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 :-)

E3 2013

I will be blogging it

This year I am going to do my version of coverage of it.
Mostly for fun but also to share my feelings and thoughts on the matter.

I will watch what there are of conferences and other coverage and do my take on it..

What will excite me?
What will puzzle me?
What will annoy me?
What will piss me off?

What will make my geek gasms go off like wild fire?

E3 2013 will tell me :)

Hope you'll join me in the week of June 11th to 13th.

E3 2012

11 days ago E3 2012 kicked off.
Gametrailers in league with Spike TV started it off before the press conferences started with various musings and trailers and then kept going for I think 6 hours day one and 5 hours day two of constant live streaming. I was working so I only could catch day one as a full on live from GT.

Gametrailers has since last year been my go-to site for my E3 coverage, with sprinklings from YouTube and Gamer.no added on. This year I was well pleased with GT and the level of quality of the coverage. (Though picture quality on the stream was SD). And the biggest bonus? 4 Invisible Walls in a row! Tuesday to friday.

So GT get a A- (would get a A with a better picture quality on stream)

On to the pressers.

Microsoft

Had Halo 4, Call of Duty Black Ops2 and the new South Park game that was their saviors.
The rest was so useless. Especially for us over here in Europe. I still haven't seen ANYTHING of the movie/TV stuff come here. (Netflix, ESPN and UFC on Xbox to name some) And NO! Zune HD does not count anymore as it is today more expensive than going out and buying a Blu Ray/DVD.
Smart Glass, sure you can use their browser and stuff with everything with this but the other things, game stuff.. I don't want my developers using more precious developer time to tack on yet another gimmick.
Kinect.. Yeah cool for those that like it but I am not one of them (only game I see myself ever playing is Dance Central). Just a bunch of mini games and Wii Fit like stuff..

Without the three games mentioned at the top this would be shit. I know I said on Twitter B- I have since revised that to a C-

EA

Had a bunch of shooters, Battlefield 3 Premium subscription service, Crysis 3, Medal of Honor: Warfighter and to an extent Dead Space 3 (more shootery what they showed), then their annual Need For Speed game (feels annual).
Cool enough. I am kinda interested in MoH mostly because MoH is said to have Norwegian special forces in it. Racing games I'm still burned out on.

Sports. They presented NFL and FIFA 13 and instead of showing the actual games off, some dude came on a talked FIFA stat crap and they brought out Michael Irving who talked some NFL stuff.. Instead of showing off their new ball game tech. UFC has been sold by THQ to EA and in the process Yukes who made the 3 first ones are now fired. I mean yeay for UFC games still being made but damn, I HOPE EA hires the original dev team to do the next one because I want them to expand upon UFC Undisputed 3. And with EA's online practices.. Yeah.. I am not fully positive to this.

And then SimCity both full game and Facebook game cool for the "sim'ers out there.

I give them a C overall.

Ubisoft

Started out with some retro dressed chicks dancing for some Just Dance game with Flo Rider and I was like "urrggghh not more of this shit.." Then BOOM naked titties in my face! Far Cry 3 throws that in my face before the other action starts and the game is making you trip balls. Cool I'm into it, time will tell if I want to get it. Rayman Legends. Now that Wii U demo made a huge smile creep up on my face :) THAT'S how you show off new tech. (Nintendo take notes). Assassin's Creed 3 looks so great and Watch Dogs looks very intriguing. The Shootmania Esport stuff was tad meh but at least they got to show it off in a good way.

All in all this was A grade stuff and got my nerd boner going for the first time.

Sony

Shows off Beyond Two Souls, Looks good but hope it's not a Quick Time Event type game. I'm want a demo before buying just to find out. Assassin's Creed 3 naval warfare shown of and I liked it.
Last of Us is one of those games I really want. God of War Ascension cool I'll get it eventually. PlayStation All-Stars:Battle Royale. Cool but very Super Smash Bro Brawl. Minus The fling your defeated opponend off screen. Oh and Assassin's Creed Liberty on Vita looks really cool. Might break down and get a Vita if that bundle gets here. BTW Sony where is my video rental service on my PS3? Still not here.
That Wonderbook stuff.. That should just be a 60 second trailer instead of that shit you had on stage.

