Well gents and ladies, E3 is here, which of course means one thing: time for press conferences! The big gaming show is about the only time of the year that I get excited to listen to executives throw a bunch of scripted marketing speak at me, since it (sometimes) means I’ll get to look at some new games — and, if it’s a really good year, maybe some new tech and a few new IPs as well.

So how did Microsoft deliver after all the hubbub they’ve caused in recent weeks with the reveal of the XBox One? Let’s find out.

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It might come as no surprise that the majority of this week’s cast is dedicated to the Xbox One reveal. We talk about our thoughts on the device, everything from the announcement itself to whether or not people actually need a console that can do all this stuff when they already have three or four more gadgets that can do the same thing.

After we wax philosophical about the Xbox One, we make a couple E3 predictions and those are always fun. In case you missed it during the cast proper, this will be our last cast for a couple of weeks until E3, which is when we’ll do our “Season Finale” E3 wrap-up.

You know what to do. Listen, rate, all that good stuff. See you after E3!

0:00 – 8:20 Intro
8:21 – 46:21 Xbox One
46:22 – 1:05:55 E3 Predictions
1:05:56 – 1:06:59 Outro

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Remember Milo and Kate, the infamous tech demo from the original Kinect announcement? You can be sure that everyone who worked at Lionhead under Peter Molyneux does. Over at Polygon, Matt Leone has a fascinating in-depth article about the long development history and DNA of the project. It turns out that Milo has roots in a failed project called Dmitri that began all the way back in 2001. Milo is still a sore subject at Lionhead, so a lot of the quotes are off the record, but the article is definitely still worth a read if you’re interested in some of the behind-the-scenes goings on at a game developer.

Molyneux definitely has a long, strange history in game development; in the early years, before Lionhead and Microsoft, it seemed like he could do no wrong. I never played Black and White or any of his early games like Populous, but I remember people raving about them at the time. At Lionhead, Molyneux became known for games like Fable, which over-promised and under-delivered but still sold well enough to produce sequels. That tendency towards over-promising weird, ambitious gameplay mechanics eventually became the inspiration for parody. However, I do think there is something admirable in Molyneux’s desire to find new ways to approach games; I just get the impression that never meshed very well with the business concerns of a large corporation like Microsoft or with the realities of the modern-day console development cycle.

Have any of you ever played Molyneux’s early work? Are you looking forward to whatever crazy idea he comes up with next? Let us know in the comments!

The timing worked out pretty well this year with Episode 50 being both the Drunk Cast and our E3 predictions show and Episode 51 as the book-end for both of those events. Sadly, a lot of our guesses about E3 2012 were off the mark, but that’s all right, I’m sure our next-gen console predictions will come true some day.

We start this cast of with a nice game of Grades, bringing back Anthony’s famous “GAME TIME” clip for the first time in a few shows. We talk about the Big Three conferences and then dip into the various games that we saw and what intrigued us. We fit in a little industry news at the end too, just as a special treat.

I’m sure that you know the drill by now, but listen, rate and enjoy the podcast. Don’t be dicks to each other and we’ll see you soon.

0:00 – 3:10 Intro
3:11 GAME TIME (grades)
3:12 – 15:30 Microsoft
15: 31 – 26:11 Sony
26: 12 – 38:48 Nintendo
38:49 – 43:47 Watch Dogs
43:48 – 47: 22 Star Wars 1313
47:23 – 52:35 Tomb Raider
52:36 – 56:03 Dead Space 3
56:04 – 56:39 Assassin’s Creed 3
56:40 – 57:00 Gearbox Studios
57:01 – 57:20 Need for Speed
57:22 – 57:53 EA are jerks
57:54 – 58:25 New old-school Final Fantasy
58:26 – 1:00:42 Jason Rubin trash-talks Saint’s Row
1:00:43 – 1:02:36 Outo

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It’s E3 time! Microsoft had the task of kicking things off for us this year so we start with the Big M. Below are my instant reactions as I watched the press conference unfold:

