E3 has finally arrived, the day we’ve all been waiting for. Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft and Sony all gave press conferences today so I thought I’d share my thoughts on each. Keep in mind that I wrote each segment directly after each conference so the impressions given are my true initial reactions.

Microsoft

Wow…and not in a good way. As promised, Microsoft showed off game after game after game, the only problem was that they didn’t really show anything exciting in my opinion. To me Ryse looked like God of War plus Gears of War; Below seems to be Microsoft’s attempt at Journey; Project Spark was Little Big Planet plus From Dust; and just about everything else was a shooter. The one surprise was the Halo teaser, I honestly did not expect one this year. I enjoy the story and the gameplay is alright, but there are several ways to watch entire playthroughs now so I’ll save myself some money.

Speaking of which, Microsoft revealed the price of the Xbox One. $499/€399/£429 releasing worldwide this November. While a hefty price tag for the US, EU has it much worse. 399 Euros is roughly $528, and 429 British Pounds is a whopping $668. Microsoft is already in deep with the EU market and pricing the Xbox One so high is certainly going to hurt sales even more.

The rumor about the “Historic IP from Rare” turned out to be true and Killer Instinct has returned. Here’s the thing though, KI is being developed by Double Helix who are responsible for major titles such as Battleship, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and the oh-so-popular Silent Hill: Homecoming. Not exactly a stellar track record. I’m not a big fan of 1v1 fighters, so this wasn’t that big of a reveal and was kind of expected after Microsoft renewed the patent on the franchise late last year. One other surprise was seeing The Witcher 3 promoted so heavily considering CDPR’s stance on DRM, a bit hypocritical if you ask me.

Impressions overall: Wholly unimpressed. Nice ideas, high price, and nothing that manages to erase the DRM. Nothing truly exciting or all that innovative. Better than the Xbox One reveal though, where I started to fall asleep during the Call of Duty reveal.

EA

Yes…I watched the EA conference, just to give impressions. Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare was announced, and the tower defense strategy game has been turned into a 3rd person shooter, what else? Oddly enough it was the most interesting game EA showed during their conference. Peggle 2 was also announced after the gameplay demo of PvZ, and the guy seemed to be extremely excited about it, while the audience seemed indifferent altogether. I liked Peggle, but without showing anything more than a couple of rainbows and the number 2, there’s no reason to be excited. EA talked about Titanfall some more and showed a dev dairy where the developers seemed to be really hung up on the word “fun.” It’s a neat concept considering the connected nature of it all, but nothing about it seems inherently fun. Run and gun, now with mechs.

Star Wars Battlefront is making a return, but all that was shown was a pre-rendered teaser that was around 30 seconds long, if that. It uses the Frostbite 3 engine, which means it won’t be on Wii U. Wonder how Disney feels about that one considering the relationship they have with Nintendo. Of course, it is possible that the Wii U will get a gimped version that utilizes Frostbite Go, EA’s mobile version of the Frostbite engine. Need for Speed Rivals was given some PC gameplay, with EA hyping connected experiences. It made me sad to see Aaron Paul on stage here to hype the NFS movie. I greatly enjoy him in Breaking Bad, but he is now in bed with EA *sigh*. The NFS movie will probably be just as innovative and exciting as the game, so…not.

There was a recurring trend at the conference, and that being any game people are really excited about gets a short teaser without gameplay and nothing more. Dragon Age: Inquisition, Star Wars, Mirror’s Edge “Reboot”, Peggle 2 all announced with little to nothing shown. It doesn’t matter if it is “in engine” it can still be a bullshot, there are such things as video editing programs.

EA’s press conference was a demonstration in why it is bad for one company to have a monopoly on sports franchises. It felt like over half of it was dedicated to EA sports and it was insanely boring. Naturally, EA brought out a few celebrities that no one cared about because this isn’t Hollywood, this is the nerdiest event in gaming. I am glad that there were very few cheers for the celebrities other than Aaron Paul, it shows that no one really cares who promotes the game, just show it. Speaking of which, Madden and FIFA both got gameplay. Neither looked anywhere near as good as the target render video from the Xbox One reveal. The Madden trailer only “features” gameplay and it is very easy to tell what is and isn’t actual footage. the difference same for FIFA.

Of course, EA decides to show off their baby, Battlefield 4. They had 64 people on the stage participating in a live multiplayer match. This sounds cooler than it ended up being. Incredibly forced dialogue, rehearsed sequences, one viewpoint from one player. The map was huge, and they brought down a skyscraper which was pretty awesome and what I love most about Battlefield, but it was still the same game I’ve played before. The only “innovation” of note was tablet functionality where the presenter brought in an artillery strike. Tap here to win basically, as “Commander Mode” didn’t seem to have restrictions, probably just a time limit on the artillery.

