Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

R-JENERATION: Ready for Battle

Electronic Entertainment Expo shows the latest in video games and technology

Jason Van Winkle, center, plays the PlayStation 2 game "Syphon Filter the Omega Strain" at the Electronic Entertainment Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles. Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Vanessa Dimapasoc, right, watches as Cathy Collette plays "Donkey Kong Jungle Beat" at the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo. Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Trade shows, no matter what the industry, are venues for companies to impress potential customers. The exhibitors at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, also known as E3, have a particularly tough time doing that.

They're appealing to video gamers, who have made a hobby out of slaying dragons, fighting intergalactic war and escaping zombie-infested metropolises, if only on their televisions. For this reason, E3 might just be the loudest, flashiest and most impressive trade show in the world, even beating out Las Vegas' famous Consumer Electronics Show.

Video game companies created E3 after being relegated to the scraps of floor space left over from the Magnavoxes of the world at CES. Now, with its 10th anniversary, the 2004 E3 in Los Angeles turned out to be one of the biggest.

At the forefront of the show was the unveiling of new handheld systems by Sony and Nintendo. Sony introduced the Sony PSP, a portable version of PlayStation that also plays movies and music on proprietary discs. Nintendo revealed the Nintendo DS, a handheld that utilizes two screens, including one with touch screen capabilities.

Both have 3-D graphic capabilities somewhere between the PlayStation/N64 era and the current generation of consoles, as well as wireless multiplayer, though only the DS had actual playable demos.

While some were simply iterations of popular Nintendo franchises, such as Mario and Metroid showing how the second screen can be used as a map, some took full advantage of the touch screen. One included a text messaging program as well as a game that had you draw a Pac-Man who would then travel in a straight line in an attempt to eat ghosts until you drew lines that directed him across screen.

On the home console front, Xbox boasted the anticipated first-person shooters "Halo 2," "Doom 3" and "Star Wars: Republic Commando," as well as the massive role-playing game "Fable," which has been in development nearly as long as the Xbox has existed.

Microsoft's console also increased its online presence with the announcement that all future EA Sports games, including the popular Madden football franchise, will now be able to connect to Xbox Live, the platform's Internet service.

Sony's booth received the most attention for playable demos of the all-new "FPS Killzone" and "Final Fantasy XII." The latter is the latest edition in the venerated RPG series, and deviates significantly from previous entries in the franchise, using a battle system not unlike massive multiplayer games such as "Everquest," as opposed to the traditional turn-based system.

Also on display was "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater," with a one-level demo. However, considering "Metal Gear Solid 2" featured a main character no one knew of until it was released, it's hard to take any advance information about the new game at face value.

Nintendo showcased the latest for the GameCube and Game Boy Advance, including a multiplayer "Metroid" (a first in the series), a sequel to "Paper Mario," as well as "Resident Evil 4," which introduces an entirely new control system to alleviate the awkward, fixed-camera system that has plagued the series.

Two favorites of showgoers were "Donkey Konga" and "Donkey Kong Jungle Beat," both of which used a special bongo controller. The first used the controller for a simple rhythm game that featured tunes such as "Louie, Louie" and "Whip It," while the latter was a side-scrolling platform game that used drum strikes and claps to control Donkey Kong on the screen.

The biggest surprise was a video-only presentation of the latest "Legend of Zelda" game, which abandons the stylized, cartoonish look of "The Wind Waker" for a more realistic, medieval look.

The PC portion of the show was dominated by "Half Life 2." Announced at last year's E3 after five years in development, the game was supposed to ship in 2003. However, after delays and a leak of the game's source code, it appeared again this year, and in playable form no less.

The main innovation of "Half Life 2" is its reliance on artificial intelligence-created scenarios as opposed to scripted events. In other words, instead of the developers creating predetermined, movielike scenarios, the computer makes up scenarios on the fly according to the player's actions.

E3 is not just a place to see the giants in the industry flex their muscles, but also a place to see tiny games and developers show their stuff. One of the quirkiest games at the show was "Katamari Damacy," by Namco, in which a player rolls a ball of junk, trying to make it grow larger by rolling it into smaller objects until the ball is so big you are picking up fences, pets or even people.

One game had a camera trained on a player who controlled a flying dragon on screen by flapping his arms. Another game called "Odama" mixed feudal Japanese warfare with pinball.