage Roadster into a hideous purple and orange glowing beast, complete with vertical doors and every garish accoutrement I had access to. (I had access to everything, via unlimited God-mode funds.)

There's also a rather substantial "vinyl editor", one that let's players create a look unlike any other. It looks to be on par with custom exterior editors found in titles like Forza Motorsport 2, with default stickers and customizable primitives at your editorial disposal.

In the Midnight Club: Los Angeles' garage, you'll also be able to choose your driver's "special moves." These special moves, as described by Rockstar themselves, are as follows.

* Zone allows you to slow down time in order to take sharp turns or weave in-and-out of traffic like a champ!
* Agro will give your car added strength and the ability to damage opponents faster, or sometimes knock them completely out of the race.
* Roar sends a shockwave that clears your path by pushing cars off to the side of the road.
* EMP is an electromagnetic pulse that shuts down the engines of the cars around you, bringing them to a complete stop.

We tried out the EMP, the latest addition to the line-up of super moves. Fortunately, the electronics shorting blast radius doesn't affect your ride, so, after creeping up on a cluster of opponents, we fired it off. After seeing the tail end of opponent's rides for a good portion of our races, we took great satisfaction in watching them spin out — perhaps a bit too much, as we went hood first into a building right after.

It might've been the sightseeing that distracted us, actually. Midnight Club: LA's edited down versions of Hollywood, Santa Monica and downtown LA look almost exactly like the real thing, minus the rage-inducing traffic the city is known for.

There are dozens of recognizable landmarks, with stylized versions of the Sunset Strip, Beverly Hills and the Santa Monica Pier chockablock with detail, including billboards of licensed products like iPods and T-Mobile Sidekicks, as well as landmarks like The Comedy Store and even the hotel we were in during our demo.

The city looks so startlingly realistic that I tried to find my way to my neighborhood — not quite the stuff of street racing — but was unsuccessful. While the feel of LA is certainly intact, the roads have been carefully redesigned for a more fantastic driving experience.

Oh yeah. The driving. We took part in a quartet of races, some initiated by simply finding competition on the streets and flashing our headlights. We then sprinted off to a the starting line, having the option to actually race to the starting line. This pre-race race will net you more REP points, used to gain access to higher level races, but is totally optional. The sprint to the starting line can be skipped if you so desire, but we found the spontaneous thrill of beating our competition to the meeting point was worth it not just for the extra points. At the very least, it's a nice warm up.

We tooled all around town through our four races. Our first formal race, Sand and Surf, took us from the beaches to the freeway. Mulholland and Beverly saw us driving through the winding hills of Hollywood before heading down to the Valley. Macarthur Cut took us from downtown to the LA River, a misnomer of a racing venue that might be familiar to fans of Terminator 2's more epic chase scenes.

Each felt unique and frenzied. Midnight Club: LA's dynamic camera, which switches to an over-the-shoulder style view when hopped up on nitrous or coming off a slipstream drafting high, combined with tire-spinning peel outs makes for a white-knuckled rush. It's somewhat difficult to see what you're actually racing toward, it's so fast. Our decked out cars may have had something to do with the feeling of untamed car control, and we'll blame our many crashes and last place finishes on that.

What we didn't get to tackle were Midnight Club: LA's motorcycles or the LAPD, both back in the newest iteration. We'll just have to wait until the game is released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 later this year to do that. The game hits October 7th in North America and October 10th in Europe.

The first big announcement of the press conference had to be exclusive downloadable content for the Xbox 360 and PC for Bethesda's Fallout 3. As a gamer with all three of the title's launch platforms in my home, that was exactly the sort of news that sealed the deal for me, and certainly a bit of a downer for the PlayStation 3 crowd, but that's not what this press conference was all about, was it?

They followed up the Fallout 3 scoop with a gaggle of sequel release dates. Resident Evil 5 in February of next year, with Fable II coming in October and Gears of War 2 slated for a November release. This was Microsoft's way of assuring 360 owners that they'd have plenty of games to look forward to over the holiday season and beyond.

Then came the first real bomb - the reinvention of Xbox Live. Support for custom avatars caught many a gamers' eye, though of course plenty of folks out there saw the new feature as an aping of Nintendo. Me? The move was definitely inspired by Nintendo, but custom avatars seem a natural addition to a console so heavily invested in community.

Along with the newly revamped Xbox Live experience came Live Party, a way for online friends to basically for a gaming group, staying together from game to game, sharing pictures, music, and even videos while never losing touch with one another.

They'll even be able to watch Netflix movies together, with MS announcing a partnership between the two companies that will allow 360 owners to download movies and watch them directly from their console, much like PC owners can do right now.

Further banking on the system's online capabilities, Microsoft also announced Xbox PrimeTime, a game show channel for the Xbox 360 where players around the world could participate in titles like Uno Rush and 1 Vs. 100, based on the hit television show.

Other revelations included news on Guitar Hero DLC from Van Halen and Metallica, a sequel to the classic Galaga coming to Xbox Live Arcade, and some pretty new controller colors.

Just when we though the show was over for Microsoft, ending with Square Enix's Yoichi Wada showing off Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean, and The Last Remnant, after which Sony's Don Mattrick came back on stage to sum things up. Some interesting games were shown, and the Xbox Live updates were intriguing, but that was it? Seemed a bit lackluster to me.

Then Yoichi Wada came back on stage and did this. Final Fantasy XIII, the game that launched a million PlayStation 3 systems, was no longer a PS3 exclusive. Up in the press room, Leigh and I actually whooped, scaring those nearby. Sony fanboys were outraged. Every day that I wake up and there isn't a parody of the song American Pie (Bye, bye FF X-I-I-I) in my inbox I am slightly crushed.

That last announcement carries a lot of importance for Microsoft. That a company as well respected as Square Enix deem them worthy of receiving the first multi-platform Final Fantasy title ever (XI still doesn't count) is a tremendous nod to Microsoft's success with the system as well as the perceived potential of the 360 with publishers across the industry.

All in all I'd say that Microsoft took several steps in the right direction this E3. They've taken steps towards further defining their vision of an online gaming community, revealed some extremely lucrative deals both game and movie-wise, and they've shown the sort of extra value that the Xbox 360 has to offer in a world where exclusives are becoming a very rare animal indeed.

