E3 2013

It's A Thing. Respect The Thing II

Sony

Sony was just an onslaught of games and features. So I'd rather just give you a quick rundown of it all:

Vita
Batman Arkham Orign
Counterspy
Destiny of Spirits
Doki Doki Universe
Killzone mercenaries
Tearaway
God of War HD 1-2
Flower
Final Fantasy X-X2
Dead Nation
Walking dead 400

PS3
The last of Us
Puppeteer
Rain
Beyond Two Souls
Gran Turisimo 6
Batman Arkham Origin w exclusive content.
GTA V console bundle w headset

PS4
Media stuff w some exclusive stuff
The Order 1886 Sony Excusive
Killzone Shadow Fall Sony Exclusive
Drive Club Sony Exclusive
InFamous Second Son Sony Exclusive
Knack Sony Exclusive
The Dark Sorceror Exclusive? (w funny 4th wall breaking segment)

Indies:
Transitor
Don't Starve
Mercenary Kings
Octodad dadliest catch
Secret Ponchoes
Ray's dead
Outlast
Oddworld New and Tasty
Galaxy
All exclusive debut on console

All of these games got sone stage shine time.

Diablo III with PlayStation titles themed items PS3 and PS4
Final Fantasy versus XIII is now Final Fantasy XV
Kingdom Hearts III
Final Fantasy XIV Realm Reborn PS3 and PS4 (This is a relaunch of the original FF XIV)
Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag (plus mention of Liberation for Vita) Some freezing issues. (To be fair Battlefield 4 had problems getting the game to run on stage on Xbox's)
Watch Dogs w new gameplay shown (additional 60 min of game plus outfit on release on Sony)
NBA2k14
Elder Scrolls Online (console exclusive PS4 aslo planned with Beta)
Mad Max w x Road Warrior kit

And we all know the rest.

Jack Tretton, We all saw it.

No DRM (3rd party decide themselves if implementation)
Online everything but muli player is free. (PS+ required)
2014 the cloud services launches.

Drive Club PS plus edition on Instant Game Collection for free for PS+ users-
Destiny with exclusive content for PS4. And exclusive partership multi year

Price: 399$/399€/349£

This holiday = November most likely

All in all a home run, a touch down. Just a short time spent on things not games or game related.

A in my book.

Day 1 over.

Day 2

Nintendo

Nintendo was at E3 without a press conference They held a Nintendo Direct on their site.
Now they were a bit to fast and their stream did skipp and hop a bit so pardon me if I don't have all the games  or system they belong on.

But here goes what I did catch.

Pokemon X and Y for 3DS
Super Mario 3D World for Wii U
Mario Kart 8 for Wii U
Wii Party U and Wii Fit U
Art Academy for Wii U (drawing thing)
Disney Infinity
Just Dance 2014
Rayman Legends
Scribblenauts Masked
Shin Megami TV
Skylanders Swap Force
Watch Dogs
Splinter Cell Black List
A bunch of eShop titles (so fast I could not catch them)
The Legend of Zelda Windwaker HD
The Wonderful 101 from Platinum Gmaes
Bayonetta 2
Smash Bros for both 3DS and Wii U
And something they called X (could it be Xeno game?)

Good line up in general. Presentation leaves a lot to be desired. Too bloody fast! and a stream of low quality.
Overall a D

Other than this E3 has consited of showcasing the games, interviews, features and general developer talk and overall just sharing the games with us.

Great cracking E3!
Can't wait to play some of this!

E3 2013

It's A Thing. Respect The Thing.

E3 2013 happened this week as you may have gathered from my last post. I hope you listened to the  BritCast I shared there featuring David and Luke with me as guest, with predictions and a bit of silly banter.
There will be a follow up.

So I watched about 90% (I needed a few breaks) of the entire livestream Gametrailers had, supplemented by Gamespot links provided by E3's official Twitter, as the livestream got very blurry at times and I wanted to see what the games looked like. I watched most of the press conferences on the E3 provided links. I also watched the Nintendo Direct, Day 2,which was fine for the most part but got a bit skippy hoppy.

Overall a great E3 coverage with tons of great stuff that I'm very keen on.

Day 1

Before the MicroSoft presser Lego Marvel Super Heroes was announced along with Rare's new title Kinect Sports Rivals. Lego really does all the geek franchises, which is fine as those games can be a lot of silly fun. Rare's game.. Yeah.. The company that once was a power house, with legendary titles such as Golden Eye 007, now just making basically mini games collections. Sad.

