E3 is over now. Or it was over a few days ago or something. It’s kind of weird because this was one of the first years in a long time where I didn’t stress out that much or feel like I had to be on top of every single bit of news. Other than the conferences I haven’t really watched all that much either. In all it feels like a pretty ho-hum year with not a lot of really surprising or exciting things announced. Really it felt more like “Hey, remember this game that we talked about for the past year or two? It’s still coming!”
NINTENDO’s Event
I’m a self admitted Nintendo fanboy so I’m probably not the best source for unbiased opinions. Nintendo isn’t above my criticisms, though. I was in the theater for the E3 conference years ago where they debuted Wii Music. That was some weird shit and the whole event was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.
I was mostly happy with what Nintendo showed us this year but the only really new things that I’m interested in are Toad’s Treasure Tracker and Kirby & The Rainbow Curse . I am very excited about stuff like SSB, Hyrule Warriors and Yoshi’s Wooly World but we’ve already known about those games. The new Zelda game looks great but we were shown pretty much nothing. The open world style does sound pretty cool though. Splatoon was an interesting new announcement as well. The concept is very interesting and I really dig the colorful presentation but Nintendo doesn’t seem to do too well with new IPs. I would have really liked it if it was somewhat Mario themed with the squid people maybe being bloopers since that’s what I thought they were originally.
Unfortunately there were also a lot of things missing this year. No news on the Metroid front, both 2D and 3D, as far as I know. I also haven’t seen any mention of SMT x Fire Emblem or whatever it’s called. I was REALLY hoping for a Majora’s Mask remake for 3DS like they did with Ocarina of Time but that didn’t happen. Seeing Majora’s Mask in A Link Between Worlds now just feels like a huge troll maneuver.
I’m not entirely sure what to think of the Amiibo stuff. Usually I’m a sucker for this figure stuff as evidenced by all of the Skylanders and Disney Infinity stuff I have, not to mention all of the posts I’ve made about them, but I’m not really sure how they are implementing this. Take Super Smash Bros. for example… You can scan a figure in but I’m not entirely sure why. As far as I know it doesn’t unlock an otherwise unobtainable character. According to the website you can scan it in and fight against it, team up with it, or watch it battle other characters. To me that sounds like the Computer Players that already exist in SSB. Does this mean that they are taken out? That wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense. They do look really cool, though.
Other Games
Here I’ll just list off some other games that caught my attention this year.
Disney Infinity Marvel Super Heroes 2.0 – I’m really excited about this game and all of the cool new Marvel figures. What’s really neat is that the new adventures are supposed to be bigger than the ones in the original game. Not only that but the characters have a lot more abilities that differentiate them from each other along with, from what I’ve heard, different upgrade paths. I’m a big Marvel fan so this is a no-brainer for me. If they do Star Wars next I’m pretty screwed.
Shadow of Mordor – I’m super excited about this game and can’t wait to find our more.
The Witcher 3 – I really enjoyed the first two games and the newest looks amazing. This was probably one of the top games of E3 for me, if not THE top.
Arkham Knight – Big Batman fan and I haven’t been disappointed with the series yet. The Batmobile looks really snazzy.
Evolve – This looks really awesome but it also looks like something I will be horrible at if I’m the monster or whatever. Kind of like Battlefield vehicle disease, if you know what I mean. (They’re unkillable when you face them yet are made of wet toilet paper when you pilot them)
The Halo Collection (Or whatever it’s called) – I’m not a huge Halo fan but I do enjoy the games. A collection that includes games 1-4 seems like a great value, especially when 1 and 2 were given an update treatment. I also haven’t played 4 so that’s a bonus.
Destiny – Very interested in this game and from what I’ve seen it looks great. I wish I was in the Alpha, though… -_-
In Conclusion…
So yeah, there were a lot of really cools games this year but most of the really interesting ones are games we knew were coming. Usually I pick my favorite game from the whole show but I’m pretty torn. Witcher 3 looks amazing but Disney Infinity 2.0 is calling to me on a deep level. I’m not sure I can choose between the two. What was the coolest game you saw?
