E3 2011 Topic of Legends, Moving Your Body and Googly Eyes

[segaismysavior]

I hate when they put CGI trailers up.

Same here. I don't get why people are excited about Halo 4 based on a teaser that reveals... nothing. At least the Halo 3 teaser showed the bubble shield and a battle on Earth, but even that was weak compared to the incredible in-game demo reveal of Halo 2.

Then again, I did become interested in Overstrike just from the trailer, but that was a well made cinematic. Insomniac is no slouch though, so we'll see.

[Chaosmaster8753]

I didn't watch MS's conference, but all 3 conferences weren't too much different from last year, except not as good.

[Sega Uranus]

I think all of the big three had good showings, very diverse list of stuff, some awful games from everyone too, but mostly I greatly enjoyed the whole event.

Microsoft focused a lot on Kinect stuff, which is understandable, and it was nice to see it coming to Mass Effect 3 and Binary Domain, but I have a hard time wanting the platform still. I was pretty impressed with the trailer for Kinect Star Wars and a few other Kinect-only games, but I could never see myself playing most. Tomb Raider looked great, the demo of Gears of War 3 was pretty lame but I know the game will be awesome, and I was honestly really shocked by Halo 4's announcement! I never expected it so soon. Not sure what to think of it yet, but I am excited. It is lame that most of the games I am most interested in were not really mentioned, like XBLA stuff and what have you, but it is all still coming.

Initially I was super pissed about Halo Anniversary, but now that the full news has come in... I am very excited! The campaign is literally just a new set of models running over the original game and has a button to switch between the two, ala Monkey Island HD, which is brilliant because I love Halo 1's physics and level design, but almost all of it is pretty bad for multiplayer in comparison to the later games in the series. The multiplayer stuff is all for Reach. You can play it on the disc or just upload it to your HDD to play through Reach itself. This is great news for me, because while I love Halo 3 and Halo Reach, the fact they sort of have their own communities really bugs me, I was worried this would be separate them even more.

The pricing really impressed me. $40 at launch, might have to get it this year.

Sony started off really strong with a fairly respectable mentioning of the "Elephant in the room" and especially with Uncharted 3, which I expected to be all kinds of awesome, but when the boat tipped over I honestly shouted "AUUUUUGHHHHWWHWHWH HOLY SHIT!". After that a lot of their showing kind of just went by without me caring much about what they had to show, Sly Cooper 4 having time travel really got me excited though. Otherwise, I thought PlayStation Vita looked cool, but their demos kind of lost me. The Uncharted game in particular looks extremely lame in comparison to even the first game. I really wanted to see them showing off some tech demos using it's features (especially the touch pad on the back, I think that has a lot of potential), but I guess actual games are needed to sell people on them.

No Jak and Daxter HD collection yet.

Nintendo had the strongest first party lineup of the big three, almost every game for all the platforms they have looked wonderful. Their third party support is weak as always, but once they finally showed off the Wii U I was fairly surprised to see Batman Arkham City and DarkSiders 2 there.

Their new console impressed me in some ways, but I can see why people are getting so upset. I cannot wait to see what people do with the hardware. I honestly am not interested in buying it at all, but as a game designer myself, I think it has an incredible amount of potential.

Wii U is literally the worst game console name I have ever heard though. I thought numerically naming your consoles was stupid, and using random words or phrases like 360 and Vita was retarded, but just adding a "U" to the title is the new low. I was even one of the people who thought Wii was a great name, even!



As for the third parties, EA had the worst show of the lot with nonstop CG trailers and literally the worst looking racing game I have seen in ages with Need For Speed: The Run, but I am extremely excited for Mass Effect 3, so I have a hard time writing them off completely. Even me being such a big Insomniac hater, their game looked like it had a lot of potential!

I knew Ubisoft would have a killer lineup, but I consider them the overall winner this year. I thought everything they showed looked awesome or at least very cool. Rayman Origins especially looks outstanding.

Although neither had their own conference, SEGA and Konami has stellar lineups. Everything from SEGA really had me drooling except Anarchy Reigns and I have been wanting to play through MGS2 and 3 again and especially their  rereleases (Never got to play Substanance), and was pissed Peace Walker was exclusive to PSP, so this is great for me. It is a shame MGS1 is not in the collection, but I assume that has a lot to do with it being much harder to make it in HD than the other games. Twin Snakes has Nintendo stuff in it, so that is not happening either.




I love the industry right now. Screw the haters, right now is such a great time for videogames. Every console has such a different and unique approach to the medium that creativity and styles can flourish in so many wonderful ways. Sonic finally has a game that looks to be at the very least "Very good" after all these years, the big three all have their own huge markets and have opened up new ones completely and Duke Nukem Forever was at it's last event as it comes out in a matter of days! What a year 2011 is for games.

Nice job, Jeremy.

[CrazyT]

Lol, yeah I sorta get what you mean guys, but I  think this is just a personal preference.

Altaïr was indeed a boring character and they hadn't really expanded alot on his character, but there was something about him that I liked which i can't describe. I am glad that we might see them expand abit more about him.

I also agree that CGI trailers suck. The gameplay footage hadn't really impressed me "that" much. It was a bit over the top so. But in assassins creed case, the story is the biggest selling point fot me and I think the trailer does a good job in pulling me in to wanna see what's gonna happen. Ezio seems older and that place where they planned to throw him down was that hideout place (forgot it's name) where altaïr used to get all his asignments to kill.

[CosmicCastaway]

I'm with you CrazyTails, I love Altair as well. Also, the name of the city was Masyaf.

The Uncharted 3 gameplay they showed at the Sony Conference reminded me of one of my favorite sections from Tomb Raider: Underworld. It's really neat.
[youtube:300yvgt2]m96rRnWmkJU[/youtube:300yvgt2]

[MadeManG74]

Ohh, this one almost slipped under my radar:

[youtube:uda53teo]4G_-AsaxujI[/youtube:uda53teo]

[segaismysavior]

I didn't see anything about that til now... Way Forward is friggin awesome for making that game the way they are.

[max_cady]

You know, I'm starting to notice a couple of things at these last E3 events, ever since the show returned to it's original format in 2009: First off, I feel like there seems to be a gap that's just getting bigger and bigger which each passing E3, this is both noticable with game studios and game journalists. On one hand, game studios seem to be getting a little non-chalant about getting coverage, after all, I subscribe about 5 video game-related channels and many of them show roughly the same interviews over and over again, maybe with slightly different questions, but above all, the things that gets to me is how most of the major demos showing are, more often than not, are basically Ubisoft, EA, Activision and maybe Capcom. Sega's been a bit MIA, but Square and Namco Bandai have also been almost invisible save for the Tomb Raider showing. E3 is starting to feel like the European Union, in some aspects, most of the wealthier states can just push their weight around, while everyone else just fights for table scraps of any the bearest minimal spotlight. Perhaps Game Trailers should be awarded for going that extra mile, since they did cover a good chunck of games.

But back to the actual games, I didn't expect to see a PS1 era game at E3 this year(***coff*** X-men:Destiny ***coff***).

[George]

The reason the interviews feel the same is because publishers make appointments with the journalists, give them times to meet, and let a group of them ask questions.