#1 Hotfoot's E3 Highlights (and BETRAYAAAAL!)
Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 7:33 pm
Okay, so E3 has come and gone, and now a lot of the Triple-A games for the next while have been highlighted. So, here's my short list of what I think looks good, what's meh, and the game that broke my heart.
Looks Good:
Far Cry 3: It's a return to a jungle island, it's trippy, and as far as I know, contains no stupid malaria pills or bullshit trigens. This is good. Even better? Four person co-op, one of the characters being a Russian hitman name Mikhail. Done. This is happening. One way or another.
Watch Dogs: What's that? Near future cyberpunk mixing Assassin's Creed and GTA with what appears to not only be an engaging story and, get this, drop-in co-op missions? Again, this looks fucking awesome and I want it.
Dead Space 3: I liked the first two games, even if they weren't that scary/difficult, they were at least fun and atmospheric. Oh, and look, they are adding co-op. Are we noticing a trend here?
Arma 3/Day Z: Okay, really, the only reason I give a damn about the first one is because of the second one, which stands the potential of being turned into it's own game. Turns out that when an alpha for a mod of an otherwise lackluster and mediocre shooter puts it on the top five most purchased games on steam for several weeks running, someone perked up their ears and said "hey, let's give this guy a job and try to make more money off of this". Persistent zombie survival horror in an unforgiving shooter, combined with the unknown elements of other players over a massive map, this has a lot of potential. The alpha of the mod is out now for Arma 2, and as someone who's been playing it with white knuckles for a while now, I'd definitely say go give it a chance. Left 4 Dead this is not.
The Fence Riders
These games could be good, they could suck, it's a little too early to tell. In some cases, I'm pretty sure they're going to be good, but you can just never sometimes.
Tomb Raider: It's a survival action reboot, sharing more with Resident Evil and Uncharted than previous games in the series, which could be good or bad. Personally, I always hated this series. Jumping puzzles are the bane of my existence in just about any game, so a game where the primary mechanic is jumping puzzles will not sit well with me. That said, moving this series in a new direction could be a good thing, and I've been hearing some promising things about it.
Assassin's Creed 3: Yeah, I like Assassin's Creed, despite all the crazy gene memory bullshit, but Assassin's Creed in Revolutionary America? I don't know. Part of the joy of the Assassin's Creed series is going around all these cities, scaling huge buildings, getting lost in crowds...I just don't know how that's going to translate to the Colonial US.
X-COM Enemy Unknown: Hilariously, this game started development after the now infamous shooter was called out for being a BETRAYAL! of the X-COM series. Now, I never really played X-COM before, but I've spent some time with Xenonauts recently, and I totally see the appeal. That said, this game and Xenonauts are going to be slightly different beasts, and while I have hopes that this one will do well, I do sort of worry that 2K shoved this one out to appease long-time fans of the series while they take a hatchet to the shooter over the next year or so.
Transformers Fall of Cybertron: Okay, okay, one of my biggest complaints (no PC port) has been answered, though I withhold judgement of that until I see it. However, the lack of co-op is a slap in the face and I really don't care what reasoning they use for it. See all my top picks? They all have co-op. They may be awesome on their own, but with co-op, the awesome is multiplied, though, as we'll see soon, co-op does not always save a game.
Amazing Spider-Man: I really hope this one captures the simple fun and joy of the Spider-Man 2 game. When we talk about movie license games, yeah, most of them suck, but Spider-Man 2 was hands down the single best movie license game I have ever played. There are some other good ones, but this one was the best, and better than many of the games that followed it (though Ultimate Spider-Man was not half bad).
Aliens Colonial Marines: Dear god, it's been pushed back AGAIN? I want a fucking pulse rifle man, give me a break. This game is supposed to be a canonical follow-up to Aliens, dealing with the team sent in after Ripley sent Hadley's Hope up the bomb. Everything past that though? No fucking idea. It was supposed to be less FPS more squad command, sort of like the Full Spectrum Warrior series, now it's not? I don't know, and really, I don't care anymore. This game was announced around the same time the last AVP game was announced, somewhere around 2008/2009, though looking at the wikipedia article, it looks like development started back in 2006. Now they're saying it will show up in 2013. Dear Developers, unless you are Blizzard, you don't get 6-8 year development cycles. It doesn't ever work. Stop it. If you go past 4 years, fire everyone involved and cut your losses.
