Brace Yourselves; E3 is Coming

Hey, I'm already making Game of Thrones references and I haven't even started watching it yet. Welcome to the week (Well, couple of days now) before E3. There's been interesting rumors going on and even some announcements already. Sometimes either the industry can't wait, have something bigger things up their sleeve or they really have nothing else to present at the conferences next week. Lets just hope for bigger things. Nintendo has been quiet this year. In the past things have either been leaked, but this time they have been air tight. Well, almost. All we know so far is that they may be announcing a new Mario game and their new console will debut later this year. Let's also hope for a new 3DS design.

• One of the more interesting rumors which is now officially an announcement, was a proposed new Star Wars game. Everyone was hoping for a new Battlefront. I know I was. Instead we got something a little different. Well, way different. What was announced recently was a new Mature Star Wars game. Which could be interesting? I mean I know I've come up in a conversation before were what if Star Wars had more mature themes? We kinda got our answer in form of a book in which Stormtroopers are tortured, which came with mixed results. The game sounds interesting though, which I think stars Boba Fett. Hopefully it will be better than what Force Unleashed was supposed to be.

• Not really interested in this next game. I mean it looks nice. What this game is essentially is Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe without Mortal Kombat. Well I mean it could be good, but when you see Batman punch Solomon Grundy through a roof, I think something may be off. I mean I just played a game playing as Batman trying to fight Solomon Grundy. And I had few problems just trying to get near him. Unless they explain Batman has super powers somehow, this game probably shouldn't be taken seriously. Also some of the costume designs are strange.

•  Dead Space 3 seems to have been officially announced. And apparently with co-op. Issac Clarke looks to be in it. I think. Because of his everyman face, it could be anyone. It's most likely him though, just with some new facial hair. Looks like Ellie is out of the picture too giving us a new male protagonist. They probably want to make it less similar to Resident Evil 5 anyway. Lets just hope the co-op is better than Resident Evil 5. I expect it to be more interesting and creepy on Xbox Live. Now the concept going on in my head sounds awesome. Oh, yeah and this one will take place on an ice planet. Similar to Hoth. And environments similar to The Thing. here are a few pictures of the co-op play: http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/05/dead-space-3.html

•  Another assassin is making its way to the 360 and PS3. Its been a while, but another Hitman game is coming. While it looks beautiful the story is, well, weird. Like if its straight out of a Kill Bill movie. Has it always been like this? No, idea. It's looking really good though. And supposedly we will be getting huge crowds of people to hide in the game. More than any other game. I find it funny that the trailer takes a jab at Assassins Creed.

• It may not be the game we wanted, but if anyone loved Bayonetta, you will love this:

• Lets see, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron will be on PC, a new Gears of War was announced, and PS Vita will get a female assassin for the Assassins Creed series, just to get that news out of the way. Now onto Blu-ray news.  Looks like we will be getting a better ET cover. With a steelbook for some reason. Not sure what warrants a steelbook these days (Jaws is getting one too, for which I like the artwork more honestly): 

•  Not only has the Avengers Blu-ray been announced, but a huge Ultimate set is coming as well. It comes with Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, and finally The Avengers. The packaging will most likely be revealed at Comic-Con or a little before then. It looks like it will be packaged in the Tesseract briefcase though. Note the announcement picture:

E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial 30th Anniversary Blu-ray

With Jaws on its way, its only fair that Spielberg release a little something extra for us this year as well. We'll get more Spielbergian movies, but Jaws and E.T. are great titles to enjoy at the beginning of the new year.

Now we come to the not so great part. Spielberg may have decided to go back and edit out his previous changes, but he decided to change the box art. Oh, boy. What a bad idea. Very little thought was put into it. The photoshop may not be as bad as my banner, but well check it out:



As you can see, a little too much is going on here with different color hues going on. Where's our famous fly across the moon image? It may serve as a back cover image, but it looks like its gone. I'm pretty anal about my DVD covers. There are some pretty fantastic (with a hint of bizarre)covers (I'm a fan of simplicity), to the just plain awful (I should have chosen a well known movie, but Val Kilmer's stretched head will suffice for now). E.T.'s cover is an an example of just being bad. Its not awful, but it isn't good either.

I can't imagine Mr. Spielberg would change it to the out of print DVD cover, which is pretty fantastic since the Disc represents the moon. Or the single disc cheap Special Edition cover, which is a mix of two classic E.T. posters. I guess he just wanted to go with something new. Its not amazing, but I guess I can live with it. At least you can't go wrong with Jaws.