Here are the big points of the big N’s press event today:
- Looks like those reports of a new Mario Wii game were right. However, they shocked everyone with a new Super Mario Bros. game – with 4 player co-op! Plays a lot like LittleBigPlanet from the looks of it. It will also be out by X-Mas!
- Wii Fit Plus is out in late 2009. Oh joy.
- Wii Sports Resort uses the new Wii Motion Plus for enhanced movement – isn’t this what the Wii was supposed to do to begin with? However, the sky diving looks cool, also there will be basketball and archery.
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 packaged with Wii Motion Plus. Neat.
- Red Steel 2 also comes packaged with Motion Plus and can only be played with the peripheral. Gameplay looks pretty sweet, and love the new art style.
- Square Enix announced Final Fantasy Crystal Bearers, a new open world RPG headed exclusively to the Wii. That’s what I’m talking about. The system sorely needs more RPG’s.
- A new DS Mario and Luigi RPG called Bowser’s Inside Story is coming at the end of the year. Those games are fun, but they really need to change the formula.
- Next, they teased everyone with a “legendary RPG announcement”. No, it’s not Zelda. Turns out it’s Golden Sun DS. Meh.
- Cop, a new DS game from Ubisoft, looks like a rip-off of Chinatown Wars, only it might be even better.
- Wario Ware DIY for the DS lets you design your own games. Could be cool, but due to Nintendo’s fear of the Internet, I can’t see this going anywhere.
- Facebook is coming to the DSi. That’s two systems now. You can upload your pictures of yourself with a squished head!
- Every presser is bound to have a wtf, and Nintendo unleashed one with the Wii Vitality Sensor. It’s a pulse reader that helps you relax? Seriously, they just showed a pic of Iwata in a recliner with his eyes closed and the thing on his finger. Wtf Nintendo. Games, please.
- Super Mario Galaxy 2! This one’s got Yoshi in it apparently. I have to say, that’s a pretty cool announcement. Any new 3D mario game is a total bonus. No date given, though.
- You know it’s bad when Reggie has to come out and say “I read the blogs, too”, and has to defend Nintendo’s hardcore-ism. After that, he showed off Sega’s Conduit, Dead Space: Extraction and Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles. Nothing too exciting here.
- Oh snap. A new Metroid game dubbed Other M is being made by Team Ninja, the Ninja Gaiden dudes. It’s a mature game with awesome third person action and platforming elements. Coming in 2010, and holy crap it actually looks cool. Maybe one of the best announcements at E3 to date.
- Kind of weird that Miyamoto didn’t make an appearance. I’m guessing that means we won’t be seeing Zelda until next year.
I have to admit, while most of that was a snoozer, the Project M reveal at the end was incredible. Check back throughout the day and these bullets will be updated with links to videos and screenshots.
What’s the coolest news from the Nintendo event? Discuss!
The Microsoft E3 press event has officially taken place. With it come a bevy of announcements, trailers, videos and more. 
Yes. I’m going on the record. I’m apologizing to Treyarch. You see for the last year or so I’ve been on the bandwagon that Call of Duty: World at War wasn’t going to be very good, because it was made by Treyarch, and it was going to be set in World War II. I loved Call of Duty 4, so any departure from that game seemed to me to be a bad idea.
Let it be known that I am a Halo fanboy. I know that may draw ire from some of you hardcore PC gamers, and even I am ashamed of it on some level, being also a Counter-Strike fanboy as well. Something about the atmosphere of Halo has always grabbed me, and its rich mythology did the job of sucking me in. You’re reading the words of a guy who has read the graphic novel, assorted comics, and several of the novels, here.
So after experiencing some more actual time with the NXE, I felt it was necessary to provide an update. While I wasn’t too thrilled after my first exposure to it, last night I played Left 4 Dead for awhile and got to tinker quite a bit. I have to say, I really enjoy it.
So apparently, if you filled out an application for the NXE a few weeks back, you can already get online and grab your update for the XBox 360. I turned on my 360 earlier tonight and was pleasantly surprised to be greeted with a new update, which then promptly replaced the old dashboard with the slick shiny new one. 
As many of us know, the Left 4 Dead demo dropped on XBox Live as well as Steam yesterday, sending gamers into a frenzy much akin to the virtual undead hordes that awaited bullet-pummeling. After a bit of a download time, I managed to nab the demo myself over XBL for the 360, and I couldn’t wait to get into my first game.
We all want Left 4 Dead. Zombies and such. Well, part of the goodness that is L4D is the main campaign which can be played as 4 player co-op, or if you have no friends, by yourself. This campaign is split into 4 acts. So far, we only know that one is in the corn fields, one is in a hospital, and some new details have recently emerged about a third act, “Dead Air”, which takes place in an airport.
So I got Gears of War 2 at midnight last night, and then played til just after 4 in the morning, central standard time. I’m about to hop on it again, too. I got about almost halfway through the game I’m guessing, and I wanted to leave a few impressions.
So last week, the Mirror’s Edge Demo dropped with a mighty splash on Sony’s PSN as well as XBox Live, bringing with it the stylized First Person Platformer that we’ve been catching tantalizing glimpses of for months.
I don’t know why developers feel like they can release broken versions of games (when their budgets are up and the games cost more for us), but that’s just the way things are these days. Just patch it later, right? It’s the mantra of the industry.
So after forcing myself to finish GTA IV last week and feeling slightly underwhelmed, I decided to grab Saint’s Row 2, having heard from several gamers that it is just maddeningly fun. I wasn’t too impressed with what I played at PAX, but that was an early build, so I gave it a go…
To be honest, there are so many great games on their way that I literally forget about a few of them every now and then. Just yesterday, I was browsing through a list of games and marking “buy” or “rent” next to them, and then I slapped myself in the forehead when I came to Left 4 Dead. I can’t believe this game is almost here.
The wild thing about PAX is there’s really so much to see and do, it’s hard to take it all in. I got to play a ton of great new games, many of which you’ve already read about. There were also a few other not-so-great ones, which you no doubt read about as well.
Even though I’m a bit of an XBox junkie, I’ve never actually played the original Saint’s Row for the 360, though I’ve consistently heard good things about it. The Saint’s Row 2 booth at PAX is almost impossible to miss, given that it’s got a giant gangsta’s head about twenty feet in the air, with 3 large HDTV’s plastered to the walls for people to play.