The Last of Us: Survival Horror with a little girl (your daughter, I assume). Post apocalyptic, brutal, could be good. Not sure about the kid, but she does have an endearing quality of stabbing people that are trying to kill you.
Planetside 2: I got into the original Planetside pretty late, but man I always wanted someone to do another MMOFPS in that style. So far, the world of gaming has disappointed me greatly. But now, SoE may have a chance to redeem many of their past sins with this Free to Play sequel that seems to keep the massive scale battles of the original with new graphics and, hopefully, frantic battles. Things that could ruin it? Pay to Win F2P modelling, boring zones, the usual stuff. But if it works? Oh man if it works? Fuck yes I will be there.
Halo 4/Black Ops 2/Ghost Recon Future Warrior/Medal of Honor Warfighter: I'm putting these together because fuck them. They may be fun, they may not, but my desire to care for these series has been beaten to a pulp. And Ghost Recon Online, the Free to Play multiplayer portion of GRFW? Fuck that shit. That's all I'm saying.
Crysis 3: Now, I'm going to actually come out and say that I actually really liked Crysis 2. The first game was kind of meh, fun but nothing special aside from the ridiculously inefficient graphics engine behind it, but the second one? Well, it was actually pretty fun and the story got really sort of creative. I originally played it to get an idea if Syndicate would be any good, since the stories for both games were written by the same guy, and it convinced me to give Syndicate a go. P.S. Syndicate's Singleplayer was a dog. Not sure why that was, the writer clearly could write games, but it was short and pretty by the number Cyberpunk. The co-op multiplayer, however, was good, but I'm sort of getting off track. Anyway, this game is on pre-order now despite not coming out for a year. I have no idea if the same writer was tapped, but if he was, it could be good. The downside to me is that the game is heading BACK to New York again, despite the ending to Crysis 2 opening up, quite literally, a world of possibilities. Dear Video Games. STOP USING NEW YORK! SERIOUSLY! There are literally hundreds of other cities out there that can offer up a plethora of amazing set pieces. Note that Spider-Man games are exempted from this mandate.
And now dear readers, I bring you what you've all been waiting for. Betrayal. Spoony, if you would please?
[youtube][/youtube]
Splinter Cell Blacklist
Man, where the fuck do I even start with this steaming pile of shit? Man, I love the Splinter Cell series, I really do. I've been a huge fan of them from the very beginning. Granted, Double Agent was bad, but this? This?
Okay, I'm going to give you all a bit of background. Splinter Cell is all about sneaking around and being a fucking techno-ninja. Voiced by Michael Motherfucking Ironside. The games have been fun, the stories interesting, the voice acting, well shit man it's Michael Ironside. The first game was a bit rough, but okay, that's fine, it was still good. The second game was more of the first with a bit of extras here and there, and brought into excellence by the fucking phenomenal Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer mode. Dear God the fun I had with that.
Then there was Chaos Theory, building on the plots from the previous two games, adding tons of new gameplay elements and gadgets and really raising the stakes. It improved Spies vs. Mercs gameplay in phenomenal ways, and added a fantastic co-op mode that told a story parallel to the main game (including a HILARIOUS crossover conversation between the two new guys and Sam Fisher). This game was the pinnacle of the series, and if they had just built on this, it would have been phenomenal.
Then Double Agent came out. We don't like to talk about it. There were basically two or three versions of the game because some of them were made for the old generation (PS2 Xbox 1) and then some were made for the next gen (PC 360). The story was...bad. It was just bad. The gameplay elements were bad. Sam looked bad. The endings were bad (and inconsistent between the versions). And they completely fucked up the Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer. Like, completely. It was terrible.
So Splinter Cell went away for a while, and Conviction was supposed to be the great return. Sort of. It was originally supposed to be a sort Bourne-esque Assassin's Creed deal, with Sam being a burned agent and then...sort of not. It was in development hell and what we got ultimately wasn't bad. The mark and execute dynamic was...not ideal, and sort of an easy mode for the game. Instead of sneaking around and bypassing people you could melee kill/KO someone and get the ability to mark and execute several targets at once, in slow motion action hero style. Sort of fun, but not really as rewarding as ghosting a place. Still, the story was good, the gameplay was fun, the stealth mechanic I thought was very well done, as were the ways to mess with the guards. There were some issues, but by and large it was refreshing to see Sam back in action and kicking ass. And it had a co-op campaign that was a hell of a lot of fun, especially the last level.