Microsoft

- Alan Wake is shown. We still have no idea what’s going on, but are also still glad they’ve stuck with the name “Alan”.
- Halo Wars is played on-stage, in real-time, putting to rest any fears that the RTS won’t handle too well on a console.
- Ex-Bungie, now-Microsoft man Frankie O’Connor takes to the stage to show off Bungie’s new Halo title. It’s part Call of Duty 4, part Ghost Recon, all grainy helmet cam footage and blood splatters. It looks amazing.
- Final Fantasy XIII is announced for the 360! Then, in an extension of the same money-making logic, Konami begrudgingly announce that Metal Gear Solid 4 is also coming to the 360. And the PC.

Nintendo

- There’s no need for a price-cut from the market leaders, so instead they announce…new colours. From October, the Wii will be available in black, red, lime green and puce.
- The lights dim, the music rolls…it’s a montage. Of new, upcoming, good-looking Wii titles. There’s F-Zero Wii, Pikmin 3, Starfox Wii, Return To Luigi’s Mansion, 4 Swords Wii/DS, Kid Icarus: Rogue Angel Squadron. There’s Animal Crossing. There’s a glimpse of a new IP: a cute, ageing artist who must fight his way through middle age, and the creative slump that’s been brought on by it. At the end? A familiar score, a flash of triforce, a sword being pulled from a stone pedestal. The crowd goes wild.
- A renewed commitment to the Virtual Console is announced, starting with the complete Mother trilogy, which will be released throughout September.

Sony

- Following the pleasant, if not surprising unveiling of the PS3’s video service, Jack Tretton announces casually that – following the introduction of the 2.43 firmware update in October – all PlayStation 3 models will be fully backwards-compatible, thanks to a nifty piece of software emulation.
- A Remote Play initiative is kicked off, whereby developers are encouraged to ensure that either their PS3 games are somehow playable via remote play, or will at least contain PSP-friendly mini-games or bonus content.
- God Of War III is debuted. And not with some bullshit pre-rendered trailer. It’s actually debuted.
- Team Ico’s new game is shown off. It’s got a muted colour palette, involves a silent protagonist, and looks absolutely wonderful.
- Square Enix finally get their act together and announce a Final Fantasy VII remake for the PS3. The good news? It’s a Final Fantasy VII remake. The bad news? It’ll be episodic, downloaded from the PSN, will cost $20 per episode (there’ll be 117 episodes) and the first won’t be ready until 2012.

Capcom

- Capcom wheel out a surprise guest during their E3 presser. It’s Ready At Dawn’s Ru Weerasuriya, who’s there to announce that, yes, they’re no longer working on the PSP. They’re now working with Capcom on a PS3 exclusive. Okami 2.

Sega

- Sega’s key E3 announcement is that, yes, the werewolf segments of Sonic Unleashed are a PR prank, and the entire game will consist of the daylight, Sonic, go-really-fast bits. Oh Sega. You had us going there for a minute!

Activision

- Two new Call of Duty games are announced. The first, Call of Duty 6, is Infinity Ward’s next CoD title. Set in the far reaches of distant space, it tells the tale of a lone soldier’s struggle against a hostile alien invader bent on humanity’s ultimate destruction. People still get excited. The second game is a CoD4 spin-off for the PSP called Call of Duty: Albion Prevails, which tells the tale of a young Price and his covert struggles against those cheeky Argentineans and Irish. Includes bonus moustache-trimming minigame.

EA

- Mass Effect 2 is shown. It does not feature slyly-cut “sex scenes”. It features full-blown man-on-alien penetration and alien-on-alien nazi sex dungeons.
- Pandemic reveal their Batman sandbox title, which surprises everyone by looking not only faithful to the source, but also good.

GameSpot Party [Comedy.com]

As we do every year, we’re beginning the process of surveying exhibitors and attendees to determine potential changes to the Summit. Once this is completed and shared with the ESA’s Board of Directors, we will make an announcement about the specifics of the 2009 E3 Media & Business Summit, which will occur.

Maybe they'll move it back to Santa Monica again to keep everyone on their toes. Or how about Pasadena? Bring it to Orange County!

E3 to return in '09 [GameSpot via Go Nintendo]

If there is any perception that Nintendo is ignoring the core gamers, it's a misunderstanding and we really want to get rid of that misunderstanding by any means. We are sorry about [the E3] media briefings, specifically for those who were expecting to see Nintendo show something about 'Super Mario' or 'Legend of Zelda.'

"Sorry" is a strong, and surprisingly powerful word to pull out. Probably won't do anything to sooth the strained neck veins of the outraged faithful, but it's a nice gesture regardless.

A Wii Bit Short On Supplies [Forbes]

That's why it's helpful that something like Fable II can be broken down into digestible, feature-focusing chunks. The game's dog, for example, with its ability to help out in battle, its nose for hidden treasure, we know is going to be A Big Deal. We won't be surprised if Man's Best Friend plays a more important role than Molyneux led us to believe in our sit down preview of his Xbox 360 game.

We just know he's going to emotionally manipulate us with that lovable digital mutt.

We were about two hours into Fable II's storyline, Molyneux says, when we got our first hands-on experience with combat and dog-play. Combat has been a big focus in the Fable sequel, and while it may not have Ninja Gaiden caliber aspirations (or animations), it works. It's fun, especially when the dog comes to your aid, gnawing on the limb of some recently dispatched foe.

The hero in Fable II had access to limited combat options at this point. He was just getting his hands on some rifles and a little bit of magic. Sadly, we didn't get to take on that lovely looking Treant beast, just some rank and file pirates, but left the combat experience feeling more than satisfied.

If there's one thing that Fable II looks to achieve, it's painless action RPG combat. It may not have the cinematic flair of Nintendo's 3D Legend of Zelda games, but Lionhead Studios title has so much more depth, we can forgive a few rough edges.

And being the graphics snob I am, those rough edges come across in some occasionally homely character models. The hero's wife in Fable II may be a busty beauty, but the game may get some flack for its sometimes ho-hum visuals.

That will most likely be forgiven with the impressive amount of depth the game appears to have. The ability to upgrade your career skills via mini-game diversions looks better than grinding and cold, hard stats arrangement.

