Even More Games!
In addition to the stellar games I've discussed at length, there was a metric ton of fantastic software to be seen, heard and played at E3 2004. While Nintendo once again had almost nothing that interested me, they surprised everyone when they announced a brand new Legend of Zelda game for the GameCube. Like a bolt from the blue, the new title abandons the super-cartoony look of The Wind Waker in favor of the more photo-realistic style of the N64 titles. Fanboys were quick to brand this new style "mature" and "dark", but I feel there is something inherently wrong with using those words to describe an elf-boy wearing green tights. Maybe it's just me. The game looked great though.

Another huge surprise was the announcement that the entire EA Sports line would be debuting on Xbox Live this fall. Chalk this one up as a huge victory for Electronic Arts, since Microsoft essentially bent over backwards for them by cancelling their XSN sports network and first-party sports titles, as well as restructuring the Xbox Live architecture. Whatever the case, it looks like a lot of sports gamers will be making the switch over to the more robust online service on the Xbox this year. The boys from the 'Box also announced that Namco's top fighter Soul Calibur III would be an Xbox exclusive this year, and all told it looks like there will be plenty of reasons to fire up that big black box this year other than Halo 2.

And of course it wouldn't be E3 without Sony, who was showing off high-profile titles like Gran Turismo 4, Jak III and Ratchet and Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal. It all looked great, but I have to say I'm really not digging the muted art direction and bland environments I've seen in Jak III so far. Sony was also promoting their first-person shooter Killzone, which has the unfortunate task of living up to the billing of "Halo Killer". I mean, it looks good and all, but let's not kid ourselves here. It's no Halo. Now, God of War, that shit looked like it had some potential, but we'll have to wait until 2005 to verify.

Although there seemed to be fewer flat-out awful games on display, there were a handful of big-name titles that seriously disappointed. Most prominently would be the GameCube title Metroid Prime 2: Echoes which, aside from the goofy name, showed me everything I never wanted to see in a sequel. The trailer depicted Samus squaring off for one-on-one combat against groups of agile, fast-moving enemies. This is the one area where the original Metroid Prime let me down, as its clunky controls just did not work well enough for this type of intense combat. The preview trailer also highlighted the games' multi-player capabilities which, in all honesty, looked downright silly. Groups of players rolling up into Morph Ball mode and Power-bombing each other? No thanks.

If there was ever a game that absolutely did not need a multiplayer component to complement its slow-paced exploration gameplay, it's Metroid. It was the biggest let-down of the show by a wide margin, but the new Tony Hawk game left me scratching my head as well. I've been a huge proponent of the Tony Hawk games since the very beginning, but the it looks like Neversoft has finally killed off any interest I might have in future games. The trailer for Tony Hawk's Underground 2 showed off a mess of a game that highlighted two teams of skaters wreaking havoc around the world as part of the "World Destruction Tour". Perhaps this is some newly-discovered aspect of skating culture that has yet to be fully explored in video game form, but I felt it looked seriously unfun. Well, at least this will be one fewer game that I'll have to cram into my holiday gaming schedule.

Wrapping Up
Jeez, I've written so much here that you'd think I actually went to E3! I didn't, of course, but that didn't stop me from plundering the Internet's vast resources to cull together the material for this article. Overall I loved what I saw at this year's show, and I'm happy that Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony were concentrating on their current generation systems instead of unveiling their next big things (PSP and DS aside). A cornucopia of triple-A games will be making their way to the GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation2 in a few months, so start saving those pennies now. Whatever your tastes, it's a great time to be a game player.

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