Continuing Border-Town's bold and stupid tradition of summarizing each year's E3 by swiping content from other sites, here is this year's summarizing of E3 featuring content swiped from other sites.

First off, the rumors of E3's death have been highly accurate. It seems like there's nothing really exciting this year compared to the past. Maybe it's because I don't own a 360 or PS3. So while parallel-universe-wasn't-under-employed-for-three-years-and-owns-all-three-systems Tim might be into stuff like Mirror's Edge or the new Portal game, I'm not even inspired enough to post a stolen screen shot.

      :O

The one thing that is pretty exciting is this new attachment for the Wii Remote called the MotionPlus, which finally allows the Wii to sense the position of the Wii Remote as accurately as everyone hoped it would when the concept was originally unveiled. I actually got a Wii about a month back, and while I am really enjoying it just the other day I was thinking about how Nintendo's next system (should it be similar) would probably have motion sensing technology that would wipe the floor with the current model. Nice to see we don't have to wait for that. The MotionPlus is going to be bundled with a new version of Wii Sports next Spring that let's you do things such as drive a jet ski or sword fight. Hopefully, cost won't prevent Nintendo from including this thing with all future sales of the Wii so they can make it somewhat of a new standard, similar to when Sony switched out the original PS1 controller for the Dual Shock 1 several years after the system launched.

The most interesting thing to come out of this year's E3 has been Square's decision to port Final Fantasy XIII to the X-Box 360 in non-Asian locations and the subsequent Internet drama from people who feel personally betrayed that Square would do such a thing to them as put the game on a system they probably wish they had bought instead.

Speaking of, the news has ignited a small hope that Konami will announce a port of MGS4 to the 360 either tomorrow or the day after. Even though I already blew $85 on a copy of the Limited Edition PS3 version, it's not like I'd really be losing money if I picked the game up again for the 360 – especially since Sony just announced that starting this September, the PS3 will retail for only $400. Wow, what a deal.

UPDATE – As I was just browsing for news, I came across the words of Tim Rogers. He said (and I'm censoring this so it won't sound gross) “'penatrate MGS4.” Though I feared spoilers, I read more of the forum thread to discover if other people were in general agreement with him. While not yet ready to suggest penetrating MGS4 myself, I can't help but feel that he's probably right.

First off, weeks before MGS4 launched I read an article on it somewhere that casually mentioned that the game used the X button for “accept” and the O button for “cancel”, which is so backwards and stupid that I can't find the words within me to write about it; the majority of PS1 & 2 games used such a button assignment, but the fact that MGS boldly spit in convention's face in favor of configuring them in such a way that made sense was a feature of the series I highly regarded. As meager as the news might sound, it was kind of shocking and hit me like a dump truck.

I read a bit more and discovered that the online game played less like the previous ones- the ones I had, you know, liked – and had more in common with a typical first person shooter, with the primary action buttons placed on the top of the controller, where God did not want them to be. Further reading revealed quite old interviews with some dude named Ryan Payton who had been hired by Kojima to make the game seem more cool to Western audiences who had not purchased enough copies of MGS3 to spar the world from such bullshit. It's ironic that Kojima kicked Jeremy Blaustein to the curb after he'd created the best localization ever in a videogame (I'm talking about MGS1, btw) because he was upset that so much of the dialog was changed from what he'd originally written – in JAPANESE – yet hired some nobody to second-guess him on core design choices concerning the game play for MGS4, the quality of which was generally never really in question to the same degree as the story line.

What made me truly believe the worst was that Tim Rogers called MGS4 “Kingdom Hearts 3 staring Solid Snake.” I'd never touch the Kingdom Hearts series with a ten foot pole, but have watched a video where the game's tween protagonist fights Sephiroth, which was kind of funny. The way the player moved reminded me of a lot of contemporary games I've tried to play but don't like, ones that feel like the core system is trying to be too many things at once and was maybe designed by committee. Well, I had a similar feeling that MGS4 would abandon the wonderful (if unintuitive to losers) play control that MGS3 perfected by trying to tack on first person shooter controls. Mr. Roger's comment played to those fears, and has made me wonder if it would be worth spending a grand confirming them.

Then again, he also said Mario Galaxy was terrible, so who knows.

