E3 2014 Impressions

Another year, another E3. Being as the PS4 and XBox One are now out in the wild, this year was never going to be as exciting as the last, but I for one was pretty interested to see how Sony and Microsoft would follow up the blowout that was E3 2013. For most people, this year was probably about Nintendo. The Wii U has been struggling for almost 2 years now, and is only now beginning to pickup steam. Mario Kart 8 is a big success, Smash Bros 4 is rapidly building excitement, and there were a lot of big Nintendo franchises people were hoping to see this year. Ubisoft and EA were there too, as they always are. For some reason. I saw it all, and even took notes this year, so here are my thoughts on E3 2014.

Microsoft

Unfortunately for Microsoft, it seems like they are still battling the perception that there is nothing to play on the XBox One, and thus no reason to buy one. I think this is expected so early in a consoles life, now that multiplatform releases are so prevalent, but Microsoft seems to be struggling with it a bit more than their competitors thanks in part to their focus on non-games during the consoles reveal. Microsoft put on a pretty good conference though. They focused on the games, showing a good 20 or so titles, including some interesting exclusives. Sunset Overdrive still looks like a wonderful collection of color and smarm, Platinum Games' Scalebound is sure to be a hit (because they are Platinum Games and they cannot fail) and Ori the Blind Forest is intriguing to me. I'm sure the Halo Collection and Halo 5 were very exciting to people, too.

My biggest complaint though, is that I don't think Microsoft really managed to break their image of generic games for college guys. Not a lot of what I saw in this 90 minute presentation deviated from "shoot and race and stab people with up to 4 players!". I'm also becoming rapidly more annoyed by phrases like "available first on system x!" or "exclusive console release on system y!". I don't really want to watch a trailer of a game that is going to be included in another conference, I don't want to watch cinematic trailers, and I don't want to watch fake gameplay footage wherein some shmuck walks on stage and pretends they are actually playing the game. Microsoft definitely isn't the only one doing these things, but somehow it annoys me more when they do it. I suppose perhaps I am just biased against Microsoft, but there you have it.

EA

I seriously doubt that anyone went into EA's conference with very high expectations. They aren't a very well liked company on the whole, and being known as the sports/sims guys who buy other companies doesn't really help. I will say however that their conference started out very strongly. Showing Star Wars Battlefront before saying a word was certainly heartening. I'm not usually a fan of musical presentations at E3, but following Star Wars up with a lady with a Cello playing to the Dragon Age Inquisition footage was pretty awesome, too. In fact all of the Dragon Age footage was pretty awesome to see, and I'm sure a lot of people are very hyped about it. Unfortunately after Dragon Age EA's conference changed from a decent show, to what was in my opinion, the worst this year.

But then EA started saying words, and it was all over. They managed to talk about a lot of games without actually saying much of anything about them, and they said a lot about their annual franchises which, let's be honest, there really isn't much to say. Bioware announced that they are working on a new Mass Effect and an unannounced game, Dawngate was confirmed to exist, and there was a lot of talk about sports, which I've always assumed the demographic for E3 really does not care about. I think my favorite was GOLF WITHOUT LIMITS on the Frostbyte engine, with no loading between holes! Mirror's Edge 2 was officially unveiled but again, we didn't get much out of it except that it is in fact Mirror's Edge 2. That said, it's good to see, as Mirror's Edge is a well loved game with a very unique and refreshing aesthetic and concept. Then we got a good look at Battlefield Hardline, which looks a lot like it did last year when it was Battlefield 4.

Ubisoft

Following in EA's footsteps came Ubisoft. Historically their conferences have been about little more than Assassin's Creed + awkward live performance + something, and has hinged on being quirky and French as well as the divisive Aisha Tyler as host. This year had seemingly more games than others, but still delivered on it's MO. Probably the thing that has stood out to me the most about Ubisoft at E3 this year as well as last, was the immaturity of their conference. E3 is the biggest platform video games have, and I think it reflects poorly on us when the face you choose to show to the media and investors is Aisha Tyler saying things like "It's hella fuckin smokey as shit, apparently it's 420 in this bitch". I held the same opinion last year when we opened with a trailer containing nudity. I'm definitely not trying to say these things aren't ok to have in games, but trying way too hard to be edgy isn't exactly the best way to legitimize our favorite pastime.

