E3 2015 from the cynic's perspective

It was pretty easy to get swept up in the neigh-constant hype cycle that was E3 2015.  For some of us, there were downright groundbreaking announcements that we'd never thought would see the light of day.  For others however, this was just business as usual for the gaming industry.  Maybe we're getting too good at playing into these kinds of promo events.  At least, that's the viewpoint of some...

SONY had E3 announcements for the Vita all along!

Sony has had a strange relationship with their portable platform. They are no longer producing first party games, but the system is still getting tons of support from third party studios.

Vita sales pale in comparison to Nintendo's 3DS, but it still has a nice foothold on the market.
Check out the video below to see a few games coming to the platform. Most recently the platform has sold over 600,000 units in Spain, and that's nothing to scoff at.

The Friday Wrap-Up 6/19/2015

Sure, they official press shows had some excellent announcements this year, but there was a host of spectacular videos and news that got overshadowed by the hypetrain.  Don't miss out on the best of these.

E3 2015 Press Conference Review

With E3 going into wind-down mode, the folks here and Pixel Loadout decided to do a quick review and breakdown of each individual show and conference for this year.  We had some absolutely monolithic announcements to show for this year, but how does everything stack up when it's all said and done?

The Friday Wrap-Up 6/12/2015

It's our last Friday before E3 proper for 2015, and it's hard not to be excited with some of the potential announcements on deck.  More so than past years, it seems like a lot of companies are getting in front of the press conference proper in order to get better exposure before the hype machine goes into full swing.  Here are some of the best Pre-3 trailers shown so far, along with some other nifty articles and videos worth a read.

The Friday Wrap-Up 6/5/2015

It's been busy this week, with leaks and annoucements applenty.  With any luck, this is foreshadowing quite  the busy E3.  If you missed some annoucements, analysis, or just cool things this week, here's a summary of some the nifty things I managed to dredge up.

Steam Sales and Such

We had a nice little hangout on Saturday evening, talking about steam sales, fighters, a little bit of E3 and other news.  I finally managed to get the hang of camera switching, so hopefully this will be a regular feature for a summer podcast, as it's easy to put together.  Tell us what you guys think in the comments.

E3 2014 Microsoft Press Conference reaction

I am pleased to report that Microsoft's E3 press conference this year was much improved over last years arguably disastrous presentation. Nothing relating to kinect or t.v. was mentioned at this years press conference and Microsoft finally seems to get the picture that games should always be the center focus of E3 and they came to the show guns blazing this time. I will comment on various games shown off at E3 in order starting with COD: Advanced Warfare.