So, you know, I was hopeful. I was thinking, maybe they could have Sam take Lambert's place as the head of Fourth Echelon, and you'd get mission briefings and instructions from him and they could move the series forward from there. That would be awesome, and they've only been hinting at it for FOUR FUCKING GAMES now.
What we got was this:
[youtube][/youtube]
Go on, watch it. Look at it. Drink that in. Let me list to you the ways in which THIS IS NOT SPLINTER CELL.
1. Run and Gun? No. Fuck you no. Yes, previous games in the series did let you action it up if you wanted to roll heavy. Fine, that's an acceptable style of play. I however see zero stealthing in this. None. Not. Acceptable. It's no longer an option, it's the desired method of play. In a stealth action game. Look, you want to have a game like Skyrim or Deus Ex where you can build your character to handle obstacles the way you want them to? Fine. THIS IS A STEALTH ACTION GAME. STEALTH.
2. Calling down air support to take out a technical. WHAT? No. Just no. Fuck you no and go fuck the person next to you.
3. Sam's in charge of the agency...and still doing field operations? NO! In the words of ChaosD1: "AGENCIES! DON'T! WORK THAT WAY!"
4. Sam Fisher is no longer voiced by Michael Ironside. Yeah, you fucking heard me. He's out. Same character, different actor. And no, this isn't a "James Bond is a code name" thing, this is the same man we've been playing for the last several games, but with a new voice. Why? Well, to hear them explain it, it has something to do with using a cut-down version of the LA Noire facial capture tech for when the VA records the lines, and blah blah blah but all I hear is that they hate America.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, maybe I'm wrong. They said they're bringing back Spies vs. Mercs. They said you can still be sneaky. Still, I just can't get out of my head that this guy is not Sam Fisher.
This is Sam Fisher at his best.
[youtube][/youtube]
This is more or less how I feel about Splinter Cell right now.
[youtube][/youtube]
WHO KILLED SPLINTER CELL!?
Looks Good:
Far Cry 3: It's a return to a jungle island, it's trippy, and as far as I know, contains no stupid malaria pills or bullshit trigens. This is good. Even better? Four person co-op, one of the characters being a Russian hitman name Mikhail. Done. This is happening. One way or another.
Watch Dogs: What's that? Near future cyberpunk mixing Assassin's Creed and GTA with what appears to not only be an engaging story and, get this, drop-in co-op missions? Again, this looks fucking awesome and I want it.
Dead Space 3: I liked the first two games, even if they weren't that scary/difficult, they were at least fun and atmospheric. Oh, and look, they are adding co-op. Are we noticing a trend here?
Arma 3/Day Z: Okay, really, the only reason I give a damn about the first one is because of the second one, which stands the potential of being turned into it's own game. Turns out that when an alpha for a mod of an otherwise lackluster and mediocre shooter puts it on the top five most purchased games on steam for several weeks running, someone perked up their ears and said "hey, let's give this guy a job and try to make more money off of this". Persistent zombie survival horror in an unforgiving shooter, combined with the unknown elements of other players over a massive map, this has a lot of potential. The alpha of the mod is out now for Arma 2, and as someone who's been playing it with white knuckles for a while now, I'd definitely say go give it a chance. Left 4 Dead this is not.
The Fence Riders
These games could be good, they could suck, it's a little too early to tell. In some cases, I'm pretty sure they're going to be good, but you can just never sometimes.
Tomb Raider: It's a survival action reboot, sharing more with Resident Evil and Uncharted than previous games in the series, which could be good or bad. Personally, I always hated this series. Jumping puzzles are the bane of my existence in just about any game, so a game where the primary mechanic is jumping puzzles will not sit well with me. That said, moving this series in a new direction could be a good thing, and I've been hearing some promising things about it.
Assassin's Creed 3: Yeah, I like Assassin's Creed, despite all the crazy gene memory bullshit, but Assassin's Creed in Revolutionary America? I don't know. Part of the joy of the Assassin's Creed series is going around all these cities, scaling huge buildings, getting lost in crowds...I just don't know how that's going to translate to the Colonial US.
