Now that the show is over, who do you think had the most impressive showing? Did Microsoft knock your socks off with Kinect? Did Wonderbook ruin Sony for you? Were you totally in awe of the Wii U? Or were you surprised by EA or Ubisoft this year? In short, which game company do you think had the best conference and won E3?
Everyone flunked. (Note the complete lack of objectivity here.) And just when you thought Nintendo was doing pretty awesome with the large amount of announcements they had to make, their "3DS Software Showcase" told us absolutely nothing. Looks like Nintendo want to tell us what we want to know by Nintendo Direct only, now. (Where's my Layton?!) Come next year and everyone's going to be going on about how their consoles are better than the Wii U.
I would say they were all lackluster conferences. Ubisoft had the best games but the conference itself was very unprofessional. Here's some of the highlights from Ubisoft conference host Aisha Tyler: “Come down to the booth and do that s***!”, “I wanna get a tiger, use it as a weapon, and then shoot it.”, “Losing tastes like pennies.”, “I don’t want you to smoke me. Or get smoked by a giant black girl.” I'm also shocked at how they were even allowed to show their Farcry 3 demo. Sexual content, lots of violence, and pretty much the whole thing was one long 'beeeeeeeeep' from all the censoring they had to do. And some of the expletives weren't censored. So I guess Sony won E3 then. I like the host, he knows what he's talking about, does so in a professional matter, and makes a couple jokes here and there. They showcased a lot of first party games and gave out Playstation Plus benefits. Overall, Sony put on a good, fun show.
Maybe that was just a G4 thing and it wasn't censored online? Because, yeah that sounds ridiculous if it was censored. Why bother showing it
If we can pick anyone, I'm going with Ubisoft. They announced no less than five new games (Watch Dogs, ZombiU, Rayman Legends, Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and Assassin's Creed III: Liberation), though two of them were leaked earlier. Plus, their Assassin's Creed III demonstrations were pretty awesome. Overall, they had a good amount of content. Meanwhile, the worst was either Microsoft or Nintendo. I'm going with Nintendo; the games that they showed were either same-y rehashes (New Super Mario Bros. U, NSMB2, Pikmin 3) or ports of games that we've had in our hands for some time now (Batman: Arkham City, Mass Effect 3, Ninja Gaiden 3). The only games they showed that excited me were Lego City: Undercover and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate... which is sad, because those aren't even actual Nintendo games. The one game from them that I think looks really good is Fire Emblem: Awakening, and they didn't even show it.
Why when Nintendo announces a sequel it is seen as "same-y", but when any other company does it it is terrific. For Ubisoft you listed new Rayman, Splinter Cell, and Assassin's Creed games. The last Pikmin game was in 2004, I think eight years was long enough of a wait. Unlike yearly Assassin's Creed games.
Splinter Cell: Blacklist adds in a ton of new gameplay features that make it play better than previous games in the series. Rayman Origins was a pretty original game for the Rayman series, and was a pretty awesome modern-day platformer, so I don't mind if Legends is more of the same-- which it doesn't even look to be. Assassin's Creed III has the same basic concepts as previous games in the series, but gives you more ways to go about objectives, and also simply gives you new things to do. Pikmin 3, from what I can tell, adds rock Pikmin and a less-than-ideal GamePad control scheme. New Super Mario Bros. 2 adds local multiplayer, and an emphasis on collecting coins. New Super Mario Bros. U adds a couple of new power-ups. I'm not saying that sequels similar to previous games are bad. But when they keep using the same ideas over and over again with minimal improvements, that is when it becomes a problem for me. I'm sorry if the two "New" Super Mario Bros. games they're releasing this year look way too similar to all of the previous 2D Mario games for me to be excited for them.
Pikmin 2 was very different from the original Pikmin, even if the general concept of it was the same. I'm expecting and hoping that this is the case with Pikmin 3 as well. I think it is at least as different from Pikmin 2 as ACIII is from its previous entries. The NSMB games... yeah... I didn't point those ones out because that is samey. XD I was mostly objecting to Pikmin's inclusion. NSMB has the same graphics, engine, same everything. It's not too similar to *all* the 2D Mario though. Just the previous NSMB games, and that subseries is pale imitation of the old games.
Why does Wonderbook get so much flack? Seriously, I didn't think it was the worst thing to come out of gaming ever. I actually thought it was a pretty neat idea that kids will love if they have a PS3. When practically all the crappy Move/Kinect stuff is just related to exercising or media viewing, I'm really happy to see this kind of interactivity showing up for younger audiences. It's a good way to get them into video games AND get their parents okay with video games. It's just a picture book with interactivity and magic. What is so wrong with it? Yeah, the presentation of it fell flat but I think the idea behind it is solid. And not all things at E3 are there for HARDCORE MATURE GAMERZZ like us which I think should be obvious from all the motion control and media crap we've had to put up with this generation. E3 is for unveiling new hardware and software and that's what Sony did with this. Just because it doesn't interest you immensely doesn't mean it's a bad idea. I don't understand the wide hate for it at ALL. Did I miss something about it? Anyway, I only saw (most of) the Nintendo and Microsoft conferences and I watched Ubisoft's a bit later and of them, I guess Ubi's was the best one for me even if the hosts were horrible. (Sorry Toby bb, I love you, but you were very awkward during the conference. ;_;) They had a lot of cool new things to show me that I'd never seen before, the trailers were all pretty solid, and the only times it really dragged for me was during the unwitty, awkward banter between the hosts. Really, I think if Toby was scripted (better?) and the chick was replaced with someone he actually got along with or something, it could've been amazing. Lol, yeah, that was only censored for you. I guess because they were showing it on daytime television? (Cable, but still. Daytime on a channel that's not, you know, HBO or something.) I watched the conference a few days later on Gamespot and there wasn't any censoring at all.