1. COD: Advanced Warfare- It's no surprise that the next iteration of Call of Duty would make an appearance at E3 this year. Debuting just a month ago, the trailer gave players a sense of high expectations and game play changes with COD stepping into futuristic warfare, exo-suits and all. The game play demo, while certainly looking stunning with a true next gen paint job, it still looked to be the same COD running with iron sights ready. Here's hoping the title has more to offer other than just Kevin Spacey when the full game launches this November; but as always I remain skeptical.  
2. Forza 2- This really isn't my area of expertise, racing games are certainly a popular genre but Ralph Fulton did say that the next Forza would feature a new dynamic weather system along with 200 cars and a full day to night cycle in glorious 1080p. So racing fans will have something to look forward to in September when the game launches for Xbox One and 360. 
3. Evolve- Now this one I am super excited to talk about. From the guys that developed the original Left 4 Dead, Turtle Rock Studios, comes the new ip called Evolve. Now evolve has been announced previously, 4 squad members track and kill an evolving monster, but today they showed off more gameplay along with the announcement of a new monster the Kraken. The Kraken is the first flying monster shown off for the game, basically a Cthulhu with laser beams and force blasts, which adds a new dynamic and new options for players eager to try other monsters other than the Goliath. I cannot wait for this game to launch being such a big fan of Left 4 Dead. They also announced that there would be one more monster in the game along with four more squad mates available when it hits this fall.
4.  Assassins Creed Unity- Ubisoft teased the next installment of Assassins Creed with a very gory trailer followed by some intense 4 player co-op featuring some neat acrobatic assassinations and how Paris is a great location for the next Assassins Creed.
5. Sunset Overdrive- Sunset overdrive is a new ip from the guys that developed the Ratchet and Clank games along with the Resistance franchise. It's nice to see Insomniac games return their roots with wacky characters and fun addicting game play. This game is a light hearted and cartoony zombie mutant slayer fest with big guns, tongue and cheek humor and platforming. This game looks to be something special and much more impressive than the recent flop Fuse released last year.
6. What the...I don't even- DLC was announced for Dead Rising 3 that pokes fun of Capcoms own terrible business practices while focusing on their obsession with fighting games. I would probably find this trailer more funny if it wasn't so satirical. They decide to make fun of their business practices just a week after releasing yet ANOTHER iteration of Street Fighter 4. Many people found this hilarious and while it is over the top, I can't really say that I find the DLC particularly cute. 
7.  Some Lovely returns of franchises- Along with some gameplay being shown from Fable Legends and another trailer shown off for Project Spark, there was also the announcement of a new Dance Central which is the only game that had even an inkling of Kinect associated with the Xbox One. 
8. HALO- This is of course the heavy hitter for Microsoft. Along with the announcement that Halo Anniversary, Halo 3 and 4 would be ported to the Xbox One along with a brand spanking new Halo 2 anniversary. All of these games would hit this fall with a $60 price tag all on a single disk, Blue-ray is a nice thing to have right? Along with this was gameplay shown from Halo 2 Anniversary which looks absolutely stunning and another trailer for Halo 5 guardians which teases a return of the Arbiter. The new character is mentioned and shown off in the trailer with the title Agent Clark if I heard correctly. The collection and Halo 5 looks to be shaping nicely and with the collections comes access to the Halo 5 beta in December!
9. Tomb Raider and Division- Rise of The Tomb Raider was announced. This comes as no surprise considering the reboots success and port to next gen. While no game play was shown, fans can expect Laura to climb, shoot, hunt, arrow and enjoy much needed time in therapy. No, I'm not kidding. The Division looked impressive although I'm still not clearly understanding what this game is striving to be. It looks like the developers are trying to make the Tom Clancy version of Destiny with an open world adventure tactical shooter. The game looks impressive and sounds fun but a short game play demo isn't enough to really sell me yet on what this game has to offer. 
10. Soul Bound- The next game from the developers of Vanish, Platinum Games, comes Dragon May Cry featuring Dante. Just kidding, although the protagonist does bear resemblance to Dante, the game seems to be about a Dragon and his headphone wearing trainer as they tackle kaiju sized monsters reminiscent to Shadow of the Colossus. Platinum always makes quality action games and this looks to be no exception. 
11. Phantom Dust and Crackdown return- Last but not least, Rare revealed that they are resurrecting another franchise from the dead, Phantom Dust. While I didn't play the original it was a mix of action and card game mechanics and had a cult following. Crackdown had some ups and downs in the series. The first game was well received, the Halo 3 beta didn't help at all I'm sure wink wink, the second not so much. The series is back with the original creator at the help so this time it looks to be a good online open world experience. Ow my hand. 

That was the press conference. Much improved over last year in my opinion and we'll try to have more articles up as E3 continues.

EA's 2014 E3 Press Conference

Ehhhhh....it was ok I guess.

Probably more noticeable in EA's conference than any so far is showing off rough, unfinished games.  Seems like a reaction to Kickstarters showing their work in progress.  In one light, sure that's great, more transparent game companies is great, but  Criterion showing a bunch of slides on what they hope to ship, along with the insides of their office just isn't that exciting.  Getting hints of the next Mass Effect or the next Mirror's Edge kind of feels like a cheat at this point for an E3 conference.

Nick from REV3 sums it up best when we did see some of Mirror's Edge:

  "say it. say "no guns" out loud. you are halfway there you're so close JUST SAY "NO GUNS"  OUT LOUD WITH YOUR MOUTHS RIGHT NOW SAY IT"

It was nice to see that EA is bringing some stuff to come out this year.  It's easy to overlook Dragon Age, UFC, even Hardline in a sense.

I'm also admittedly not the guy to talk to about sports games, but it seems like we're still playing the incredibly minor improvement game of the yearly franchise.  Was anybody asking for flags that moved on the pitch?  Does that feature sell the game for FIFA enthusiasts?