X-COM Enemy Unknown: Hilariously, this game started development after the now infamous shooter was called out for being a BETRAYAL! of the X-COM series. Now, I never really played X-COM before, but I've spent some time with Xenonauts recently, and I totally see the appeal. That said, this game and Xenonauts are going to be slightly different beasts, and while I have hopes that this one will do well, I do sort of worry that 2K shoved this one out to appease long-time fans of the series while they take a hatchet to the shooter over the next year or so.
Transformers Fall of Cybertron: Okay, okay, one of my biggest complaints (no PC port) has been answered, though I withhold judgement of that until I see it. However, the lack of co-op is a slap in the face and I really don't care what reasoning they use for it. See all my top picks? They all have co-op. They may be awesome on their own, but with co-op, the awesome is multiplied, though, as we'll see soon, co-op does not always save a game.
Amazing Spider-Man: I really hope this one captures the simple fun and joy of the Spider-Man 2 game. When we talk about movie license games, yeah, most of them suck, but Spider-Man 2 was hands down the single best movie license game I have ever played. There are some other good ones, but this one was the best, and better than many of the games that followed it (though Ultimate Spider-Man was not half bad).
Aliens Colonial Marines: Dear god, it's been pushed back AGAIN? I want a fucking pulse rifle man, give me a break. This game is supposed to be a canonical follow-up to Aliens, dealing with the team sent in after Ripley sent Hadley's Hope up the bomb. Everything past that though? No fucking idea. It was supposed to be less FPS more squad command, sort of like the Full Spectrum Warrior series, now it's not? I don't know, and really, I don't care anymore. This game was announced around the same time the last AVP game was announced, somewhere around 2008/2009, though looking at the wikipedia article, it looks like development started back in 2006. Now they're saying it will show up in 2013. Dear Developers, unless you are Blizzard, you don't get 6-8 year development cycles. It doesn't ever work. Stop it. If you go past 4 years, fire everyone involved and cut your losses.
The Last of Us: Survival Horror with a little girl (your daughter, I assume). Post apocalyptic, brutal, could be good. Not sure about the kid, but she does have an endearing quality of stabbing people that are trying to kill you.
Planetside 2: I got into the original Planetside pretty late, but man I always wanted someone to do another MMOFPS in that style. So far, the world of gaming has disappointed me greatly. But now, SoE may have a chance to redeem many of their past sins with this Free to Play sequel that seems to keep the massive scale battles of the original with new graphics and, hopefully, frantic battles. Things that could ruin it? Pay to Win F2P modelling, boring zones, the usual stuff. But if it works? Oh man if it works? Fuck yes I will be there.
Halo 4/Black Ops 2/Ghost Recon Future Warrior/Medal of Honor Warfighter: I'm putting these together because fuck them. They may be fun, they may not, but my desire to care for these series has been beaten to a pulp. And Ghost Recon Online, the Free to Play multiplayer portion of GRFW? Fuck that shit. That's all I'm saying.
Crysis 3: Now, I'm going to actually come out and say that I actually really liked Crysis 2. The first game was kind of meh, fun but nothing special aside from the ridiculously inefficient graphics engine behind it, but the second one? Well, it was actually pretty fun and the story got really sort of creative. I originally played it to get an idea if Syndicate would be any good, since the stories for both games were written by the same guy, and it convinced me to give Syndicate a go. P.S. Syndicate's Singleplayer was a dog. Not sure why that was, the writer clearly could write games, but it was short and pretty by the number Cyberpunk. The co-op multiplayer, however, was good, but I'm sort of getting off track. Anyway, this game is on pre-order now despite not coming out for a year. I have no idea if the same writer was tapped, but if he was, it could be good. The downside to me is that the game is heading BACK to New York again, despite the ending to Crysis 2 opening up, quite literally, a world of possibilities. Dear Video Games. STOP USING NEW YORK! SERIOUSLY! There are literally hundreds of other cities out there that can offer up a plethora of amazing set pieces. Note that Spider-Man games are exempted from this mandate.
And now dear readers, I bring you what you've all been waiting for. Betrayal. Spoony, if you would please?
