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.

CES, IGF and OMG

...and plenty of other acronyms too.

Independent Games Festival

The finalists for 2012's Indie Games Festival have been announced, and there are many games, so I'll link you to the news article so you can check them out for yourselves:

http://www.giantbomb.com/news/these-are-2012s-independent-games-festival-finalists/3901/

There are a lot of cool looking games on there, and a few I remember playing last year and maybe before that when they were just in their infancy. I have a feeling FEZ may win the Grand Prize, but all of those games are in with a shot.

Winners of various categories in previous years have included big names such as Minecraft, BIT.TRIP RUNNER, Limbo, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Machinarium, World of Goo, Audiosurf and more, so it's exciting to see the big indie names of tomorrow competing for the prize today.

Consumer Electronics Show


It's that time of year when the big names in consumer electronics head over to Las Vegas for CES, one of the biggest trade shows around.

This year, the main focus is on televisions, and smart devices (phones, tablets and the like). Early this week we got the announcement that USB 3.0 would be in phones and tablets by the end of 2012, meaning faster data transfer for all, hurrah!

Not long after, Samsung unveiled their new "Super OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) TV", which will introduce "Smart Evolution", whereby consumers can upgrade both the hardware and software, using a small chip that fits into the back of the set. Samsung say that you will be able to keep up with television advancements, without having to fork out the extra cash for a new TV each year. They also showed off "Smart Interaction", where the user can navigate channels using gestures or be speaking to the device, much like the recent developments with the Xbox 360.

Ever competing with Samsung are Sony, and they got set to show their new "Crystal LED" TV, which boasts 6 million LEDs making up the screen, offering a self emitting HD display. They say that the device is comparable to current OLEDs, so it will be interesting to see who wins this war.

HP unveiled their new Notebook range, "Envy", which seems to be focussed more on style than function (are Notebooks really relevant these days?). Everything from the lid, to the palm rest to the trackpad is made of glass, and damn, they look nice. And then you see that the 14" "ultrabook" version is $1400 and you back off immediately, "I'm just gonna buy an iPad".

Beyond that, there were thin tablets, huge smartphones and everything in between flying all over the place, and everything looks very shiny and pretty, but at the time of writing, nothing hugely exciting catches my attention. I'll be sure to let you know if anything does.

The Games of 2012

January is traditionally pretty slow for games, making new posts on a blog about video games fairly hard to come by. If I find the time, I'll be reviewing some lesser known games from last year that I enjoyed (here's hoping that my timetable for the next few months isn't as overwhelming as I feel like it's going to be).

Really, the next game that I'm kind of at all excited about coming out is Mass Effect 3, and that's not until March. I didn't much care for the first game, and barely played any of it, but the second one really grabbed my attention and I started to care about what was going on. This was mostly due to the improved gameplay...I'm told the story in the first game may have been better, but the story in 2 kept me going just fine.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning seems like it could be quite interesting, but I'm going to need more convincing before I buy it for myself. I'm really not a fan of that 'Reckoning' after the colon, it's the first game bearing the Kingdoms of Amalur name, so why does it need a subtitle? Also 'Reckoning' is just the least exciting subtitle to add randomly onto a game isn't it? I guess they just went through the list of possible subtitles beginning with 're'...Revenge, Redemption, Restructured, Rearmed, Remastered, Really...?

It seems that, like last year, most of the blockbuster games will be coming out in the second half of the year. It's possible we might see GTA5 around May/June given Rockstar's recent release schedule, but that's just guessing on my part.

Speaking of Rockstar, Rockstar Vancouver have been making Max Payne 3 fairly quietly in terms of press coverage. What's exciting about that is that the studio's previous game was Bully, which turned out to be rather a surprisingly good game given the setting and subject matter. I'm not sure how much of that experience they'll be able to bring from that game into Max Payne's gritty, film noir world, but if you make good games, you can make good games, right? The release date for that is March, allegedly, so that could be interesting.