Hardline Beta opening up today is cool.  Site is currently getting slammed, but having something to play out of E3 in a fashion is a nifty touch, so hop on that if you like.

Weakest conference so far, but Ubisoft is up next, so we'll see what they bring today.

MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!

After the success of the rebooted Mortal Kombat 9, titled Mortal Kombat, it was no surprise that the series would continue anew with creative director Ed Boon at the helm of NetherRealm studios. After the success of Mortal Kombat, NetherRealm decided to tackle the D.C. License again with Injustice: Gods Among Us. Now they are shifting their focus back to Mortal Kombat with the announcement of Mortal Kombat X. According to IGN, some footage from the cg trailer indicates some new game play mechanics that might appear in the sequel. The brutal x-ray attacks from nine will likely make a return along with: environmental hazards, weapon switching, possibly the return of the run button and the oh so gruesome fatalities. After sinking many hours into Mortal Kombat 9 and Injustice, I cannot wait to see what NetherRealm has in store for E3 this year.

It is your Destiny

Bungie finally showed game play for their open world action title Destiny during Sony's E3 press conference yesterday. The video above is the entire game play demo for the conference. Overall I enjoyed what they showed. There was definitely a heavy Borderlands vibe coming from the game play and teamwork playing off the different classes. Unlike Borderlands however, at least during that point in the game or for demo purposes, it appears that the player will only be able to use 2 weapons along with having infinite ammo in reserve. Again this could possibly be a build specifically for the conference. Another interesting thing to note was that loot drops would come in the form of an all in one package. This could be used for allowing players to sort loot among themselves in a more organized fashion or that each player receives their own unique loot drop based on level and class. Guns will also appear to be a bit more unique in this universe as they can all individually be leveled up. We saw that  the Thunderlord has it's own set of skills, the final one being the ability to, "burn through enemies with thunderous rounds that will penetrate and detonate." Finally we also got to see a public event in action as a couple of squads take down a boss called the "Devil walker." I thought this was a great demonstration to show how alive this world can be and what you and your friends could do to fight back against the alien forces was awesome. It has yet to be shown how often or where events like this will take place in Destiny but the game has me excited none the less.

Destiny is set to release on the 360, Xbone, PS4, PS3 and PC sometime next year.

Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts III in development

During the Sony E3 Keynote this year there was a brief segment where Square-Enix were allowed to strut their stuff. In this, it was finally confirmed that Final Fantasy Versus-XIII  had been re-branded as Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3 has finally popped out it's head.

That's all we basically know. The Final Fantasy XV footage looked to be pseudo in-game rendering with some CGI spliced in between. There was some magic sword wielding and gun shots galore but the game we have virtually only been able to see through pre-rendered scenes finally seems to be coming along quite nicely. 

I have recently had some sort of crisis in how Square-Enix has been handling the Final Fantasy IP. As games have been coming out they have felt less and less "Final Fantasy" and more Sci-Fi Fantasy with high end cut scenes and esoteric story lines that struggle to sprinkle in series icons and fanservice.

Final Fantasy XV seems to be teetering on this as well with it's mind-boggling combination of Modern Existence, Advanced Technology and High Fantasy. But if you didn't notice what that huge serpent thing was it was none other than Leviathan, a classic Summoned Creature from the series. I was glad to see such an impressive rendering of the series' legacy but felt conflicted as what seemed to be in-game footage looked like a hi-res version of Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. 

It's too soon to actually form an opinion but I hope that Square-Enix gets its stuff together and not make another relative dud like Final Fantasy XIII. 

Finally there is Kingdom Hearts III, for the last 5 or so years there have been hopes that this game would in some form debut its existence at E3 but we were constantly fed spin off titles on non-console systems. The tidbit we were showed from a pre-rendered Kingdom Hearts III should be enough to satiate the hordes of fans that have been near demanding this game be made. Now we can rest knowing that the game is finally "in production" and knowing Square-Enix, it may be years before we even see more.

And...Boom goes the dynamite!

That's right folks, it's as easy as that! Sony has unveiled that there will be NO always online DRM with the Playstation 4. They also announced that used games will not be blocked and can be traded in whenever the purchaser wants. The console was also shown and priced at $399, which is cheaper than the xbone I might add by $100. 