Anyways, rant aside, Ubisoft's conference was at least a bit better than EA's but not by much. Far Cry 4 had no gameplay, but there was a very engrossing intro cinematic that I liked a lot. Conversely, Assassin's Creed Unity had both cinematic and gameplay, but a worse showing than in the Microsoft conference. Just Dance is yet another annual franchise, The Crew has yet to give me a reason to care about it and Shape Up seems like a mediocre exercise game, despite seeming better than what's already out there. The Division and Valiant Hearts win the award for most depressing trailers ever, which made me lose interest in the game and conference both. Ubisoft closed with Rainbow Six: Siege, which seemed like a decent enough game, but was so staged it's really hard to judge. I find it amusing that Ubisoft is also catching a lot of flak this E3 because of their use of a female hostage in the Rainbow Six demo, and the lack of playable females in Assassin's Creed. Oh Ubisoft. Maybe one day you will learn how to present yourself.

Sony

Ahh Sony. The defending champion. They wrecked Microsoft last year with their cheaper, more powerful console and less restrictive feature list. This year the race is much closer, and Sony's conference much more complacent. There were a lot of subtle little jabs at Microsoft that came across as a bit distasteful to me, like throwing a punch after the bell has rung. Sony's conference was also really poorly paced, opening quite strongly, and then transitioning into boring PSN features and weird pieces of hardware. These new things may well be things people care about, but we aren't going to know until they are released, and as cool as YouTube is, it's not a great way to build E3 hype. The show ended with should be some pretty exciting games, but after the boring middle, there was no hype left.

On the whole Sony showcased a more colorful selection of games, thanks to the likes of Entwined, Abzu and No Man's Sky. It had it's own share of exclusives too, with the likes of The Order 1866, Bloodborne and Uncharted 4, though none of their presence were very surprising. Unfortunately they were also stricken with PS4 ports of PS3 games (Grand Theft Auto V and the Last of Us), a trend that I find somewhat annoying. I also really enjoyed the tongue in cheek introductions that Magicka 2 and Grim Fandango got. I think a lot of people were hoping for some kind of showstopper from Sony, as well as some Kingdom Hearts of Final Fantasy. Unfortunately we didn't really get any of those. I think the closest we got to a showstopper was No Man's Sky, which is a game we saw at VGX and, despite being really pretty, struck me as kind of ephemeral.

Nintendo

Finally, we have Nintendo. They have always kind of done their own thing both in and out of E3. As I said at the beginning, there were a lot of eyes on Nintendo this year, especially after the previous 4 conferences all ranged from mediocre to straight up awful. I don't think Nintendo knocked it out of the park. I think a lot of people are still waiting for a lot of things from Nintendo. But I think they did well enough. They wasted a lot of time trying to convey just how much love and care goes into creating the games they showed. It is a sentiment that is important, but one that I think they conveyed without the diatribes, and one that doesn't really engage the viewer. What I will say is that this year Nintendo really made great use of the digital medium through which they were presenting, with Robot Chicken sketches and CG Reggie/Iwata.

As expected, games like Hyrule Warriors and what little there was to say about Wii U Zelda generated a lot of hype. Smash Bros was surprisingly excited to see, despite there already being large amounts of information about it out there. I'm a really big fan of what Nintendo is doing to stylize their graphics in games like Yoshi's Wooly World and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. Even if it's done to mask the Wii U's inferior graphics capabilities, it makes for a really cool aesthetic. Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game that I was really excited for going into this E3 (and still am) but the footage they showed during the presentation I found to be ugly and uninteresting. The clear surprise act here was Splatoon, though. A third person arena shooter wherin you control a squid trying to cover the arena in more ink than your opponent. It's a surprisingly clever and elegant game, I'm a little dubious as to how well it will actually sell though. The whole Nintendo aftershow kind of killed the hype for Splatoon though. In fact the multiple day long after show is pretty lame on the whole to me, but to each their own I suppose.