I suppose the main games coming out (supposedly) this year are Bioshock: Infinite, Halo 4, Borderlands 2, Diablo 3, Hitman: Absolution, Tomb Raider, Far Cry 3, Guild Wars 2, and Nickelodeon Dance. If all those games do come out this year (barring maybe one of them), then what a colossal year it will be for video games. That's also leaving out the inevitable Call of Duty game, and maybe even an Assassin's Creed game (although I hope not, I'd rather they take another year with that). Perhaps there's a possibility of a Skyrim expansion before the end of the year too? That would be cool, as I think I'm close to finishing all I really want to do in that game now.

 I've probably even missed some off the list...there are quite a few big games to remember... Until I get to play all of them though, I'll go back to NBA, Madden and FIFA (I've been spending an unusual amount of time playing sports games recently), and continue playing LA Noire on the PC (yeah I bought it).

Thanks for reading, enjoy your week.

Daily Steam Deals - Jan 1st

Today, the deals are pretty much taken from my Top Ten Games of 2011. Both Portal 2 and Bastion are under a fiver, LA Noire's under a tenner, and my top three are all heavily reduced. If you've got any leftover money from the Christmas period, feel free to splash the cash today if you haven't played any of the games on today's daily deals list.

I've talked about most of the games before in previous blog posts, and you don't need me to keep going on about them, so I'll tell you about Terraria, a game I've spent a lot of time playing, but no time writing about.

For a mere £1.49, you can grab a small, unassuming game, that I happen to have played 60 hours of since purchasing it. In the most basic terms, Terraria is a two-dimensional Minecraft (beta), but with a bit more game packed in. You start out with nothing, craft some basic tools, and then build your little house to survive the night. From there, you can explore left, right, up and down, mining everything in sight and upgrading your equipment. Then, you can build extensions onto your house, and eventually, people will start moving in! These people range from a nurse to heal your injuries, to a demolitionist to sell you dynamite. There's a huge range of loot ranging from weapons, to armour, to trinkets, but the way to get the best stuff is to kill one of Terraria's many bosses. When I say that the first boss you'll meet is the Eye of Cthulu, and the bosses only get stranger from there, you'll know what kind of experience you're in for. And the best part about it all? You can bring friends along for the ride!

Anyway, welcome to 2012 everyone, hope you all enjoyed your evenings.


Oh, by the way, buy Bastion today.

Steam Deals 31st December + Happy New Year

Oh God damn, LA Noire is £8.74 today, and that includes all the DLC. I've been toying with whether to play through it again recently and now this amazing game has fallen onto my lap, on my preferred platform (PC), with extra content and really cheap to boot. I may have to call this a late Christmas present to myself...

I wrote about LA Noire in my Top Ten Games of the Year list, so you only have to go there to find out what I think about it. If you want the short version...if you haven't played this game, you should buy it today, although if you've got New Years plans you might want to hold off playing it til tomorrow, it's that good.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Both Bioshock games are £3.49? Steam, you are treating us...maybe they thought everyone would be out celebrating by now and would miss the deals? The original Bioshock is an absolute masterpiece, with one of the best realised game worlds ever created. The second wasn't bad either, although didn't quite live up to the magic of the first game. If you've never played them, would you kindly pick up a copy?

Grid is probably the best driving game of this generation. It has tons of cars, a multitude of tracks and great gameplay, along with a highly addictive single player experience which makes you want to keep playing and playing. The multi player was fantastic too, although I will put a warning on this glowing recommendation. Codemasters discontinued the online multiplayer, so if you're looking for the full racing package, I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere (to another Codemasters game).

Dead Island was also on my top ten list, and £15 is well worth it for what was one of the most enjoyable games of the year. It's not quite at the price point of "Well I may as well just buy it," but if you want a high quality zombie killin' game, look no further.

Hitman: Blood Money is a game that kept me coming back to it, years after I had finished it. I had always enjoyed the Hitman games, but this was the first one that really didn't severely punish you for not playing exactly how the game wanted you to play, while also rewarding the people careful enough to go for that Silent Assassin rating. There's a great range of ways to get your murder on, along with some good sadistically humourous moments. All of the Hitman games save for Contracts are on Steam for £1.49 each today, what a bargain!

Happy New Year everyone, hope you're all okay.

Thanks for reading.