(Image courtesy of Kotaku)

I’m going to do things a little different this year and just write about the key points, along with my comments on each announcement (as opposed to the overall comments I wrote last year). I have a lot to cover on this amazing press conference so lets get on with it!

Games

This year Microsoft had much pride in itself by announcing that ten “never seen before” games would be coming exclusively to Xbox Live.  Although that statement wasn’t technically true there were some surprise announcments and, for once, Microsoft really didn’t disappoint in the games department.

Beatles: Rockband - Kicking off the show was the opening cinematic from the game, quickly followed by Microsoft lackey’s coming out to demonstrate the game live on stage. Six people took part in singing, drumming and playing the guitar. The top of the screen showed three voices, showing that you can sing in harmonies.

After the demonstration Yoko Ono appeared on stage (thankfully she didn’t speak) quickly followed by the two surviving Beatles; Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.

You can see some of the tracks that will be appearing in the game here, with more announced for downloadable content. ‘All You Need is Love’ will be an exclusive part of this dlc, with all proceeds going to charity.

Tony Hawk Ride - Tony Hawk took to the stage to show off the board we’ve been hearing all about recently. A video showing pro skaters enjoying the game was played, with them all looking extremely excited playing a game about something they’re actually pretty good at in real life. The board itself will be playable at E3, so look out for games journalists making a fool of themselves in public soon.

Modern Warfare 2 - At first they showed the trailer we have already seen, but this was followed by Infinity Ward finally showing us some live gameplay.

The demonstration opened in a snowy scene, with the demonstrater following a guy as you both climbed up an icy cliff. An obligotory cracking ice scene followed, with the controlled character nearly falling. After skipping ahead we got some walking around in a pretty intense blizzard, which makes it really hard to see very far in the distance. This should make for some tense moments, and I could see Infinity Ward making a multiplayer map out of this area of the game.

What followed was some intense shooting action around the snowy level, before jumping onto a snowmobile and racing down a mountain whilst shooting at enemies on other snowmobiles. It’s still pretty standard stuff, but if it’s exciting as the first game was then we have nothing to worry about.

To top it all off Xbox 360 will be getting two exclusive map packs for the game, so sorry to those with only a Playstation 3.

Final Fantasy XIII - All that was shown here was the game actually running on the Xbox 360 (it was a scene we’ve seen before). From what I could see it looks just as good as the PS3, but obviously I can’t really make that statement official until we run both versions side by side.

Square-Enix also announced a projected Spring 2010 release date.

Shadow Complex - So, no new Gear’s from Epic at the moment. Instead we get Shadow Complex, which is 2.5-D (basically part 2D part 3D) shoot-em-up that looks a bit like Bionic Commando: Rearmed. It will be coming to Xbox Live Arcade this Summer.

Joy Ride - A kart racer with dashboard avatars; which is free to download, apart from tracks you can purchase that can also be shared with friends. Enough said?

Crackdown 2 - Well, this was a surprise! Nothing but a pre-rendered video was shown, but the announcement itself made my head come off and fly around the room.

Left 4 Dead 2 - Another surprise, and it’s also a kind of odd move for Valve as Left 4 Dead itself didn’t have much content and many expected Valve to continue supporting it. The sequel may be a little too soon, but more zombies is still good in my book - especially as it’s set in New Oreleans!

Coming 17th November.

Splinter Cell: Convinction - Finally coming out of relative obscurity and giving us some gameplay. This includes smashing a guy’s head into a mirror, ‘marking’ a room of targets through a closed door, crawling around near the ceiling, shooting out the lights and generally shooting people in the face.

Forza 3 – We kind of suspected this was coming, but it was the first gameplay we’ve seen. There’s also more emphasis on customisation and community this time around; with more options for customising your car and a video editor to share your best moments with friends.

Halo 3: ODST – It could just be a re-skinned version of Halo 3, but from what was shown it does show at least a little improvement in the graphics department. There seems to be more emphasis on working as a squad, with your AI squad members defending while you detonate a bridge with a remote charge.

