E3 Day 1–Part 3: Sony's Emptiness

Thank god its over. It started strong, strained badly in the middle, but ended very strong once again. Sony debuted exactly two good games that I will look forward to. My god what happened? That felt emptier than any conference I’ve ever seen of Sony’s. Only two new games were announced were the only ones I cared for after the 4 somewhat announced. God of War: Ascension gameplay was shown, but it was already announced a while back and I’ve never been a fan of the series. To kick off the highlights, lets go into the new game announced:

 

Yep, stars Ellen Page and is created by the team behind Heavy Rain. Looks promising, even if the story seems like its done before. Looks beautiful anyway. Next was Playstation All-Stars. I look to boycott this thing, its an obvious Smash Bros. rip-off right down to the Vita cross-play. Nintendo announced and plan to do this last year asking for a developers help. Instead of helping, Sony stole the idea and making it their own first. I find it interesting that Nintendo is coming up with the better ideas than what Microsoft and Sony were doing. I mean they have all along but all Microsoft and Sony want to do is take the idea and create their own. Nintendo’s are always solid and I’m glad they are finally making the system the Wii was always supposed to be with the Wii U. But I digress, the Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale demo:

All the show I was waiting for Kingdom Hearts 3 or for a Last Guardian announcement. Instead for 10 whole minutes we sat through more apps that didn’t need announcing for the PS Vita. We did get previews for Assassins Creed: Liberation and a Call of Duty Vita game, but not enough to get me to buy one. Now onto probably the most aggravating announcements was Wonderbook. A sort of collaboration with JK Rowling and Pottermore. I’m not sure why it needed 20 minutes to show off the thing. It wasn’t really all that impressive. Its good for kids I guess. Here’s a trailer since I doubt anyone would like to sit through the long presentation again:

 

Unfortunately the Sony presentation was only an hour this year so it would feel a bit shallow naturally, but I didn’t expect it to be this much. The show picked up some speed after they showed a bit of gameplay for God of War: Ascension. I haven’t played a whole lot of God of War. This looked ok though. Nothing really new:

 

No Last Guardian or Kingdom Hearts 3 this year sadly. We were treated to another look at The Last of Us. I’m really looking forward to this game since it was announced last year. I was kinda hoping for Last Guardian a little more since it was announced years ago. Where the hell is this thing? They must be having more problems than we realized. Then again, its quite a tough game to tackle. Well back to The Last of Us:

 

Not many titles, but it did have a solid start and finish at least. Later on today will be Nintendo’s conference so we should expect many things from them. And on a final note here is some gameplay footage from the new Star Wars 1313 game. And yes, that is real actual footage from the game. Similar to Beyond and The Last of Us above. Well enjoy it:

E3 Day 1 – Part 2: EA and Ubisoft

Now on to the developer conferences. Lets start with EA. Time to start strong with one of EA’s highly underpraised franchise: Dead Space. Just having beat the second game and beat the first a while ago I have to say; keep the horror a strong element in the game. Do not stray far from it like Resident Evil has. The second game was amazing having both horror and a little more action than the last, but keep the horror. Let’s watch what they have for us this time in the 3rd entry in the series:

 

 

It looks…different. And because of that I don’t know how to feel about it. The co-op is fine but the drill bit area was strange. And the necromorphs look very different too. I think I need to see more to give an opinion. Even the character designs seem radically different. I don’t know about that one….

What was next…well EA kinda had mostly sequels in their line up and nothing really new to show us. Sports games were again showing up, some updates for Star Wars:TOR and Battlefield 3 DLC. What I did like was how SimCity was shaping up:

 

Another awesome PC game. And also SimCity Social was announced which not many will play. The next Medal of Honor game was shown off as well which was also nothing new. Last game of the conference was Crysis 3 which looked quite beautiful.

 

Now on to Ubisoft’s conference. Now there was something special going on here. Usually we get weird, but well actually there's plenty of that too. Not enough to ruin the conference at least. Well, actually we did start with a dancing routine and another concert which is never a good idea to start a conference. It was obviously for another dancing game. Well, now that’s over we get…oh wow something very different:

 

Soft-core porn! *ahem* A trailer for FarCry 3. Isn’t there like kids watching this? No idea how they got away with that. But never been a fan of the FarCry series. Just thought you would take a look at the strange transitions Ubisoft conferences can have. Now next I believe we got to see some actual footage of a major game for the Wii U. This was quite a treat:

 

Our first look into a Wii U game and it looks great! Looks very fun too. Very creative use of the tablet and the new Wii U controller. A taste of things to come from Nintendo’s presentation for tomorrow and Wednesday. Now on to a bigger title Assassins Creed 3:

 

The cinematic, yeah its…improbable? They could have done something else with it. Oh well. At least the gameplay was pretty cool":

 

Very cool. Its like Red Dead Redemption mixed with Assassins Creed. Avengers: Battle for Earth was announced, but was disappointed when the motion controls only quip came up. My interest was up and was gone by the end of the trailer. An exclusive Zombie game was announced for the Wii U which looks kinda good:

 

Not bad. The trailer made it look interesting. And now for the game that stole the show. This isn’t a sequel or a reboot either. Its something new? Unheard of! But alas Ubisoft has brought of one of the best games of all. I give you: Watch Dogs

E3 Day 1 - Part 1: Microsoft Bombs

Well, in a surprising turn of events, looks like Ubisoft has the most interesting line up of games, compared to both Microsoft and EA. It was literally the worst conference I have ever seen of Microsoft which focuses more on small dashboard updates, Kinect games, few confusing Arcade games, and Sports. I think Microsoft is very lost right now. The only promising things we got from the conference was Halo 4, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Tomb Raider and surprisingly a South Park game. I don't watch South Park a lot, but watching Matt Stone and Trey Parker come out and telling it like it is was the biggest highlight of the whole show. I mean listen to this amazing line:




This was seriously the conference in a nutshell. Plus dancing and Usher for some reason. Well to avoid the rest of the hell the made conference boring and hard to watch, here's the trailer and Gameplay for Halo 4:




Great beginning. I'm so sorry the rest of the show wasn't like this. At least you get to skip to the good parts here. Now for gameplay:




Not bad. Interesting looking villains. Looks like a true sequel. Will launch later this year and I look forward to it as a Halo fan. You can look at Splinter Cell: Blacklist footage here. Its not a bad game. It just doesn't seem important. Kinect stuff can be cool at times though. I'm sure it will be good. Now after a bunch of other stuff that wasn't entirely important like tablet configuration and other apps no one will really care about; its unto Tomb Raider:




I thought this looked really cool. Even if it was compared to Uncharted constantly. Which I'm tired of. Its not exactly, but people like to throw the "clone" thing around if it looks too much like another game they seem to love. I think Tomb Raider looks fantastic either way. They are really taking it to Lara Croft this time too.

Now lets look at some Resident Evil 6 footage shall we?:




Oh, boy. This game. I really thought Capcom had returned to better ways with Resident Evil: Revelations. But there's more action in this game than the last game, just by this trailer alone. Yes we have zombies again, but they really make it a cliche with this game. It was very underwhelming, unless you think otherwise. This was only a small piece though, hopefully we see better things in future footage.

Now that the conference was over Game Trailers was able to show us some really nice Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance footage. This might be my favorite game at the show now:

Get More: GameTrailers.com, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - E3 2012: Action Controls Walkthrough (Stream) HD, PC Games, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Eh, why not. Here's the South Park: The Stick of Truth:




Part 2 of the highlights of EA and Ubisoft will come a little later. As well as Part 3 of Sony's conference.

The New Wii U Classic Pro Controller