When we got into town, we met Fable II's bard, the singer-songwriter who will belt out tales of your heroism. He'll also sing songs of your cowardice, adding comic relief and occasional annoyance to your journey through the game.

Molyneux showed off some of the game's Expressions, the silly jigs and smooth moves that let you woo ladies and forge new friendships, prior to our hands-on. You'll pick them from a radial menu when you want to take a wife or receive a gift. They were fairly limited in our demo of the game, but look to provide some welcome options for adding variety to the game world. You'll see non-playable characters throughout town that you can interact with using Expressions, each with icons over their heads indicating their disposition. Wow them with your moves and you'll reap the rewards.

It's difficult to tell if Fable II, with its pub games, combat system, intelligent canine partner and career skills, will be more than the sum of its parts. We'll know when the game ships this October, as we start focusing less on the features and more on the game itself.

When it comes to asking the industry's bigwigs the big questions, we here at Kotaku aren't afraid to get our hands dirty. So, while we were at E3, we asked some of the top executives from each of the major companies questions on their own material. I mean think about it, when do you get to quiz your teachers? This was an opportunity we weren't going to miss. We present the Kotaku Executive Pop Quiz!

Ray, here to save the world from an evil something or other that's covering his kingdom with a black goo, has a pair of familiars that will help him in his fight against, you know, evil. One, a portly bat-winged devil sprays a cleansing orange slime and a sticky green goo. The other, an angelic wisp, sprays water and ice that puts out fires and lays down ice tracks.

The combination of all these things is what gives SPRay its uniqueness.

As you can probably suspect, SPRay takes advantage of the Wii's remote for directing Ray's flow of slop. He'll need to lay down the sticky green stuff to stick to walls (or have other objects stick to walls), stuff that's in a more limited supply. As Ray and his liquidy partners level up, the player will have access to more abilities, giving it a Zelda-like adventure feel.

Like that series' star, Link, Ray also has a sword. He'll use it in concert with the liquid attacks to take out foes, something that should add variety to battling hordes of enemies.

The game looks to have epic boss battles that take advantage of your progressive abilities, something that will surely further comparisons between SPRay and The Legend of Zelda. While the visual design on some of these creatures may not hold up as well to what Nintendo's team has been capable of, we were surprised at how good some of them looked in motion.

The game is due out by the holidays. We look forward to getting some additional time with it... whenever that may be.

But what about what we didn't do? There are a handful of key titles that we thought we could expect for this year's holiday season, so why weren't they showing alongside their seasonal bretheren? We rounded up for you a complete list of this year's no-shows and the hype that preceded them, and then tried to get to the bottom of their conspicuous absence.

Hit the jump for the full report.

The Game: Alan Wake

The Hype: Max Payne developer Remedy announced the "action thriller" way back in 2005, promising to unveil it at E3 — but the game's skipped every event since then, while the developers denied cancellation rumors.
The Facts: A recent story referring to a Windows-branded contest that suggested the game would be shown at this year's Tokyo Game Show turned out to be old news from last year - Remedy posted on its Alan Wake forums that the team's just gotten back from a bit of holidaying, and that they "haven't had time to chat with Microsoft on upcoming shows/showings yet." We contacted Microsoft, and got a "no comment."

The Game: Beyond Good & Evil 2

The Hype: After the original Xbox title first earned critical acclaim in 2003 (making it the ideal title for the return of Kotaku's Game Club), Ubisoft at last announced a sequel for Xbox 360 and PS3 at its Ubidays 08 late in May with a single trailer. No release date was given, and the only other thing we've heard from boss Yves Guillemot is that the sequel will be "more accessible" (read: easier) than its predecessor.
The Facts: Ubisoft has not returned requests for comment, but since the lid was only peeled off the first trailer late in May, it's probable that E3 came too soon to expect the developer to put together a serviceable E3 build.

The Game: Tekken 6

The Hype: Back in 2006, some less-than-impressive E3 screens surfaced for the sixth Tekken title, and in early 2007, unconfirmed rumors suggested the title would launch on Xbox 360 after a period of PS3 exclusivity. When? All we heard is "after Soulcalibur IV" — that's this month, and with no show at E3, that seems pretty unlikely.
The Facts: It's been out on Namco's Japanese arcades, the ones modeled on PS3 hardware, since November 2007, and that's the only place it's been seen since then. We've got no comment from Namco as of press time.

The Game: APB (All Points Bulletin)

The Hype: Dave Jones of Realtime Worlds, the team behind Crackdown, first unveiled APB at GDC 08 in February, wowing audiences with the Counter-Strike-inspired MMO that featured character customization with so many choices that Jones demoed a battle featuring modded FFVII characters. It must have inspired investors, because only a month later Realtime Worlds scored an eye-popping $50 million in venture capital to support the game's development.
The Facts: After the developer bought full rights to the game back from Korean company Webzen, rumors abounded that the developer was angling to sell the game to Rockstar, to create a GTA IV-branded MMO. No such deal surfaced, and early in June the developer said they were in alpha, heading for a full public beta.

Realtime Worlds president Tony Harman told Kotaku that the investment, plus the changing of hands, is the reason behind the no-show at E3: "This year we would have had an exciting presence with APB at E3 if we had continued with Webzen as our publisher," Harman said. "But, given that we re-acquired the rights to APB just this spring and closed a very large fundraising round ($50,000,000) to secure APB’s future, the timing just wasn’t right to attend E3."

"RTW is very excited with APB's progress and we have used our fundraising as a means to invest even more heavily in the APB development team. RTW hopes to release more information later this year with regards to gameplay details and beta plans."

The Game: Brütal Legend

The Hype: The "heavy metal roadshow" epic, starring Jack Black and in development by Tim Schafer-fronted Double Fine, was first announced in September 2007 to much anticipation. We've since seen some effervescent concept art and even a trailer, enough to provoke anticipatory handwringing over the next opus from the well-reputed Psychonauts genius.
The Facts: Alas, it looks like the Activision-Vivendi merger tangled E3 plans for Brütal Legend — Vivendi was the game's original publisher, and the newly-combined company largely snubbed E3 amid its withdrawal from the ESA, though it did hold a press conference there. Just ahead of the event, Schafer confirmed that he hopes to show the game "soon after" E3, and told MTV Multiplayer that "As soon as the dust settles from this whole [Activision Blizzard] merger thing we should be able to talk about the game a lot more.” On Double Fine's official blog, though, Schafer humorously told readers that he skipped E3 because he was much too fat to get through the door, but hopes the South Beach Diet will help.

