Game Stooge

E3 ‘07: Best Game of Show: Rock Band

• Scribbled on July 15th, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in E3, Features, Game Genres, Industry News, Platforms

If you listened to all the podcasts, watched all the videos, was completely hooked in to what all the journalists were talking about, the unquestioned Game of Show was Rock Band. The guys at 1Up even stated had E3 been in its old format, Rock Band would have been what the Wii was at E3 ‘06 - unstoppable. Everyone wanted to play. Everyone. Had there been fanboys there in the style of old E3, there would have been lines to try it out.

Other games that made people salivate included Fallout 3 (including a 45 minute session that had some journalists coming back for it twice), Mass Effect (which featured a critical moral choice that seriously affected the direction of the game either way, and resonated with writers), Bioshock, and Killzone 2. Halo 3 was more low-key, but all who played the single player hands-on were stunned by the lighting effects - gratefully, they also reported that the multiplayer got a graphical boost, too. Crysis was a surprise “under the radar”, generating almost no buzz, despite showing amazing water effects and AI. Call of Duty 4 had its coming out party at E3 as well, stunning everyone with its graphics, especially the smoothness of the animation.

On the negative side, people were sniggering under their breath at Nintendo’s press conference - how many commercials did they include? - and the debut of the WiiFit, which didn’t go far in declaring the Wii as a “serious” console. The news of Mario Kart Wii salvaged Nintendo’s show. Microsoft misstepped in deliberately only discussing 2007 titles and not announcing new titles or discussing such awaited games as Alan Wake and Fable 2 - did anyone really think that Sonic the Hedgehog and Golden Axe deserved that much excitement? Guitar Hero III, despite showing next-gen graphics, seemed trite and unexciting compared to Rock Band - and the fact that the latter would have entire albums thanks to MTV’s involvement, it just made GH3 look cheap, especially since the claim that GH2 would be “the King of Downloadable Content” is turning out to be a gross misstatement.

What game are you most eager for after E3 2007?