I've been keeping up-to-date with E3 announcements this week. (not something I usually do for E3)  To tell you the truth, I didn't have very much hope for the conference this year.  When I heard how different E3 was last year and how many companies pulled out of the ESA this year, I honestly thought that E3 was going to be on its last legs.  It's amazing how I always seem to be pleasently surprised when I expect the worst.

Monday at Nintendo's press conference, Miyamoto showed off Wii Music and the new advanced motion control system.  Finally, Nintendo's getting on the ball.  I was more than a little disappointed when I first played the Wii and found how unresponsive and limited the sensor and accelerometer was in the Wiimote and Nunchuck.  Now they're finally trying to make up for that failure by launching the Wii Motion Advanced for cloase to a 1:1 motion response ratio.  This is what Nintendo should be doing.  Finding ways of improving on their system in order to compete with the various price drops and firmware updates of the XBox 360 and PS3.  Wii Music also looks kinda cool.  I'd be more excited if I didn't already have a 360.  Wii voice?  Don't need it.

Yesterday, Sony's press conference was far more interesting.  Holy crap.  Resistance and Rachet and Clank are now Sony's poster children.  Insomniac was definitely getting the publicity.  They kicked things off by having Ted Price show off the Resistance 2 demo.  Very spiffy, indeed.  They then went into the success of the PSP bundles, announcing a new one.  In October, Sony's releasing a bundle that includes a silver PSP, Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters, National Treasure 2 UMD, a 1Gb Memory Stick, and a download pass for echochrome.  Sufficed to say, it's on my shopping list.  Next, they announced a brand new PSP title, Resistance: Retribution that will bridge the gap between Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2.  It's being made by Bend Studio, who created Siphon Filter.  Finally, they announced a new title coming exclusively to the new Playstation Network, Ratchet and Clank Future: The Quest for Booty!

Man.  I heard Brian Allgeir and James Stevenson name that as one of the possibilities for RCF:TOD's title.  At the time, I thought it'd be a fitting title for a Ratchet game.  I guess they did, too.

Last, but certainly not least, Alex Evans from Media Molecule took us on a whirlwind tour of Playstation's year-round success and future as a demo of Little Big Planet.  That's what I call a presentation.  I'd use LBP just to create an alternative to Powerpoint.  It's amazing!

I'm excited to see more, but now I have to go back to work.

Wow.  It's not every day that I can say I was surprised about something.  Least of all, a JRPG!  Two days ago, I heard on a few gaming sites that SquareEnix had released Song Summoner, an RPG for the iPod available through iTunes.  To some, this might not seem like much, but to me, it says a lot.  First of all, it was released almost silently.  SquareEnix didn't even announce it until its release date.  Secondly, they're completely distributing through iTunes!  I half expected that a large company like SquareEnix (especially one overseas) would probably publish separately at first (would be a huge hassle for iPod owners) and eventually release on iTunes after a few months or so.  Not so!  SqEnx seems to have thought ahead on this one.  Not only that, it stands out as one of, if not the only non-casual and non-puzzle game on iTunes to date.  At only $4.99, I just had to download it and try it out.

Okay.  I'd never installed a game on my iPod before, so I was very surprised at the graphic quality of the game.  The display is practically flawless.  It looks like you're playing a next-gen portable game!  The interface uses the iPod's click wheel and really shows off how intuitive it really is.  No more tapping the D-Pad forever!  Not only that, the gameplay itself is really fun and interesting.  You control a single "Conductor," Ziggy and his "Tune Troopers."  To start off, you can create your "Tune Troopers" in practically the same way you created monsters in Monster Rancher.  You can open up your artists, albums, or songs list and select a song to make a "Tune Trooper" from.  The character that's created and his/her stats are based on various aspects of data associated with the song, most important of which is the number of times it's been played.  Once you make the characters you want to play with, you can progress through the story and battles.  The battle system reminds me most of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.  Each turn, you control all your characters (Ziggy and three Troopers of your choosing) one-by-one, picking where they move and what attacks or skills they use.  Unlike FFTA, however, each Trooper has a limited number of battles they can be used in before they become unusable.  You can "rewind" or give them more chances with certain items, but I've yet to see if this is limitless.  The storyline as far as I've played is pretty much what we're used to with JRPGs.  What's completley different, however is the experience system.  Instead of gaining experience, you gain items that you can purchase new skills with at the end of each battle.  You can increase your stats of your Troopers and level them by...wait for it...LISTENING TO MUSIC!  That's right.  After you install and start playing Song Summoner, the songs you used to make Tune Troopers actually increase their stats when you listen to them more times.

All I can say is SquareEnix has surprised me with Song Summoner.  I can't get enough of it, and I'll happily say it again.

In other news, WALL-E was every bit of the geeky, sci-fi movie I'd hoped it would be.  The lighting was spot on!  Siguorney Weaver cracked me up as the computer.  Tons of particle effects?  Awesome!  Pristine shaders?  Totally awesome!  No dialogue for the first 15 minutes? (not counting the music, mind you)  Brilliant!  I loved so much of this movie!  That's why it pains me to talk about the disappointments. 

I'm looking at you, live-action composites.  They just didn't fit.  Besides, the lighting was perfect as-is.  Why did they even need live-action to begin with?  Including it just made it and the CG seem out of place.  My solution:  Dump the live action altogether.  The film really would work better without them.

My quoms aside, I really loved WALL-E for what it was.  The best Pixar film. (so far)