The Game: Indiana Jones

The Hype: The game was announced in 2005 and first unveiled at E3 2006, appearing to be slated for a 2007 release — when 2007 came and went, we figured that LucasArts would time the game's launch with the release of the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull flick. Nope.
The Facts: LucasArts has had its share of troubles lately; back in June, it sacked anywhere from 75 to 100 employees. Though the publisher stated it was still committed to internal development, it joined Activision, Vivendi, id and others in ditching the ESA, and while it still presented at E3, LucasArts told us in late June not to expect any new announcements or titles at the show because of "too much noise" around the event. The publisher has not yet returned requests for comment, but the facts seem to point to a resource-limited LucasArts preferring to focus on Star Wars right now.

The Game: Team ICO's Mystery Project

The Hype: The team behind ICO and Shadow of the Colossus is working on something, possibly even two somethings, with a Sony exec saying he was "pretty sure" it was an ICO sequel while another rep said it seemed "close to Shadow of the Colossus" in atmosphere. Since then, all we've seen is an exciting screenshot of a chain disappearing into a hole of some kind.
The Facts: Sony says there's nothing new to announce — if there are any details to be known about when we'll see the Team ICO game, they aren't telling us.

The Game: Duke Nukem Forever

The Hype: The "Forever" in the title must refer to how long it's been since we first heard about this game. Actually, it's been more than a decade — that's right, it's said to have entered development in 1997, a whole 'nother console generation ago. Since then, we've seen the occasional stray screen and twittering rumor to remind us that our favorite piece of vaporware does exist. But then, when a trailer surfaced at last, a 2008 release date was confirmed (and then promptly un-confirmed), and Shacknews actually got to take a demo for a spin, we wondered — could this E3 finally be the one?
The Facts: 3D Realms' Scott Miller said at the end of June that the game, although "coming along" (of course), would not be at E3. Why? Because E3 has become so unimportant that Miller just forgot it existed. "It's just that we view E3 as irrelevant nowadays. In fact, I wasn't even aware it was coming up," he said.

The Game: Aliens: Colonial Marines

The Hype: A new FPS based on the Aliens IP? Count us in. Sega first revealed official details of the Gearbox-developed title in February 2008, teasing with a quick trailer at its gamers' day in May. The release date is supposed to be "late 2008," the same timeline as other games shown at E3. So why did Aliens: Colonial Marines skip the party?
The Facts: Sega of America president Simon Jeffery told our own Crecente that Aliens was the game he was most looking forward to among the publisher's entire lineup. "I think Aliens is going to be kickass," he said. Coming out this year, then? "Well, fiscal year," said Jeffery. "This E3 we're really focusing on stuff that's coming out by the holidays, as much as possible," he added.

The Game: Bungie's Next Project

The Hype: Rumors abounded about what Bungie's next project would be — a Halo sans Master Chief? A 2D platformer featuring a plunger-wielding hero? Whatever it was, when a cryptic splash page appeared on Bungie.net at the start of E3 week, it seemed we were just about to find out.
The Facts: What's E3 without a little drama? When no Bungie announcement came, Bungie president Harold Ryan was quick to reveal the reason why via a simple letter posted on the front page of the developer's website — Bungie had been planning to announce its next game, but said it was as disappointed as the fans when its "plans were just changed by our publisher." When Microsoft's Don Mattrick let slip during E3 that Bungie's next project was indeed a Halo game, the publisher soon followed up with an explanation for why they held off on a big reveal: Microsoft thought it had its competition well enough beat with its E3 presser, and decided to save some of its "embarrassment of riches" for a later event that would "do this game more justice."

While we didn't actually get to lovingly touch the mouse and keyboard used to control our Dragon Age: Origins preview, we still got to see plenty of what the BioWare developed role-playing game will have to offer. If you'd like the alternate universe experience of what we saw in the bowels of the Sheraton Hotel at E3, edited down to just three short minutes, watch this down and dirty Dragon Age gameplay clip. You'll feel like you were there — minus the swag and European journalist aroma.

You'll move around the map with the left analog stick, zooming in and out with the right stick. Unit selection is done with the A button — hold A to select groups via a circle — but you can select all units on screen or every unit in your army with the right or left bumpers, respectively.

Your units will fire on enemy units with X, with an alternate firing mode tied to the Y button.

Unit special abilities and building options can be chosen from a pop up radial menu, giving you quick access to things like air strikes or expansion building choices. The control experience is relatively easy to wrap one's head around, thanks to a clean, quickly loading interface.

Building management is similarly straightforward stuff. We started out with a pre-built base, one with a series of "slots" that additions like barracks and vehicle factories can be built upon. You'll also have access to defense towers, but Halo Wars won't devolve into a turret defense mishmash. Base support feels like less of a focus than team-to-team field combat.

On combat, you'll have more than just Warthogs, Scorpions and Vultures to inflict damage on the UNSC side, a Spirit of Fire colony ship orbited overhead, allowing for called-in airstrikes via MAC cannons. Things get hairy? Call in some giant laser fire.

Halo Wars has some impressive visual pop to it, more colorful than when we last saw it. The game's visual effects, in motion, look spectacular. It may not have the immediate visual sex appeal of something like Halo 3, with it's micro-sized units and overhead perspective, but it looks good.

Keep your eye on Halo Wars, even if you're not a fan of the franchise or traditionally an RTS fan. It looks and feels like a console strategy game should. When we get our hands on the Covenant next time, we'll have a better understanding of how well it stacks up.

Jack Tretton took the stage at Sony's E3 2008 press conference and proclaimed it "the year of the PS3." Reflecting on the oft-touted ten-year lifespan of the PS2, the underlying message seemed to be similar to what we heard from Sony in the past: Just wait, a little bit more.

Sony dropped few big bombs during its press conference, which lasted an hour and a half, but did have plenty of details to reveal: just in case you missed something, we've got complete Cliff's Notes from Sony's presser for you after the jump.