The game will be coming on 22nd September, but that wasn’t all. The previously rumoured Halo: Reach is also in development, which means we’ll hopefully be overloaded with Halo content come this time next year. You will also get an invite to the Halo: Reach multiplayer beta when you buy ODST.

Alan Wake – The final game was one we’ve all been waiting quite some time to see more of. After a “previously on Alan Wake” we get to see some actual gameplay. It’s clear that there’s heavy emphasis on story, with Alan narrating as you move through the game world. He also has a slight flashlight fetish.

After supernatural enemies turn up, flinging items at Alan, he goes on a rampage with a shotgun before getting out a flare gun and going into some sort of bullet time mode. It seems to have something to do with light, meaning that Alan will probably have to use light to defend himself. The demo ended with Alan stuck in a house while a bulldozer pushed it towards a cliff.

But wait!

Metal Gear Solid: Rising – Yup, the Xbox 360 is getting a Metal Gear game. It’s too bad it features Raiden though…

Spring 2010 was given as a release date.

Other announcements:

Last.fm – Last.fm will be coming to Xbox Live meaning that you can listen to personalised radio stations based on what you listen to while you play games. I love Last.fm, and considering I only have one LAN wire running into my room it’s either the PC or Xbox 360 that is connected to the Internet, so this means I can now continue using Last.fm when I have to sacrifice my PC connection to go on Live.

It will be available for free for all Gold members later this year.

Netflix – Unfortunately this is something that doesn’t concern us U.K residents, but Americans will now have the ability to add movies to their Netflix queue through Live. Previously they could only do it through their PC.

Sky – More relevant to us U.K residents is Sky bringing content to Xbox Live. Apparently the service will be similar to Sky Player, but will also include live TV such as football games. This is something that I am pretty excited about, especially as my team Burnley has just been promoted to the Premiership.

Video Store – HD content will be getting upgraded to 1080p, while also doubling the amount of countries that have access to the video store. You will also be able to watch videos with friends (it’s a virtual living room with a massive TV, with your avatars sitting watching it), something that didn’t make the original dashboard upgrade.

Facebook – Xbox Live will also be getting Facebook integration; allowing you to post status updates, view those of your friends and their photos. You can also see who on your Facebook friends list is also a member of Xbox Live.

Facebook Connect also allows you to capture a screenshot in-game and send it to your Facebook profile.

Coming this autumn.

Twitter – View your Twitter stream from Xbox Live, while also being able to Tweet straight from your console. As someone who spends a lot of time on Twitter I’m looking forward to seeing this come autumn

Project Natal (motion controller) – It has been rumoured but now we get to see it for real. Microsoft says that you are the controller, meaning that all you have to do is make the motions to play a game. So, for example, playing a racing game would have you pretending to hold a wheel; while a football game will have you kicking a ball by the doing the motion you would while kicking a real ball or pretending to jump like a goalkeeper.

I can’t really stress how much more advanced this looks compared to the Wii, so you will really have to check out the videos for yourself. To give you a picture though the ‘controller’ also has voice and facial recognition, meaning that the Xbox 360 will recognize you and you can also shout out your answer in, say, a quiz game. Your avatar also mimics the movements you’re making in real life.

Also shown off were a kickball breakout style game and a painting mode; the latter of which had two people bent down trying to form an elephant while the Xbox 360 took a snapshot of the shape and added it to the painting. Microsoft really intends to take on Nintendo with this one.

Finally Peter Molyneux came out to show off something that, if it works like intended, could be pretty revolutionary. A video was shown about a boy named Milo, a virtual boy that was literally talking to a woman stood in front of the TV. He answers her questions and, at one point, threw goggles towards the screen which the woman pretended to catch and place them on her face when Milo asked her too. Next she bent down towards a pool of water, her reflection shown on the screen and any arm movements towards the screen making ripples in the water. Finally she drew a picture of a fish on a piece of paper, which she then handed towards the screen. The paper appeared on the screen in Milo’s hand, amazingly showing the picture she had drawn.

