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Onto the West Hall (read: other side of the convention center) were
more publisher booths. Big names like Square Enix, Namco, Konami and
Sega were all packed together. When I make it inside the West Hall I
saw Bueno Vista Games’ booth. They’ve been heading up the Disney
titles and featured Nightmare Before Christmas: Oogies Boogie’s
Revenge, The Chronicles of Narina, Chicken Little and Kingdom Hearts
2 with a huge Mickey statue in the middle.
Past
this booth was Konami’s section that showed a huge Bemani line up.
The biggest announcement is that Beatmania IIDX is coming to
America, renamed as Beatmania. The playable demo featured 2 high
quality Konami brand IIDX controllers and headphones so you can
actually hear what’s going on. Classic songs like Metal Gear Solid
Theme, The Shining Polaris and In My Eyes were playable. No major
announcements about licensed songs, if any will be in Beatmania.
Dance Dance Revolution had its share of presence in the Konami booth
with Ultramix 3 for the Xbox and Extreme 2 for the PS2. Ultramix 3
had a Japanese influenced mix that featured ever snow, Miracle Moon
(L.E.D. LIGHT STYLE MIX), and Breakdown. It also has Butterfly from
Smile.dk, which will please gamers eagerly awaiting a US mix with
the classic DDR song. The most interesting song was Akumajo Dracula
(Castlevania) Medley Kukeihakurabu. DDR Extreme 2 has Eye Toy
support, but the only thing I saw was the mode where it displays
someone dancing instead of background visuals. The song list
features quite a few missed songs from the Japanese DDR Extreme like
1998 and un deux trios. New licensed songs are Sean Paul’s Get Busy
and NRG Factory’s Genie in a Bottle. The biggest surprise on the PS2
DDR was the inclusion of E-Rotic’s In the Heat of the Night,
something that US DDR gamers have been waiting for year after year.
To go with all of the Bemani games Konami had breakdancers come up
every two hours and gave away a bunch of Beatmania t-shirts.
Adjacent to Konami was Namco’s booth with a huge area for Soul
Calibur 3. Multiple kiosks let almost everyone who wanted to play a
two player battle join in. Versus mode featured the huge razor wheel
wielding Tyra and the mascot character Mitsurugi. To no one’s
surprise Soul Calibur 3 is really Soul Calibur at the core. No real
major gameplay changes were announced or shown. The versus mode was
pretty cool, Mitsurugi players had a definite advantage since most
of his moves from SC2 carried over. Curious players that tried out
Tyra found out that she was a fast close ranged fighter. She’s got a
lot of horizontal reach with that huge ring around her. What most
people seemed to ignore was the single player mode called “burning
of the soul”. Here you could play as the staff wielding Kilik on a
quest to search out the Soul Calibur. With each victory you were
given a choice of what to do next. For instance you could gather
more information about the legendary blade or chase someone down.
Either result leads to battle, but this mode allows Namco to tell a
story with the title. There were a bunch of other single player
modes, but none of them were playable at this demo.
Strangely enough, next to Soul Calibur 3 was Namco’s new line up of
family friendly games. They showed off a Bernstein Bears game, a
Gumby game for the GBA plus a huge area for Hello Kitty’s Roller
Rescue. Just imagine the castle area set up for Soul Calibur next to
a pink wall with Hello Kitty right next to each other. What’s going
on with Namco? We Love Katamari also had a huge presence in Namco’s
booth. Plenty of consoles for gamers to try the title out and a life
sized Katamari ball with Namco junk on it.
Just past Namco’s area was Square-Enix’s section. A massive screen
in the center had trailers for upcoming games like
Full Metal Alchemist 2: Curse of
the Crimson Elixir and
Radiata Stories. We’ve
previously covered these games, but just to note the English voice
acting in Radiata Stories was much better than I anticipated. Code
Age was a new Square-Enix concept that was shown off in video form.
It’s a game/manga/anime mix similar to Bandai’s .hack series. The
game side of things makes it look like an action RPG. The trailer
looked cool, but I want to wait to play the game before getting my
hopes up. Playable games included of course Kingdom Hearts 2,
Radiata Stories, Dragon Warrior VIII, Romancing Saga and Before
Crisis: Final Fantasy 7. The cell phone prequel to FF7 is being
brought over to the US for Verizon phones, a definite surprise. What
was really going on at the Square-Enix booth was a mad rush to pick
up tickets to a screening of game trailers. Minutes into E3 all of
the tickets were gone, luckily a friend gave me his ticket so I
could watch the show.