Fitting the theme of a gradual but ever-progressing transition for the PlayStation 3, Sony announced the first Greatest Hits collection for the console, older titles that will now sell for $30 in North America. The first of these will be Resistance: Fall of Man, Motorstorm, Warhawk, Call of Duty 3, Fight Night and Need For Speed: Carbon.

The company also provided a launch window for LittleBigPlanet — previously pegged for September, the company now plans to release it in October.

Sony also spent time on the PS2, which Tretton said is still alive and kicking. "In 2008, we're introducing more than 130 titles to PlayStation 2," he said. A new PS2 bundle, called the "Family Value Pack," is hitting North America in the fall, coming with LEGO Batman and Justice League: New Frontiers on DVD for $149.

As concerns the PlayStation Network, Tretton mentioned the company's effort to ease user migration from PS2, part of which is giving all PlayStation users a single sign-in that can migrate from PSP to PS3 and PC. The other piece of big PSN news was the announcement of Ratchet & Clank: Quest For Booty, which is a shorter-length downloadable that Europeans will have the option of purchasing on disc.

Tretton touched on Sony's long-awaited virtual world, Home, with little new information to report. "Your patience [for Home] will be more than rewarded," said Tretton said at E3 — meaning there's still no launch date in sight. However, the demo that was shown during Sony's press event looked, according to our own Crecente and McWhertor, much better than Home had previously looked.

As a counterweight to Microsoft's announcement of a partnership with Netflix, Sony revealed that it, too, would be receiving downloadable movies through studio partnerships, including Warner, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate, Disney, MGM and others. The cost is $15 to purchase, $6 to rent in HD, and $4 to rent in standard definition. The AVC-format videos downloaded to PS3 can also be transferred to the PSP via a USB cable, and the service was set to go live on the same day the announcement was made, July 15th.

A new "Life With Playstation" channel was announced, set to launch in North America at the end of the month, said to bring the news, weather and more to your PlayStation 3.

Finally, the PS3 did get a price drop — of sorts. Tretton announced a 80 GB PS3 "Core Pack" that'll go for $400 — "the same functionality of the 40 GB... with twice the storage," he said.

"This new 80 GB PS3 is perfectly suited for HD games, music, movies and more."

On to PSP, a new bundle was announced, the $199 Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters pack, which comes with the game, National Treasure 2 on UMD, a 1GB memory stick and a voucher forEchochromeon PSP.

The PSP is also getting several new titles: Sony showed Resistance: Retribution, in development by Sony's Bend Studio, along with LocoRoco 2, Patapon 2, NBA 09: Inside, Super Stardust Portable, Buzz! Master Quiz, and Midnight Club: Los Angeles Remix.

The presser closed with the unveiling of MAG, the so-called "Massive Action Game" that may or may not be a SOCOM IP, promising battles for up to 256 players online at once.

The game will be set on a terraformed Mars, 50 years after the events of the original Red Faction game. Now the Earth Defense Force folks are in control and have turned bad. Players will take on the roll of a man caught up in the struggle against the EDF. The game will play out in third-person perspective and the entire world will be destructible.

You can, I was told, bring down an entire three-story building piece by piece. The multi-platform game's open world will also allow you to steal vehicles, swipe weapons even recruit other people to join your band of guerrillas.

While I didn't have a chance to play around with the single player campaign, Volition did give me time, lots and lots of time, to play matches of multiplayer.

Chief among the things that Guerrilla adds to the Red Faction franchise is the fully destructible environment. This time around players get both weapons and special power backpacks as they shoot it out with each other. These packs give players different abilities they can use as they rampage through the stark Martian landscape. Some packs let you thruster hop around the map, other's give you a temporary shield or the ability to charge things and inflict massive amounts of melee damage. That last one, a Rhino Pack, was by far my favorite one to use, allowing me to charge right through a building's wall and take down people camped out inside... with a sledgehammer. That's right, you can run around smashing people with a two-handed sledgehammer. Great fun!

The game will feature five to six modes total including anarchy, team anarchy, capture the flag, bagman and siege. In that last mode, one team tries to defend a structure while the other team tries to dismantle it. In all of the modes teams can repair damaged buildings with a rifle that shoots out what appears to be a cross between flames and plasma.

From what I played through, it looks like the physics are pretty dead on. For instance, you can take out a few stabilizing beams on a very tall building and then watch the whole thing slowly buckle and eventually cave in on itself. Volition told me that the stress system in the game calculates by the second where the stress in a building is and how it should crumble depending on the weight. As buildings topple, debris showers down around you. Nice touch.

The game will support 20 to 25 multiplayer maps, all unique to multiplayer and Volition is toying around with the idea of allowing a third, unnamed, force to be unlockable for multiplayer. Unfortunately, the game won't support co-op multiplayer.

Finally, Volition said that Microsoft came to them back in May or so to talk to them about someone using the Xbox 360's recently unveiled avatar system.

"We are talking with Microsoft about their Mii thing, about maybe allowing you to link up with each other in that and then go into the game."

Then he watched the Sony press conference, and the world as we know it changed. After hearing about “Metal Gear Solid 4”, as well as other PlayStation exclusives in the pipeline and the awesomeness of Blu-ray, he promptly packed up his Xbox 360 and all his games and went down to Game Stop to trade them in.

I am sure the folks at Sony are overjoyed to hear oh Jane's boy's extreme reaction to their press conference, but had he been living in a cave for two years or what? He heard about Blu-ray and Metal Gear Solid 4 and decided to go PlayStation? According to Wells, her son reads all of the news sites, participates in chat rooms, and even watches G4...oh. That explains it.

Not heartwarming story about a journalists son is complete without a tender moment at the end, so I leave you with Jane's final words on the subject.

As we left the store, I said to him, “I never thought I’d see you with a PlayStation.” “Neither did I,” he replied.

*wipes away tear and adds a link*

The Ultimate Proof Sony Is Winning [CNBC - Thanks Dean!]

In this terrifying edition of Justify Your Game, Doug Lombardi takes a crack at justifying Valve's upcoming co-op FPS Left 4 Dead. Can he persuade us in 15 seconds?

The Wii exclusive does a lot of neat things with the genre. First is the fact that while you do take turns controlling both the scorpion and spider in Deadly Creatures, they aren't buddies. In fact, they're deadly enemies of one another. You will never actually do combat while controlling either creature, but you get to witness a few stand-offs as the game unwinds.