Apparently this works today and is not just a concept, and could be one of the most amazing things to come out of Lionhead so far. Lets not forget that Molyneux has a habit of making promises he later breaks, but I hope that isn’t the case here. It will be shown behind closed doors at E3, so we should get some press impressions up soon.

That’s it for the Microsoft E3 Press Conference coverage, but check back tomorrow for Nintendo’s and Sony’s. You can also continue checking ButtonSmasher for the latest news coming out of E3.

The guys at Media Molecule have been flooding PSN with new LittleBigPlanet content as of late (such as these Monsters, Norse Mythology and Rag Doll Kung Fu costume packs), but anyone who doesn’t want some time in the cubes needs to know that nothing beats the law. The law sometimes goes by another name, and that name is Judge Dredd.

Yes, Media Molecule have conquered the seemingly impossible task of making Judge Dredd and some of his 2000AD compatriots cute in the form of loveable Sackboys. Joining Judge Dredd’s trademark frown are Judge Anderson, Johnny Alpha, Hammerstein and Rogue Trooper. The pack also features a set of stickers, which in total sets you back £4.79 (although each character can be bought individually at £1.59 each, but Judge Dredd and Judge Anderson are counted together) and should be available on the UK PSN Store right now.

Since I don’t own a PS3 I can only sadly admire this from afar, but at least I can be content in the knowledge that the worlds of 2000AD are being highlighted to the masses. Sure, most people know who Judge Dredd is (unfortunately most people outside of the UK will know the character based off Stallone’s awful interpretation of him) but other characters such as Johnny Alpha aren’t as widely known.

You can check out more images of the DLC on Media Molecule’s Flickr feed.

Epic Games has announced that it plans to release an expansion for Unreal Tournament 3 on 5th March. The ‘Titan’ pack will be free for the PC and Playstation 3 and will add new maps, units, vehicles, characters and awards for the game.

Will the ‘Titan’ pack be coming to Xbox 360? Epic Games is saying that “Given the file size requirements for updates on the Xbox 360 platform, we have no plans to release the Titan Pack for Xbox 360.” (Via Joystiq). Sigh Microsoft, why must you prevent things like this?

Anyway, there are a hefty 11 multiplayer maps that can be used for the Deathmatch, CTF, Vehicle CTF and Warfare modes. If that’s not enough maps for you there’s also a further 8 maps from the first UT3 bonus pack and Xbox 360 version.

More content? As you wish! Two new game modes will also be along for the ride: Greed mode, which is a “tug-of-war” style point’s battle; and Betrayal mode, which makes you turn on your teammates to get a higher score. If that doesn’t sound good enough then the new Titan mutator turns you into a 15-foot tall Behemoth that grants you the effects of every power up in the game all at once. Now try telling me that this doesn’t sound awesome!

Last but not least there’s also some new equipment for you; which includes two new turrets, an X-Ray deployable field that instantly weakens all enemies inside it and new vehicles. The PC version also allows Steam achievements.

Phew, you can’t accuse Epic of not delivering! Head on over to Big Download to check out an in-depth preview of everything this amazing free expansion has to offer.

I have always been fascinated with creating little societies and watching them grow. As a kid these societies would be created on paper, and all the growing that these towns and cities would undergo was due to my pencil and imagination; and even to this day I’ll draw maps that plan out futuristic cities, or maps that have the giant mountains and lush forests of a fantasy land. While my imagination can be incredibly vivid, eventually I wanted to be able to watch a virtual society grow on its own through the magic of another great hobby of mine; video games.

