E3 2012 Part 3: Sony and Nintendo

Sony Press Conference
Well, Jack Tretton has been the best and least awkward host so far, and definitely got the best crowd reaction - most people actually laughed at his jokes.

First up was Quantic Dream, the developer behind critically acclaimed Heavy Rain. They were showing their new IP: Beyond: Two Souls. The main character, Jodie, has some kind of link to supernatural beings, ghosts or otherwise, and is being portrayed by Ellen Page, with her likeness looking rather eerie with no hair. It seems as though Jodie will be on the run from law enforcement as we see a SWAT team, helicopter and all being utterly destroyed by Jodie's supernatural powers. It doesn't seem as though she's wholly malevolent though, perhaps she's just misunderstood...

Playstation All Stars was next, Sony's take on the much loved Smash Bros style of gameplay. It will be featuring a whole range of character's from the company's past and present, although some of them are less recognisable than the ones Nintendo have in its game. The main difference between the two games seems to be that in this one, the characters can level up super attacks by fighting. It certainly seems like fun, however I can't see it being as popular as Smash Bros itself.

Next up were some Vita games, with Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified and Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation. AC3L will feature the first female assassin of the series, and will be able to link with the full AC3 PS3 game to unlock items that each character can use. CoD has similar functionality, but just looks like another CoD game to be honst.

Sony had some exclusive content about already announced games next. In Assassin's Creed 3 you'll be able to control a big old war ship, where you'll be handling navigation and cannons to fight off other ships. The water and changing weather effects look really nice too.

The Far Cry 3 exclusive announcement was that the game will feature a fully fledged four player co op campaign. There was a live demo of this, and it looks fairly interesting, although the graphics looked strangely lacking compared to the solo campaign demo we saw earlier. Perhaps this was due to the image being blown up for a big screen, but we'll see.

Then came Wonderbook, the new piece of hardware which looks like a physical book, which is recognised by the PlayStation Eye and functions as a piece of augmented reality kit. They showed Pottermore- which acts as an interactive spellbook from the Harry Potter universe. After a few failed attempts they eventually got the thing working and showed how to use the Move controller to act as a wand, and how you can interact with the Wonderbook to alter what's happening on screen. It'll certainly be popular with kids if the bugs are ironed out.

God of War Ascension is the new God of War game, basically. There doesn't seem to be much to it other than that. There are new moves and new enemy types, but that's what everyone would've already expected - a little disappointing.

Finally, Sony showed a gameplay demo of The Last of Us, which received the biggest cheer of the conference on account of its seemingly fluid and dynamic gameplay set in a post apocalyptic world inhabited by thieves and scavengers. It looks really interesting and if it can keep up the varied gameplay throughout the entire game it could become an instant hit.

Nintendo Press Conference
"The Wii U will change your life" apparently, so it seems like Nintendo are expecting big things from it. They showed a black console! It's black, not white! Also there's the much anticipated Pikmin 3, so that's cool for fans of that franchise, especially since it's been eight years since the last one.

Nintendo are introducing something called Asymmetric Gameplay, with many possibilities. Perhaps a player with a Wii U gamepad has a different gameplay experience to those using regular Wiimotes. The console will only support two gamepads though, which seems a shame.

The new home screen for the new console will be called the Miiverse - a screen populated by your friends, and further populated to represent what's trending on Wii U by the miniature Miis gathering around particular titles. You'll be able to send simple text messages which appear on your friend's consoles or create notes using the stylus.

It wouldn't be a new Nintendo console without a Mario game, and they haven't disappointed. New Super Mario Brothers U, the first in the line of many games with an unnecessary U added to the title was announced. The asymmetric gameplay was shown here, where a player with a gamepad can place blocks around the screen to help those with Wiimotes. Other than that though, it looks pretty similar to most other Mario games, funny that.

