Another year and another awards season. E3 was packed with exciting memories you have all seen (some still to be posted), and rooms filled with the hottest and most anticipated titles to date. It was certainly a great time, and now that time is over. It’s time to look forward, ahead to newer and better releases, and to ennoble titles in this year’s WhatIfGaming’s Best Of E3 Awards 2008.

Criteria: The Best of E3 Awards, a subcategory for the WhatIfGaming Prizes, are given solely to those video games that demonstrate a pure excellence in the field for which they are not only nominated but also chosen. These awards only apply to playable games at E3 given a few exceptional categories.

Nomination & Selection Process: Compared with other site awards, the WhatIfGaming Prize nomination and selection process is long and extremely rigorous. This is the sole reason why WhatIfGaming Prizes have grown in importance over the years to become the most important prizes in their field. Forms, which amount to a personal and exclusive invitation, are sent to about over 1,000 selected individuals to invite them to submit nominations months in advance from the latest builds per video game. Self-nominations are disqualified. For WhatIfGaming Prizes, inquiries are sent to such people as developers, industry experts, analysts, freelance journalists among others. After our deadline passes, the nominations are chosen by permanent committee of 5 selected individuals and only the final stage of nominees remain per category. From all of these, a winner is chosen.

The names of the nominees are not publicly announced, and neither are they told that they have been considered for the WhatIfGaming Prize. Some are announced publicly by practice. Nomination records are revealed approximately 2 years after each respective award year.

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Final Fantasy XIII is finally coming to the Xbox 360 in North America and Europe that had all of us buzzing the moment it was announced. Now the problem with this is that there grew some concerns as to why a seemingly PlayStation 3 exclusive went multiplatform with the announcement of Star Ocean IV also a 360 exclusive. At least for the time being anyways. We heard a lot of buzz everywhere and from all the analysts and top notch guys at the conference and most were convinced something bigger is occurring between Square Enix and Sony. Something very seven-ish. To elucidate, Final Fantasy VII-ish for the PlayStation 3 only. After our preview of Heavy Rain for the PS3 behind closed doors, we caught up with Shinji Hashimoto for an interview of all things Final Fantasy XIII and any fallaciousness behind exclusivity in general and that of Square Enix titles.

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We had a chance to catch up with a very cool industry analyst Michael Pachter who wanted to reveal what he thought about the Microsoft vs Sony conference debacle.

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Take a look at all the pictures we took:

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Here’s some footage we recorded for you guys. We don’t believe in generic stand and capture every time. We like to capture moments. This is one out of many to come. Flash Version Now Available For All Upcoming Videos Due To Popular Request

We went over a walkthrough with the guys from Insomniac Games for Resistance 2. A lot of information was revealed. Check out what we think.

1. Interesting gameplay concept with the Leviathan and increased gameplay is part of

Resistance 2.

a. Textures look phenomenal

b. Draw distance is great

c. Monster eats Ted Price’s main protagonist. Price continues to explain his frustration with the level and messing up as a result of not being a good “presenter and player” at the same time.

2. Shows the beginning of Chicago

a. Loading screen is standard.

b. Demonstrates tech. (shows a vast scape of Chicago)

c. First impression is refractive and reflective water.

d. Swimming alien, looks great and only 1.0 water render engine says Price.

i. Music is traditional to the first one from our note. Any change? According to Price, it has changed a bit in nuances.

ii. Ted Price: “We’ve upped the gore considerably.” Larger destructive weapons. One weapon actually shoots bullets into the enemies and with the L2 trigger, you can blow the bullets up while inside their bodies. Talk about gruesome.

iii. Grim Horde are performer inhabitants of Chicago. They are seen as a core example of the Motion Capture from San Diego capture headquarters for Insomniac Games.

e. The lighting refractals looks great with particles and what not in the exclusive scenery shown.

f. Weapons just laying on floor (kind of dated), but makes sense for the storyline.

g. Great weapon with bullets and grenades.

3. Body reflective movement is with believable chunks. A lot more enemies, chunks, gore, etc.

4. Not too happy about the closed “barrier” chunks.

5. Levels are big, but they are linear.

6. It’s at this point that Ted Price decides to talk about scale. Admittedly, after seeing the first Chicago level we were certain the scale was of minimal quality. Apparently not when the exclusive walkthrough of the San Francisco Bay demo area was shown. There are vast ships that players will be able to board without any load screens. Talk about massive.

a. You will be boarding the ships on the flight and it will be seamless

b. So it’s more geared towards a retroactive approach to answer missing questions in the 1st one. Should be great for those wishing to delve into the story of Nathan Hale.

7. In addition to more intuitive weapons, the rise to fight a more challenging A.I. is demanding. The enhanced A.I is strategic, and wastes no time in demolishing Nathan Hale from rooftops, clinging to the side of buildings and attacking, or a combination of both. This is not the place you want to be when you’re in San Francisco.

8. Smarter strategies, weapons, etc.

9. Integrating community with production

a. “We wanted to create something completely different and create a site that takes social networking to video games,” exclaims Price proudle. This is probably a fully functional profile for Resistance 2 Players. Let’s find out:

Chronicles will be a part of MyResistance and will detail the following:

Latest news for the resistance universe. News FEED for maybe Podcasts? Videos? Or News? Divided umong game related information about Friends, what they’re doing, what trophies they earned most likely

Community development

· Combat badges will increase the interactivity between gameplay and the participation with community.

