Nintendo 3DS, Kinectimals, Dead Rising 2 among best of E3 2010

With each passing year, it becomes more difficult to reduce the best of the Electronic Entertainment Expo to a handful of games and devices. Technological advances keep changing the game, and talented developers are becoming more and more skilled at using that technology. At this year’s E3, there were dozens of forthcoming games that impressed, and dozens more that there was no time to see—not to mention the new interfaces introduced by Kinect for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation Move. That being said, here are the Georgia Straight’s highlights of E3, which took place in Los Angeles from June 15 to 17.

Dead Rising 2 (August 31)
With tongues firmly planted in cheeks, the developers at Vancouver’s Blue Castle Games have managed to take this zombie-infestation franchise and put their own indelible stamp on it. They’ve added the ability to combine objects to create new weapons for destroying zombies, and pushed the black comedy even further. Dead Rising 2—to be released for PlayStation 3, Windows PC, and Xbox 360—not only satisfies a gamer’s impulse to wreak havoc, but also provides the social commentary that can emerge from good horror stories.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution (early 2011)
In development at Eidos Montreal, this action role-playing game has the daunting task of being the prequel to the 2000 game that introduced concepts of choice and consequence to video games by allowing players to set their own moral path. The developers are maintaining the tension between the organic and the mechanic, the biological and the technological—a theme from the original game—and will deliver an experience that offers the player multiple paths. You can play the entire game without killing anyone, evading or disabling them instead. For PlayStation 3, Windows PC, and Xbox 360.

Disney Epic Mickey (set for release in November)
Created by noted game designer Warren Spector, this Wii game entices in a way that few can. Starring a host of characters—all pulled from the Disney archives—it sees gamers play the famous mouse, who uses ink and paint thinner to manipulate the Wasteland, home to rejected cartoon characters. How players affect the world and the characters who live in it influences how they treat Mickey and the story that gets told. Mickey can be as sweet or mischievous as the player wants. In an interview, Spector told the Straight the game was created to “honour Mickey’s heritage. But to be true to that, we had to honour another part of Disney’s history by innovating.”

Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (October 10)
Based on a 400-year-old Chinese novel, this stunning game was written by Alex Garland and puts players in the role of Monkey, a brutish wild man living in a postapocalyptic world some 150 years in our future. Monkey is among a group of people who have been captured by a slave ship from the West, and when he and Trip, a clever young girl, escape, she finds a way to bind him to her as her protector. The actor Andy Serkis plays Monkey through the art of performance capture, in which both a person’s facial expressions and body movements are digitized. It makes for a PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game that seems more emotional, somehow.

Kinectimals (November 4)
Of all the games that will be available for Kinect when the Xbox 360 peripheral is released in November, the one that comes closest to providing a new experience is Microsoft’s Kinectimals. This title has players—kids, in particular, are going to love it—interacting with virtual wild cats, training and playing with them, and completing challenges like obstacle courses. It’s much more than a virtual pet, something that becomes clear after you spend a few minutes with the cuddly tigers and jaguars that you can adopt.

Nintendo 3DS (2011)
With a 3.5-inch screen that can display 3-D images without the need for special glasses, Nintendo’s new handheld game system was the talk of E3. The top screen offers the crisp, bright 3-D display, and the depth of the 3-D can be easily adjusted using a slider on the side of the device. The bottom screen is the standard DS touchscreen. The built-in joystick makes it easier to play games like Star Fox 64 3D and Paper Mario, and the two cameras on the front of the device, which enable users to take and display 3-D photos on their 3DS, are a nice touch.

Games like Paper Mario are easier to play on the Nintendo 3DS.

True Crime: Hong Kong (September 21)
The second game from Vancouver’s United Front Games—the first was the very different ModNation Racers, released in May—True Crime: Hong Kong is an open-world game inspired by Hong Kong action movies. In its hard-edged gangster story, the protagonist, Wei Shen, is an undercover cop who was born in Hong Kong but grew up in San Francisco. In development for the PlayStation 3, Windows PC, and Xbox 360, the game incorporates the concept of “face”, which affects how characters treat Wei and what he can do.

True Crime: Hong Kong is all about honour.