by NOA_Steve

As day two of E3 gets under way, my feet hurt (new shoes) and I feel overwhelmed by the number of games I’m going to have to buy later this year. I don’t know why videogame publishers can’t just make crappy games for a year and give me a chance to catch up. I’ve still got games in my queue from 2003!

I just got back from an interview with Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Super Smash Bros. and Meteos. You can check it out in next month’s issue of the magazine, but he largely agrees with Mr. Iwata’s philosophy of going beyond what we traditionally think of as games. I can’t wait to see what he has in store for us next.

After remaining hidden since the DS’s release, Viewtiful Joe DS has finally made an appearance and it’s absolutely fantastic. I can’t believe how good it looks, and the new VFX powers that take advantage of the touch screen are brilliant. For fans of sidescrollers, the DS line-up is amazing this year: Viewtiful Joe, Castlevania, Sonic, Mario. Good stuff.

Sadly, the new Viewtiful Joe VFX Battle for GameCube isn’t playable. I’m still not exactly sure what type of game it’s going to be, but Clover’s track record has me looking forward to it regardless.

At the EA booth, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the new Bond game, From Russia with Love. It plays a lot like Everything or Nothing (by far EA’s best game in the franchise to date); not surprising since many members of the development team previously worked on that title. The jet pack sequence in particular looks incredible.

On the other hand, I was underwhelmed by Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. The gameplay seems very simple and the design of the EA characters doesn’t do anything for me. They’ve got a long way to go before challenging what Capcom did with the franchise.

Zelda. My god is Zelda freakin’ great. In the roundtable we attended with Mr. Miyamoto, Mr. Aonuma and Mr. Kondo, they mentioned that some of the music in the game would indeed be orchestral. I consider this big news, as I find music to be a very important part of the experience, especially in an epic game like Zelda. Finally! Oh, and Steven’s got some great theories on certain story elements, but I'm not going to share them with you in case he’s right and it ends up spoiling the game for you.