[youtube][/youtube]
Splinter Cell Blacklist
Man, where the fuck do I even start with this steaming pile of shit? Man, I love the Splinter Cell series, I really do. I've been a huge fan of them from the very beginning. Granted, Double Agent was bad, but this? This?
Okay, I'm going to give you all a bit of background. Splinter Cell is all about sneaking around and being a fucking techno-ninja. Voiced by Michael Motherfucking Ironside. The games have been fun, the stories interesting, the voice acting, well shit man it's Michael Ironside. The first game was a bit rough, but okay, that's fine, it was still good. The second game was more of the first with a bit of extras here and there, and brought into excellence by the fucking phenomenal Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer mode. Dear God the fun I had with that.
Then there was Chaos Theory, building on the plots from the previous two games, adding tons of new gameplay elements and gadgets and really raising the stakes. It improved Spies vs. Mercs gameplay in phenomenal ways, and added a fantastic co-op mode that told a story parallel to the main game (including a HILARIOUS crossover conversation between the two new guys and Sam Fisher). This game was the pinnacle of the series, and if they had just built on this, it would have been phenomenal.
Then Double Agent came out. We don't like to talk about it. There were basically two or three versions of the game because some of them were made for the old generation (PS2 Xbox 1) and then some were made for the next gen (PC 360). The story was...bad. It was just bad. The gameplay elements were bad. Sam looked bad. The endings were bad (and inconsistent between the versions). And they completely fucked up the Spies vs. Mercs multiplayer. Like, completely. It was terrible.
So Splinter Cell went away for a while, and Conviction was supposed to be the great return. Sort of. It was originally supposed to be a sort Bourne-esque Assassin's Creed deal, with Sam being a burned agent and then...sort of not. It was in development hell and what we got ultimately wasn't bad. The mark and execute dynamic was...not ideal, and sort of an easy mode for the game. Instead of sneaking around and bypassing people you could melee kill/KO someone and get the ability to mark and execute several targets at once, in slow motion action hero style. Sort of fun, but not really as rewarding as ghosting a place. Still, the story was good, the gameplay was fun, the stealth mechanic I thought was very well done, as were the ways to mess with the guards. There were some issues, but by and large it was refreshing to see Sam back in action and kicking ass. And it had a co-op campaign that was a hell of a lot of fun, especially the last level.
So, you know, I was hopeful. I was thinking, maybe they could have Sam take Lambert's place as the head of Fourth Echelon, and you'd get mission briefings and instructions from him and they could move the series forward from there. That would be awesome, and they've only been hinting at it for FOUR FUCKING GAMES now.
What we got was this:
[youtube][/youtube]
Go on, watch it. Look at it. Drink that in. Let me list to you the ways in which THIS IS NOT SPLINTER CELL.
1. Run and Gun? No. Fuck you no. Yes, previous games in the series did let you action it up if you wanted to roll heavy. Fine, that's an acceptable style of play. I however see zero stealthing in this. None. Not. Acceptable. It's no longer an option, it's the desired method of play. In a stealth action game. Look, you want to have a game like Skyrim or Deus Ex where you can build your character to handle obstacles the way you want them to? Fine. THIS IS A STEALTH ACTION GAME. STEALTH.
2. Calling down air support to take out a technical. WHAT? No. Just no. Fuck you no and go fuck the person next to you.
3. Sam's in charge of the agency...and still doing field operations? NO! In the words of ChaosD1: "AGENCIES! DON'T! WORK THAT WAY!"
4. Sam Fisher is no longer voiced by Michael Ironside. Yeah, you fucking heard me. He's out. Same character, different actor. And no, this isn't a "James Bond is a code name" thing, this is the same man we've been playing for the last several games, but with a new voice. Why? Well, to hear them explain it, it has something to do with using a cut-down version of the LA Noire facial capture tech for when the VA records the lines, and blah blah blah but all I hear is that they hate America.
Maybe I'm being too harsh, maybe I'm wrong. They said they're bringing back Spies vs. Mercs. They said you can still be sneaky. Still, I just can't get out of my head that this guy is not Sam Fisher.
This is Sam Fisher at his best.
[youtube][/youtube]
This is more or less how I feel about Splinter Cell right now.
[youtube][/youtube]
WHO KILLED SPLINTER CELL!?