Halo 4

• Halo 4 will kick off the show. After ending the show with it last year, MS obviously doesn’t want to make us wait any longer than necessary. But what will end the show? My money’s on a sequel to Blinx.
• Live action trailer for Halo 4. Pretty bad-ass. Pretty cheesy. A ship designed to discover new worlds. Looks like something went wrong. Oh, they are crashing on the Chief’s planet. Interesting.
• Gameplay! Looks like Halo. The planet is a vibrant green, lots of foliage. Looks cool. Grunts. Covenant. An Elite just disintergrated. Weird. New enemies are attacking. Some new robot thing that reminds me of General Grievous popped out. Cortana says it is Forerunner design.
• Some cool ass new weapon is tearing these things up. Daddy like.
• Infrared visor! Nice! Metroid Prime meets Halo.
• Clips of lots of stuff, like Warthogs, Cortana going batshit and a tagline: An Ancient Evil Awakens.

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Even in a site where everyone can easily be considered a nerd, Anthony and I have another badge to pin on the sash of our geekiness: we are both huge Star Wars fans. We read the books, play the games and watched the Phantom Menace in 3D (or at least I did). Since neither of us have a Kinect, we won’t be playing the recently released Star Wars title, but the game’s Galactic Dance Off mode seemed like good fodder so we decided to watch a few videos and give you our thoughts on them. Be warned, the songs featured in the videos are terrible to the extreme.

See our breakdown after the jump!

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April Fools’ is an interesting time for any entertainment industry because you’re never quite sure if what you’re seeing is an obvious farce or something that could come true. Generally we’ve gotten pretty good at sussing these things out, but sometimes there’s a really good prank out there that trips us up.

This year saw some pretty good gags from Blizzard (like Blizzard Kidzz and Supply Depot 2, which takes a stab at Mass Effect 3′s ending) to Mojang and Notch’s very overt dig at Mass Effect, Mars Effect. The Old Republic team also had a pretty good one detailing the addition to play as your ship’s Protocol Droid. There were also a lot of great video April Fools’ gags, which I’ve put in after the jump.

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Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (Super Gaiden Subsistence) is coming out on November 15, updating the classic Xbox shooter with a shiny coat of new graphics and other bells and whistles. It may surprise you to learn that 343 Industries isn’t just content with bringing Combat Evolved into the modern era; they also found the time to put a few Kinect commands into the game.

It’s not as bad as you’re probably thinking, and the Kinect stuff actually seems pretty harmless. There’s three commands that have been introduced and they are:

• Voice Commands: Lets you switch weapons, throw grenades and toggle the graphics overlay without lifting a finger.
• Analyze Mode: Similar to the Metroid Prime series, you can point your reticle at various objects in the environment and the game will scan the thing in question and add it to your…
• Library: This Library is not the one in the game, fortunately, it’s actually an index for all the things you scanned in Analyze Mode and you can leaf through it with gestures. They had to call it the Library, though?

So there’s the list folks and it’s not all that bad. The voice commands are incredibly redundant in my opinion, given that you’ve already got a controller in your hand (and they probably won’t be used in multi) but the Analyze Mode sounds pretty cool. I hope you can still do that one without a Kinect, I mean there’s a few extra buttons on the controller that Halo doesn’t use.

In addition to the reveal of the Kinect features, 343 also dropped the achievements for Halo Anniversary and the list actually looks pretty fun. I’m a big fan of the co-op achievements which use the “bro” puns like “Standard Operating Brocedure” and “Brovershield”. All of the achievements appear to be doable, so don’t be surprised if I end up nabbing all the cheevos on this list.

So, any thoughts on the Kinect commands or the achievements? Still excited for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Super Gaiden Subsistence?

Source – IGN, Xbox 360 Achievements

Microsoft’s big shindig just went down, and it was kind of crazy. Despite the early leaks, they still manage to pull off a few tricks and bring a lot of Kinect.

Hit the jump to see the round-up!

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Every now and then, we like to pay a little visit to our good friend, Gamestradamus, the Gaming Fortune Teller. Last year, we asked him his predictions about the Nintendo 3DS, which turned out to be largely true, minus a few small quibbles. Gamestradamus is different than the rest of us lowly gamers in that he is gifted with the ability to see into the great beyond, the ever-future, the swirling blender of time – and he can tell us bits of what he knows.

As the E3 fervor is getting ready to build into complete mania over the next few weeks, we thought we’d pay Gamestradamus a visit to glean his secrets before the rumors broke. What we found was shocking, titillating (tee hee) and worth reporting about here at GamerSushi. Beware, gents. Spoilers.

