It looks like E3 has a new contender for late arrivals and frequent showings with Star Wars: The Old Republic. Once again shown to a crowd of expectant gawkers with nothing more than an awesome trailer, The Old Republic managed to do exactly what it did in 2009 – get everyone hyped. With the only brief announcement being that every player in the game would be able to fly their own ship. Okay. Now maybe ten more scraps of details like that and we’ll be comfortable enough to hazard a release decade. Nevertheless, the trailer was incredible. It isn’t quite clear why Chun Li was beating the crap out of Darth Vader, but who didn’t love it?

What is Halo Reach? No one should need to ask that now. At Microsoft’s 2010 E3 Keynote, they showed us a brief section of a singelplayer level from a Halo Reach video. Needless to say, it added in aspects from Halo Reach multiplayer beta and showed how they would be implemented in the regular campaign. Showing off four members of the elite Spartan Noble Team, this four minute Halo Reach video puts every Halo Reach screenshot we’ve seen previously into motion. Oh, and did you know there seems to be space combat? The September 14th Halo Reach release nears.

The 360 Project Natal got it’s official name today at the Microsoft Press Conference’s E3 Keynote. Now called Kinect, and it will hit shelves this holiday season on November 4th, and it’s still without a price point for some reason (I’m guessing they didn’t want a hefty price tag to distract people from the show). There will be 15 launch titles, and 6 of them were shown off at the conference:

Kinectimals: Picture Nintendogs on the Xbox 360, but with a LOT more control and activities to try.

Kinect Sports: The title says it all.

Kinect Joy Ride: A racing game.

Kinect Adventures: A game designed to get you moving. It takes your picture during all of the crazy moves you have to do.

Your Shape: A Ubisoft title that is basically a much more advanced Wii Fit.

Dance Central: A Harmonix title that teaches you how to dance. Think Rock Band except you are utilizing your entire body for points.

They didn’t actually say what the other titles were, put they did show an image of all of their box art. The ones that I can confirm are:

Motionsports, The Biggest Loser, Sonic Free Riders, and EA Active.

Not a single one of those games were very interesting to me, but at the end of the demonstration, they showed off actual gameplay using Kinect for an upcoming Star Wars game. It was told that this project was a collaboration between Microsoft and Lucas Arts and that it would release next year. I have to say that I am extremely excited on this one. It appears that you’ll be able to control your lightsaber with exact precision, with all the bells and whistles of things like physics to control how your weapon effects Storm Troopers and other enemies. This game (that wasn’t given a name) is at least one thing to look forward to.

*Image via E4g.info

Gears of War 3 on 360 proves that too much of good thing will probably just make you shout “HOLY CRAP!” There’s probably more new stuff in this five minute demonstration than you could pick apart from playing the whole previous two games. What we noticed, good and bad has to be shared with the world.

1. You can tag an enemy with a grenade after using them as a meat shield for a meatsplosion.
2. Everything seems to have a lambent version – including Beserkers.
3. Cliffy B uses God mode. He should have died.
4. The animations are a bit stale, but no one will notice when it hits the fan.

But don’t take my word for it, here it is for yourself.

“This is the biggest game that we’ve done since GTA IV, and is already receiving Game of the Year nominations from specialists all over the world.  Can you please ensure Toby’s article reflects this – he needs to respect the huge achievement he’s writing about here.”

After posting the email from Rockstar on Facebook, McCasker was let go from the publication.  It has not yet been revealed as to why McCasker was fired, but many have already theorized that it is likely due to pressure from Rockstar Games.

After being fired McCasker told News.com.au:

“I did not sign up to become a journalist to write advertorials masquerading as editorial.  This ‘cash for comment’ culture that is fast becoming the status quo within print media bothers me a lot.”

We all remember the incident with James Gerstmann and Gamespot that occurred a few years ago over a review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.  It has been stated by Zoo’s editor, Paul Merrill, that Toby McCasker was fired for a number of reasons including the disclosure of a company email.

In my personal opinion advertisement money should never hold sway over what a journalist writes.  If true it is unfortunate that game companies have this kind of influence over the publications covering the medium.