B+ Missed Last Guardian a ton.. Don't do the fucking Final Fantasy 13 crap and give us a 5 year promo circle before giving us that game.

Nintendo

Started off good with Pikmin 3 (though I have never played any Pikmin game so I don't know if it's a good game) but it disintegrated into a stale box of cookies by the end. (and to think they had 2 more parts online to this). No proper showing off of the Wii U, no hint as to what's in the console (and for crying out lout CNN had an article up that they thought the Gamepad was a new one for the old Wii) nor a hint of price.
Sure they will get tv stuff that as per usual NEVER get here.
Nintendo.. you failed miserably this year.

F for failing at what E3 is for..

The Games

The following games gained my attention this year:

• Metro: Last Night
• Dishonored
• Assassin's Creed III
• Assassin's Creed: Liberty
• The Unfinished Swan
• Last of Us
• Far Cry 3
• Borderlands 2
• Rayman Legends
• South Park: The Stick of Truth
• Watch Dogs
• Star Wars 1313
• Hawken

The order of these games does not reflect my overall nerd boner for them and which gave me the harder one. Rather these are games I'm hungry to play.
I got the brain tingles when I saw these and the brain tingles are good :)

E3: My impressions

Alright. This past week there was E3. Or Electronic Entertainment Expo if you will. 

I've now caught up on the big 3's (that's Sony, MicroSoft and Nintendo) press conferences and various developer interviews and showcases and such. And I've formed some thoughts on the matter. 

Let's do this in one by one.

Microsoft:

Kicked off with Rock Band The Beatles. Now I like the beatles but I personally dont' care about Rock Band or Guitar Hero anymore. Sure it's fun for a bit but I'm not into it anymore. 

Then they had a string of XBLA stuff like Epic Games' new title and some other stuff like Facebook and Twitter being on the 360. And from the flags shown in the expantion of TV streaming bit it seems we're getting it here in Norway too.

Natal looks great but the Milo bit was fake as hell. Though you'd need a frikking huge livingroom to play using that thing ^_^

Modern Warfare 2 looks totally awesome (getting it on PC though) and Forza 3 did impress me.

Metal Gear Solid: Rising looks cool but is multiplatform so not a big deal per say but I love the concept nontheless.

Halo ODST and Halo Reach looks good too (but I've not really play Halo at all apart from a bit on a XBL DL of the original.) 

And I loved the look of Alan Wake.

As a whole I was impressed by Microsoft and as a 360 owner I do see it having a future and has some great stuff coming (though some boring stuff to)  Grade: A-

Nintendo:

The good stuff. Super Mario Galaxy 2, Metroid: Other M, New DS Zelda and the general Motion + stuff.

The bad: Boring and too slow. The New Super Mario Bros Wii just an up-resed version of the DS iteration. Plus that Vitality thing... Yet another thing that needs to be plugged somewhere and I don't see the point of it really.

All in all decent, better that last year(and no stupid story from Cammy about breaking something) so a grade C+.

Sony:

They showed God of War 3 which looks brutal and it seems it's evolved quite abit from the other two. 

MAG, They actually had a live 256 player demo on stage on the HUGE screen on stage. I'm curious about how they plan to do the hosting of matches and skirmishes. and what resolution and framerate they're shooting for. My guess is 720p 30fps.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, I'm impressed by how far into the scenery you can see and the colours and everything. I should go and get Uncharted shouldn't I?

Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker looks great and a sort of sequel to MGS3. 

Gran Turisimo is just insane however you look at it and it is coming to PSP and PS3 and like 800 cars to collect! I am getting abit stoked I must admidt.

Rachet&Clank: A Crack in Time: Breif mention in the conf but I've seen gameplay and it looks great. 

The wands. I like but will I need it? Got the PS Eye already so perhaps.

Final Fantasy VII announced for PSN and two days later out on PSN. And promptly bought.

Final Fantasy XIV MMO console exclusive. for me I don't give a squirt of piss about it.. Done with MMOs for the time being.

PSP Go. Cool but way too expensive!

Oh I'm forgetting stuff.

Sony was great and stole the show by sheer amount of content and the fact they had an answer to everything the other two came with. Grade A.

Apart for the big 3 there is an impressive amount of stuff coming. :-)