Thankfully I grew up on the likes of Populous and Powermonger. The aim of these two games was pretty different; the former had you manipulating the landscape so your little civilisation would grow and overcome an enemy force, while the latter already had the infrastructure in place and your objective was far more combat orientated. However, it was not the main objective of the two games that interested me, as I was far more interested in watching the little people move around the landscape. Powermonger was better at this, and I would often ignore my army altogether. Clicking on a person would allow you to see such things as their name, age, sex, hometown and more; and each person would also scurry around living their own lives. They would collect wood from a nearby forest, fish from the river, or shepherd the sheep on the fields. It was like having my own world inside my console, and I was their god. I was amazed that a game could do such a thing, and these were only the early days.

Since then there has been literally thousands of god-games. From the tycoon likes of Theme Park, to the virtual cities of SimCity, there is plenty there for the aspiring god in you. While playing these I’ve always found that the main thing I thought needed improvement was the AI. I would often get the feeling that the denizens of my creation were only responding to algorithms, and they would not take the initiative and do something without my say-so. Lately I’ve been playing a lot of Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile, and I think I’ve finally found a game that, at least, feels like I’m simply watching a society go about their daily lives. Of course, these tiny Egyptians need your guiding hand to build the infrastructure that they will live in, as they are not about to build the city on their own, but once it’s there you understand that Tilted Mill wanted this to be more about the people than the buildings they inhabit.

Let’s look at a typical level from the game. You will often start off with nothing more than a few peasant villages on the banks of the Nile. These peasants don’t belong to your city, but you will soon be drawing them in to help set up your basic infrastructure. Firstly, a palace is in order, as the peasants won’t really be much impressed if their Pharaoh lives in the woods. Once this is done you should build a couple of noble estates. These estates are the key to building a prosperous city, as the more estates you have the more farmers you can support, and you will soon discover that farmers are the lifeblood of your empire. Once you’ve got a number of farms built you can watch as they scurry out to the mud banks and start planting fields. The fascinating thing is that each of these farms supports a family. The man of the house will do the planting and harvesting, while the women will go out and shop for wares (which you will need to build as soon as possible, or your farmers won’t stick around for long). The kid will help out wherever is possible, and eventually will be the one who moves out into his/her own job (and often up the ladder too). There are increasing levels of society, and each one needs the level below it in order to support it. Getting complicated, right?

While you place the infrastructure, the people will go out and use it on their own. They all have their own desires that need to be fulfilled, and they will often take it into their own hands if it’s not readily available. For example, if you’re lacking in food (an amount of which is distributed to your workers and estates; plus you, the Pharaoh, of course) then farmers may go out and forage for their own. Be aware though, as this will take valuable time away from other key tasks they should be doing, and if they can’t fulfil these tasks then they’ll start to complain. As you will soon see, the life of a Pharaoh is tough and pleasing everyone is nigh on impossible, but you can at least try. Every decision you make you have a positive effect on one part of society, while a negative effect will hit the other. All this can make the game quite a head scratcher, which should be fun for those of us who like complex city builders.

Eventually you will have a massive support network around your city. Priests will man hospitals, mortuary’s, temples and teach children at schools. People will go to these hospitals for cures, worship at a temple when the need strikes them, arrange a funeral at the mortuary (they will even carry the coffin through the streets) and children will go to school to be the priests of the future, or whatever educated job you assign to them. They will complain if these aren’t available, but when it all works it’s absolutely fascinating to see the city move under its own flow. Servants will follow noblewomen as they go shopping, shopkeepers will look for resources on their own, soldiers will patrol the streets and labourers will quarry limestone before dragging the large blocks to create a pyramid. It’s a whole living breathing ancient society inside your PC!

All this life is beautifully presented in a nice graphical display. While the graphics aren’t top notch by today’s standards, you’d be wrong if you called them ugly. You can zoom out to survey your city and the ants scurrying around in it, and then zoom in right down to the face of a farmer pulling lettuce from a field. The buildings are also incredibly detailed, improving themselves overtime (such as a noble home building a granary). The fact is all this people watching you’ll be doing won’t be ugly. It might be somewhat annoying though, as sound-wise your subjects often have little conversations that, while interesting at first, can often be grating when you’ve heard them repeat for the hundredth time.

