We have a long list of explanations for the games that we didn’t write up previews for on QP after this year’s E3 Media & Business Summit… and this is no place to air ‘em. We will, however, drop you a little rundown of some games we feel need mentioning here on the site that just didn’t make the cut. E3’s old news, right?! Here’s our wrapup of what we missed, what we loved, and what ain’t worth your time — consider this a jumbled version of QP’s Best of E3 Awards, except there are no awards (because that’d be unnecessary and ridiculous).

What We Missed (unintentionally)

Sony:

Our number one regret at E3 is not spending enough time playing Street Fighter IV… NO! Fight the urge! We do however, wish we had the time to have seen Sony Online Entertainment’s demonstration of The Agency, an upcoming action-MMO for the PS3. In fact, we regret that we didn’t have more time in general to check out Sony’s offerings — you know, all those games they should have been touting during the lenghty press conference? Between pollinating a field and feeding princesses, we didn’t have nearly enough time to enjoy the Chimeran debut on the PSP (although we can say based on our time with Resistance: Retribution, it played a hell of a lot better than most PSP first-person shooters), nor walk around Sony’s most stagnated project ever, Home.

Microsoft:

Between the 45-minute co-op playthrough of Halo Wars and another lengthy sit-down with Iain Wright from Lionhead, we unfortunately missed our chance to check out Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (aka: “the game with a bear with a bird in a backpack”). And though we can’t imagine ourselves singing karaoke in a room full of people like Cliffy “Young Clifford” Bleszinski and Peter Molyneaux (on the last day of E3 no less), we do wish we had gotten some hands-on with Lips. We were too busy playing Rock Band 2 though… constantly.

Nintendo:

Other than Mega Man 9 (a multiplatform release, lest you forget), we weren’t exactly enthralled by what Nintendo was showing off. We kinda, sorta, wish we had checked out Wii Sports Resort (mainly because pretend sword fighting would have been a nice break from all the real videogames). Seriously though, we can’t think of anything else. They just can’t help but focus on the mainstream — asking Nintendo to make hardcore games again is akin to asking Green Day to play punk songs again (hint: it’s not happening).

Games That Didn’t Make Deadline:

We saw a handful of games at E3 that we simply couldn’t write up in time — there were only two of us and we got up just shy of 20 previews in under two weeks! Unfortunately though, we simply could not push out preview after preview as that kind of thing leads to some pretty horrific results for you, dearest reader. As such, here’s a little rundown of each of the games we had some hands-on with but didn’t get the chance (for one reason or another) to give you 1000 words on.

Little Big Planet: So, while we did sit down with Alex Evans from Media Molecule and played through a few levels of the most critically hyped game of all time, we didn’t cover it for those exact reasons. We took notes, we planned on writing it up, it just didn’t happen. Besides, everyone else covered it so thoroughly (and non-objectively) that we worry our puny voices might be covered by all the shouting going on. “E3 Game of Show!”, “Most Creative Game in all of History!” — hogwash, we say. The game’s stunningly detailed — whether it be graphics, physics, gameplay or creation — but we just don’t see the system selling potential here.

Prince of Persia: You know what’s awesome totally f’ing moronic? Standing in a room and watching someone play through a game. That’s what we got to do with Prince of Persia, a game that all of the 36 E3 judges got to put their hands on, although we did not. We watched a developer run around the walls and deal with some minor puzzles, as well as an “area boss” fight. Visually akin to Okami and Street Fighter IV, the new Prince will certainly dazzle many eyeballs when it arrives this Holiday season.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky: Valentine Yeltyshev from GSC Gameworld was stoked about their latest iteration in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, Clear Sky. And reasonably so — this game’s a prequel with twice as much atmosphere as the first as well as adding more to the already living world that the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game was built upon. And unlike certain games, those developed by GSC Gameworld happen to run on DirectX 8-10 — an important inclusion considering the state of PC gaming.

Bayonetta: After reading the rundown in the most recent EGM, we were a little disappointed to find no more information than what we ourselves saw when visiting SEGA. Developed by PlatinumGames’ Hideki Kamiya (creator of Devil May Cry, among others), Bayonetta is a sexy witch doctor (with sexy librarian glasses) and a wardrobe that not only comes to life, but is made of her own hair. Stuck somewhere between our world and the next, she spends her time stylishly fighting monsters with halos around their heads. Oh, and did we mention she has guns on her feet? This game looks awesome, sounds awesome (chillout J-Pop!), and will likely be pretty damn awesome. After watching Bayonetta’s hair dragon bite through the mini-boss at the end of our demo, we were pretty sold on it. Considering Kamiya said, “The part that I showed you, the part that I can talk about, is the most boring part of the game.”, we can’t wait to see what’s next.

Fallout 3: Hey, it’s Elder Scrolls: Oblivion but they fixed a bunch of different stuff (so we hear) and added a post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C. as the setting! We sat down for a half hour with Fallout 3 and the most interesting thing we can say is that there’s totally corpse eating. And no, we’re not sure what that means either. The VAT system worked well, the environment was beautiful and massive and the details were all filled in. Consider this 2008’s Bioshock.

(and finally)

The Conduit: Developed by High Voltage Software for the Nintendo Wii, The Conduit is quite simply the best looking game made for the system. In fact, The Conduit wasn’t even being shown at E3 — the guys from High Voltage were there to shop around for a publisher and we were lucky enough to get a little bit of hands-on with the game a day after E3 had ended. We will in fact be publishing our full hands-on preview of this game in the upcoming weeks, except it’ll be piggybacking onto an interview with the folks developing it.

What We Loved:

Rock Band 2: We felt a full preview of Rock Band 2 would be a bit much. Let’s be honest, the game isn’t that much different — which is just fine with us. Other than a few minor additions (and some pretty important fixes), Rock Band 2 is more of the game you already love. With a 500 song year-end-goal and the promise of importing Rock Band 1 tracks into Rock Band 2 (as well as all your original downloadable content working in the new version), Harmonix reminds us why Rock Band was developed as a platform rather than an annual rehash.

Street Fighter IV: Not only is this arcade game a beautiful iteration of a tried and true formula we spent so many years enjoying but it’s also something we’re never going to own in our homes. Which is a damned shame, because we enjoyed the hell out of it. Regardless of the arcade cabinets themsevles (which were voluptuous and comfortable), the game plays like the game that inspired it quite a bit, though clearly updated for the modern fighting genre fan. After schooling a few other journalists at E3, we were really hoping Capcom would just give us our own unit for review. No such luck.

What We Loathed:

Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe: We get it, alright? You people grew up with these terrible fighting games and for some reason, harbor nostalgia whenever you get your dirty little hands on a new (and ultimately, still terrible) Mortal Kombat game. We played it though, for serious. We really tried to understand why people like characters that respond like they’re moving through a grid and not free space, with no depth, that have “make your own” combos. Even though we played as Batman, the game could not be salvaged. It’s another (still terrible!) Mortal Kombat game. Go ahead and miss it. We’ll be over here playing Smash Bros. and Soul Calibur IV, wondering what the hell you’re doing wasting your time.

And with that, Quarterplay has ended our first year of E3 coverage. But with September fast approaching (which means Digital|Life and the first ever NY Games Conference), there’ll be more big news to come back for. We’d be lying if we weren’t to say this though: We’re already looking forward to next year.

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