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For some reason, all of you crazies keep coming back to listen to our podcasts. And for some reason, we keep getting together on Skype to record them without killing one another. Basically, everybody wins.

We celebrate the sixteenth edition of the GamerSushi Show by waxing not-so-philosophically about a variety of topics. These include our manly Valve love, the Nintendo 3DS, Final Fantasy XIII-2, and then some. Nick also drops in with another one of his games, Percentages, and I think there are some hilarious results that come out of that conversation. I may have broken the podcast a couple of more times in this episode, for which you’ll have to forgive me. Lord knows I’m having a hard enough time forgiving myself (not really).

Anyway, check it out, and be sure to rate the podcast on iTunes. Many thanks to those of you who already have done so. You’re our favorites.

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It’s the first podcast of the new year! The year isn’t all that new anymore, but we finally got off our butts and chatted about video games. In this edition, we were careful to avoid recapping 2010 (again) and looking forward too far into 2011 (again), and instead just talked about what we’re playing and some stuff that’s been rattling around our mostly empty brains.

In order to achieve that ultimate state of full disclosure, I must say that we actually recorded this the week before last with the intention of releasing it last week, but stuff happens and we didn’t get to it. So, it’s new to you, and should get us back on our regularly scheduled podcast programming. I know you’ve just been dying to hear our nasally voices.

For some reason, I was either hyper or bored, and by the end of the podcast I was in a bit of a rare form. It’s the form that Daniel and Nick know best from when I goofed around on the set of WZ or in the making of Leet World. Since I haven’t listened to it just yet, I’m not sure if it’s been immortalized in podcast form. If it is, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Anywho, hope you guys enjoy, and be sure to rate the podcast on iTunes!

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We’ve been grumbling and moaning around here since E3 of last year about the Xbox 360 and Microsoft’s seemingly all-in strategy with Kinect, but I think that we took solace in the fact that the 360 would remain a bastion for the hardcore in some respects even after Kinect sold 8 million copies this past holiday season. Our hopes may be in vain, however, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently spelled out the company’s long term plan in an interview with USA Today, citing how the Xbox 360 isn’t only made for playing the video games.

“Xbox isn’t a gaming console. Xbox is a family entertainment center. It’s a place to socialize. It’s a place to watch TV. We have Hulu coming. It’s the only system where you are the controller. Your voice, your gestures, your body.”

Mr. Ballmer goes on to say that while the Xbox has the 15 year old boy demographic nailed down, they’re searching for ways to expand beyond that, into the 15 year old girl and the middle aged market. Things like Kinect will go a long way towards that end, especially after the aforementioned sales bonanza which outstripped Microsoft’s own internal estimations. Sounds like the Xbox only does everything, right?

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As the end of the year draws nigh, it’s only natural that every site in the world is going to come up with a series of “Best Of” lists regarding the nearly late but still great 2010. We try to vary things up around here when we can, but since there’s no news, you’ll probably be getting a few of these lists as we find them, because hey, we like to post. Sort of.

Anyway, Gamasutra has been doing a series of lists about 2010 in review, including this new one I enjoyed where they covered the year’s Top 5 Disappointments. The list covers everything from the giant cluster that was the Final Fantasy XIV launch through the removal of the Taliban in Medal of Honor. I suppose it could also be called the biggest fails of 2010, but hey, it’s their list. I think if I’m going over my list of disappointments, it would include Little Big Planet 2 getting moved to next year, and Microsoft’s focus on Kinect at E3.

So what about you guys? What were your top disappointments of 2010?

Source – Gamasutra

It’s the first week of December, so we’re bringing a brand new edition of the GamerSushi Show, back in our shorter and more frequent format. If we can keep rolling with this, you should see one of these bad boys each and every week.

In this edition, we cover a whole slew of topics, including a brief look back at 2010, and a look forward at the titles we’re going to be playing in an effort to close the year out strong. We also tackle the release of Epic Mickey, one of the Wii’s new flagship titles, and discuss the game’s virtues and a couple of its shortcomings, including third person video game cameras and why it seems so hard for developers to get it right. After that we tackle a new game from Nick (which Anthony dominates) and then take a look at Game Informer’s list of 30 Characters that Defined a Decade.