Third party software came next, and Batman Arkham City: Armored Edition, will be using the gamepad to scan things, and the touch screen will be used to interact with environment. The motion controls will be useful for controlling batarangs, and much more. It's a shame that interesting technology like this is being used on a year old game however.

Scribblenauts Unlimited made an appearance, and will be building upon the popular franchise by opening up the creation tools to create endless exciting objects. You'll be able to create any object, and then share your creations with your friends.

Everyone loves a fitness game these days, so they then showed a bit of Wii Fit U with multiple cleavage shots of an attractive woman and many angles showing off the muscles of an attractive man. Yay, fitness! Another type of game everyone needs these days is a karaoke game, so here was the unimaginatively named Sing to be a part of that.

Then there was what looked like a tech demo of something called Nintendo Land which is an almagamtion of their famous franchises in a theme park setting, with more antisymmetric gameplay being demoed.

Then that was kind of it, there was no big reveal like many of the other press conferences had, so that was a little underwhelming.

So that's it for the press conferences of E3 2012! Check back later in the week when I'll be writing about anything that catches my eye from the show floor, but until then, thanks for reading and have a good one.

E3 2012 Part 2 - EA and Ubisoft

Sorry EA, even though you were chronologically first, you've been relegated to second place in this post because Ubisoft absolutely blew your press conference out of the water. And all that in spite of the awful Ubisoft hosts for the second year in the row. Tobuscus should stick to making Literal Trailers on YouTube and Aisha Tyler should stick to... playing Charlie on Friends for like five episodes... has she done anything else? Terrible attempts at banter aside, Ubisoft had some really impressive looking games on show - here are my thoughts:

Ubisoft Press Conference
Microsoft had an Usher performance for Dance Central 3, so Ubisoft also had to splash the cash and get Flo Rida to come out live and rap and attempt to dance for Just Dance 4. The actual dancers were all fairly attractive women wearing tight shirts and short shorts (probably to make up for the fact that Just Dance is generally thought of as the inferior dance game).

And then, more boobs. This press conference was very uncensored, strange considering how early in the day it was, but hey ho. The Far Cry 3 trailer opened with a topless woman writhing on top of you, and then there were guns, bows and arrows, knives, tigers and fire. Damn Cry Engine is good at fire. Then there was a sequence where the character was injected with something, then started tripping out and was walking through a dream world on television screens and then he shot the bad guy, but his face changed just before he did it. I'm not entirely sure what was going on, but it looked interesting and I'm enough of a fan of the previous games to be pretty excited about this one.

Probably the most underwhelming trailer of the conference was for Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth. It showed some fights between some recognisable Marvel characters, but not much else, and it was barely talked about.

Rayman Legends was next, and suddenly became my most looked forward to game of the show so far (although that didn't last long, you'll find out why later). It was demoed on the Wii U, with a new character shown to be controlled using the touch screen controller, while two other characters used normal Wiimotes to platform. The touch screen was used to move around the screen and manipulate environments to help the platformers. Then there was a sequence when things on screen were happening in time with the music, and it was very impressive. Definitely something to look forward to on the new Nintendo console.

It's the Queen's diamond jubilee this weekend, so there was a trailer with the British national anthem playing over it! God save the queen! Oh God, zombies are killing everyone in London. Zombi U is the new winner of worst game name of the show so far (the previous holder of the title was Lococycle, although strangely that also held title of best named game), and apparently it's a zombie game, because that's a revolutionary concept.

Assassin's Creed 3 had a large segment of the show, and deservedly so, as it looks very (I'm going to use this word again) impressive. Being able to free run over trees instead of building is fresh and looks very cool. New mechanics such as firing squads and not being able to run as fast in deep snow and so on all look like they are going to make this game one to watch this year, despite my trepidation of it only being a year since the previous game. Also the shape of Connor's tomahawk is still awesome. His unexciting name is still not.

