Cool Ideas from E3 08

So....in watching a lot of the press conferences from E3 this year, there are some interesting game ideas that sparked my attention. Some of them in the "Why didn't I think of that?" kinda mode. Some of them in the "It's about time!" mode. And some of them in the "That's a refinement that I'm looking forward to" genre. The ideas might have been out there before but it was the first I had heard of them.

Sports games for girls emphasizing sports that girls play. This is from UBISoft's Ener-G brand that they announced. I have 2 girls myself. This should have been smack upside the head obvious but it wasn't for me.

The Green Screen in your home using what is essentially just a webcam. This is from the You're In The Movies game. The coolness is that it captures you yet you don't have to have the green screen using just a webcam.

The action-adventure without firing a shot. This comes from Mirror's Edge. It was started in Portal but a full-length action adventure type game of this sort would be so hard to do in my mind. Granted, a full length game could have been done before but I'm not aware of it.

The parkour game. Also from Mirror's Edge. This looks to be a different take on the Assassin's Creed control scheme. I'm hoping it doesn't have what has been called "repetitive play" in Assassin's Creed. It could get old but I think that depends on the story. Tangent: I'd really like to see how they do the control scheme for the the martial arts. I'm not into the "Mortal Kombat" type fighting games because they feel like random button mashing.

The "Director" from Valve in Left 4 Dead. To be honest, I think they've used this to some degree in the HL2 episodes. They would get real time feedback from players on where they were having the most difficulty in the game and then subsequently make changes to the game in future patches. They've now pushed this idea into real-time changes in the game and adding a "reward" for the good players. I'm sure I've oversimplified what Gabe Newell was trying to say but that's the meat of it in my mind.

The it's not a sandbox game but honestly it is a sandbox FPS game. This comes from Far Cry 2. They are touting it as a non-linear FPS and the way FPS games will be going forward. We'll see. Far Cry ranks as one of my top games of all time though. I know it's not the same developer but they did do at least a decent job on the sequels. Pre-emptive strike: I have not played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. because of all the reports of system crashes.

Wii Light-sabers: Duh. So excited.

Wii as anything musical from WiiMusic. Music game w/o any additional accessories. Alternate game name: AirMusic. I'm curious how "playing an instrument" w/o the tactile feedback would really work.

Wii-speak: About time. Everyone else has audio chat. The "room-chat" vs. "mic-chat" design decision is interesting though. I guess they don't expect people in the same room to be on different teams.

Voice controlled gaming from Tom Clancy's Endwar. I wondered how they would do an RTS on a console and wrote off following this game because of it. Now I know. I was a big RTS gamer back in the day on a PC. This could be really good or else people will feel really self-conscious talking to their TV. And yes, I know you can do this in Rainbow Six games with limited functionality. I tried it once and felt just that.....self-conscious. It also wasn't all that reliable.