So, as you can see, just because things are shorter does not mean we don’t have anything to talk about. Once again, please go rate this cast on iTunes and subscribe with the handy links to the right. Enjoy!

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Well fellow gamers, it’s now officially December, so that means that all around the land, people are jumping into holiday mode. It’s kind of funny actually, that once November passes everyone runs around like crazy all the way until Christmas-ish time, and then everything gets calm again. At least that’s the way it is around here.

As we’ve been discussing, winter and holiday season naturally means one thing for all of us and our interests: games, and lots of them. Over the years, I know that all of us have received a bountiful harvest of great gaming goodness, and we’ve played games until we couldn’t stand them any longer. Traditionally for me, December is the time that I play more games than any other.

I’m setting all of this up to give you some sweet gaming questions, naturally. As always with our getting-to-know-you type games, feel free to answer with as much or as little as you like. Answer to the best of your ability. Go!

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Man, do I hate being right all the time. It seems Microsoft’s relentless media blitz paid off in huge dividends with an excitement from the mainstream not seen since the days of the Wii’s release. The Big M’s (Yeah, I said it) entry into motion-gaming, Kinect, has now surpassed over 2.5 million units sold since its release on November 4th.

I’m not surprised as Microsoft had previously stated they were treating Kinect like a console launch and they certainly put their money where their mouth was. Regardless, the reaction from people who I didn’t know were aware of video games was staggering and it seems that we’ve entered a new paradigm in gaming. Whether or not it will sustain itself remains to be seen. Did any of you buy a Kinect? What do you think of Microsoft’s rousing success?

Source: 1UP

As much as we dog pile on motion control gaming, I think all of us here at GamerSushi recognize that when utilized correctly, it has tremendous upside. Who didn’t get excited at the prospect of awesome sword play in a Legend of Zelda game way back when, before we realized that these hopes were totally misplaced? I think I like the idea of what motion control gaming could be, but I recognize that many developers are too lazy or have deadlines much too tight to really give it a thoughtful implementation that makes sense and enhances gameplay.

That being said, whenever people talk about the potential of big name titles getting some motion controls, I can’t help but let my mind wander to a magical place without all of that reality that normally bogs down tacked-on control schemes. I suppose RipTen feels the same way, as they put together a couple of lists of ten games that would be awesome with motion controls, including one for Kinect and one for Move. I would totally agree with their assessment on games like Fight Night Round 4, Starcraft 2, From Dust and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow for the different machines. But really, what I’d like is to be able to do Dragonball Z motions with my arms. Someone needs to get on that.

Joking aside, as much as those would be nice, I still think they would miss the mark somewhat.

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I got to try out Kinect over the weekend, and I had enough hands on time with Microsoft’s full-body motion controller to get a decent impression. This isn’t a review, per se, but it’s still going to be a decent summary of my thoughts on it.

Kinect, if you’ve somehow managed to avoid the copious amount of information about it over the last year, is a sensor bar that hooks up to your Xbox 360 and uses an infrared scan of your body as input in specific games as opposed to the remote-wand set up used by the Wii and the PlayStation Move. The major hook of Kinect is the lack of any extraneous methods of control: it’s just the game and your body. There are no complicated button combos to remember, no dual analog sticks to fumble around with. By making the game an extension of yourself, Microsoft hopes to tap into the casual market by removing arguably the largest obstruction for new gamers: controllers. Does Kinect work in this regard, or was Kevin Butler right about the need for buttons?

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After all the months of speculation, ridicule and “is that actually what I’m going to look like playing that thing”, the launch week of Microsoft’s Kinect has finally arrived. The hands-free motion control system will be out tomorrow in North America, prompting all of its purchasers to get their Wavy McJiggleArms swinging. I jest, but I am actually interested to see what this thing does, especially considering that it is Microsoft’s big horse, on which it is pinning many of its gaming dreams.

So how do they feel about it? If you ask Aaron Greenberg, head of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, he thinks it will do just swimmingly. He feels so strongly about this, he believes it will sell units even in the face of negative game reviews for Kinect’s launch titles.

Why is that? Because Kinect is different.

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