Trackmania 2 was one of my favourite games of last year, I love the speed, I love the craziness and I love how janky it is. So when Shootmania Storm was announced a few weeks ago, no one was more excited than me. Ubisoft had a live demo, with 'famous' names from the world of eSports taking part in a girls vs boys match of Elite Mode, where each round is 1 v 3, with the one person having the advantage of using a one shot kill gun. And the boys won, woo.

Finally, Ubisoft had a new IP to tell us about, and God damn it looks cool. It seems to be a third person action game, where the protagonist has access to a wealth of technology, as well as guns. The tagline is that "the city becomes your weapon", and that certainly seems to ring true, as we see the main character hacking in to traffic lights to cause a car crash involving his target, being able to gain someone's personal information just be looking at them, hacking into phones or turning off all signals in an area to cause a distraction and more. Then there was a twist at the end of the gameplay demonstration as the camera switched to another character, who certainly had what looked like a multiplayer gametag above his head. On top of all this the city the player roams around looks gorgeous, with great lighting and weather effects, and there are some top notch long coat dynamics. Watch Dogs got the largest cheer I've heard so far at the show, and rightly so, we love new games that looks awesome! The one thing I will say is that I'm unsure whether Ubisoft are targeting current generation platforms with this game, but if they are, sweeeeet.

EA Press Conference
I didn't realise the finale of Game of Thrones was going to be longer than usual, which is annoying as it made me miss the Dead Space 3 reveal. Apparently they were touting a co op campaign and a new playable character. I loved Dead Space 2, and I hope this one will live up to that.

Do you know what else I loved growing up? Sim City. And EA are making a new one, super excited. Did anyone say "roads that aren't straight"? The one downer of this presentation was that it's not coming out til next February, booo.

EA then rolled out their sports games, Madden and Fifa, which I talked about in my first post, so go and click that link on the right if you haven't already.

Battlefield 3: Premium was announced. Right now you can pay the low low price of $50 and get access to 5 unreleased expansion packs! I'm not a fan of this whole "pay now and you can get stuff later!" payment model of late, but who knows, maybe the new stuff will be super amazing.

EA's other big war game came out next. Medal of Honor Warfighter showed itself, and damn it looks pretty, that Frostbite 2 engine is niiiice. Other than that though, it looks like...a war game. We've already got BF and CoD, and the new MoH doesn't look revolutionary, which is a shame.

Then EA announced a few year and multi game partnership with UFC, which I don't really have an interest in, even though they hammered home the point that apparently it's the fastest growing sport in the world. Good for them.

Criterion make some damn good driving games, and Need for Speed Most Wanted looks like it will keep up with the trend- wait a minute wasn't that the name of a previous NFS game? On the current generation of hardware? Weird.

They closed out the press conference with Crysis 3, what else? It looks nicer, but the gameplay looks veeery similar to Crysis 2, which is a fine game, but I'd like something a bit fresher like what Ubisoft are doing with Assassin's Creed. Also, I'm guessing that Cry Engine has some new bow and arrow technology, as both this and Far Cry are using them...

So that was EA and Ubisoft. I'll be back later with Sony and Nintendo! Thanks for reading, have a good day.

E3 2012 Part 1 - Microsoft

The biggest press event in the gaming calendar is here! E3 2012 started today and I'll be attempting to watch all of the press conferences and write about what has been sparking my interest.

Microsoft Press Conference
The entire theatre started awash with Microsoft's familiar green light, and then there it was - a FMV Halo 4 trailer! Now I've never been the biggest fan of Halo, and my hopes of something new were dashed when I saw that the first enemies to be seen were Grunts, Jackals and Elites. But wait, that Elite just disintegrated... wait, what are those glowing crawling animal robot things? Awesome, something new from the Halo franchise, perhaps I'll be excited about it after all.

Next up was Splinter Cell Blacklist. I remember when these were highly unforgiving stealth games, but not any more. This origin story sees Sam Fisher running and gunning his way through hordes of enemies, and scaling walls like a monkey. I haven't confirmed this, but I don't think Michael Ironside was voicing young Fisher, which made me a bit sad, but we'll see.

