E3 2011 The Overview

[Dark Silver]

E3 2011 Thread, I'll be overviwing each conference in one big post, as they come on.

[Hotfoot]

The week of lies begins!

[Dark Silver]

I'll be including my thoughts on the presentation on each portion



Microsoft Keynote Presentation

Show starts, with ten minutes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - The presentation starts off with a chuckle as the controller DC's from the xbox...I guess to show the game is being run live. it's a underwater mission, we see the team on power sleds as the job is apparently to plant a mine on a sub. Graphically, very impressive. better than the last CoD:MW game I find. The team plants the mine on the sub, after it passes them up, and they enter the sub. Queue shooting in corridors, still very nice, I can't tell if the OpFor is ChiCom or Russian - two man entry team into the sub makes it to the bridge, and launches off a set of missiles. Queue chase sequence against OpFor, pull out, looks like it's a full on battle in New York Harbor.

New Tomb Raider, a prequel and origin story for Laura, showing her as a 21 year old. Looks nice, very good demo. Will be interesting to give it a try if your a fan of the series


EA people take the stand, showcase Mass Effect 3. ...Kinect optimized so you can use voice controls. Bleh.

Tom Clancy Future Warrior - they showcase the full gun optimization features they call Gunsmith. Looks interesting, and they showcase it's utility with Kinect. They optimize multiple guns, then showcase how the game utilizes Kinect motion control...god damn it. All Tom Clancy games in the future now Kinect Enabled.



Xbox Live poeple...talking about the Fall Update....all about how Kinect will power the new update, voice control for everything on the menus, adding new stuff to the dashboard - like Bing for voice searching of content, how the Xbox with Kinect is going to be the all in one service now - games, music, videos and....Live TV.

Remember when the Xbox used to be about games?

All future games are now Xbox exclusive.

Gears of War 3. It's visually impressive More of the same it looks like to me.

Halo Anniversary HD edition coming out.

My feed cut off here abouts for a few mins....missed stuff.

Forenza Motorsports - I'm not a racing fan, but nice looking.

Peter Molyneaux on stage, showcasing the trail for Fable: Journey. Oh god damn it, it's Kinect powered. or at least their showcasing the Kinect controls on it. Guy's leading a horse and buggy around like he's holding the reins. Meh

......Minecraft on the 360 this Winter.....god damn it. Admittedly, I can't blame Notch for making his money....but oh gods...

Kinect Disneyland Adventures - get to virtually explore Disneyland on your xbox. ....If I wanted to goto Disneyland, I'll fucking GOTO DISNEYLAND! Not buy a game that lets me go virtually!

Kinect Starwars....oh gods this better not.....oh shit..it is. The horrible Lightsaber on rails demo in full game form. My excitement is non-existent for this.

Cookie Monster just introduced Time Schafer. Kinect Sesame Street....looks cute.

Kudo Tsunoda on stage now. Kinect Fun Labs - basically lets you play with Kinect on the Xbox, like people do in videos you see on the web. Apparently it'll be apart of the Dashboard. Full body scanning to turn you into a avatar...3ds does it already. What the hell am I watching now? Something called a Finger Tracking, which is like fingerpaints....but not.

.....I'm not sure I can keep going on with this. Now it shows how Kinect lets you scan in a object, then you get to play with it virtually. -stares-

Well, it's available now to people with a Xbox, so yeah. go play with it if you have a Kinect and tell me WTF.

Montage vide of various Kinect games...looks to be a sports package. Kinect Sports - Season 2. There's a reason Nintendo didn't make a WiiSports 2. Guess MS didn't learn. This is...sad.


Dance Central 2.....not my cup of tea. No thanks. Maybe the only real Kinect game they have though.


Talking points on Xbox now...

New Game Trailer.....is it? It is. Reveal Trailer for Halo 4...first in the new Halo Trilogy. What the fuck was that at the end?


MS Conference ends.

[Dark Silver]

Sony Press Conference

It's 5pm PST....and the conference hasn't started yet.it's actually 3 minutes late - color me unsurprised.

oh hey....12 mins later..we finally get to see inside the hall where the show will be. They tried to tie us over with some streaming of the Playstion new" team stuff.....wasn't very good.

house techno/trance type music and people milling about.....so far Sony is STILL doing better than MS's conference in my opinion :P (I kid I kid)

6 mins later, it starts. Montage video game stuff.

Jack Trenton takes the stage for the opening address. Addresses the Playstation Network outage - makes a joke about it for the press. He talks more about it, some more, makes more profuse apologies, etc.

Cinema Now being added to the playstation Network later this year - not bad.

Naughty Dog takes the stage, Uncharted 3 Drake's Deception Demo being played on stage. As fitting with the previous Uncharted's, it looks beautiful. Shit that ocean looks to real....reminds me of being in a little boat on the ocean going to the rig....

Showing off a Unchartered 3 Trailer done in full 3d. I got a feeling 3D for Sony, will be like Microsoft's Kinect in their conference. fucking everywhere.

