Well well well, It's been...eventful this year, some surprises, some laughs and Kinect. LOTS OF FRIGGIN' KINECT! Microsoft kick started the first press conference of the event by showcasing footage of Modern Warfare 3, complete with the most bombastic sequences that would even put Michael bay in hospital. Hot on the heels of this - new Tomb Raider, looking pretty sharp (i wont be buying, but it looks enough like a 360 uncharted
to maybe entice some.) Peter Moore's EA Kinect onslaught came next, along with his Horrendous English / American hybrid voice. This is what pretty much happened for the next hour - Mass effect featuring Kinect, Molyneux was wheeled out to describe another Fable letdown, Ice-T made a tit of himself on stage playing Gears 3 (snore), HALO 4 (surprise suprise), Ghost Recon showed us a fancy new trailer with...yep, you guessed it Kinect playable options, UFC showcased Live TV interactivity (nothing for Europe, yet.) Youtube and Bing will be available soon on Xbox WITH VOICE CONTROL VIA KINECT, nope I'll just use my smartphone and be on the web before my 360 has a chance to warm up. Jesus, Microsoft what a shower of dribble. I'm not gonna even mention the other Wii sports style titles announced for Microsoft's glorified web-cam. Look for yourself. Waste of time...
To see this in all it's glory click the links below -
SONY
Sony's conference up next. Jack Tretton took to the stage, using his opening speech to talk about the 'Elephant in the room!' He talked openly and honestly about the PSN-outage, apologising to customers, vendors, press, 3rd party publishers and anyone who would listen. Ok, onto the meat and veg of the show - GAMES!! First out of the gate was the mightily impressive Uncharted 3 followed by Resistance 3. Playstation Move came snapping on the heels next. 2K brought out Kobe Bryant to show off his 'skills' in NBA 2K12, and some Move bloke played a crappy 1st person Zelda game called Medieval moves. BOOOORING. Jack returned onstage to help things along by demoing new in-game footage of Infamous 2 (released this week) one game i would like to play, along with Uncharted if i owned a PS3! 'Dust 514' from 'CCP' the company behind Eve online showed some space battle goodies, PS3 exclusive that will integrate Move and your home PC for the first time ever. Right; time for the big news eh? The announcement of the 'PsVita' the sequel to the PSP. Fully integrated touch screen, fully 3G compatible, social networking on the go...sounds like a bog standard smartphone so far (cough cough i have an Iphone4 cough.) Admittedly the graphics for the demo'd Uncharted handheld is impressive, but i thought that about Infinity blade a year ago. Is meh? a good enough statement for how i feel about this new tech, maybe, maybe im just not bothered about using any handheld consoles anymore... unless it's my DSlite, i love that!
Click these 'ere links to see the FULL show in action-
Ubisoft
I watched the Ubisoft conference with some anticipation, over the past few years Ubisoft have released some pretty good titles (Beyond Good and Evil, No more heroes, Prince of Persia) but the one I'm looking forward to this year is 'Assassin's Creed: Revelations'
Yves Guillemot kicked off proceedings with Rayman Origins, a nifty Super Mario style 2D platformer with charming cartoony graphics. The reveals came thick and fast with Driver San Francisco (not for me) Farcry 3 (again, not for me) Brothers-in-arms Furious 4, Tintin, Ghost Recon Future Soilder, and Rocksmith. A pretty strong line-up for the next 12 months. The last 20 mins of the show was dedicated to the beast i mentioned at the top of this paragraph; Assassin's Creed: Revelations. With a brand new trailer and 6 minutes of in-game footage to show off, Ubisoft defiantly left the best till last. I can't wait to play through this chapter and close the book on this awesome and beautiful trilogy to Ezio's life.
Linky, linky, watchy watchy -
EA
One of the worlds biggest game publishers and distributors kicked off their E3 2011 with a chunky section of Mass Effect 3. Having never really played any of the Mass Effect series, this entire sequence meant nothing to me, it looked nice, but that's it. Need for speed: The Run came next, looking very pretty and showcasing 'for the first time ever that in a NFS title' you'll be able get out of the car and RUN about on foot. More like a collection of QTE's than GTA, even so it's not a game i'll be investing any time in.
The next title i can see getting into, Star Wars Old Republic showcases its snazzy CG intro followed by rapture of geek applause quickly followed by brand new footage of SSX (coming jan 2012.)
Arrgghhhh i can hear the horrible tones of Peter Moore arriving next, I've mentioned how fucking ridiculous his accent is previously so i wont stay on it long, blleerghh cross Atlantic rubbish. He brings a cavalcade of EA Sports gubbins on stage with him including Fifa 12 and Madden 12, so i'll skip over that (not a sports fan.) I'm gonna skip over the gay Sims social Facebook 'thing' as well.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning reared its head to bring us a game not a million miles away from what Fable should have been all along, its shows promise but we'll see when the finished product is finally released. If your an RPG fan this may be worth a look. It's no Dark Souls or Skyrim though.
Into its final stretch the EA train rolled out it's big guns, Overstrike and of course Battlefield 3. The former looking like a team fortress-y run and gun squad based shooter, think Brink with more woman. Now I'll be honest here, I've no intention of ever playing Battlefield 3 BUT as one of the two towers of popular FPS gaming along with COD (re:SHIT), this does look mighty impressive. COD has always looked very OTT and bombastic, there's something about BF that kept it grounded or so I've been told, maybe, what do I know, I'm an RPG fan!
All the press conference, including that Battlefield 3 footage is here -
Nintendo
The granddaddies of E3 kickstarted their conference with a live Orchestra playing various 'Zelda' themes, all part of Nintendo's 25th anniversary celebration of 'The legend of Zelda'. The man himself Myamoto then took to the stage along with a translator to...act out various stances from past Zelda titles accompanied with music. Odd!! "opening a treasure chest - duh duh duh duhhhhhhh"
As it's the 25th anniversary Myamoto announced various re-releases of older zelda franchises, but we know about this already.
Mr Nintendo himself Satoru Iwata took to the stage after another little orchestra fill, to give word on how is company are bringing the world together and to 'serve every player.' He exited after this to let their backdrop do the talking, an impressive digital screen delivering a sharp presentation of future 3DS titles including - New Mario Bros, Luigi's Mansion, Star-fox, Mario Kart and Kid Icarus. Reggie Fils-aime filled the gaps between other 3DS games on the big screen - Mario and Sonic at the Olympics 2012, Resident evil Mercs, Ace Combat 3D, MGS and Driver 3DS.
And so; the biggest announcement of the week, the new and official name for the Wii's successor - Wii U! So far the console hasn't been seen and probably wont be seen by the public till at least next year, just the new touch controller that can be used completely separate from the machine itself. It looks shiny and bright but will it really work as well as they want it to come release date. Only time will tell, I honestly think it looks like all Nintendo releases these days - Gimmicky!
The last 10 minutes of the final press junket Nintendo did what they do best, bringing shiny white toys to the masses, showing off the 'stats' of their new device. Split screen action, bigger and better graphics and total interactivity 'bringing power to the people.' They even managed to bankroll other famous studio heads to praise the new console. Meh?!!
So, the final bit of linkage for you (see what i did there)...
Thats it!! Random highlights from this Year's E3. as ever hope you've enjoyed this, please comment and tell your friends about us on Facebook and Twitter. I have just updated a TONNE of new trailers on our Youtube channel as well - Subscribe and enjoi !!!! xx
Thanks guys, peace and love to you all
Dr Sanchez