· Different icons that suggest different items

· More to come about how it relates. It’s obvious.

The entire left side is covered of this Resistance 2 like Myspace-ish community.

About

Activity

Friends

Accomplishments

Resistance Updates

Progression through game

Conversations

It’s basically like MySpace and MyGoogle. More so of MyGoogle according to Insomniac.

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Resistance 2 has a lot of scope and is looking fantastic for a game that has been in development for such a short time. Increased A.I., amazing textures, and stunning graphics with a thoughtful storyline are making this one shooter we’re all hungry to get.

Gears of War 2 is going

See videos for beginning.

Rendevouz with death trailer

Cliff Bleszinski is here. God his haircut is awful. But who am I to judge ?

“Most anticipated title this holiday season”

He used the word precarious. Nice

Going to demo co-op.

First Impression, Gears of War 2 has an enhanced particle system as a result of the updated engine.

The demo glitches and starts again. Go figure.

Goal: “ Make it to the bottom of the sinkhole”

Definitely a more increased texture system, running is 100% different on site. Everything looks amazing as usual, but this is a spherical node environment with a procedural texture system. Enemy mounts a resistance-like vehicle.

So original. Hah.

Time to record some footage!

Here comes the BS marketing stats.

Sold 5x more than the 360. He says Xbox 360 will sell more consoles TOTAL than the PS3. It seems someone is threatened.

A year ago more than 6 million ppl connected to Xbox Live

New member every 5 seconds ?

Share for the first time: More than 1 billion $ on Xbox Live.

More than 500 million pieces of content.

Partners: Disney , WB , ABC, etc.

New partner: NBC, Universal (go figure with HD-DVD) Universal had to make up for their disfealty.

Microsoft just blew Sony’s online community grid WIDE open. Complete domination with a Wii-parynamous gaming community know as Xbox Live Friends.

It’s seamless with arcade games, and it’s simply amazing. It makes you want to buy a Xbox 360.

In addition, they just redefined the line between TV and gaming by combining the Live onset of features with the Xbox Live Friends.

Exclusive: Portal Still Alive

Xbox 360 Exclusive Arcade game of South Park. No wonder cartman keeps playing his 360.

This is madness. Pure and utter effulgence at its best. The rest seems so insipid in comparison to what they just announced. Literally over our heads in the jocose of our own community gaming and reality television addiction.

Netflix…meh. Blockbuster > All

They just announced that you can SHARE any movie/tv shows you buy.

Video coming soon of our coverage.

We can just say that ESA’s 2,500 people invite-only model of the E3 Media and Business Summit as of 2007 is a digression to the dreams and happiness of that gamer who saves up everything for games, and has nothing more forward to look to during that time of the year than a massive event. The problem is that it isn’t true. In fact, the ESA’s decision to make E3 invite-only is one of the best decisions they could have ever made apart from catching pirates in the Northern regions of Seattle or some place like that. People have become tuned to the idea that the downsize is the worst possible thing that simply could have happened. The newest model of E3 has brought a sense of eventual prejudice and mostly misdirection from all fields that makes it apparent that many people are far from the realities of it.

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The “Late Night With WhatIfGaming” is a new series feature of ours. No, it won’t have the little blue icon but it’s going to be just as significant. Every week we’re going to be doing either a video or post about anything we want to show or discuss on (you guessed it) very dark and late nights.

Just don’t find yourself in this situation.

Taking gamers as close to war as they’ll ever want to get, Codemasters today revealed the CGI trailer video for Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising, the game that will mark the return of the genre-defining military series. Previewing the total conflict experience using footage created from rendered game models, the trailer is now available to view and download from www.flashpoint2-game.com.

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Monte Cristo Games, an independent game company located in Paris, today announced that it has received €4.5 million (approx. $7 million USD) in funding from Arts Alliance, 360° Capital Partners and Innoven Partenaires. This new investment will be used to expand the development of CITIES XL, Monte Cristo’s upcoming next-generation city-building online game.

We are very pleased to receive this new round of funding from such renowned partners. This new funding will allow us to dedicate additional resources to creating the best entertainment experience possible in CITIES XL, while also leveraging our incredibly talented development teams in Paris and Kiev to create a fantastic virtual world and online community. - Jérôme Gastaldi, CEO of Monte Cristo Games.

CITIES XL is an impressive project, and we are very excited to support it with such a significant investment,” said François Tison, General Partner of 360° Capital Partners. Thomas Balland, Investment Director of Innoven Partenaires added: “Monte Cristo Games is a well-established creator of top-quality entertainment, and we have absolute confidence in their ability to create and operate a massive interactive experience as unique as CITIES XL will be.

In development by Monte Cristo Games, CITIES XL expands upon all the features that make city builders fun and interesting, while also letting players take their game online, as they interact with others in a persistent online environment. Realism will be pushed to the limit with cities that are bigger, more realistic and more sophisticated than ever before.

Brash Entertainment announced today that key Hollywood talent from the upcoming animated movie, Space Chimps, will be featured in their videogame of the same name. Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm, RV) and Patrick Warburton (Bee Movie, Seinfeld) reprise their roles from the movie, Luna and Titan respectively, for the videogame. Based on the highly anticipated film produced by Vanguard Animation and presented by Starz Animation, the game is slated for release on 1st August, 2008.