I don't know about you but this pretty much is hook, line and sinker for me. At this point I fully support the Playstation 4 and look forward to being a Sony consumer. Also, this is my face when all this wonderful news was announced. 

Pre-3

We've started to get a lot of early trailers this week as we look forward to the Electronic Entertainment Expo, so we've gathered some of the best here along with our opinions:

I'm pretty sure Zombies + Parkour is a subgenre of zombie games that we haven't touched yet (heck, parkour games in general are hard enough to find as it is).  I'm always down for any trailer that uses Woodkid for music, but as is Techland's track record, no actual gameplay footage.  I'm hoping this is closer to the actual game than the Dead Island trailer was, but we'll just have to wait and see.

A rather big update for Metal Gear with Keifer Sutherland taking the reigns of Snake over David Hayter (who doesn't seem to be taking this all too well).  Sometimes different can be good, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was another long con by Kojima.  Hopefully we'll get some more details soon

The new Castlevania series seems to have the best music around for trailers.  The timeline for how this game works is a bit of a mess, so I'm interested to see how they sort it out.

This one comes with a bit of a pushback of the release date to early next year (big surprise).  The lastest feature for Lightning's return thats being show off is a sort of class and visual swap system, not unlike the Dressphere system from X-2.  Cool to see some returning characters from the series, don't think Snow will ever catch a break.

Mobile platforms are becoming increasingly appealing to developers it seems, so now we've got a new Deus Ex game for the iPad, much in the same vein as Human Revolution.  Looks pretty slick, but I feel like it's going to be a nightmare to control

More to come soon, so stay tuned!

Xbox One: presentation afterthoughts

It’s been roughly two days since the unveiling of the Xbox One, just enough time to let the announcement be processed and consumed by most around the net.  Interpretations by most have not been favorable to say the least.  While some may claim it to be a typical case of the gaming media being in an echo chamber of negativity, it all keeps coming back around to a very simple truth of the press conference itself:

The announcement was not for gamers.

In some ways this isn’t surprising.  We’ve seen the Xbox 360 shift its intended usage from blade-swapping game machine to blocky ad-delivery Netflix box.  The Xbox One continues Microsoft’s grand plan to dominate and control every facet of media in the living room, hoping that one day all consumers will have open floor space for their cameras whilst you integrate your surface to whatever smartglass app happens to coincide with the program on the screen.  It’s an ambitious goal for sure.  But for hardcore gamers and even mild gamer aficionados alike, this isn’t what we want to hear.

Hard to think I’d quote John Riccitiello, but his recent article at Kotaku says it best:

“The first and most obvious of these pitfalls is if Sony or Microsoft forgets who brought them to the dance in the first place. Gamers.”

At this time, the only attractive features gamers have seen about this console is the console specs, which end up being largely in line with Sony’s PS4 and dwarfing the WiiU, all standard stuff like an 8 core cpu with a 64-bit architecture, 8 gigs of ram, an AMD gpu, 500 gigs of onboard storage, etc.  This and an actual look at the box and controller all are positives in the books for gamers, but thats about it when it comes to the presentation.  Everything else being shown off if you go back and look at the conference are exclusive deals for TV content and Kinect functionality.  

What’s been worse has been almost all the info being presented after the conference that Microsoft of course would not present up front.  Always Online isn’t as bad as was speculated, like kicking you out of a game if the connection drops, but the Xbox One does need to check in online, what’s being speculated at least once every 24 hours.  Used games are somewhere between a small licensing fee and having to rebuy the entire game every time.  Live accounts still have a premium feature, which does share over the One and 360, but will no doubt be required for online gaming and probably other online services like Netflix.  Kinect is bundled with every system and is required to use the console, and will always be on, even if the console isn’t in use.

All of these “features” just serve to fragment the consumer base for a new console.  Gamers would rather see software.  Software is what sells a system, and Forza, Call of Duty and Quantum Break aren’t nearly enough to sell this monolith on its own.  The onus is now on Microsoft to make a phenomenal presentation at E3 in terms.  Comparatively,  Sony is still riding a wave of goodwill of presenting first, as well as advertise the ease of publishing for third-party devs and indie publishers.  Rest assured,  E3 this year will be very interesting, as we haven’t seen a true presentation for a new console generation for years now.

If I had to make a choice now though, Sony is looking far more attractive than Microsoft.