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E3 2004 Preview - 05/11/04 - Staff E3 is upon us, and the game industry again flocks to Los Angeles to kneel before the film industry and attempt to coax the hot steaming ejaculate of legitimacy. With development costs skyrocketing and margins crumbling, every publisher is keen to find the Next Big Thing, and the Electronic Entertainment Expo is the perfect time to unveil it to the world. What's going to be the next Mario? The next Sonic? If you want to know, look elsewhere, because you're not going to find it here. Since we're attending E3 this year we thought we'd read up this year's crop of games. Some enterprising snoops managed to ferret out a complete game list long before the show opens its doors. To use a tired hyperbolus, there's approximately 14 billion. No fucking way are we actually researching all these games beforehand. We needed a way to pare down the list and decide which ones were worth our times. We needed a list, and we needed it, reaching into our pile of hyperbola, yesterday. We're no experts. We're just a couple of guys with a half-assed website and $4.25/month worth of hosting. But as the saying goes, we're going to count our chickens before they hatch, look before we leap and judge a book by its cover. If all we have to go on are the titles, we're going to fucking psychoanalyze those titles. What makes something good? We don't know. But if there is one thing we've learned from decades of declaring our glasses half empty and waking up on the wrong side of the bed, it's when something sounds completely retarded. Asterix & Obelix: Kick Buttix (Cube, PS2) Title lameness rating: 3 Andrew: We'll start off with something relatively benign. Sidney: I don't see... oh, is it supposed to be "buttocks"? Andrew: It's a play on words. Sidney: How is that a play on words? Who outside a home schooled child has ever said "kick buttocks"? If you're going to avoid "butt" maybe you should just not mention kicking that region at all. MTV Music Generator 3: This is the Remix (PS2, Xbox) Title lameness rating: 2 Andrew: This is the sarcastic comment. Sidney: This is the caustic retort. Andrew: This is the obtuse referential joke. Sidney: Have we driven it into the ground yet? Andrew: This is... yes. Crescent Suzuki Racing: Superbikes and Super side cars (PS2) Title lameness rating: 1 Sidney: Honestly, I think I sort of like this title. I want to know what makes the sidecars so super. It piques my curiosity! Andrew: What could be in them? Weapons? Fuel? Another person? It might be anything! Sidney: Never mind, forget this one. Classic NES Series: Pac-Man (GBA) Title lameness rating: 4 Sidney: I don't know what's stupider, that people might actually still want to buy Pac-Man, or that Nintendo thinks that people will actually buy it for twenty bucks. Andrew: Hey Nintendo, maybe you should release some other classic games that no one played on the NES because they came out five years beforehand. How about Arkanoid? Maybe someone made NES Pong? Jesus. Sidney: Hey, I heard this really funny joke about Pac-Man and raves. Andrew: What, the one about munching pills and running through dark- Sidney: No, they're both about gathering up fruits. Get it? Because- ah, never mind. Star Ocean: Till the End of Time Director's Cut (PS2) Title lameness rating: 4 Sidney: Every single game on this page has a subtitle. Andrew: What happened to the old days of "Doom" and "Quake" and "Myst"? Did we run out of words? Sidney: I looked to see what makes this game a "Director's Cut" and apparently the characters have different costumes. Andrew: Who's making this? Oh, Squaresoft. They could draw a picture of a doe-eyed brunette with their own feces and it would sell a million copies. I guess we should be grateful. Page 2 || Page 3