El Shaddai has made me very excited indeed. The game director and character designer, Sawaki Takeyasu, is known for his role in games such as Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe and – my favorite – Okami. The publishers, Ignition Entertainment, were responsible for bringing one of my favorite Wii games to the west – Muramasa: Demon Blade. Put together, these two factors suggested that I could look forward to a fresh game, a colorful and different experience from the usual stuff out there. Judging by the trailer, I’m not wrong:

I’m not usually a huge fan of biblical plots in my entertainment in general, not for religious reasons but because the plots can get so weighed down by biblical “wink wink nudge nudges” that I can do naught by loll my head back, drool, and wish to be somewhere else (Evangelion, Xenosaga, I’m looking at you). However, I’m keeping my fingers crossed here because you can usually trust former Clover staff to put the fun first.

And besides, did you see the colors and animation in that trailer?! I would kick a puppy to see more of that level of artistry be considered in gaming. Beautiful.

As promised, here is something at E3’s Ubisoft conference that caught our imagination, a game called Child of Eden. Created by the man behind the cult hit Rez and intending to be that game’s spiritual successor, it’s played using gesture controls with XBox Kinect and the Sony Move. Just… just have a look for yourself:

This trailer convinced me and Teph that  gesture control games have the ability to go beyond being “just a gimmick”. Let’s hope other game developers realize the same thing and run with it.

Thanks so much for waiting on the comic today! The laptop I draw the comic on died on Saturday, taking with it the half finished comic. Managed to salvage it  from the hard drive before the laptop was dropped off for repairs, thanks to Teph’s quick thinking, so it was just a matter of setting up a temporary workspace with all the stuff I needed in order to finish it up.

So, it’s that time of the year again. The time where game publishers exit their stasis pods, rub their eyes from the bright sunlight, and proceed to make giant asses of themselves on a stage while they try to convince us (or perhaps… themselves? How meta…) that the months they spent in self-imposed exile trying to create the next big game was indeed worthwhile.

We’ll be keeping track of E3 all this week, so if anything catches our collective eye, we’ll post links/videos right here during the week. Til then, enjoy the spectacle!