In Summary

So who won? What are the standouts? After the first day, this was Nintendo's E3 to lose. They definitely pulled it off in my mind. I didn't see as much as I wanted to from them, but their conference got me excited in a way that none of the others did. This E3 made me feel like soon my purchase of a Wii U will be justified, and there are at least 3 games that I definitely want to own ASAP, which is 30% of the games in Nintendo's presentation. Also Nintendo's Smash Bros Invitational is probably the most hyped I've ever been about E3, but that wasn't a conference so it doesn't count, ok? I think Microsoft had the second best presentation, but I find I am more interested in the games that Sony had to show. I didn't see any "must have"s out of either of them, but about 3-5 "would play"s out of each. On the whole I would say this E3 was pretty mediocre. But then every E3 seems to end up more mediocre than I hope. I would say that this year was slightly ahead of the average. I saw some cool games, I saw some cool presentation ideas, and I didn't see too much that actively offended me.

Wind Water and Making Travel Fun

As any fan of the Zelda series likely knows, an HD remake of the game is coming to the Wii U this October. This announcement sparked a bunch of discussion among people I know, and as with most Wind Waker discussions, this eventually lead to a conversation about traversing the open ocean. It's a pretty notorious and ill-loved aspect of Wind Waker, and a direct source of a lot of hate on the game. So after some discussion and some thinking, I thought I would spend some time talking about this aspect of Wind Waker, and travel time in video games in general.

So at it's root, the issue here is pretty obvious. Travelling for large amounts of time is typically uneventful and boring. This isn't always the case, some games manage to make it interesting, but I'll talk about that more later. Essentially what it comes down to, is that there needs to be something to occupy your mind continually while travelling. Sometimes this can be as simple as having something really pretty to look at. Travelling can in itself occupy some brain power too, especially if navigating something like a city, which would also them have traffic and such. However if you are crossing a distance large enough for it to be labelled as "travelling", then chances are the points in time where you need to wonder "which way do I go now?" are far enough apart that there is plenty of time for boredom to creep in. And yet, other times you may be travelling by air or by sea. In which case, you are likely moving in a straight line and navigation isn't even a worry. 

So let me give you another example of a game that does travel time poorly. You may have heard of Just Cause 2. It's an open world game with a massive world which focuses on blowing up property and doing silly things with the grappling hook. However it also so happens that the world is so large, getting from one point to another can take an agonizingly long time. To make matters worse, being set in the fairly rural island nation of Panau, the roads are fairly unoccupied, and more to the point it's almost always better to fly places anyways. Flying awesome jets is cool and all, but soaring through the skies in a straight line for 5 minutes at a time is pretty dull. It's to the point that, dying is really only annoying because it means you are going to need to make that journey again. The only times that travelling is fun, is when you discover a secret of some description (which only exist on the ground), or you are grappling hook jumping (which is slower than most vehicles). I've personally never dreaded travel more than in this game.

With that said, let's now move on to the other end of the scale. I've never not dreaded travelling as much as in Saints Row the Third. The game does 2 main things to keep travelling fun. First off, it's entire city is designed to be dense rather than vast. It never really takes that long to get from one place to your destination. The other, is that it offers constant opportunities for rewards along the way. Going on foot? Might as well go streaking at the same time. Going by car? Drive in the opposite lane and dodge cars. Going by air? Fly close to the buildings, barely missing. All these things reward the player with Respect points, and this means that you always have something to do no matter where you are going. What's more, it adds challenge to travel - it's certainly harder to drive against incoming traffic, but if you are rewarded for doing so why would you ever not do it?