Underneath the Square-Enix logo two of the screens opened up to
reveal a 50 foot wide screen arena. Ticket holders walked in and got
a close up view of the “AAA” Square-Enix games like Dragon Warrior
VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, Final Fantasy XII and the
Completion of FFVII. Being notably absent from the floor the trailer
was the only new information about Final Fantasy XII. The trailer
showed Balthazar (the gun wielding guy) as a sky pirate with his
rabbit-eared Viera friend Fran driving a motorcycle. Vaan (the main
character) dreams of being a sky pirate and befriends Balthazar. No
actual gameplay footage or real story details except the subtitle
“Return to Ivalice”. The only thing that was neat was a quick flash
of a bunch of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance moogles in a huge group.
The FFXII trailer ended with a cryptic 2006 release date. Next up
was the compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Advent Children was first
and a brand new trailer was shown. All of the main characters were
present. Barret was firing away with his gun arm at a huge robot
while Yuffie threw her windmill shiruken towards it. There was a
longer scene in a church where Tifa bounces off a wall and battles
some people hand to hand. Story wise a little more is revealed.
There is talk about a return of Sepiroth and a scene with Cloud and
Aeris back to back reveals Cloud’s sadness that he couldn’t aid
Aeris. A major surprise was at the end of the trailer where another
famous FF VII character appears for the first time. I’ll leave it up
to you to guess who it is.
  
Watching the Crisis Core trailer was neat, since these were the
first actual details about the game since it was announced. The game
is being done in a manga style and focus around Cloud, Zack and
Sephiroth with the events in Nibelheim. It appears that this game
will elaborate on Cloud and Zack’s relationship. Maybe even give an
insight on why Cloud chose to take Zack’s image. Again Square-Enix
revealed no actual gameplay footage, just a bunch of in game
cut-scenes. The final scene from the trailer was in the Mako reactor
and Sephiroth is pulling out the Jenova core. Dirge of Cerberus was
the last compilation game shown. As you probably know it stars
Vincent and is an action RPG. We got to see some gameplay footage
and it has an over the shoulder perspective similar to Resident Evil
4. When Vincent draws his gun out the perspective shifts and Vincent
is placed on the back of the screen. Dirge of Cerberus certainly
looks cool, but Square-Enix still didn’t reveal any major details
about the story. There’s a scene with Vincent reminiscing over
Lucerica and the trailer explains that the Dirge of Cerberus was
created prior to the events of FF7. Could this be Shinra’s doing?
Probably.
To end the session on a strong note Square-Enix pulled out a brand
new Kingdom Hearts 2 trailer. The trailer had some spoilers from the
end of the first game and then went straight to Naimee one of the
stars of Chain of Memories. Naimee inside the castle is talking to
an unknown character dressed in a white tunic. Naimee sums up the
events of Chain of Memories to him. Next we see the blonde haired
boy chase a white knight heartless through Twilight Town and then
the unnamed character pull out two keyblades in a battle with the
fire casting Axl. Back to Sora we see him in some gameplay shots
fighting along Donald and Goofy. One thing that surprised everyone
was the appearance of Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the
Caribbean. The scene was awesome since we got to see him in skeletal
form battling along side Sora. We get to see a whole bunch of other
characters too like a Santa clothed Jack Skellington, the Genie from
Aladdin and a black cloaked Mickey coming out of a train. Another
really cool treat was the return of the Gummi Ship. Instead of basic
flying the system looks much more adventurous like a shooting game
on rails.
  
Sega’s booth showed off the latest Sonic titles like Shadow the
Hedgehog and a new DS title Sonic Rush. For the first time Phantasy
Star Universe was playable. The game has a display reminiscent to
Phantasy Star Online so long time players will feel right at home
with the offline title. I didn’t get a chance to learn about the
story, but gameplay wise it’s shaping up to be a decent action RPG.
I just hope Sega spends enough time with the game to separate from
being Phantasy Star Offline.
While most of the action, games, and contests are in the two main
halls there are nearly hidden exhibits to find across the Convention
Center. One of which was Atlus’ booth. Hidden in the hallways in a
tiny room was Jack Frost, Atlus’ mascot character. They had a Puyo
Pop Fever DS tournament and an iPod shuffle giveaway for the few
lucky people who stepped inside. Playable games included were a US
version Samurai Western for the PS2 and an English version of Trauma
Center: Under the Knife. The unique DS title has gamers take on
surgery with the stylus. It’s an innovative title where you
literally stitch patients back up by moving the stylus over a wound.
More severe wounds require players to remove shards of glass with
tweezers then pour antibiotic over the injured area. I wish I could
try out Magna Carta: Tears of Blood or Digital Devil Saga 2, but
I’ll have to wait until later this year to check them out.
Also outside of the main halls was Atari’s booth. They had a full
blown Matrix chair set up with multiple LCD monitors. Gamers could
hop in the main seat and take Matrix: The Path of Neo for a ride.
Also playable was Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi. That’s the latest
entry in the series, which is being developed by an all new company
with an all new fighting engine. Marc Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents
Under Pressure was also around. An interesting game, but it feels a
bit too much like Jet Set Radio. Atari still has time to work on
this game for its September release.
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