E3: The Best and Worst of this year's Show + other great Moments

E3 will officially wrap up tomorrow but most everything that will be shown off has been announced already.  Thus we pretty much know what all the winners and losers of the show, the press conferences and various other gaming details. 

Let's take a look at the best and worst of the show in a year when there weren't many jaw breaking new games announced.

The Biggest Announcement

Day one's news from Microsoft and Square Enix bringing Final Fantasy 13 to the Xbox 360 was easily the biggest "surprise" and event changing news.  Any way you slice it this is a huge deal for Microsoft by being able to cut in to one of the PS3's big exclusives.

The Best Press Conferences in order

Sony - MS may have had the best announcement but Sony had the best show top to bottom.  They outlined new unseen killer games like God of War 3, MAG and DC Universe Online.  They launched their new video service the same day it was announced.  Games like Resistance 2 and Little Big Planet are stellar titles in the making.  Gran Turismo TV, new Rachet and Clank and a PS3 price drop, sort of, round out the rest of the good news.  Sony takes the cake for new titles, new announcement and showing off upcoming titles in a new light.

Microsoft - Easily the second best show of the week.  Their huge announcement alone puts it ahead of Nintendo in my book and that doesn't count some great games on the way.  My biggest problem with the MS press conference was the lack of anything new.  Some great games were shown; Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Fallout 3, Resident Evil 5 etc.  But none of these games were new announcements.  They were all titles we have heard about or seen for some time.  The new Xbox Live dashboard is a huge plus, and of course they announced FF13.

Nintendo - The epic failure of E3 press conferences.  What the hell were they thinking?   Animal Crossing, Wii Music, and Wii Sports Resort are what you have for us?  No Kid Icarus, no Mario, No Zelda, nothing.  For a system that is known for killer first party titles we didn't even get that from Nintendo this week.  The third party titles announced weren't much better either.  Plus we get Wii Speak, and Wii Motion Plus (someone shoot me know, all this Wii-Crap constantly being named this way), two new additional pieces of hardware that should have been included with the system from the get go.  Fail!

The Battle of the Music Band Kits

Rock Band 2 vs. Guitar Hero World Tour, who won?  Tough call.  Rock Band 2 had the The Who playing at E3, pretty bad ass right?  But Guitar Hero World Tour is compatible with Rock Band 1 hardware on the 360 and that potentially means RB2 as well.  We don't have a track list for GHWT yet, though Rock Band 2's is out and about.  It was a big move on Activision's part making RB stuff compatible (no word on PS3 or Wii yet), but the bigger surprise was for a small fee (licensing purposes) you can port over all your Rock Band 1 music and update it for Rock Band 2.  That and the combination of RB1 DLC working on Rock Band 2 makes Harmonix and MTV the winner so far.

Best Gameplay Video

Gears of War 2 was pretty damn impressive, but I am picking Resistance 2 and the Leviathan fight:


Best Video w/o Gameplay

Final Fantasy is up there but much of that was seen in previous trailers.  God of War 3 was the big one for me, it was rumored, but we had nothing seen nothing on the game till this point.


The worst No Shows

Many had hoped for some KOTOR news, maybe the long awaited Kid Icarus or a new Halo game.  We got nothing.  No news on Zelda, Mario, Duke Forever, Gordon Freeman, etc.  I had really hoped to see these five games, and just like I thought, we only saw two of them; God of War 3 and Final Fantasy 13.

*huge update* KOTOR MMO NEWS

Stupidest Thing Heard all Week

Stephen from MTV Multiplayer: “What games should the hardcore fans be playing later this year?”

Reggie Fils-Aime from Nintendo:  "Grand Theft Auto‘ on the DS and ‘Animal Crossing‘ on the Wii.”

Come on Nintendo, get your head out of your ass.  Hardcore gamers do not give a crap about Animal Crossing.  GTA on the DS maybe, but you guys only mentioned that in passing, why should we care?  "

New Slogan:  Nintendo, catering to your parents and little siblings from here on out"

And last but not least, Best Game

Hate all you want, but I wasn't going to pick a game people couldn't play.  That cuts the choices down quite a bit.  From reading hands on after preview from all over, the best game of E3 in my book is Left 4 Dead.  Valve is going to have another huge winner on their hands, just watch.

Check out part one of this developer walk through, two and three as well.