May 18, 2006 - Every year IGN attends dozens of game shows. From the Game Developers Conference and the Tokyo Game Show to the former ECTS and a litany of little one-offs, we cover everything. The Electronic Entertainment Exposition (E3) takes place annually in May, and it's the big enchilada. It's a wonderful, terrifying, extremely busy environment -- and it's packed with the world's latest and greatest games. It's sort of like being a kid and getting an invitation to Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory with a free invitation to drink from the chocolate river, burp your way to the top of the soda chamber, and keep the Everlasting Gobstopper. Each year we pick our top games, and today is the day when we list 'em.
Picking the top five on the Xbox 360 channel doesn't mean anyone gets an award, a free lunch with the editors (what a drag that would be!), or a trip to the Lamborghini factory in Italy. Nope. It just means you landed on our list. To be more precise, the sight and sound of the particular game burned into our memory cells with such intensity and clarity that we couldn't resist thinking about it for days after. That, after having seen hundreds of games in three packed days, those five games reached above the rest. That we really want to play those game above all else. Collectively, Jon Miller, Charles Onyett and myself (Doug Perry) have easily played thousands of games, so getting a nod from us means your game doesn't suck. It also means that, for whatever it's worth -- a million dollars or a million handshakes -- we like your game.
Right, who cares? We're pathetic anyway, right? OK, good. Got that out of our system? Onward. Put on your rocket scientists hat and focus. Our top five consists of three sections: Our individual top five picks could include games from any system at E3. All of these games had to be playable -- or played at the show. Why do we do this? It gives us a chance for you to see what our preferences are, what we wanted to see going into E3, and how these game met or exceeded our expectations.
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At this year's E3, all I wanted from Microsoft were a few admirable games. Instead, I got a half dozen. Woah! After last year's E3 debut, which showed terribly early games or none at all (with the exception of Gears of War), seeing a wealth of superlative titles in LA this year made everything about the ominous show a relief. We saw the Halo 3 trailer, so now we know it's Halo 3, not some other crazy Forerunners thing or whatever. We saw Gears of War running in real-time -- not as a tech demo, but as a game -- and that was titillating. Such a sexy word. And I got to play it twice in multiplayer. Sweet E3. That's how E3 should be. Fun. Exciting. Giving you a good fat taste of the game. Gears of War is sure to knock some people out come this fall. And we saw just exactly how freakin' cool Mass Effect is, and how badly we want to play BioShock come next year.
Microsoft is doing things right. It's leading with a great lineup of first-party games. Unlike Nintendo, which is almost always about the first-party games, and Sony, which is usually all about the third-party games, Microsoft is trying hard to strike the right balance by leading with first-party games and still negotiating for getting great third-party games on its side. The first party line-up looked solid, with a few exceptions. While Gears of War and Mass Effect stunned, the two disappointments were Crackdown and Too Human, both of which still have potential.
Crackdown was a little slow to control, but it still had some amazing gameplay. Visually, Real-Time Worlds is taking a basic approach, using cel-shading-like techniques to create a comic book effect. I think it's working, but I don't think that many people want cel-shading games so much on their $400 systems. Realism and style are the name of the next-generation game, and Crackdown just looks like a cel-shaded GTA. That graphics may get better and hopefully the controls will, too, but this one has yet to wow me. The other bummer was Too Human. I like the concept behind the game, I love the mythology and the premise, but the framerate was chunky, the camera pulled really far away, and control was stiff, the animations were poor and the giant hallways seemed vacuous. Silicon Knights knew that showing the game might be too early, and it's only 50% complete, so it's got a long way to go. Hopefully, it will indeed meet its high expectations. I have faith in Silicon Knights to pull it off.
Anyway, the crazy thing about my picks is that I love action games, shooters, adventure games, platformers, strategy games, and action RPGs. For me to put down Mass Effect is a big deal, because while I have always respected BioWare, I never really play their games. This one? I'm playing. And BioShock? Well, not only is it stylistically gorgeous, but you can already feel the atmosphere and the tension in that creepy game. It's already an intelligent, nerve-wracking experience, so I can't say anything other than, "I can't wait." If my list could include three other titles, they would be Spore, Super Mario Galaxy, and Tony Hawk's Project 8. But I couldn't fit 'em!
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4. Assassin's Creed (Publisher: Ubisoft, Developer: Ubisoft Montreal, Release Date: fall 2006)
3. Gears of War (Publisher: Microsoft, Developer: Epic Games, Release Date: fall 2006)
2. Mass Effect (Publisher: Microsoft, Developer: Bioware, Release Date: winter 2006/2007)
1. BioShock (Publisher: Take 2 Interactive, Developer: Irrational, Release Date: 2007)