Insomniac Games - Resistence 3. Set in 1952, blah blah blah. Should look stunning. He's starting up the demo...."put on your glasses" The video is fuzzy, but that's because IT'S IN FUCKING 3D. RAAAGGGEEE
<cont>

At that point, round about, my feed started going screwy, and I fell aleep. But mostly it was a lot of Playstation Vita (the new Sony handheld) news.

[Dark Silver]

Nintendo Press conference

All times CST

11:00 Live Feed begins. Just showing the hall, looks like we're going to be a few minutes late.

Of the three, so far, only MS started RIGHT on time, but at least nintendo swapped to the feeds I find it telling that Nintendo's music is various flavors of rock and pop music for the "waiting period" while MS and Sony was techno/club.

11:05 - Zelda Montage Video, looks to be celebrating the anniversary of Zelda a lil late. Music is provided by a live orchestra. Class.

Montage ends with scenes from Skkyward Sword. It looks good.

11:09 Miyamoto-san takes the stage. Apparently the Orchestra peice we heard during the montage, is the Skyward Sword's theme - which was just nice. Apparently the Zelda music quality is not suffering in this edition. Miyamoto asks the Orchestra to play some of the Zelda music - "Puzzle solve Chime" , "Opening a Treasure Chest", "Fairy Fountain Theme" And last, full orchestra "getting a item" Flutist screws up and plays the fairy theme a lil. heh.

11:14 - Zelda games on all current nintendo consoles, fromo the past, in celebration of the 25th anniversary. Link's Awakening first game in the E-shop. .....Zelda Ocarina of time 3d launches within the next month.... Zelda on the DSi - 4 Swords Adventure. Skyward Sword comes out this holiday on the Wii. It's finally done.

Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony Concerts will be held in various parts around the world in the fall. look forward to more announcements for dates and venues.

Two Sound Track CD's coming out - Skyward Sword concert CD released when Skyward Sword is, and offficial OST for Zelda Ocarina of Time 3D (for those who register it with Club Nintendo). Miyamoto invites several of the Dev Team members for various Zelda games onto the stage.

11:22 Iwata takes the stage. Begins talking about Nintendo's platforms. Begins gives teasing hints about the philosophy of their new console.

11:25 - 3ds Games montage - Mario Kart 3DS, StarFox3DS, Super Mario 3DS, Kid Icarus...Luigi's Mansion...

11:27 - Reggie comes out on stage. Apparently all the games in the mvideo will be playable on the show floor. Lucky bastards.

First up, full trailer for Mario Kart 3DS, looks good, the gang's got some new tricks (paragliders coming out of the karts for example). Looks like classic gameplay though.

11:31 - StarFox 3DS, fully 3D, camera's record your reactions to what's going on in the game for the characters to react - and the console itself is a controller. You can tilt the controller to act as the flight yoke. Out in September.

Super Mario 3D - Racoon Mario returns. Gameplay footage looks good...and it's interesting. it's a fully 3d mario on a portable, with VERY good graphics. Will be out before years end.

Kid Icarus - looks great still, includes PVP multi-player Be out before years end I'd wager. Will use the Augmented Reality cards to be involved in gameplay.

11:37 look at the new Luigi's Mansion 2. Fond of that old game. Looks pretty good.

11:39 Third Party 3ds games montage - Sonic and Mario at the Olympics, Ace Combat 3d, Tekken 3d, Cave Story 3d....just to name some. All look pretty damn good.


11:40 - talking about the new 3ds Virtual Console for portables.

11:42 - new pokemon game for the 3DS - Pokedex 3D. Available only on the E-shop, not on retail. Apparently it's free if you do the system update.

11:45 - New Nintendo Console is revealed to be called the Wii-U. The controlle looks like a tablet, but has all the buttons we've come to expect, plus the big touchscreen....

holy shit...I can't explain what you can do with the new controller...I'll have to find the video for it. holy shit, that Zelda shot was gorgeous.

6.2" touchscreen put in, can display games on it, can draw on it, can use it to play with Wii controllers and games to....has Rumble built in, microphone, speakers and accelterators and gyroscope, and a inward facing camera. That's a lot of tech in that controller.

The controller is not portable, the Wii-U generates all the images, and it's transmitted tot he controller wirelessly with no latency. To put it mildly, the WiiU is nessacry for the controller to work.

Visuals are in full HD. even on the touchscreen.

11:55 - Miyamoto is back on screen, talking about what you can do with the Wii. Talking about how the Wii's screen is entirely optional for the developers. They can build classic games on it if they want.

Wii-U hardware is on the floor, as well as playable interactive demos. Showing a graphical demonstration of what the Wii-U can do...holy shit that's beautiful. (The aforementioned Tech Demo, vid is a bit low res though. looked better on the stream in HD)

They discuss the demo's they have on the floor, making sure to emphasise that their only demons, not true games.