So the question then becomes, where does Wind Waker play into all this? Personally I feel like it depends a lot on how you play the game, but for the average player it probably lands closer to the Just Cause side of things. The Great Ocean is doubtlessly vast and mostly empty, but It's not devoid of distractions. To me, being something of a completionist, I never found the ocean that boring. It was always enough to always be on the lookout for baddies, treasure and the splash of fish in the distance. There aren't always a lot of active things to do, but for those that care about them, there are plenty of things to be on the lookout for. By the time you start to feed all the fish and find all the treasure, you start getting warp spells to aid in your travelling. For someone who maybe doesn't care about dredging up every sunken treasure or  feeding all the fish to uncover the map, I definitely see why this seafaring would be dreadfully boring though.

In the end of the day, the only reason Wind Waker's ocean was ever so big was really because of the technical limitations of the Gamecube. The game's engine needed enough time to make sure nearby islands were properly loaded before the player came in range, and increasing their travel time was the way to do it. The HD remake will have improvements in place to make the experience more painless, and it's unquestionably for the best. I think we all know that the game's real bugbear was that money grubbing &*$% Tingle anyways.

E3 2013, Sony Microsoft and Nintendo Impressions

So, E3 is going on, and as always the big news is in the form of the Big 3's conferences. Of course, Nintendo  didn't hold an actual conference, instead opting instead to do another Nintendo Direct, but we will include them anyways. This year's E3 is extra special, because it's the period of hype for the next generation. Information on the next round of consoles (sans the ailing Wii U of course) is just coming to light, people are forming their allegiances, and Microsoft and Sony are fighting tooth and nail to earn said allegiances. It's an exciting time to be a gamer, to be sure. So in honor of E3, I thought I would discuss my thoughts on the the big 3's E3 presence, and my thoughts going forward with the next generation.

Microsoft

If you've been following the information pertaining to the Xbox One, then you know that Microsoft had nothing to lose and everything to gain from E3. Their focus on non-gaming media and their stance on used games and internet requirements turned a lot of people off, at least among the vocal minority. On the whole I would say Microsoft put on a pretty good conference, though. People wanted to see games out of Microsoft, and they got them. Of course many of the games on display were in fact titles that will be available on PC and/or PS4, but people seemed pretty excited for the most part. I can't really claim that anything really caught my attention aside from Project Spark and Titanfall in terms of games, though I'm a fan of the in-built streaming capabilities. We know the PS4 has similar, but I would certainly prefer stream to Twitch (partnered with Microsoft) than Ustream (partnered with Sont). Oh, and there was a rape joke, that was fun.

When all was said and done, I don't really feel that Microsoft came out of their conference too much better of than they were, though. People said they wanted to see games, they saw games, and yet all they were talking about was the elephant who remains in the room, and the $499 price point. I feel like Microsoft tried to just sweep the talk of DRM under the rug and hope games would make people forget, but it doesn't seem to have worked. I think the better approach would have been to subtly show how the online requirements and DRM can work to the player's advantage. Obviously they aren't going to get on stage and discuss all the features everyone is up in arms about, they are there to build hype not draw attention to their detractors. Yet, if I had seen a good reason for an Xbone to be constantly online, then maybe my opinion on the console would change. Instead, we got Smart Glass awkwardly and aggressively shoved in our faces.

I think Microsoft has managed to seal their own fate on this one. As soon as they announced the price point that was all anyone was going to take out of that conference, and it's a doozy. What confuses me the most about the Xbone continues to be the question of demographic. Who is supposed to buy this thing? Microsoft has touted this thing as the one device that will take over your living room, seemingly aimed at everyone. Yet, between used game restrictions, online requirements and a $500 price tag, it seems to me they have managed to alienate every demographic in some way. Sure, it's understandable that packaging a kinect with it will drive the price up, but casual or non-gamers aren't going to buy this thing at that cost. The same is true of college students, whom I assumed was the primary demographic.

I don't know what Microsoft does going forward. It seems to me their only options are to back pedal, and hope they regain enough good will to not be a total disaster. Perhaps the more likely course of action is that they simply stick to their guns and try to stay lean and economical. No doubt regardless of whatever missteps the Xbone will still sell many, many units. If they can maximize their income from every unit, then maybe they can hang on. Either way, it would certainly seem Microsoft has thrown away any chance at the top spot in this generation.