There was mention in the round table on Codename: S.T.E.A.M. (made by IS who does fire emblem) that they are working on SMT x Fire Emblem and it is still on schedule.
Also surprised you didn’t mention Codename: S.T.E.A.M. as it actually looks pretty good and a decent mix between tactics game like FE and a action game. The art style was kind of meh but otherwise it looked fun with some decent new concepts on the genre.
I actually forgot about Codename: S.T.E.A.M. but it does look interesting. The gameplay reminds me a lot of Valkyria Chronicles, which is a pretty good thing. Honestly though it just made me think about how we didn’t get a localization of Valkyria Chronicles 3 and left me feeling mopey. It will probably be good, though. IS usually makes some pretty good stuff but I’ve been very leery of them ever since they botched the Paper Mario series.
True. Also the other game I am really hyped about that I didn’t see you mention was Xenoblade Chronicles X. I saw the game play of it on the last day of treehouse and was entranced, but then I have always loved JRPG’s and having one that has the depth of skill/customization of one but the open world-ness of the more western RPG’s is amazing for me at least, and I think this game actually is my favorite shown game from it.
I was disappointed there wasn’t more news about new IP’s or even new games though as well. Like sure a lot of what they showed looks good but there was nothing really NEW shown.
I mean when they had a whole segment devoted to Bayonetta 1 for the Wii-U simply because it had new costumes, I think that kind of shows the way the whole thing went.
On the other side though I was really glad to get to see a lot of smash bros. gameplay, it looks great, and like a good compromise between brawl and melee. The huge cast is awesome and the smash run mode looks great for the 3ds one. I know I am probably going to pick up both. I also know my friend went to the best buy demo event and said it plays more like brawl and that it is still ‘floaty’ and the matches can be longer but it’s not as bad as brawl when compared to melee.
Splatoon did look… interesting. The concept is kind of cool but like you said I think it would have been better if they had done more with it, if they had iconic characters instead of random squids, etc.
The last thing I was actually really interested though was surprisingly to me… Project Robot. It looked clunky and weird but also strangely fun and I found myself itching to try it.
Yeah Xenoblade does look good but it’s another one of those games that they have been showing us for what feels like forever. The hype is still high but I didn’t see anything that really upped it any further.
As for SSB, I’m in the camp of people that didn’t see anything wrong with Brawl. I get that some people didn’t like it but from my experience they are usually the “No Items, Fox Only, Final Destination” crowd that I avoid like the plague. I don’t understand why people want to take something fun and make it as boring as possible. It would be like playing Mario Kart with no items and only playing on Mario Circuit. I think I’d rather strangle myself with a controller cord. I’m not really a big fighting game fan so I don’t get why people try to make SSB into a serious, no-nonsense, fighting game. To me it’s more of a party game or party fighter or whatever you want to call it. The items, smashes, and crazy levels are part of the charm.
See, I am in the middle. I like the crazy party fighting game part as well, but the issue I had with brawl was more of the fact that it was too floaty… hits except from the super heavy characters didn’t seem to really have any oomph to them, unless someone had a huge amount of damage. Getting someone out was more about putting them off the edge into a non recoverable situation or juggling them in the air until they got high enough you could hit them up than actually hitting them with a smash at high damage. Sure those happened but it was much harder to get someone out with a smash than with a ‘ring out’ or air juggling imo because of the lack of oomph. And not just to the hits, the characters seemed to jump really high and almost float, making the game have a lot of ‘air time’ and air based.
So while I don’t necessarily want it to be a serious fighter (I have serious fighting games for that) and stay a fun crazy game, it would be nice to have it feel a bit more like a fighter as well with some oomph to the hits and such. Which the new one is bringing back a lot with bringing back hit stun, but keeping some of the floaty air aspects at the same time.
The items and final smashes are cool and I don’t mind those.
And for me the Xenoblade one was hyped for me because I actually had been pretty unaware of it until I saw it on treehouse. I never played the original and had only heard of it a couple times, never knowing much about it.