While most of the action of the game takes place in the desert of Arizona, there is an overriding story that deals with these mysterious guys searching for something. It's these cut-scenes that sort of tie the entire experience together.

Controlling the spider and scorpion involves a lot of motion control, but the good kind, not the bad one. For instance, while moving the spider around you can target nearby creatures and then strike at them with a sudden flick forward of your hand. This also allows you to do some distant jump attacks. The spider, of course, can also crawl up walls and such, and both creatures regain health by eating crickets. Movement can be just as important as combat in the game too. In one scene the spider had to ditch a rattle snake by tricking it to strike into a cactus repeatedly. The whole thing, from interface, to movement and types of attack, has a very organic feel to it.

Both creatures unlock new abilities, like the ability to spin spider silk to capture creatures, by defeating a set number of creatures to hit predator goals.

Unfortunately, the game won't include any two-player co-op play. Instead you get take turns playing as the two critters in alternating chapters.

While almost all of the game is about surviving the environment and other nasty creatures, the final boss is one of the two humans in the game, the developer told me.

"I don't want to give too much away, but it will make you very squeamish," the developer said. "We do awful things to that poor man."

Nintendo – We did have a bunch of individual Nintendo-related things in here. We don’t want to see Mother’s Day cards. We don’t care about broken wrists. We don’t ever, ever want to see anyone playing Wii Music on a stage ever again. But the list just kept going, and going, and going, so we’re just going to lump them all into one category: Nintendo. Anything and everything you did at E3 this year, Nintendo, don’t ever do it again.

Talky-Talky – You may have missed it if you caught it in bullet-point-form, but Sony’s E3 press conference ran for an hour and a half. And what did they manage in that hour and a half? The video marketplace announcement, a God of War III trailer and MAG. The other 87 minutes was stuff we either already knew or didn’t care to know. An E3 address is the time for sizzle, Sony, not slumber. We’re gamers, not investors. Next time, get to the point, even if getting there only takes you 15 minutes.

Duffy – Who the hell is Duffy? We had no idea. The Googlepedia mastermind tells us she’s a Welsh singer, and that she’s got the biggest-selling album in the UK this year. Good for her. Pity the Microsoft press conference wasn’t Top of the Pops. Don’t ever do that again, Microsoft.

Tell Us, Damnit– “Oh, I’d like to ask you that”, said an interviewee on more than one occasion. No. We’d like to ask you that. That’s why we’re here. We’re the ones asking the questions, thank you very much, and we ask them to get answers.

Navel-Gazing – We get it, E3 is dead. But does the world need any more people reminding us of the fact? Talk is cheap, and worse, most of the E3 talk thus far has been cheap and selfish, based almost entirely around what a games writer thought of the event from a games writer’s perspective. What about the publishers point of view? The developers? The PR teams? The mass media? Or, you know, the public’s? It may well be dead, but for once, it’d be nice to first check with everyone else concerned, see what they think.

Killzone 2 – Looked good in 2005. And 2006. And 2007. And...look, we don’t ever want to see it at E3 again.

Over-Excitement – Gamers are no different to any other type of consumer. They can smell bullshit marketing a mile away. So when senior company executives get up on stage like they just drank crack-laced Kool Aid, it’s only going to end badly. Nintendo and Microsoft were equally guilty of this. You’re grown men/women, and that’s how we see you, and expect you to act. Anything otherwise will only generate suspicion. Unless you’re The Cliffster. Then you get a pass.

Posts About Stuff We Never want to see at E3 again – They’re kinda boring and self-serving, aren’t they? You always start them with the best of intentions and they always come off looking all whiny. We never want to see, or write one, ever again.

Other tweaks the Monolith team have employed include giving the medkit system the boot and now using a regenerize system instead. Another pic change is that players can now carry four weapons instead of just three. The devs said that in F.E.A.R. most players got three weapons they liked and were hesitant to try out new ones — hopefully, this fourth gun slot will open up more experimentation. With the game running on the Monolith developed Jupiter Engine, the team has put in nice touches like a better depth of field and scope. The A.I. is much better as well, making the single player hands-on much more satisfying.

Another neat aspect was that enemies take cover behind cars. But they don't just take cover behind cars, they open car doors and use them for cover. Players can do this likewise as well as flip over cars and whatnot. There are also mechanical body suits (mechas) that players can get in and shoot stuff up with. Mechas aside, the game might benefit from including the slo-mo as it still does feel somewhat nondescript — though solid. The E3 build featured a city in rubble, and it was great to roam around, because Project Origin gives the player more freedom than F.E.A.R..

The game's release date will be announced "sometime after E3, but not the day after E3." Well, that's good to know. The day after E3 has already passed.

Mega Man 9 is very hard. We didn't want to do Mega Man, but easy. We want players to get better, we want them to remember. I've always tried to challenge players, and I think there are gamers who miss being challenged by games.

We'd like to think so as well. Takeshita also expressed his interest in making more Wii titles, which is good news for Wii owners looking for a challenge.

If there aren't dramatic changes to the format and staff, I'm never going again...The concept is broken, it's expensive, messages are diluted, consumers are ignored (remembering that the future of this industry is direct connections with consumers – not retailers), the ticket policies are stupid, and if the entire industry worldwide doesn't participate, it's not real anyway.

Tough words! Tough, but true. Who'll be next to let us know of E3's impending demise? Stay tuned!

Perry: E3 is an embarrassment [GI.biz]

The most exciting title Natsume is bringing? Princess Debut, hands down. We posted about it before, and the DS game is broken down into three parts: rhythm game, princess dress-up and find a prince. The game takes place within the thirty days before a big ball. The game has multiple endings in story mode, and the dancing sequences use full motion capture. It's even possible to watch footsteps on the dance sequence and learn the steps.

The game is geared towards the female pre-teen ('tween) audience, and while Princess Debut doesn't make any misgivings about its girlyness, the game doesn't appear to be shovelware in the least. While checking out Natsume's line-up, Princess Debut went from being the game we were least interested in to the game we were the most interested in. Hey, who doesn't want to play rhythm games, learn to actually dance and find a prince?! Princess Debut debuts later this year.

Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff offers d-pad and stylus control options, naturally, with the latter making for easy (possibly to easy) play-making. You can move your QB around and pass to your receiver with straightforward stylus drags and taps, leaving little to the imagination control-wise.

