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NB vs. E3 Update 1-1

So e3 is finally here and holy hell is it crowded. I thought crowds like these are why they killed e3 a few years ago.

So who watched the press conferences? Remember that thing called a 3DS announced this morning? It’s officially the hot property of the show. The line to get some hands on time with the unit snakes all through out and around Nintendo’s booth. I couldn’t tell if it was worse then the legendary line for the Wii a few years back, but it was close. Mission accomplished Nintendo. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but by Thursday I definitely will.

While we’re talking about 3D, I’ll go ahead and give you some quick impresions of what Sony is offering. The two games I’ve played so far are GT5 and Killzone 3, both of which are being shown in 3D as well as 2D.

Let’s start with the less impressive of the two - Gran Turismo 5. You would think a racing game would be a perfect showcase, but the 3D effect could only be described as subtle. 3d definitely added some depth to the scene, but not as much as you would hope or expect. Also, something that worked against the 3d was GT’s game engine itself. GT has always “cheated” by using flat polygon images for roadside detail. Trees, people, signs, etc. are often just flat images faced towards the camera like the trees outside the castle in Mario 64. While normally you wouldn’t notice them as much in GT, once you apply 3d to the scene, the game begins to look like a popup book at times. It’s painfully obvious just how flat they are when the 3d layers the objects in front of you.

Killzone 3 displayed a much greater sense of depth which, at times, was very effective in offering added level of immersion. What concerned me with the Killzone demo was that since the 3d adds a slight blur of it’s own, the game became hard to follow at times when the 3d blur was combined with Killzone’s in-engine motion blur. Not sure how they’ll get around that, but it was definitely something that bothered me. Both games suffered a bit because of the dark tint the glasses added to the image.

So there we go. E3 post number 1 is out the door. Time to head back in and see what else looks interesting.

-Steve