Tonight I attended Activision’s Non-E3 Press Conference and reception. As I said on the Twitter, I didn’t expect much in the ways of new announcements and I was right. I did get to talk to some industry people about the day’s events, how Nintendo shouldn’t have acted like Animal Crossing was a “core” game and how Sony might as well have not shown up. I also saw J Allard every time I turned a corner and Jeff Keighley talking to Stephen Totilo about Reggie. It was really freaking cool, to say the least, and it’s nice to be in a situation where I feel like a complete greenhorn when it comes to gaming in general.

Activision spent the first half-hour talking about their Blizzard merger and how it was the best thing to ever happen in the history of ever. I’m not going to do a run-down of everything that was there, but here were the highlights:

Call of Duty: World at War looked very decent, and the cooperative gameplay was definitely fun looking enough to make me forget how bad Call of Duty 3 was. Fire effects, while not Far Cry 2, are some of the best in gaming to date, and the game looks a lot more like CoD4 than expected.

I'm happy to say that the new footage of Quantum of Solace looks great! I ended up getting really excited by the end by the  blend of third and first-person gameplay. Well done, Activision. It managed to be more seamless than Rainbow Six Vegas', and I didn’t think that was possible. From the footage it looks like it will feel more Bond-Like than anything yet.

Spiderman: Web of Shadows stole the show for me with amazing visuals and extremely fast combat. They showed a scene with Spidey fighting the Vulture that looked like the best thing in any Spiderman game yet, and I can not wait to explore this destroyed city. Switching costumes on the fly, teaming up with my choice of characters (and not in a shitty Friend or Foe way) has me ready.

I might be forgetting stuff, but it is really late and I have a million things going on. The party was cool, and Activision might be one of the only companies that deserves to tout the “We have the best lineup ever” line. Wolfenstein footage was shown for just under twenty seconds and a bunch of musicians I don’t care about played Guitar Hero: World Tour, which looks like it might take down Rock Band this year as much as I hate to admit it.

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