Every kid who grew up playing Duck Hunt on the NES shared the common dream of shooting the dog that accomponied you on the field. Seemingly invunerable the blasts of the magic gun that could kill things inside the television, the wicked canine abused the player by laughing callously and sans fear of reprisal each time a fowl escaped the edges of the television without being perforated.

As I was searching for more info on a new homebrewed Wii version of Duck Hunt, I found a video of the old arcade version of the game. Not only does this version seem more asthetically interesting, it actually lets you shoot the dog!

The only bad part of is that you shoot him when he's frollicing playfully instead of when he's being an a-hole, which makes the player seem like the bad guy. What kind of perverse justice is that, Nintendo?

Hopefully Nintendo will start putting its VS series of games on the Wii, as I wouldn't mind playing this one.

Much like rock stars hate being famous, video game protaganists hate being bad asses. Yeah, it's cool every once in awhile, but just imagine if you had to be a bad ass every single day. Like if it was your job. The strain would be unbearable.

The new Metal Gear Solid 4 US cover art, which is simply a close up of Snake's face, displays that "why must I be such a bad ass?!" angst-filled pathos better than any ten minute cut scene ever could.

Look at those eyes. If the guy was an emo teenager instead of a grizzled war veteran, he'd probably be bawling. Instead, all he can do is grimace and move on. When you're Solid Snake, you don't have time to wallow in your feelings.

The other great thing about this cover is that unlike the much cooler looking Japanese or Europe one, this clearly shows us that the game is 3D. I'd hate for PS3 owners to pass up Metal Gear Solid 4 because they can't figure out it's a 3D videogame and think maybe Sony of America was taking a nap and somehow let an outdated 2D game get released on their state of the art $500 vidcon player.

Hey Sony, that sounds great!

But tell me... does it include the ability to play all of the other Metal Gear Solid games that I already own using something besides crappy emulation that has, as of this writing, a host of officially published issues with the very last Metal Gear game?

Thanks, but never mind. I guess I'll have to eventually spend even more money to buy a used, and increasingly rare version of the PS3 that can actually play PS2 games for a ridiculously high price on e-bay, meaning both of us will get screwed. You idiots.

If you read the commentary on JoyStiq.com, you'll see people saying wonderfully stupid things in anticipation of this deal, such as "100 percent PS1 backwards compatibility, 85 percent PS2 backwards compatibility, DualShock 3 - the best controller this gen(motion sensing plus more advanced rumble than 360 controller)."

The last comment is too easy to pick on so I'll ignore it. What really gets me though is this idea that "85 percent compatability" is somehow good or even acceptable. Its as though people have bought that the software emulation used with the newer PS3's isn't that bad, or that the 15% of broken compatibility won't affect the parts of the game they like. This ignores three things -

1. 85% compatibility is the kind of quality you expect from PC emulators you get for free, not from a year and a half old game system that still costs half a grand.
2. 85% is a figure Sony's concocted using some system they made up from scratch and isn't really good at rating something this subjective - there may even be little issues with MGS2 or other games that Sony decided (without any bias or agenda, of course) wouldn't be worth mentioning.
3. 85% compatibility in an emulator still means its imperfect, which can ruin the experience more than one might initially expect. Imagine if you were watching Silence of the Lambs on a DVD player that would play it "85% perfect," which meant that in some scenes Jody Foster's head vanished for several seconds at a time and in others Hannibal Lecter was brighlty lit instead of being occluded in shadow. It just wouldn't feel the same. It probably wouldn't even be worth watching.

As it is, I want to buy this, but just can't get over this stupid issue Sony introduced in order to save maybe ten dollars or so by omitting the Emotion Engine CPU (legal notice: that figure is unsubstantiated). Sometimes, a man just has to live by his principles.

UPDATE FROM 2008-07-12 - So yeah, I picked this up today. Its pretty good, and I don't need to play Metal Gear Solid 3 on it anyway - that's what my PS2 is for! Plus the Dual Shock 3 has all the functionality of the Wii and its like a Dual Shock, its really the best controller ever invented by man. Also, Blu-Ray, and the online is free which makes it better than X-Box Live. Clearly this is the best system ever created, and I recommend all of you buy one so you can play Metal Gear Online with me. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.