Gaming's Big News Week

Or the one I really struggled to think up a witty title for. E3 this week and like nearly every other gaming geek on the planet I'd thought I'd weigh in with my thoughts. Not Halo though, I'm too much of a fanboy to do Halo here and will cover that in its own blog another week.

So the second biggest franchise announcement was the new Metal Gear Solid. Two of 'em in fact. The multi platform Rising, starring Raiden and apparently not directed by Kojima as he's busy with Peace Walker on the PSP. I'm happy we're getting a MGS on the 360 because I missed 4 and I never had a problem with Raiden in MGS2. Loosing Kojima at the moment I'm not sure about yet.

Also on the espionage front is Splinter Cell, now spies have always been one of my geek spots so the first Splinter Cell was a given. It was also the last one I played. I gave Chaos Theory's co-op a quick go and the demo of Double Agent but none of them seemed to fix what I felt was wrong with the franchise. Taking Sam Fisher down the Bourne route may go a long way to fixing it and the gameplay footage did look awesome.

Finishing off the espionage is Alpha Protocol, a game that was pretty well covered before E3 but I've only just started paying attention to it as I'd failed to notice it was Obsidian making it. Because of the subject I can't wait but the combat looks pretty standard fare, I'm waiting to see how they pull off some of the other aspects of the RPG genre. What has been shown is the speech mechanic and Obsidian are taking a leaf out of Bioware's book with the conversation wheel but look to be doing it slightly better.

Speaking of Bioware, they've been showing off Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins. Mass Effect 2's trailer was suitably dark, which suits a game Bioware are saying is their Empire Strikes Back and there's some very cool new looking weaponary. I'm also please that they're still bigging up the continued save function as I was worried that little ability was going to disappear as we got closer. Really reminds me to finish Mass Effect again as an arsehole so I've got two versions of 2 to play. Dragon Age just gets a new trailer and more Marilyn Manson music.

Assassin's Creed 2 was one of my most looked forward to games of the year, and still is its just got a lot more company now. What has been shown looks great the fact Ezio doesn't carry round an armoury with him like Altair I love because I always found it slightly comical that the guards never clicked that Altair was up to no good with swords and throwing knives strapped to him. Other than that the game looks like more of the same with some really good improvements to the formula.

Left 4 Dead 2 came as a surprise. Not that I'm really complaining, I was hoping for more campaigns for the first game but five new ones plus new variations of super and normal zombies as well melee weapons has made me happy this is the right decision. What I really love about this announcement is that the new zombies and level features are all designed to mess with tactics that everyone's using in the first game. Well done Valve.

Raven's Singularity looks pretty cool, jumping on the band wagon of first person shooters taking Half Life's 2 gravity gun to new heights. Lets hope it manages it and doesn't go the way of Fracture.

Darksiders by Joe Madureira's Vigil looks fantastic but you'd expect nothing less from MAD and joining in on the ranks of games jumping aboard the God of War train.

Overall, I've been quite excited about the news that's come out of this year's E3. I'm slightly surprised that most of the news seemed to come out on the same day and things have been pretty quiet since then, more clarifying details then anything.