E3 Day 1

I'm gonna try to be quick, so please excuse any typos.

First off, the new locomotion system in Madden 11 feels incredible. They've been long overdue in that department, and I think they;ve finally gotten it right. I'm not at the point yet where I can implicitly trust their newfangled Gameflow system, but I did give it a try. They have a nice addition where you can choose a basic fourth down play on the fly, so no more having to search through plays when you want to fake it. Not having a sprint will take getting used to, but I think it's better in the long run.

Crackdown 2 feels a lot like the first one, and that means it feels good. I probably spent more time with that demo than any other today. It just speaks volumes about how fun the basic game mechanics of that series are.

I gave Dead Rising 2 a little bit of playtime today. It, too, feels exactly like its predecessor, but in this case it feels a little clunky. I was also disappointed with the seemingly small number of zombie character models. It's particularly noticeable when you kill identical twin zombies standing next to each other, especially when they're dressed the same. Sonic the Hedgehog 4 felt terrible during my playtime. It takes a full 2 seconds to get up to speed, what's that about? The new Tron game felt surprisingly fresh. I only played cycle racing, but it was pretty intense. I played Medal of Honor a little bit. Felt exactly like Bad Company 2. I'll wait for the beta to make a call on that one.

Metroid: Other M is an interesting game. Metroid Prime is my all-time favorite game, and Other M feels nowhere near as good as that game. That new Zelda game uses Motion Plus for more accurate sword mapping, and I can confirm that they did a pretty good job with it. Unfortunately, the graphical style is disagreeable. It's like a cross between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker. It needs to commit to one.

I saw Cliffy B and Shaun White.

I'm on a personal mission to snag as much swag (stuff. we. all. GET!) as possible. I've kinda been sucking it up on that part so far, but I'm going to work harder at it tomorrow. I missed out on Bulletproof-themed free burgers with T-shirt give-aways. I feel like a real sucker for that. I also feel like a sucker for not getting a business card from the Activision exec who checked out Vision by Proxy. Tomorrow will surely be more successful. I gotta go, it's eatin' timez.

--Chilly P