Finally, there were some really bizarre things going on technically for the conference itself. People forgot to turn off their mics when they went backstage so you were able to hear talking, stage directions, laughter from people somewhere off stage, it was very distracting and very unprofessional. Then during one of the videos, an icon appeared on the screen, giving away pretty much the rest of EA’s conference. Why would they show that they would be showing off Dragon Age: Inquisition? It completely spoils the name, and builds anticipation which leads to disappointment after it was simply a CG trailer…possibly in-engine but maybe not.

Overall Impression: Bleh. I actually walked away during the EA Sports segments to get some food and when I came back they were still on EA Sports. Incredibly boring, worse than Microsoft’s event. They showed off their best game first…who does that?

Ubisoft

Easily my most anticipated conference of the day, but it turned out just like the others, mostly boring with a few cool things. It started with an unnecessary concert to announce the new Rocksmith game. Interesting in that you can actually learn to play guitar, uninteresting if you already can or don’t want to. Aisha Tyler was back this year and while she’s hysterical in Archer, having her as a presenter is a little awkward.

I guess the first sign the conference might be a bit of a let down was when Ubisoft started with Rayman Legends. Personally I’m not bitter about the delay, but I’ve experienced enough of the game to not care about announcements for it anymore. Next up was Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, which is a free-to-play PC RPG…meh. I don’t game on PC’s at all so it really doesn’t appeal to me. It is pretty neat that you can invade friends’  worlds in order to steal their loot, just wonder what the microtransactions will be since it’s free to play.They also brought up South Park: The Stick Of Truth, but no gameplay was shown…again.That and without a firm release date it is hard to get excited about it.

When they brought up “Next-Gen Time” and took a major dig at trolls on the internet, it led me to believe that some Wii U announcements were incoming. Boy was I wrong. For all of this support Ubisoft is claiming to be giving to the system, only one of the new games announced was for Wii U, and that was Just Dance. The Crew, Trials Fusion/Frontier, and Tom Clancy’s The Division were all announced, for just about everything except Wii U. The only way I see these games coming to the Wii U is if Nintendo told Ubisoft not to announce it so that they could include it tomorrow or later this week. Not counting on it though.

The theme of E3 this year seems to be connected, persistent worlds. Lines up pretty nicely with Microsoft’s plan don’t you think? The Crew is an open world, open USA, racing MMO that almost looks like it wants to compete with Need for Speed, Forza and Drive Club all at the same time. It honestly looks like it could be fun if you have friends to play with, might get annoying with random people. Trials Fusion is basically every flash game from 2000-2008. The Division is an open world MMORPG, set 3 weeks after a flu pandemic wipes out a large amount of the population. Probably the most refreshing thing is that there aren’t zombies of any kind and it is more about the breakdown in society. IF I end up getting a PS4 sometime, I will most likely play it, looks like it could be fun with friends.

The rest of the show focused on things we know about like Watch Dogs, no new gameplay, and Assassin’s Creed IV, very little gameplay shown. I expect hands on demos of games during the week to cover that kind of stuff. Hopefully we learn more about second screen experiences with Watch Dogs considering all three next-gen consoles feature them one way or another. There was also talk of the Rabbids TV show, which is now interactive if you own an Xbox One. Since I won’t, and don’t have kids who would watch the show, meh.

Overall Impressions: Ugh. While some pretty cool things were shown, nothing really grabbed me. The Crew and The Division were the highlights but if Sony has strict DRM practices and/or a high price, I likely won’t get to play them for a long time if ever. Still the best conference so far though, shame. What is interesting is the tease from Ubisoft just the other day. You don’t tease something like Beyond Good & Evil 2, and just not show it at your press conference….

Sony

This one’s a doozy.

Not gonna lie here, Sony’s press conferences always come off as a bit pretentious. They start with all sorts of hit music, and with claims of the Vita having rich gameplay experiences that make it the best place to play outside of the home. Sales say otherwise, but that’s all I’m going to say on that subject.

Honestly I’m a little surprised at Last of Us making an appearance considering it comes out in 4 days. Rain and The Puppeteer are actually creative games, imagine that. First ones we’ve seen all day. Batman, Beyond, Gran Turismo 6 and GTA V (with an exclusive bundle, and new headset) are all out this year. These still might negatively affect PS4 sales in the beginning, but considering…other developments, it should do just fine. Thankfully, they didn’t spend much time on PS3. What was odd however, was the virtual lack of Vita support they were giving. They mentioned some games and talked about remote play, but that was basically it. How can it be “the best place to play outside of the home” if you don’t bother marketing and announcing major titles for it?