I will say that the game is pretty slow-paced, but that can be both a positive and a negative depending on who you are. I like my god games long and drawn out, and I usually find plenty to do while I’m waiting for something else to be completed. For example, if you’re building a large pyramid outside the city you can set-up a labour camp. Labourers will drag stones from nearby quarries, but they’ll also drag stones you’ve gained from trades halfway across the map if you’ve placed cargo-drop off points in a location easily accessible to your main city. The same goes for bricklayers, even if you place more near your building sites the rest from other parts of the map will join in, meaning you have to wait for them to arrive too. It doesn’t bother me though, as I just enjoy watching the people carry out their jobs, and there’s always something else that can be done elsewhere. If you don’t have patience though, then you’ll probably hate it. Then again, if you don’t have patience then maybe the whole city-building genre just isn’t for you.

For its price (£6.93!) Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile has plenty to offer the aspiring god. Maybe I lied when I said it was perfect, but it’s surely one of the best society simulators out there at the moment. Its complexity may turn some away, but if you enjoy sitting down for a good few hours; building a great city and watching it finally work like clockwork then this game is worth every single penny. Plus, you’ll have plenty left over to buy another game, or two.

This is part of the Bargain Bin series, which is dedicated to bringing you excellent games for mere peanuts. Got a bargain you know of? Hit me an email!

The downside to being a videogame blogger is that you have to play as many games as you possibly can if you want to keep on top of your niche. Now, you may be wondering why I’m complaining about being able to play so many games, but bear with me here. The problem is that you can’t really spend as long as you would want to on a single game, and sometimes this means that you can’t fully appreciate just what that game has to offer. There’s just not enough time in the day, and as much as I’d like to I can’t spend all my time playing video games. Sure, you can spread the love equally between games but every once in a while a game comes along that you just have to dedicate all your spare time too, even if it means falling behind on the stacks of other games that have recently been released. Do I care? Not a bit, as Fallout 3 is totally worth spending all my time with.

This post was partly inspired by an entry over at Girls & Gaming. Elysium wrote a love letter to Fallout 3 - which finally made me break down and go out and buy the game - but I’m going to go one step further and slip a ring on to the meaty finger of Fallout 3. Now ‘meaty’ may seem like a strange word to use when describing a loved one, but Fallout 3 has so much to offer that I can’t honestly think of another word that could apply to it. Fallout 3 has so much to give, and puts so much passion into its splendid offerings, that I’m going to be terribly upset when it all comes to an end. Right now I will not allow my mind to dwell on such a prospect as I seemed to have barely scratched the surface of what is possible in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Washington D.C. When you first escape from Vault 101 - and after your eyes have adjusted to the sudden glare on irises that have been subjected to years of artificial lighting- you may wonder how such a devastated and morbid landscape can offer much in the way of excitement. You’d be wrong; however, as such a devastated landscape has never before placed such opportunity into the player’s hands.

From the moment you step of Vault 101 you are presented with a choice. There is nothing forcing you to follow the main storyline right there and then, but the burden of sudden choice on the player made me do as I was told and head to the nearby settlement of Megaton. Don’t like the sound of that? Well, do what you want and ignore the main storyline altogether for the moment. The world of Fallout 3 is an absolute delight to explore, with every nook and cranny holding something of interest or an insight into what the world was like before the bombs dropped.  Posters are strewn across half-collapsed walls, advertising underground vaults to protect against the threat of nuclear war. Checking in the mail box of what used to be someone’s home may present you with a letter from Vault-Tec saying that the householders application to join one of the vault’s has been rejected. It is only when you look in a nearby bathtub that you discover what really happened to the occupants. Computer terminals may have a diary from someone who is desperately holding out against a mob of fire breathing ants, while another will tell of upcoming museum exhibitions that were never held, and never will be. All this paints a very vivid picture of the background to the Fallout 3 universe, and the society that the player will never see but will have nevertheless partly experienced. Of course, it may look it but this bleak landscape isn’t entirely dead and it is the Capital Wasteland’s occupants that really bring the world to life. Whether they be hopeless wastelanders, psycho raiders, gigantic super mutants or ghastly ghouls; there’s still plenty of life remaining in what was once the beating heart of US democracy, even if it isn’t all friendly.

