18:04
Dave Pickering
As gamers we're lucky, we get two birthday's. One is our actual date of birth and the other is a 3 day festival dedicated to games! What more could we ask for?!?! Click on the jump to have a read on why we at CDS(A) think this could be one of the finest.
Dave: Well it’s that time of year again and I would say I’m probably looking forward to Nintendo’s press conference the most if you made me choose one thing. “Project Cafe” has got me all hot under the collar because it’s a chance for Nintendo to restore some semblance of trust in the “Hardcore” (Dammit, I really hate using that term) market. I was brought up on Nintendo consoles and didn’t own anything other than a Nintendo console until this generation. We all know that Nintendo have a great catalogue of characters that they can draw from and in Miyamoto-san they have possibly the greatest mind in the business, Nintendo now need to prove to the market that they have found themselves again and we won’t just get Shovelware HD (which is starting to happen on Kinect...but we’ll get to that later). In terms of software, I would have to say I’m most looking forward to unannounced titles, to clarify; I am super excited for the year of the threequel, Gears 3, Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and all the rest, but, there’s something about an announcement which knocks you off your feet, the likes of Final Fantasy coming to 360 spring to mind. I wouldn’t put money on it, but I’m hoping to see a new Splinter Cell, and a new Brothers in Arms title. It’d be very nice to see a new IP announced, but we’re quite far into the console cycle now, and a new name is certain to not get as much attention as a well known name. The flipside to the new IP argument will be to see if anything is heard from Respawn Entertainment, the camp has been quiet so far and Bungie have announced they aren’t going to be at this year’s E3 so it leaves the stage wide open for them.
On the flip side to that, here are a couple of things I’d like E3 2011 to avoid. As I touched on earlier, I really feel as if Kinect and Move are going the way of Wii. All we’ve had that are any good on Kinect are the main release titles which are party games. Kinect Adventures and Kinect Sports, great fun and great examples of the hardware, but just a more advanced version of Wii games we were moaning about a couple of years ago. I’ve not actually played Move and can’t really paint a picture on it without being unfair so I’m going to avoid that minefield. Both Sony and Microsoft obviously saw Nintendo raking in the money from the casual market and (quite rightly as a business) decided they wanted some of that cake. I must say though that as much as I appreciate the technology I don’t want to just play table tennis and volleyball for the rest of my life. I also don’t particularly want to see the company executives doing to usual chest beating “We’ve sold 17.5 trillion units of Cheddar since release 5 years ago”, that’s great, really, I’m impressed. But truth be told, I don’t care. I just want to see your games, I’m not a businessman, I’m a gamer, d’ya hear me Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo? Good, glad that’s settled.
Craig: It’s that time of year again! Everyone who’s anyone in the video game business get’s a chance to put on a nice little show and dance to prove who has the biggest and shiniest metaphorical cock to wow us with. The first of which to slap theirs straight across my face is the good folks at EPIC games, with the final installment of the gears of war series. Having spent numerous hours on the BETA and glued to the videos on Youtube, I can whole-heartedly say that this game has got me rock-hard for the September release date. I don’t know what else anyone could expect from EPIC; maybe they will offer a hint to the potential fate of the new tank, Clayton Carmine. It’s great to see some developers are releasing trailers of upcoming games at E3; one that caught my eye in particular was new Tomb Raider. Having been a fan of the once polygonal, femme-fatal; it’s great to see she is making a comeback in a style which isn’t all guns blazing with stupid, over-the-top, Hollywood style action! The new trailer has me drooling at the mouth, finally some awesome scenery, dark passages and purposeful reason to an adventure. The trailer shows a younger, less cynical Lara; I see no guns, no over-exposing attire and she lacks a rack which would give any other woman back problems. Like prince of Persia, this game looks potentially very ‘art’ heavy; so I’m looking forward to seeing some luscious landscapes and fantastic animations. I would like to see some news on the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft, but like the rapture, it probably won’t happen, sad face. Although I did slag off MW3 in the previous post, I still would like to see something from them; having heard about the recent outrageous attempt to rob fanatics of the franchise with the new ‘COD elite’ service, I would love to see Activision try to defend themselves against what will be an onslaught of disgruntled gamers, they better bring bloody shields!
