So many games, so little time. Magnify that age-old dilemma by a thousand and that's E3 in a nutshell. With three days to comb thorugh acres of real estate, jammed with literally thousands of playables all crying for attention, we returned with the intel on what's looking especially hot for the year ahead. Click below to check out our findings
This game's wide-open play is like the plot of a Hollywood thriller with fifty different scenarios. From its opening sequence-in which you've iced a guy in a scuzzy bathroom-you decide whether to hide the evidence or flee and every decision you make propels the story into new directions. Smart controls utilize both analog sticks whether you're fighting, playing hoops or pursuing a car, allowing veteran gamers and newbies alike to get hopelessly tangled in the sticky story lines.
You begin with a single-celled, prehistoric creature then custom-create a species, mate, and evolve into a tribe. Build towns and cities, engage in war, construct a UFO to travel to other planets. Eventually, you'll have the opportunity to rule an entire galaxy. Dispensing with dull strategy, Spore is streamlined fun taking gamers from primordial ooze to tomorrow's news.
The first game to put you in the moccasins of a Native American hero with a quiver full of organic and high-tech weapons. Amidst an alien abduction and pending war, you become humanity's only hope. Enter a spirit world and shoot deadly arrows under an invisible cloak and get little animals to do your reloading. First-person shooting as it should be: slick and full of hideous aliens and wild action.
If the words "role-play" make you flee in horror, fear not and take an epic journey to the world of Tamriel-a realm brimming with magic, monsters and bitter factions. Strapped to the gills with chain mail and broadsword (that is, a big ass killing blade) use fighting or stealth to save the kingdom. Oggle the amazingly rendered next-generation landscape too long, however, and get you guts handed to you.
The ninth film may be a done deal, but the franchise can still be squeezed for more interactive juice. Think of this as a best-of from all the movie battles; dive into combat in a smorgasbord of vehicles with all the Episode II characters added. And, of course, you can take it online and get all Dark Side on your pals.
Black is a color best reserved for funerals. Luckily, this is a first-person shooter that's to die for-a shimmering, stylish stunner that puts you in the boots of an uber-agent bent on laying waste to... well... everything in sight. The game delivers the bullet-blasting cool of that Matrix lobby scene with the graphical whiz-bang of the Burnout series. Mix in real physics and it's a formula that's best described as "gun porn"-buildings collapsing, cars exploding, debris clouds swirling and lots and bodies getting a first-class helping of hurt.
Director Peter Jackson may have been confused for an ape during his heftier, Lord of the Rings days, but there's only one Kong in town now. Thanks to the filmmaker, what gamers get here is a one-of-a-kind movie experience: a first-person adrenaline rush through the eyes of not only the agile Jack Driscoll-who'll be jabbing dinos and natives alike in the 30's fantasyland-but the King himself. That's right, players will plod around as the giant, grumpy primate, whooping T-Rexes and other jungle critters into shape.
Think David meets Goliath, only the big guy is bigger... much, much bigger. You won't be hacking, slashing, or bashing thousands of mushroom baddies in Shadow of the Colossus, oh no; there are just 16 enemies for you to conquer, one enormous badass at at time. Each of the colossi is like a dungeon all its own - it has its own style, secrets, and fatal flaws. And the battle, dear adventurers, begins at their toes. The back story may be a bit mysterious-something about awakening a girl (friend? sister? booty call?)-but one thing's for sure: the PS2 has never seen such slick imagery.
Silly, sure. But let's be honest, Mario is a man for all seasons, so why not put him on the soccer pitch? While your local 1-800 plumber may not be so versatile, Nintendo's Italian instigator spins this genre in another direction. By bringing pals like Donkey Kong and Toad to the green and tweaking action to accommodate over-the-top cartoon coolness, it's a party-ready package.
Another game in which you play a hardened soldier with a heart of gold and a handful of lethal hardware? Yawn. The difference here is the way Unreal-developer Epic Games approached this third-person destruction fest. As you're spraying the uglier-than-hell, ten-story-tall locusts with lead, take a moment to notice crumbling brick walls, SUVs riddled with bullet holes and bodies collapsing in defeat. Nearly every single element in this graphically slick, interactive Arnold flick of a game is destructible.
In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Link, the elfish hero and perpetual child, finally starts to grow up only to hit puberty as a werewolf. The shape-shifting Link will fight his way through a much darker world with a new hand-drawn look. The game includes a new assortment of weapons, an ally to help Link pick objects up when he's lacking opposable thumbs, and the ability to ride a horse when he's in human form. For the first time, players will have a sense of a world much bigger than Link and his adventures.
All you need is your Nintendo DS, a stylus and a little time and you too can be a trauma surgeon. In Trauma Center: Under the Knife you use a stylus to cut open patients, disinfect wounds, remove glass, tumors and, um, surgical instruments, it's a virtual carnival of med school fun. An anime nurse with long, unsanitary hair guides you through your quick operations and a monitor charts the condition of a patient. My run through the game included pulling shards of glass from someone's arm, extracting tumors and killing a patient with a bandage. Whoops, bring on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney.
Out to retake his recently invaded hometown, the prince wall-runs, flips and decapitates his way through Prince of Persia 3, dishing out death in the fluid moves that make this franchise so much fun to play. Now the prince can do speed kills, instant death moves that manage to make his already ballet-like fighting style more graceful. In one scene, the prince wall-runs to a balcony, flips toward an enemy and then skewers him with his sword, using it to fling him into a second enemy which he decapitates. The game also introduces a new playable character, the prince's darker personality, the dark prince.
Old School horse decapitation comes to the console with The Godfather: The Game, a reimagining of Mario Puzo's classic mafia novel. You'll play as a recently recruited thug in the Corleone family as you work your way up through the ranks of collectors, thugs and assorted other Italian American stereotypes. The game's intuitive and visceral controls (you use the thumbsticks to throw punches and swing bats, and squeeze the controller's triggers to choke people) helps separate this game from the rest of the GTA-wannabes. Add to that a brand new story line that blends seamlessly with the original story and you've got an instant classic.
Condemned: Criminal Origins combines the best elements of a psychological thriller with a first-person shooter to create a chillingly realistic hunt for a serial killer. You move through the twisting plot in a first-person perspective, and while there is plenty of fighting, you'll also have to use forensic tools and your intelligence to make it through the game. In one scene you wander through a darkened, dilapidated building with a pipe in one hand and a flashlight in another only to be surprised by your prey. Realistic. Creepy. Disturbing. Fun.