Sony finally revealed the PS4 hardware and it kind of looks like a PS2 and the Xbox One combined. Semi-boxy, but with a much better aesthetic than the Xbox One. Almost like an old VCR vs. an old DVD player. I kind of missed the days of shots being fired at other companies, and Sony definitely delivered early by announcing 20 exclusive games in the first year with 12 of them being new IP’s as opposed to MS’s 15/8 ratio. There’s definitely more, but I’ll talk about that after the games.

The Order: 1886 was announced, seems to be some sort of Van Helsing type game where you play as a werewolf hunter. There may be vampires and harpies and the like, which would be awesome, but we weren’t shown any more than a trailer sadly. Knack, KZ: ShadowFall, Infamous, Drive Club were all shown with gameplay…but not much. We’re supposed to go to a website for more footage, but I’m lazy and don’t care about those games enough. All but Infamous are launch titles so you would think they would give them blowouts at the conference. One thing that really bugs me about Killzone is that they show off these amazing vistas and large open areas, and then funnel you into corridors.

Sony went out of their way to give credit to Indie developers which was nice. Hopefully Nintendo does the same as they have been giving Indies just about the same amount of attention as Sony has. The two companies even took chummy pot shots at Microsoft earlier this year at a Full Indie Summit in Vancouver. Supergiant Games, creators of Bastion, showed off their new very artistic game Transistor which is coming first to the PS4 and if Bastion is anything to go by this should be pretty good. Sony also showed off around 4 different Indie titles which are nice, but at the moment, none of them seemed to grab my interest, perhaps when I see more of them.

The digs at Microsoft continued by Sony saying that “Our media services are relevant and meaningful.” Sony knows about people switching away from cable TV entirely, so making it a key feature is a bit silly. I honestly like Nintendo’s approach by allowing the Gamepad to control the TV itself, but that’s just me. PS4 seems to be more of a media hub than the Xbox One…without even trying. Offering some of the same experiences, without shoving it down your throat. They did drag on during this part a bit, even talking about Video Unlimited and Music Unlimited which are two services I barely knew existed as it is.

Microsoft said it was bringing excellent games, but Sony actually did. There was a presentation from Square Enix where they announced that Final Fantasy Versus XIII has been rebranded as FFXV. The gameplay trailer shown looked excellent, but I refuse to get hyped about this until more is known. It still doesn’t have any sort of release date, and it is by the same company that is giving us Final Fantasy XIII three times over. The game has also been in development since 2006, which rarely ends in a game’s favor so we’ll see. SE also announced Kingdom Hearts 3, but it was never mentioned if the game was exclusive to PS4 or not which seems a little odd to me. Other than handhelds, Kingdom Hearts has been exclusively Sony and you would think they would have yelled that from the rooftops if it were the case. Again, we’ll see. ACIV and Watch Dogs were shown, which were nice but expected.

It makes me happy that the PS4 will not have ANY sort of DRM unless someone like EA decides to implement an online pass scheme. That paired with the lower price compared to the Xbox One and the grim future I was expecting seems completely squished. Sony re-confirmed that it doesn’t require online while taking massive shots at Microsoft, fun times aside from the extremely unprofessional chanting that went on. One downside seems to be that Sony’s online portion may require PS+ in order to be accessed, much like XBL. It could have been a slip of the tongue and we’ll find out in the next couple days, but it’s a major bummer if it’s true. Destiny looks pretty sweet for what it is, but I’ll wait to see about a Wii U version before I do anything drastic. Also, playing solo might not be the best idea in that one.

Overall Impressions: Sony won the day, hands down. The conference was a bit of a snooze-fest up until Sony dropped the bomb about DRM to be honest. The games were neat, some were creative, many were shooters. A LOT of fluff during the conference and honestly, I am wondering how much money Sony has been spending getting exclusives and exclusive content. With the gaming climate the way it is, developers don’t do that stuff out of the goodness of their heart.

Short Wrap Up

What started as an absolutely boring E3 with very little interesting content, was turned mostly around by Sony at the last-minute. Conference grading breakdown; Microsoft D+ to C-, Passable. Electronic Arts D-, Passed but barely. Ubisoft C+, Good not great. Sony B- to B, Good not great but completed the extra credit homework.

Tomorrow is Nintendo’s turn, bright and early. Mario, Mario Kart, Smash Bros, Wind Waker HD will all be shown and honestly, that’d be enough for me. E3’s only part way done folks, get your bodies ready.

Author: RicardJulianti (11 Posts)