So, what do you do? Do you go to Megaton and try to disarm the bomb sitting in the middle of the settlement? Or do you activate the bomb instead and watch the settlement wink out of existence? Do you ignore the settlement altogether and visit an old hotel where people are trying to live in luxury, their only complaint about the outside ghouls whose only threat is their unfortunate zombie-like appearance? (This quest reminds me a bit of the plot to Land of the Dead) Or do you help out a town that is being plagued by daily attacks of a gang that act like vampires? I do not wish to spoil the game for you, but this is just a slice of what you can expect from Fallout 3. What you do is entirely up to you, but make it last as long as possible. Once you finish the game you will only begin to miss what is one of the most detailed, varied - and certainly excellent value for money - video games ever created.

Oh, plus there’s always V.A.T.S; and you don’t want to miss the ability to blow every limb off an enemy with the push of a single button. Let’s not also forget that once you’re done with hours of your life being taken up by Fallout 3’s post-apocalyptic wasteland you’ll be pulled right back in with the advent of the game’s DLC.

If you call yourself a gamer then you cannot afford to miss this. While you go and put down the cash I will be continuing to carry Fallout 3 over the threshold of the new home in my heart.

Although I said I wouldn’t be able to get hold of Spore for a few more weeks luckily I was wrong and I got hold of it the other day. Since then I’ve been losing a lot of my life to the game, although it’s initially hard to discover why. The problem I have with Spore is that it’s an absolutely excellent idea but the gameplay built around it can become pretty repetitive and, foremost, it lacks a lot of depth. However, the wonderment of it all overrides this extremely basic gameplay.

It’s an absolute joy to explore the universe of Spore, and it makes it even more of an amazing experience when you know that each and every creation that populates your very own galaxy is created by other players. For example, once I’d jumped out of the cell stage of Spore and made it on to land I came across a nest inhabited by a herd of creatures that looked remarkably like elephants, except they all sported nice little mustaches. It’s really unlike any game as you know that each and every time you load Spore up you’ll discover something new, and that’s why Spore is - by far - one of my best gaming experiences of the last few years. To get this experience though you really have to immerse yourself in the game, you have to begin to love your creations and get past the linear gameplay.

Spore is also a big experiment in new technology and I think that everything that goes on in the background while you play will pave the way for games that will use this technology in new and exciting ways. Spore isn’t perfect, and if you’re not a creative person that you may hate it. I do believe that expansions are absolutely needed this time around though, as there’s so much more that can be done with the Spore technology.

I’ll have a full review of the game up sometime in the next few days (or you can check my review round-up here). I also be doing some Spore diary posts over on my other blog if you want to check those out. Feel free to share your stories in the comments section as I look forward to hearing them.

Since it’s an extremely lazy Sunday (and a very rainy one) here I figured I should post something a little different from the norm. The above picture is a papercraft of Dog, Alyx Vance’s lovable robot pet from Half-Life 2. It was created by chamoo232 over on 4chan (yes, amazingly enough 4chan does sometimes produce some decent stuff) and took around 50 hours to complete. It’s not actually as big as this photo suggests and that seems to be some sort of cupboard behind it, but never the less it’s still pretty damn cool and has amazing attention to detail.

I wish I was creative enough to come up with something like this. Then again I already do enough time wasting so maybe it’s for the best. I think the rest of today will be spent catching up on a few games, since although I write a video game blog I’ve been pretty lacking on actually playing them lately.

Papercraft Half Life D0g is Amazle - Kotaku