I know lots of "proper" gamers don't like sports games, but that's only because they're wrong. Fifa 13 will be the new slightly improved football game for this year, and will feature Kinect support for the first time. You can make substitutions without going into menus, can call for passes and so on. My favourite part was when they showed a player being caught by the offside trap and swearing at the Kinect (it was beeped out, kid friendly show). The Kinect picked up on this however and the commentator began saying how the player was unhappy about being caught out, very amusing.

Madden 13 too will feature Kinect support, and the presentation even featured legendary quarterback Joe Montana! I found it funny that no one seemed to be acknowledging that Sega made the largely unsuccessful Joe Montana football games back in the nineties, but anyway. Montana began to call plays using his voice rather than a controller and then proceeded to score a touchdown! Against the Seahawks, with the Niners, what a dick.

Fable The Journey is a Kinect Fable game. Yay.

Gears of War Judgment got a trailer too, sparking many debates about what the correct spelling of that word is. The trailer didn't show much other than confirming that it is indeed a new Gears of War game, so there's that.

Then there was dubstep, which can only mean one thing: a racing game! Forza Horizon was on show, and this time they're leaving the track and heading out into the open world, and it looks very, very pretty. I've never been drawn to the Forza franchise despite being a big racing fan, hopefully this will do something to persuade me.

Last year we saw the new Tomb Raider game, and this year we got to see a bit more! The gameplay looks incredibly fast paced, seeing Lara running, jumping, shooting and stabbing her way through the level at breakneck speed. I'm hoping that there will be more of an exploration element to the finished game, but I guess they have to show off the exciting sections here.

Then three new titles. Ascend New Gods seems like a fantasy beat em up, in the same vein as God of War, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it from what they showed. Then they showed a trailer for a game called Lococycle, and in the notes I made for the press conference it says "Wat???????", so there you go. Go and watch the trailer. Then finally 343 Guilty Spark was floating around a test chamber from Portal and apparently that's going to be called Matter. 


But that doesn't Matter because Resident Evil 6 was next, and much like Tomb Raider the action was fast and action packed, with explosions and fire and helicopters and quick time events out the arse. I wasn't particularly interested, but then I haven't been interested in a RE game for a long time now.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park then made an appearance to grant some much needed levity to the press conference. They were showing off South Park: The Stick of Truth, well not so much showing it off as showing a trailer which gave no indication of what the game will be. You will be playing as the new kid in town who is trying to become cool and be the fifth member of the group. It remains to be seen just how this will be done and whether it will be any good or not.

Then for some reason Usher came out and sang a song and danced. A lot. And then he left and apparently that was them showing off Dance Central 3, huh.

Finally, Microsoft closed out their star studded show with the big guns, quite literally. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or CODBLOPS2 if you're feeling that way inclined showed the public what they've been showing press since the game got announced a while back. There's a female president and holographic devices, so you know it's the future. Also there's a gun which you can "charge up" which apparently means it can shoot through solid concrete to kill guys on the other side. The gameplay demonstration takes place in Los Angeles and shows the branching storylines and differing tactics you can use to approach your mission. At one point you can choose to either snipe from the top of the broken freeway or rappel down and shoot guys that way. Okay fine, it's not really revolutionary, but at least it's a step in the right direction for the ageing franchise. The most interesting part for me was the use of drones which could be controlled using a PDA thing on your wrist, and that there was a pilot-able jet. I'm unsure whether the jet is on semi- rails, as there didn't seem to be a way to alter your altitude when you wanted to, but I could be wrong about that. Also, the future is black, apparently.

So that was Microsoft's press conference. I'll be writing up EA and Ubisoft's respective press conferences early on tomorrow, and then I'll hopefully be able to do Sony and Nintendo's later in the day.

Excited about games yet? I sure am, and we're only a couple of hours in to this epic event. Thanks for reading, see you later.