Sony

In truth, Sony didn't need to do much. The advantage was theirs to throw away. All they had to do was show up, not murder any puppies, and be heralded as the great prophets of gen 8. Sony basically did just that, and then some. There were several games on show, including Final Fantasy Versus XIII (rebranded as FFXV) and Kingdom Hearts III, and indie titles like Transistor and Octodad. In truth the games were kind of secondary in this conference, to me any ways. It was predictably a bunch of trailers that didn't say much about the games in question. I will say that I was very impressed that Sony managed to get live demos of both Assassin's Creed IV and Watch Dogs, despite Ubisoft not doing a live demo of said games in their own freaking conference. There was also a first look at gameplay from Bungie's Destiny, which at first didn't do it for me, but as it went on and the RPG features came to light, my interest was piqued.

I think the biggest thing about this conference was the subtle things like the language they used. It seemed to me like every word in Sony's presentation was chosen very carefully, and it went a long way. I loved the referential humor that they knew the people watching the show would get. More to the point though, Sony clearly had been paying extremely close attention to what Microsoft's detractors were saying. Almost point for point, Sony had something to say about every one of the Xbone's weaknesses. Oh, you are obstructive to indie's? Here's 20 minutes of indie games on PS4. You restrict used games? Yea, we don't. They may have well have been shouting "PS4 does what Xbone don't", but instead they were just taking subtle jabs there weren't off-putting, but reassuring.

Then there was the final nail in the coffin. They announced the $399 price point, and it was all over for Microsoft. Not only is the PS4 significantly less restrictive, more powerful, devoid of  major privacy concerns and just more gamer friendly in general, but it's $100 cheaper. That makes a big difference. That means more early adopters, which means more third party developers, which means more exclusives, which is ultimately all that it comes down to. The PS4 even has some small advantage in their Gaikai cloud streaming service, but what that ultimately ends up looking like has yet to be seen. On the whole, it would seem that the PS4 is in a decisive lead some 5 months before either console is released.

Nintendo

It's very strange to me that Nintendo seems so far removed from the competition of late. Ever since the last generation started it's felt like Sony and Microsoft have been duking it out, and Nintendo has been off in the corner doing their own thing. This has never been quite so apparent as with their approach to this year's E3. Sony and Microsoft are battling for supremacy, holding huge 2 hour conferences in E3. Meanwhile, Nintendo's console has been out for 7 months and they put together a 40 minute pre-recorded presentation from the empty 7th floor of their office in Japan. In truth, it really wasn't any different from every other Nintendo Direct that has been put out, except that it happens to have happened during E3.

In that light, I would say that on the whole, the presentation was pretty unsurprising. Every game that was shown was either an already announced (or, at least known to be existing) game, or a highly predictable one (zomg, who would have guessed! Mario Kart, ON THE WII U?!?!?!). Of course there isn't anything wrong with that. Nintendo has subsisted on their first party titles and handhelds for over a decade now. People love their Nintendo franchises. None the less, there is clearly a lot of excitement behind the announcement of the next Super Smash Bros (apparently entitled simply "Super Smash Bros" ?). With games like that, a closer look at Wind Waker HD, and another look at Platinum Games' Wonderful 101 and Bayonetta 2 it seems likely that Wii U sales will begin to pick up.

And then there was "X". The next game from Monolith Soft, the rumored Wii U successor to Xenoblade Chronicles. In truth, I think I'm more excited about this title than any other I have seen from E3 thus far. I mean it's like Xenoblade, but high def, with more awesome mechs, mechs which the player can ride, and it's a more proper RPG. It looks pretty amazing, and is the first Wii U title I have seen that really screams "you need this console. You cannot miss this game". Of course I was always going to grab a Wii U once Zelda games started being released, but X might finally be the first third part core game that really pushes the Wii U into peoples' homes.