The DS version also adds Super Skills, buffs that give your quarterback, running back and receivers special abilities, adding to the arcade-style bent of Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff.

Tecmo's exhuming of the franchise may not appeal to the Madden set, with its faux teams, old school graphics and limited playbooks, but for lapsed football fans it might be worth checking out. We had fun, maybe you will too.

Our demo began with an introduction to the Gray Wardens, better known as the Good Guys, and their epic struggle against the Blight. The Blight are a the blue and green skinned orc lookalikes that you, your party and the Gray Wardens will battle throughout. They're of a varied species, some standing ten feet tall with sprouted horns, others more human like, with an unfortunate similarity to the Koopa from the Super Mario Bros. movie.

At first glance, the game is pure BioWare. Dragon Age: Origins has the dialogue tree interface the company is well-known for, with Mass Effect style camera angles paired with more isometric, full party view angles for keeping an eye on the action.

The game also has the BioWare patented "pause and play" method of controlling your party members actions with a turn-based/real-time combat engine. The whole thing looks familiar enough to feel like a medieval fantasy skin applied to a BioWare's Greatest RPG Hits release. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just that, despite the dandy artistic style and modern-day graphics engine, it could feel like familiar territory.

Dragon Age's twisting plot line, full of choices decided by your unvoiced dialogue tree choices, came into play early in our demo. Wandering around the king's courtyard, we came across a caged man, one who promised us a key in exchange for feeding him. Instead of opting to find food for the poor caged soul or ignoring him, our "hero" decided to go with another choice — kill the prisoner and take his bartering tool.

BioWare reps showed off some of the game's scope, as we watched a massive Blight versus Human battle going down just outside the castle wall. This kicked off a brief mission in which we were instructed to light a tower beacon, gathering up disposable party members along the way. These "red shirts" weren't important to the story, but, as we saw later, you'll come across playable teammates that do affect the plot.

Our BioWare rep switched the action to a separate scene, showing off the skills of a higher level elven mage, one gifted with elemental powers. She casted fire and ice spells — each with spectacular effects — which showed off the "pause and play" technique a bit further. Dragon Age can pull off some impressive visuals, something one might not appreciate if the visual din weren't something that could be stopped and controlled.

After dispatching some of the lower-level Blight, our rep kicked off what amounted to a boss fight with a giant blue-skinned demon. The ogre, twice the size of the Gray Warden and his party members, was hurling chunks of the floor, picking up the less fortunate and bashing them to death as the four-person hero squad attacked. It was more action oriented than what we've come to expect from the RPG experts and, after whittling down the ogre's health bar, ended with a sword through the skull cinematic attack. Oh, it was epic.

Our all-too-brief look at Dragon Age: Origins, part of a BioWare-built franchise that will be supported with downloadable content in the future, left us surprisingly interested. It looks to have a respectable blend of story, action and solid design, a satisfying return to form for the developer. We'll be keeping an eye on it.

Senior brand manager Lauren Faccidomo may be a capable bass player in the all-female Ramones cover band The Sheenas, but her performance on her own company's "band" game, Rock Revolution, is... awkward. Faccidomo is most likely very thankful that her Rock Revolution misfire was comfortably nestled within dozens of exciting Konami announcements and that this particular embarrassment was quickly forgotten about.

Sorry, what's that? This is how Konami wrapped up its press conference at E3? Oh. Oh my. Lauren, I have Jaime Kennedy's phone number if you need someone to help you through this rough patch.

It's not just designed as a day and date release cash-in, as the game follows the Tigon design mantra of "combining key film components with unique game play." That comes through in some of Wheelman's more dramatic driving sequences, ones that will see the titular driver jump flaming oil tankers and smash into cubicles as he speeds through an office building.

Wheelman forgoes realistic driving for over the top badassery. Diesel's digital alter ego can "air jack" vehicles a la Pursuit Force. He'll jump from car to car, kicking out the driver without missing a beat. The whole thing looks a bit silly in person, but this is the kind of game one should suspend all disbelief for.

This is mostly forgiving arcade-style stuff. Think San Francisco Rush instead of Driver and you'll be a lot happier. Having your tires blown out and driving on rims doesn't feel like it has much impact on your wheelman skills. It's all speed, adrenaline, big jumps and sexy undercover missions.

As the Wheelman, you can pull off stock Hollywood car chase moves. You'll be able to ram vehicles by flicking the right analog stick forward or side-to-side. There's no spinning out — unless you're doing the bullet-time 360 degree spin that lets Vin fire on pursuing vehicles through the windshield — and you'll never mistake the game for a sim. You'll most likely have your finger on the trigger the entire time, giving whatever car you're in maximum acceleration.

The game is set in a Hollywoodified version of Barcelona, featuring locale specific architecture and landmarks, but lacking in the city's civil engineering. It's an attractive city, featuring some 130 missions spread throughout its racetrack of a road system. According to Midway reps on hand, the game, while packed with things to do, should only take about 10 hours or so to burn through.

Visually, Wheelman has its ups and downs. The city is well modeled, but some unfortunately chosen close-ups on character models can make for a very ugly Vin Diesel. While the city and its vehicles are nicely modeled, the frame rate and rag doll physics have some noticeably rough edges.

Given the game's "Fall" release date, some of this may be ironed out. At this point however, Wheelman feels like a game that's lacking in the features and polish that consumers might be expecting. There's no multiplayer mode to speak of, for one thing, and the package smacks of an half-competitor to titles like Grand Theft Auto IV or Saints Row 2.

There's a certain charm and vibrancy to the game, but it certainly has its share of shortcomings. Whether those will be addressed in the final version — and whether controlling Vin Diesel will be enough for folks thirsting for some arcade style, mission based racing — remains to be seen.

Between the LucasArts presentation of the game and my brief hands-on, I walked away feeling confident that this could not only be one of the most exciting Star Wars video games of all time, it could very well provide moments more epic than anything we saw in the three prequel films.

One particular moment had me believing in the Star Wars franchise all over again. The story opens with Vader hunting down a surviving Jedi hiding out on the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk. He finds the cowering Jedi, but as he prepares to strike him down his lightsaber flies out of his hand, into the hands of a small child. There is a moment right then...Vader looming over this small boy, defiantly holding a weapon against one of the most powerful beings in the universe...it gave me chills. Nice chills.