Red Dead Redemption has been getting a lot of coverage lately, and for good reason.  Rockstar Games has called the project their “most ambitious game to date”.  With this in mind the company, responsible for the Grand Theft Auto series, is planning on a very large advertising campaign.  The game had a strong showing at PAX East (trust me, I was in that line for quite a while), and with this in mind Rockstar will not only being doing the usual viral and television ads, but they will also be bringing advertisement into the theaters hoping to draw on the cinematic quality of the game in order to get people more interested in the project.

With Rockstar placing so much of their resources into Red Dead Redemption it will be interesting to see if the game does well commercially, as the company expects.  The demo they offered at PAX was good, but we’ll have to wait for the full version to find out if it is a game of the year contender.

The game, aptly described as “Scrabble meets Risk” was shown to the public for the first time last year and recently released a great little trailer. According to the post, it is  also “completely finished, very polished and great fun” which is certainly the impression it gave me in the released media so was very much looking forward to checking it out early this year.

Denki promise that Quarrel will still see the light of day this year though when and in what form remains to be seen. The blog post has several railings against “the industry” and it’s inability to take on anything other than  low risk products. They also assert that they will be exploring routes to go directly to gamers stating they will be “focusing on platforms that don’t have arbitrary gate-keepers who periodically change the requirement goal-posts halfway through development” which sounds a lot like Xbox Live Arcade to me. The service has a somewhat legendary approval process for all the wrong reasons.

One of the benefits of digital distribution is that it’s supposed to be a lot more feasible for publishers to take calculated risks on games just like this and it’s not like the guys at Denki, itself founded by alumni of DMA Design (and now Rockstar North) don’t have a track record. Hopefully, those who have to move on as a result of this will land on their feet and Quarrel will still see a release soon. Despite being a platform not without it’s own whims, it would look like a good fit for the just released iPad or with a more significant reworking even Facebook.

For now though, we’ll applaud Denki for sticking to their guns and refusing to compromise. If you’re a gamer who enjoys games, you should too.

With the first Penny Arcade Expo on the east coast finished and in the record books we have already news of its return to Boston, but this time it will be in a different place.  PAX East 2010 was held at the Hynes Convention Center in the Prudential building complex and while this is an advantageous area of the city the Hynes ended up being too small for what was to occur this past weekend.  Speculation was abound that Penny Arcade’s first foray on the east coast would only attract around 30,000, and even Jerry Holkins (one of the co-creators of the Penny Arcade web comic) had fears as to whether or not the turnout would be thinned due to the convention’s move to the other side of the country.  The fans would not disappoint.  Approximately 60,000 people showed up for the inaugural PAX East, selling out the expo and packing that particular area of Boston for three days.

With such a turnout it has already been decided to move the next expo to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, which is a much larger venue.  However, there are some problems with this move to come.  The Boston Convention Center is located near Boston Harbor, and is somewhat isolated from many of the shops and restaurants of Bean Town.  Even so this seems to be a necessary trade off, as attendees and exhibitors both felt very cramped in the restricted space of the Hynes.  In fact many of PAX’s panels where scheduled closely together simply because the Hynes Convention Center did not provide enough space to feature them with only four rooms actually available for the panels.

The next two Penny Arcade East Expos slated for 2011 and 2012 appear to already be locked in at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.  I attended PAX East for the three days that it was in Boston, and I can honestly say that the change is needed.  Traffic flow among the crowds became such an issue that it could take quite some time just to get down a hallway.  In addition to this two of the rooms in the Hynes, the Wyvern and the Naga, as they were dubbed for the expo, were so small that people had to line up quite well in advance to get into the particular panels being conducted in them.  Even the exhibition room appeared to be cramped as there was just not enough space for publishers, and it really seemed to be lacking for what one would expect to see at a PAX convention.  I managed a few moments to speak with Jerry Holkins on this issue concerning space, and due to the turnout the Penny Arcade staff already went to look at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center while in town.  The decision to move appeared to have already been made by the time I had a chance to talk to Jerry on the third day of the convention.

So rejoice denizens of the east, the return of PAX promises to be even grander than what we experienced this time around.