E3 wrapped up last week. Thanks to actively working on producing a podcast, that relates to movies, music, and adventures, I worked harder then usual in keeping up with all the information. The DLC podcast did excellent daily podcasts all during E3 that covered all the news in great detail. With that said, and I make no claims at bing a hardcore gamer, here are my thoughts on E3 2014
The Games
I was really impressed with the amount of games you got to see this year. One of my biggest complaints of the last few years is the amount of attention put on
Inside – Limbo was one of my favorite games in the past few years. The art style, the game play, the soundtrack, and the story built up to such a beautiful blend that created such great game. The trailer for Inside looks like the developers took all that greatness and are building up a new game. Probably my biggest surprise and most excited for.
Zelda – Growing up, Zelda was the first big eye-opening series. It brought such nostalgic feelings watching the trailer. This might be the game that convinces me to buy a Wii-U
Little Big Planet 3 – I really like games that have a lot of user created content, and the LBP series is definitely delivers that. I’m glad to see that LBP3 will give access to all the old user levels, because there was a lot of greatness there.
No Mans Sky – This game hit all the right buttons for me. I love exploration, and I love space piloting. This game might be a console seller for me.
Witcher 3 – Having just beaten Witcher 2, I am super stoked for Witcher 3. Love this series in both deep story and great action. The open world of the 3rd installment could bring a lot of great depth to an already deep game. Definitely going to need to upgrade my PC before I take a stab at this game.
Cuphead – Wow, what can I say about Cuphead. You only see a few short seconds of gameplay, but man am I excited. Classic cartoon style art in a video game.
Bloodbourne – The makers of Dark Souls, From Software, have made quite an interesting and bloody game.
Scalebound – Looks like a pretty fun monster hunter game
Valiant Hearts – Another game that has really nice looking art style.
Entwined – This game looks like a weird Fez and DYAD blend? Should be fun to play.
Destiny – This game looks like it has a lot of potential, and Peter-freaking-Dinklage is doing some voice acting. I’ve heard some disturbing reports that his voice acting is not that great though, so time will tell.
The Shows
Microsoft was the big surprise to me this year. In years past they have played the “Home media center” card a lot, and tried to show off Kinect, but not this year. They knew what was up, and just showed a lot of gameplay videos. Definitely thought they had the strongest press conference of all the big ones, and was in a good position going first.
EA felt to me like they were trying to show a lot of early stage stuff. Battlefront looks exciting, and the Mass Effect music definitely got me going, but most of their stuff looked to be pre-alpha and not that interesting.
Sony seemed kinda cocky and it left me wanting. Between it and Microsoft, I definitely felt more like buying an Xbox One then a PlayStation 4.
Nintendo had a cool vibe going and definitely was a standout show. I loved seeing the new Yoshi and Toad games. Because I was never a big Smash Bros fan, that didn’t carry much weight with me. Mario Maker looks awesome, again, because I love games that have a lot of user created content. Splatoon also looks like it could be a lot of fun. I have a soft spot for a Wii-U, but my biggest hesitation comes from the fact that the 3rd party titles feel weak. Nothing I really saw from this conference changed that opinion.
Overall Thoughts
The Dark Souls-style co-op seems to be a big trend among new games. Having the ability to just call in a friend to your game to help out could be a really cool idea as time goes on. Far Cry even mentioned the possibility for people being able to drop, co-op style, in without owning the game. I think this would be great if you could drop in and play a little to see how great it was, and then go buy the game yourself.
I also noticed the trend lately to move maps and other over world displays onto your game screen without breaking the immersion. I’ll be especially interested in how the Wii-U leverages the gamepad to show more game info without needing to pull it over the main play screen.
Another trend, and a sadder one, is the lack of women, both in speaking roles and as playable characters. Polygon had an interesting article about there being more severed heads then women speakers at E3. Assassins Creed offers the ability to play co-op with multiple people, but none of them women. Far Cry developers discussed in an interview that they “almost had a women playable character”
Theres a lot of articles on the web that put my feelings in better words then I can, but I’ll just leave this thought here – white straight males are a minority in the world, and I’d love to see more variety and inclusion, both in presenters, and games themselves.
Finally
Lastly, I also watched some of IndiE3 last week. The describe themselves as “An alternative online video-game event” It was quite enjoyable to see the presenters go over a lot of interesting Indie games. I didn’t get to watch more then a few hours, but here are my favorites.
Talos – Looks like a really cool arena shooter with really neat fluid movement.
Belladonna – Really cool steampunk/Tim Burton-esque art style
What sort of thing did you see at E3 that surprised you? What things would you consider buying a console for?
These are the breaks 