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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Ex–lusive… Get it ? Elusive Silent Hill…Ex-lusive… nevermind. Just watch the interview and keep here. We have a ton of great stuff coming up!

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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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As you all can tell from our preview, the Resident Evil 5 controls we played with at an invite-only Capcom session were as horrific as the zombies themselves. Why? You see, when deadly and rotting zombies are chasing you it should be a flight and fight mechanism to run the hell away. What does Chris Redfield do in our previews? He stands there holding his gun and shooting. No. Our chiseled man cannot run while shooting. He’s bad at multitasking. To find out more, we interviewed Capcom PR recently on the controls.

WhatIfGaming: A lot of people have been asking if the controls will suck just like Resident Evil 4. We know we know, we said suck. We mean to say they just aren’t practical at the moment. Will they change?

Jason Allen, Capcom PR: Haha, it’s okay. But um, yeah. The controls seen here are definitely pending and will eventually change. This is in no way finalized. It will definitely be different and listen to what people are saying.

WhatIfGaming: Okay, great. But does that mean that Chris will be able to finally comprehend the meaning of multitasking and be able to run and shoot at all?

JA: The controls will definitely changed, and these are not finalized. As for the answer to that directly, I can’t confirm that at this time but will say most likely.

WhatIfGaming: Hopefully soon (laughs). As for PC gamers, will Resident Evil 5 be headed to PC?

JA: As for the PC, that is not in development and there are no plans for this.

There you have it. Bad Resident Evil 4 controls are no longer a plague to us all. Keep here for more E3 stuff to come.

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

Constantly murmers are everywhere regarding which console leaders conference was the best in terms of presentation and pure content. Everyone downright agrees that Nintendo was “the worst” and there’s a whole lot of jumble about Microsoft and Sony.

Microsoft recently announced the multiplatform version of Final Fantasy XIII for North America and Europe,  but it just isn’t enough to get blood boiling. Microsoft has sold literally 19 million Xbox 360’s and it’s a number that’s hard to refuse. The placement of titles from Square Enix are numerous with Star Ocean 4 as a more than likely timed exclusive for the Xbox 360 console, and a general shift in more production towards the 360’s database. This increased relationship goes hand in hand with the unexpected, which is why some people were left far from surprised.

Sony’s conference didn’t have the best in its arsenal either. The conference began almost rather as a marketing pitch than anything worthwhile about the games themselves. We get it. “Playstation 3 is the next big thing,” “2008 is the year of the Playstation 3,” but that progress just seemed to regurgitated. Instead, how about feeding us something new? Something other than LittleBigPlanet, which we know is simply marvelous and full of effulgence. Show the public demonstrations of the games for the closed door conference held on July 15th, 2008. Same as Microsoft’s condition, Sony takes the liberty to flash us Kratos within minutes of the presentation, and things couldn’t be more obvious. Some of the Underground members even started yelling out “God of War III.” But hey, they tried.

As for Nintendo…well, we know about that.

Through the hordes that are these 3 conferences, we see that each and every one has their flaws and overall ups and down. There isn’t always 1 winner, and sometimes being a little bit better just doesn’t cut it.

Resident Evil 5 horrifies the player into a surreal world set in Africa where the local population has been infected with some sort of malignant disease that turns them very very angry. Chris Redfield, agent of the BSAA is sent to investigate the dangerous and barren lands. While exploring the continent through a tirade of a zombie deluge, players will learn to adapt to the beautifully crested environments and manage to survive with the help of their partner Sheva Alomar, a trusted partner and an agent of West African branch of the B.S.A.A. that will help make the journey easier. Though the decapitations, guts feasting, and axe gore is an ugly scene, the game itself makes even something so horrific imbued with a sickingly gruesome patina.

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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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