From then on the story revolves around this secret apprentice, whose powers can only grow. He walks into a room filled with Rebels and Imperials, and everybody dies. He's a secret, you see? You see him, you've pretty much signed your death warrant. His is, for all intents and purposes, a Force ninja.

Despite the recent spoiler-filled trailer, there will still be plenty of surprises in The Force Unleashed for fans of the Star Wars films, from returning characters from the prequels to all-new characters never seen before in the Star Wars universe. During a brief bit of game involving a fight with a massive rancor a dark-haired male character flashed by the screen, and the gentleman presenting the game quickly blurt out "Who's that!?" before telling us we'd have to play the game to find out. I have my suspicions though.

As for the gameplay itself? While I didn't get to try out the Wii version with it's lightsaber controls, I did spend a bit of time with the Xbox 360 version in which our hero (anti-hero? villain?) wanders into a fight between Rebel and Imperial forces in a Tie Fighter factory, and carnage ensued. Force powers tossed enemies about like rag dolls as they desperately tried to save themselves from my wrath. While I longed for some of the powers I had been shown during the presentation, the potential was certainly there. The only problem I really had was overconfidence - I felt like such a bad ass that I wound up dying horribly. Should probably have channeled all of that confidence into hate or something. Whoops.

The graphics are nice and clean, but of course the physics are the real star here. The Digital Molecular Matter technology really shines in conjunction with NaturalMotion's Euphoria and Havok physics. I notice a few issues, such as trees that seem to break as if they were planks of wood instead of living plants, but for the most part it does the job quite nicely.

While LucasArts' Fracture gives you control over the forces of nature, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed makes *you* the force of nature. It could very well surpass Republic Commando as my favorite Star Wars game of all time, and it's really hard to top Sev and crew.

Why bother redesigning the Xbox 360's interface? Shane Kim is here to tell us. Oh and Kim totally gets in Sony's face. No, not really. He does talk a minute amount of smack, but no gang signs were thrown.

So, you know that Square Enix RPG that's coming to the Xbox 360? No, not that one. Infinite Undiscovery, which is actually being developed by Star Ocean developers Tri-Ace and published by Squeenix, looks rather like a Final Fantasy at first blush, which makes one wonder if it wasn't the backup plan in the event that Microsoft's much-prized (and Sony-disappointing) multiplatform deal with Square Enix for FFXIII didn't work out.

Nonetheless, in all of the FFXIII hysteria and hullabaloo, don't forget that Xbox 360 owners actually have more than one large-scale Square Enix RPG to look forward to.

The chill wind of neglect was blowing over the Infinite Undiscovery booth on the show floor last week, so I decided to stop in and give it a whirl.

You may recall that the original announcement of Infinite Undiscovery contained the promise that "every decision you make leads to a myriad of discoveries and affects every encounter." Lots of discoveries, huh? Possibly even infinite ones? Oh, wait, those are un-discoveries? Okay, okay, the title is somewhat confusing, but, moving on.

As I said, at first glance the game looks a little like FFXII — the bit I played featured a three-person party jogging across an expansive rolling meadow under a bright blue sky, with ruins dotted here and there, while creatures on casual strolls across the landscape could be attacked (or would attack) if the party got too close.

Unlike FFXII, though, the other two party members are largely AI-controlled, though there are specific buttons that can be used to instruct them to use specific techniques. Combat is entirely real-time, and you determine the lead player character's weapon combos through simple button combinations, rather than by choosing from a menu. At any time, you can tell your healer to heal simply by pressing Y.

My character was a handsome, sword-toting lad named Capell in the company of two beautiful brunettes — one seemed a range fighter, as I could instruct her to use an archery weapon, and the other seemed to use primarily magic-based skills. Needless to say, all of them had fabulous, gleaming hair.

It's a very appealing battle system, user-friendly, intuitive and fuss-free. It seems to follow a trend in JRPGs lately that seems to minimize menu-based combat in favor of optional AI with some control options — in other words, you can command the rest of your party if you like, but they can handle themselves well without your interference.

In fact, I enjoyed the real-time, action-style battles so much that I wish I encountered more enemies to fight. A good portion of my time with Infinite Undiscovery was spent jogging across the plain, watching my dot blip gently and slowly across the map in the upper right hand corner as I jogged, and jogged, and jogged. This gave the world a real sense of scale, but it also meant I spent a lot of time discovering nothing — undiscovering, if you will.

There were items in my environment occasionally, like a treasure chest that required I take a long detour through a largely featureless area just to descend a tall hill (my character couldn't hop down a small ledge and instead had to find a way around it). There are also occasionally herbs and plants around, that you can pick. You have to sheath your weapon using the right trigger, though, before you can pick something up.

My character had a cool ability — by holding the left trigger, he played a flute, which caused a white aura to spread about him in a narrow-radius ring. That ring, the booth staff told me, represented the range in which my character could search for special items concealed nearby him. I used the ability often as I jogged along, but I never did find anything.

I was slightly annoyed when my pretty archer couldn't shoot a nearby enemy when it seemed like he should be within range. He was in a bit of a depression in the ground, and it seemed to me they were not allowing me to engage with him because, with a ledge between him and me, he couldn't immediately fight back. Okay, fair enough, but what's the good of range fighting if you can't be at range? Archery switches to nearly a first-person view and lets the player aim the bow, which is very cool, but the aim didn't seem too precise at this stage.

Largely, though, there was a lot of jogging between fights, as I searched to try and discover more. At last I reached what looked like a castle wall with a heavy wood door in it — at which point the booth staff helpfully pointed out I'd gone all the way back to the entrance to the previous area, and couldn't re-enter.

Running and running endless miles across an expansive world has been a staple of this particular genre since the dawn of time, and perhaps I'm just terribly impatient in wishing there had been more to do in that great, big infinite area. The never-ending jog through huge environments was, in my opinion, one of the shortcomings in Twilight Princess.

Nonetheless, the quest to perfect the RPG's battle system without turning it into an action title has been a long evolution fraught at times with missteps, and it seems really worth something that Infinite Undiscovery has hit on a methodology that I found engaging, even addictive. I'm looking forward to