- Fallout 3: Man, I want this game to be good. I really do. I'm just not sure I'm getting that vibe yet. Bethesda appears to have the Fallout atmosphere and look down cold. The gameplay vids they showed, though... man, I'm just not sure. The VATS targeting system looks neat, except that every time you use it, it goes into what looks like a canned animation sequence. The transition to and from the sequence seemed a bit too jarring for something you'll be doing (potentially) in every combat sequence in the game.
- Rock Band 2: The Harmonix CEO (I forget his name) just came out and laid out some of what they had coming. More than 80 tracks on RB2. (You can find the full -killer- set list here.) You just know I'm gonna end up belting out Liv'n on a Prayer at the next Rock Band party I go to (after the game comes out). What really impressed me was the revelation that you'll be able to port your Rock Band 1 tracks into Rock Band 2. (There may be a fee for this, but the speculation is it's under $5, so to me that's no big deal.) I'm really, really looking forward to this one.
- Guitar Hero 4: I almost felt bad for the Activision guy who came out there, clearly expecting massive applause at multiple points, only to get crickets. Guitar Hero's big thing was signing up "exclusives" to the Eagles, Van Halen and Metallica. As an old Van Halen fan, that hurts a bit, but ultimately they're slapping themselves on the back getting exclusives to a bunch of bands I couldn't give less of a f#@ about, while Harmonix looks to be just be going for a broad, killer list of individual tracks and making sure everything I've spent money on in RB1 and its download content carries over to RB2. I don't know what will sell better at retail, but I know where my dollars are gonna be spent.
- Fable 2: I only played a little bit of Fable 1. I enjoyed it, but it didn't suck me in and I should really give it another go. That said, a lot of the Fable 2 presentation was both interesting and alarming. Some of the multiplayer co-op features could be fascinating, the way it lets you see other players from your Friends list in the game (as floating orbs) that you can then invite into your world without leaving the game. They talked about the dog companion a bit more without explaning at all how his advanced AI will affect the actual game. It was all vaguely cool, but on the other hand there was absolutely no discussion of the gameplay and that's a bit of a red flag.
- Lips: I know, as big a fan of fake plastic guitars as I am, I shouldn't poo-poo a singing game, but... yeah, not a day one purchase for me.
- New 360 UI: Evidently the fall 360 dashboard update will include an entirely new UI. What they showed off was considerably less colorful and used avatars that weren't totally dissimilar to the Wii's Miis. (There's a sentence I thought I'd never type.) This is a risky move. The 360 UI may be unspectacular, but it's very, very functional. This thing boast some interesting features (8-way chat rooms, media sharing, etc.) but some of it looked clumsy as hell to me and I see no need to make people re-learn a new UI when the old one worked just fine. Hopefully I'm wrong.
- Netflix Support: As a Netflix subscriber, I think this is great. Netflix's On Demand content may not be everything everyone wants it to be, but there's a lot there and making it accessable via the Xbox is just gravy.
They also showed off Gears of War 2, Resident Evil 5 and some other weird casual sh#@ that used the camera. Can't say any of those are in my wheelhouse, but if they're in yours, they're worth checking out. What I'm really waiting for is for some info on Dragon Age to start rolling in. Bioware had me at hello with this title, and this IGN gameplay screenshot makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