12:02 - Lego City Stories being developed for Wii-U

12:04 Developer reactions video. They have some big names talking about it. ...Darksider's 2 on the WiiU..Arkham City on the Wiiu, ASSASSIN'S CREED. Those are some huge gaming names for third party.

The Video of upcoming games just showed fucking more! Oh gods.Ninja Gaiden 3....Tom Clany's Ghost Recon online....shit.

12:10 - EA dude comes on, confirms Battlefield 3 on thed WiiU.....plus all the classic fully-nongimped EA sports games.

12:15 Nintendo conference ends.

[Hotfoot]

Key points for the things that matter to me so far that I've seen:

1. Whoever does the cinematics for Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Star Wars: The Old Republic are incredible and I want them doing well-written feature length films. Now.

2. The Old Republic itself, well, it remains to be seen. I'll likely be giving it a go, but beyond that I make no promises.

3. Mass Effect 3: If Bioware can keep up the momentum from ME2, they've got a real winner on their hands. The big question is how will they wrap this up? If they don't knock it out of the park, I think that people will start to question their ability a bit more, especially after the utter debacle that was Dragon Age 2.

4. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Third person works and actually looks good. Two weapon style? Check. Two magic style? Check. Doubling up on spells? Check. Fighting dragons looking and feeling sufficiently bad ass? Check. Dragon speech being sweet? Check. Graphics looking fucking cool even on the console version? Check. Expect not to hear from me after November 11th. I get to call down the lightning!

5. Dust 514, the EVE FPS. For PS3 only. FAIL.

6. Battlefield 3: Look, you don't really need to know much here. It's the proper sequel to Battlefield 2. Destroyable terrain. Huge fucking battles. Vehicles. Made by a developer and put out by a publisher looking to put the fucking nail in the Modern Warfare coffin once and for all. Going up against the publisher that made the coffin in the first place. Given the choice, I'm going to go back to Karkand.

7. Wii U: Nintendo, please get a new naming department. That said, this could be an oddly interesting choice for Nintendo. The console is supposedly more powerful than the 360 and PS3, which is not terribly impressive to us PC folks, but pretty good for console gamers. Supposedly several "real gaming" titles are coming to it, including things like Batman Arkham City. I guess Nintendo missed having those sweet, sweet multiplatform title sales. The real question here is going to be multiplayer connectivity. As we all know, Microsoft is king of the hill there, Sony tried a "bang for your buck" approach, but with the recent hack attack and month-long down time, has plummeted to dead last in that department. Impressive, given Nintendo's bass-ackwards approach to multiplayer functionality, which involves each game requiring stupid long "friend codes" to be input when you want to include people in your games. We'll see how it turns out. The Wii-U can apparently only handle one tablet controller and up to 4 Wii controllers at the same time. And, unlike Sony, the Wii-U offers full backwards compatibility with older Wii games.

Anyway, excuse me for a bit but FUCK YEAH SKYRIM HOLY SHIT!

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

[B4UTRUST]

I have to concur with Hotfoot. The graphics from DX:HR are pretty freaking amazing. Having just finished another run through of the leaked pre-release it's just great and the FMVs are beautiful.

[Lys]

I always wonder about graphics. Not the graphics themselves, but what people say about them. The thing is that there are two possible things that "good graphics" could mean. The most frequently used refers to the technical sophistication: number of polygons, number of objects, quality of textures, complexity of light effects, etc. The other is more properly art direction, how the available resources were implemented to make the game look good.

Sometime after the PS2 generation I kind of just stopped caring about the technical side. I mean, I can tell when something has amazingly sophisticated, and I can even be a little impressed, but I just can't care. I want something that's enjoyable to look at; something interesting and deep and varied. It's kind of irrelevant how sophisticated the graphics are if they used poorly. I frankly like the looks of, say, Perfect Dark better than Modern Warfare or whatever. One did a lot with a little, the other is just... *shrug*.

I bring this up because of Deus Ex: Human Resources. Yeah it is amazing how realistic it all is, to the point that for the first few seconds I thought I was watching an FMV with live actors and such. But the art direction it's... I don't know, quite a bit of it looks cool, but far too much is just dull. It's like they took a nice looking world with actual colour, and then they desaturated the crap out of it and passed it through a brown filter. Who the heck thought this was a good idea?

I can sometimes tolerate oppressive monochrome sometimes, but this game's supposed to be on Earth in the near future*. I know what Earth looks like, I live here, and it doesn't look like the Gods spilled a giant bucket of ochre over everything. Colour can work well to set the tone for the story. Morrowind used it to great effect as a contrast between the various parts of the Vvanderfell, and I found myself really liking the desolate Ashlands. In DE:HR the sort of sepia golden-brown tone worked great for the dream sequence, but then he wakes up into shitdark world that looks the same in every scene and it's lame.

I understand that shiny graphics are shiny, but could we please not neglect the colour palette? The world has more than varying shades of brown and grey.


*Too near honestly. I'll be impressed if in twenty years we have even half the fancy technology in that trailer.