However, i'm not really looking forward to seeing the Wii, project café and everything associated with Nintendo if I’m honest; having slowly watched the quality of games for the Wii slowly slide into a deep pit of despair, I really could not care what they have to show. The Wii and Nintendo has slowly become a child and ‘forced’ family interaction device with wild flailing about to accomplish what I preferred to do with a pad; I would prefer Nintendo to re-assess the quality of their games rather than bring us some new hocus-pocus every E3. Seeing as there is now going to be a touch screen related item with ‘Project café’, I don’t think my wish will come true anytime soon… PSMove and any of the games for it, Wii did it, stop acting like it’s brand new, It’s been done before and Microsoft went one better and did away with the controller, catch up with the times SONY! Speaking of Microsoft, I recently heard that one of my favourite series on the XBOX, Gears of War, will be releasing the final installment with added Kinect functionality. This is yet to be announced but looking at all the hot, flaming rumours and Mr Cliffy B’s general fetish for the Kinect, I can see it happening. I’m hoping to the dear FSM that it does not ruin the game; I hope they keep it as close to the BETA as possible, they’ve finally fixed all of the handling problems and now they want to try and pair it with that… thing… I have faith; please don’t destroy my beliefs EPIC! Last, but certainly not least, Squeenix (or Square Enix for you noobs), have been in development of the new Final Fantasy game; cleverly named ‘Final Fantasy XIII-2’ (I really don’t know how they come up with such great titles for sequels!) Having just seen the newest teaser trailer I can safely say, It looks exactly the same… Same interface, same graphics; besides from the story, I can’t really put a finger on what is new about this game… Oh and I loved the older FF games, but since they’ve been putting the loud, childish, over-the-top, Japanese characters into recent games, I’ve slowly fallen out of love with this series. One of the characters in the trailer was dressed to the Gills in over-the-top, "oh my god it’s coming my way", flamboyant clothing (And I will bet you any money he will have the personality to match.) That said, I hope Squeenix will at least make some announcements (besides from Tomb raider) that will shake off my prejudices and prove me wrong!
Anthony: For me, e3 is all about the games that are coming out way in the next 12 months. The last year has been sorely lacking in new ip's and I would love to see a whole host of new and creative games to demonstrate that 360 isn't just about shooters and sports games. I'm really excited about the supposed remake of halo: combat evolved and any announcement about it is sure to be a show stopping moment for Microsoft. What other games do I hope to see at e3? Well there is one game that has demanded a sequel from the moment it was released and that was Mirrors Edge. It was a truly unique and ground breaking gameplay experience that has never been matched since. It had it's problems but with a few control tweaks, a sequel could be a true classic. By the way, if you haven't played the original go get yourself and then thank me in the comments section! Of the already announced games I would love to see how modern warfare 3 and battlefield 3 shape up next to each other. They both look like epic games and e3 is the perfect opportunity to showcase them both and see which one scores the first blow!
I would also like to see some games in 3d. I had the pleasure of playing Crysis 2 in 3d and I can safely say that I was a mind melting experience! 3d delivers a level of immersion that is simply staggering and if other developers can match what Crytek did with 3d we may just see the beginning of a whole new level of gameplay experience!
E3 and hardware revelations go hand in hand. I would be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for Microsoft to reveal 360's successor, let's face it it's been 5 years since 360 launched, and with Nintendo already announcing Project Cafe it's not beyond the realms of possibility that they will. However, I think it's more likely that Microsoft will announce new iterations of the current hardware, 500gb 360 slim anyone?, and wait to see if Sony announce a Playstation 4 before committing to a new console cycle.
Speaking of current hardware, Kinect has been criminally underused by both Microsoft and 3rd party developers since it's launch. Due to the huge amount of casual games it now has the air of the gimmick about it, which for a device that has unlimited possibilities is very disappointing! Hopefully we will see some core titles announced for Kinect along with some more info on Forza 4's Kinect integration and just what Bioware are doing with Kinect in relation to Mass Effect 3.
That's my hopes for e3. But it's the unknown side of things that I'm most excited about. It's the potential surprises about games that we know about and the ones that we do not know about which will keep me on the edge of my seat. But if they fail to materialise, well then I will have to be satisfied with seeing some new stuff about Skyrim!
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