MicroSoft

The conference kicks off with Metal gear Solid V The Phantom Pain and Hideo Kojima, that looked awesome (non-exclusive title). Followed by Xbox Live talk. Now we'll get two free games each month with our Gold memberships. Not specified if Europe and US will get the same offer.
Next up World of Tank 360 Edition, Free to play exclusive to 360, followed by Max And The Curse Of Brotherhood from Press Play( XBLA exclusive) and Dark Souls II from Namco Bandai (360, PS3 and PC).
MicroSoft Studios segment (all exclusive) with Ryse Son of Rome from Crytek, Killer Instinct by Double Helix, F2P with one character, the rest you much buy.
Sunset Overdrive by Insomniac Games a loony cartoony shooter with energy drinks? as ammo. 
A bit of car porn courtesy of Forza 5 by Turn 10 Studios a solid racer, now with Drive-atar.
Remedy brought Quantum Break, Xbox One exclusive, I have no idea what it is yet. Looks tasty though.

Xbox One will feature the Twitch streaming service for game streaming and MS points is gone to be replaced by real currency pricing.

Crimson Dragon by Grounding, Inc.Land Ho! Co. Ltd a Kinect on rail shooter (fail on audio missing in stream).
Dead Rising 3 the zombie apocalypse exclusive to Xbox One, that seem to have lost it's humor from it predecessors.

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt by CD Project Red, will also be on PC, looks awesome!
Titanfall from Respawn Entertainment, also on PC, looks like tons of fun, FPS, Jet packs and Mechs.
Battlefield 4 (a false start) by Dice, Xbox One, PS4, PC. looks cool but kinda standard.

Indie titles such as Minecraft and Below was also present.

MS confirmed always on, check in ever 24 hours, game DRM to be determinded by publishers but the messaging was still unclear exactly what they really mean.

And Halo 5 was teased.

And Don Mattick response (in a interview post presser with Geoff Keighley of GT) to people not able to be online all the time "get a 360" (Smooth.. Not).

Price: 499$/499€/429£

Overall a good presentation with good titles ovarall. Though some of the "killer apps" aren't even truly exclusive.(to me a true exclusive is only on one platform i.e not PC as well)
I give them a B-


In between MS and EA we were presented with Saint's Row IV from Volition Inc. Same loony style, Now you're the US president powered by super powers brought by aliens. *Teal'c eyebrow*
Looks like good silly fun.
Thief from Eido Montréal a reboot of the orignal game series by Looking Glass Studios/Ion Storm. Looks alright I guess, a bit generic sneaky sneaky.

EA

Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare from Pop Cap a Team Fortress like thing based on the Plants vs Zombies games, looked like fun. And Peggle 2 (how is that going to be improved?) announced with a jump.

Titanfall out on stage. Still keen.

Dice Frostbite with Star Wars Battlefront teased and Battlefront 4.. Looks fun.
Dragon Age Inquisition by Bioware is a thing.

Need For Speed Rivals, which looks to merge single player with multi player seamlessly, a variant on the Most Wanted theme.

Sports the usual NFL, NBA Live, FIFA, NHL and new comer UFC which was introduced by Bruce Buffer in his classic style, with Dana White, Benson Henderson, Jon Jones and the EA Sports guy. All games built on the Ignite engine. Personally I, as a UFC/MMA fan, am curious about how the UFC game turns out, not sold yet.

Mirror's Edge 2 was announced, this time free roaming. Cool.

Overall a good presentation but badly paced. a C+.

Ubisoft

Aisha Tyler is the host again, yes! I like her!

Jerry Cantrell from Alice In Cahins comes out, he's demo'ing Rocksmith. Cool enough.
Splinter Cell Blacklist with a confusing trailer, out this august.
Rayman Legends re-announced from last year this time not a Wii U title only.

We got to see Assassin's Creed IV Blag Flag, Watch Dogs, Just Dance 2014 South Park the Stick of Truth and The mighty Quest For Epic Loot, the latter a F2P Hack and Slash, Trials Fusion and Frontier, one for iOS and one for consoles. And Rabbids interactive TV thing in cooperation with Nikelodeon.

New cool IPs are The Crew a car based mission based multi/single player game, looked like a cool game. As someone who has a background in the car mechanic/shop business the car assembly bit was very nice.
The Division looks so cool, that one I really want to get my hands on.

Overall a solid B

Part 2 comes later. come back for more.

BritCast E3 Prediction Show (music by "As Night Dies")

Join David, Luke and me for some E3 Predictions



We'll return post E3 :-)