And so E3 is
over. It's a bit of a bittersweet
moment. On the one hand one of the
biggest video game events is over and we won't get to experience this again for
another year. But on the other we leave
this event with more information as to what's coming in the near future. This year was especially exciting as Sony and
Microsoft went toe to toe and showed off their next generation consoles. Other companies came too including Nintendo,
EA, UbiSoft, and many more to show off new and upcoming games. One of the most anticipated aspects of E3 is
the press conference as gamers around the world gather around a live stream to
hear some of these announcements first, myself included. There's a certain sense of anticipation and
excitement as you see a company take stage and show off a completely new game
whether it be the continuation of a popular franchise or a new IP. Since this is one of the more important
aspects of E3 I figured I would give a summary of each one along with my
thoughts.
Microsoft: Going in Microsoft was the one company who
had a lot of work to do. After the
lackluster debut of the Xbox One they really needed to show off some high
quality games that would convince people that the console is worth it. As such I think that they showed off a lot
of interesting games such as Ryse: Son
of Rome, Metal Gear Solid V, Dead Rising 3, Project Spark, Titanfall and many
more. While the games did look good the
one thing that concerned me was the lack of exactly sharing used games would
work or how the console would have to connect to the internet once every 24
hours. The best way I could sum this up
is that Microsoft showed some good games but then you realize you would need to
buy an Xbox One. And the price for the
Xbox One didn't relive much tension either as it had a whopping price tag of
$499. It's not nearly as crazy as the
PS3's original price of $599 but it's still expensive. When I was finished watching the conference I
was left thinking that the games were alright but I still didn't have much
faith in the actual console.
EA: EA was
average this year. I had no idea what to expect going in as we already knew
about most of EA's games such as Battlefield 4 and the various sports titles
they make too. They did however have a
surprise or two up their sleeve. The
first was Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, a third person shooter based upon
the popular mobile game franchise. It
looked like a good game but I honestly wouldn't pay full price for it. The next surprise was the announcement of a sequel
to Mirror's Edge. Only a trailer was
shown and it was made pretty clear that DICE, the developer, was taking it's
time with this game only offering a vague release date of "when it's
done." The one announcement that I
was excited for the most was the first Star Wars game being developed by
EA. While it was only a short trailer it
brought me joy knowing that EA was going to be resurrecting the Battlefront
series. Aside from that EA also showed off Dragon Age Inquisition and a new
Need for Speed game. They both looked good even though I wasn't particularly
interested in either franchise. The
weirdest announcement though was a Need
for Speed movie starring Aaron Paul of Breaking Bad fame. It flet out of place but at least it didn't
take up most of the conference. Overall
the conference was average for me aside
from the Battlefront announcement. I'm
sure other people are excited for Dragon Age, Battlefield and the other games
as well but for me I just wasn't interested.
Ubisoft:
This in my opinion was the most disappointing press conference. Almost every game shown were games we already
knew about and no gameplay was shown yet.
Sure it's nice to know South Park is still in development but it
would've been cool to see some gameplay.
All we got was a short trailer.
The same goes for the other games there as well such as Rayman Legends,
Watch Dogs, and Assassin's Creed. The
only new games shown were The Crew which looked like an interesting online
multiplayer driving game and Tom Clancy's The Division a post apocalyptic
MMORPG. Even though I'm not a fan of the
Tom Clancy games this one looked interesting.
But one of the biggest drawbacks of the conference was the host Aisha
Tyler. While I enjoyed her last year,
this year she seemed a little off. While
last year she was full of enthusiasm and ramped up excitement for the games,
this year she just seemed to crack jokes about sex whenever she could. It may be funny the first time but it gets
tiresome if that's the same shtick you go with for the entire conference. I wish Ubisoft showed off more of their games
instead of just showing us trailer after trailer.
Sony: I was looking forward to Sony's press
conference the most this year. Ever
since the announcement of the PS4 in February I was hungry for more information
about the system. If the announcement in February was the appetizer
consider this the main course. Starting
off Sony briefly touched on upcoming games for the PS Vita and PS3. From there though they kicked it into high
gear as they finally showed off what the actual PS4 system look like. The console looked very cool. It was a black box like most expected but it
had some interesting angular details to it.
After that they debuted a trailer for The Order: 1886. The game is a third person shooter set in an
alternate history. It looks like it's
about an organization that's trying to hunt down monsters. It had a very interesting Steampunk aesthetic
as one character had what appeared to be gun that shot electricity. No other details were shown aside from
that. Following that Square Enix had two
announcements. Final Fantasy Versus XIII
was now retitled as Final Fantasy XV and work on the long anticipated Kingdom
Hearts 3 has finally begun. Sony also
showed off a slew of Indie games for the PS4 focusing on its more development
friendly nature. We also learned that
Killzone, Knack, and Driveclub were all going to be launch titles. But arguably the biggest announcements were
that Sony wasn't going to be blocking used games or forcing the console to
connect to the internet. Combined with the price of $399 for the actual console
and many have agreed that Sony definitely triumphed over Microsoft that day.
Nintendo: I won't lie but I was kind of disappointed by
Nintendo's showing this year. Instead of
doing a press conference, Nintendo just did a general livestream of upcoming
games. What disappointed me however was that the new
Mario game they were touting was just going to be an expanded version of Super
Mario 3D Land. There was also a very
small presence of third party games as it looked like UbiSoft and Sega were the only companies outside of Nintendo
developing for the Wii U. The only announcement
I was genuinely excited about was the new Super Smash Bros. game and the fact
that Mega Man was going to be a playable character. While Nintendo did show off several
interesting games I am worried about the lack of third party developers
producing games for Nintendo. Nintendo
can't sell the WiiU on Mario and Zelda alone.
Well that
was what I thought about the press conferences this year. While some companies did a lackluster job
others did showed off some impressive games and hardware. Either way I left E3
this year more excited for the next generation of consoles.
