The press portion of this E3 was all about the potentiality of tech, and frankly, nobody had any inflections for it other than kicking dodge balls or graffiti. Though Microsoft's very definable market was expressed as your next-door-bro, encouraging you to, "snap his neck," or asking, "What would YOU do if this greaseball kidnapped your daughter," it's hard not to give the big M$ credit on some geniunely interesting technology. Even if it is stamped with Molyneux's pre-recorded sessions and genuinely ignorant comments.
Past and contemporary gaming is relient on translators for our digital actions that influence the machine's processeses. Molyneux states that we, "are the controller" with some of the newer tech this year, but the content in that statement is both self-evident (a game's operator is always part of the "controlling factor") and dismissive of the fact that "controllers" can never be taken away, only translated into software forumlae. A video game interprets operator actions, and that is always the role of the, "controller," however narrow or broad the interpretations are at a given time, and however distant said controller's palpability might be.
Lost Planet 2 is one of the games I'm most excited about. LP1 definitely had the edge on early "next gen" 3rd person action gaming, taking a nod in conceptualization from old and older sources, I beleive. But LP2's co-op gameplay genuinely encourages party dynamism and caution with it's similarly large beasts's threats of ingestion (where you can actually battle it from the inside out, slipping down its gullet and using the floor of its stomach as terrain, and all in real-time!) and electrocution (I am not familiar with the why regarding the electricity that flows through this orange tipped creature's cells, but am satisfied with such alpha-monster nonsense). What I played of the coop in the LP2 demo displayed some major suggestions on cooperative "battling" in general; if such an imaginary game as Starcraft: The MMO were to burst onto retail shores, I would imagine its multiplayer "raids" to be like the monster hunting in LP2. The quadraped beast lumbers stoicly around the arena, aiming at the most damaging player at any given time for its instinctual revenge, letting other players coordinate enough firepower to focus its attention elsewhere, all the while whittling at the incredibly healthy alien. The experience was very regurgative of classic boss battling (but with better physics and graphics and other pretty widgets), and that's part of what made the demo thrilling.
More to Come.
