The day began with the Sony press conference, which was jam packed with exciting announcements, live demos, and trailers. As you scroll through our live blog of the event, nearly every single post could warrant a news piece. Seriously, let’s recap just some of the news from the conference: Final Fantasy XIV announced, coming to the PS3; Rockstar’s PS3 exclusive, Agent, revealed; Team Ico’s PS3 exclusive, The Last Guardian, officially announced; ModNation Racers revealed and demoed; Gran Turismo 5 shown; PS3 motion controller announced and demoed; God of War III arriving March 2010; Gran Turismo PSP, Resident Evil Portable, Fat Princess, and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker coming to PSP; Lost Planet 2 coming to PS3; and much, much more. Although Nintendo and Microsoft both had very respectable showings, it’s safe to say that Sony had the best E3 press conference.
After the lengthy press conference concluded (at 1:10 PM PST, 10 minutes after we were supposed to be at the Activision booth), we drove over to the convention center to begin our real E3 adventure. We headed over to Activision’s booth fashionably late, and as such only had time to see Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 before leaving for our 3:30 PM appointment with Ignition. Don’t worry; we’ll head back to play Modern Warfare 2 tomorrow if indeed it’s playable at the show.
While Seb grabbed a bite to eat, I went over to Ignition’s booth to go hands-on with King of Fighters XII. While I have yet to master the game, I picked up the key elements fairly quickly, and definitely enjoyed playing it. I then headed over to Warner Bros. at 4:00 PM, where I tried out LEGO Rock Band and Batman: Arkham Asylum. LEGO Rock Band is simply Rock Band with a new, LEGO-fied presentation and generally more kid-oriented song choices. Arkham Asylum, meanwhile, is a quality experience, though I have minor issues with a few of the mechanics. Following those two games, Seb rejoined the party and we hopped over to Codemasters for some time with DiRT 2, Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, and Overlord II. Full previews of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, King of Fighters XII, LEGO Rock Band, Batman: Arkham Asylum, DiRT 2, and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising are coming as soon as possible (not enough time spent with Overlord II to provide accurate impressions).
Tomorrow, we’ll be spending several hours checking out Sony’s first-party game line-up, as well as other big third-party titles. We apologize for the lack of new pictures and video today; we’re having a few tech issues on our end. We have them all, but we simply can’t get them on the site right now. They should be available shortly. As a consolation prize, we’ve placed some footage of the PSP Go in action below.