My thoughts on
all the conferences at E3 2017
Well, E3 has come and gone, and now
it’s time to look back and decide who are the winners and losers. As always
I’ll be going through each of the six major conferences in order of when they
aired, and instead of giving a play-by-play recap I’ll just be talking about
what I did and didn’t like. So with that said…
EA
It’s been a running joke that EA keeps
trying to squeeze as much sports content as possible into their annual
conference, with these games getting more and more airtime as the years have
gone on. This conference seems like the proper next step for them, as it felt
more like a sports show with a few video games sprinkled here and there for
good measure.
With their only major anchor game this
year being Star Wars Battlefront II,
one had to wonder what surprises EA had up its sleeves. And, to their credit,
they had surprises.
By that of course I mean they had two
of them. Or, rather, one and a half.
Most of the conference was dominated
by an ungodly amount of sports and eSports content, enough to really make you
question whether you were watching a video game conference at all. As soon as
it began with a college drum line advertising Madden, I knew we were in for a rough ride.
This year saw parts of the show given
up for FIFA and NBA, as well as three
separate Madden showcases. Three! For
a game that’s basically identical to the one that came out last year! And the
year before that!
As someone who doesn’t care about sports in any
medium, I can’t tell you whether these trailers were good or not. I guess it’s
cool that Madden is getting its own
generic EA Sports singleplayer campaign, but whatever. Like I said last year,
E3 is predominantly watched by geeks and nerds who have no interest in
real-life sports. While EA Sports inevitably needs to be there for the
shareholders, I’ve always said that they should get it out of the way early on
to please the penny-pinchers and spend the rest of their time showing off stuff
the majority of the audience will care about.
So did we see anything new? Well,
there were a couple of interesting things. We got a first glimpse at BioWare’s
next game, entitled Anthem, but as
they said we’ll see more at Microsoft’s conference, you can hear my thoughts on
it over there.
We also saw this year’s EA Originals indie game
by the developers of Brothers: A Tale of
Two Sons, called A Way Out. The
idea behind this game is that it’s exclusively couch co-op splitscreen
multiplayer, where you and a friend play as two prisoners attempting to break
out and finish the job that got them in there. I really think this is a cool
concept, especially as you can see one player involved in a cutscene while the
other is wandering around gathering information. I’ll need to see a bit more
before I’m sold on the concept, but for now I’ll be watching this one with
great interest.
And with that really poorly handled Star Wars reference, let’s talk about Star Wars Battlefront II. Despite being
an enormous fan of Star Wars as a
whole, I’ve made my dislike of 2015’s Battlefront
quite public. I hated how the game released as barely a shell, with more
content coming later…for a price. It
was a bad sign of things to come now that EA had their grubby little hands on
the Star Wars license.
While I’m still not ready to put down seventy
bucks for Battlefront II, I am
extremely happy to say that it looks like EA’s taken some of the major
complaints people had with the first game to heart. In addition to stuff like
space battles and a campaign, Battlefront
II is pulling a Splatoon and
releasing all future content for the game at no cost. If you bought the game,
you’re getting all the stuff that EA and DICE add in later updates. No season
pass bullcrap here, just a developer doing what the industry standard should
be.
They showed off an extended look at the gameplay
(and when I say extended, I mean it), and honestly, it looks like more of what
we saw in the first game. Part of my problem with Battlefront was how massive the maps were, leaving you spending
most of your time running up and down looking for enemy players to fight. I
remember getting lost on Hoth trying to find other players so often. The Naboo
map they showed here looks to be pretty darn big as well, and I worry that the
same problem will be the case here.
The addition of “battle tokens” that you can use
to unlock different weapons as well as hero characters like Rey or Darth Maul
also worry me about the potential for microtransactions coming later on. Who’s
to say that a more powerful character like Emperor Palpatine won’t cost silly
amounts of coin that would take hours of gameplay grinding to earn, or a quick
fee that allows you to unlock him early?
On the plus side, the graphics look just as good
as they did in the first game (ironically Naboo here looks more realistic than
it does in Phantom Menace), and the
flying combat looks to be far less sluggish and cumbersome than it was in the
original. I feel that if EA makes this game more like Titanfall 2 and less like the original, we could have something
special on our hands.
Overall, EA was a real bore this year.
The overabundance of sports that nobody really cared about made large portions
of the conference feel sluggish, like they had nothing else to show so they just
gave us a bunch of filler content. The Battlefront
II gameplay demo was also given
way too much screentime, although I was happy it was at the tail end of the
conference and didn’t really matter. Despite this Battlefront II looks to be a huge improvement on the original, A Way Out looks really intriguing, and
while I wish we’d seen a little bit more of Anthem
the teaser did a great job of getting me excited for the Microsoft conference
the following day.
EA’s biggest problem is that it
doesn’t know who its audience is. Cramming a bunch of trailers for EA Sports
games doesn’t really gel with the geeks that watch these conferences on Twitch.
While the trailers we got for the real games looked pretty good, this
conference floundered because there just weren’t enough of them.
Microsoft
Microsoft’s been navigating a slippery
slope lately. After the Xbox One suffered a disastrous pre-release phase,
things didn’t improve for the gaming giant afterwards. With a lack of
interesting exclusives (and the ability to play them all on Windows 10
anyways), there was little point in buying a One instead of a PS4.
Ever since last E3 Microsoft has been
teasing “Project Scorpio”, an upgraded version of the One with some of the most
powerful processors ever seen on a home gaming console. Here Scorpio was
officially revealed as the Xbox One X, the definitive version of the One.
They got it right out of the way first
thing, revealing the One X and its specs. A lot of it was technical mumbo-jumbo,
but the message was clear: this thing was powerful, and games on it will look
outstanding.
To prove this point, we jumped right
into this year’s Forza showcase. As
much as I dislike going through this every year, I will give Microsoft this:
they got it out of the way for the investors early on, it didn’t go on for too
long, and then they moved onto the real games. If EA adopted this tactic for
its sports games, I think they could really improve their conferences.
With all that out of the way it was
time to get to the real meat and potatoes of the conference: the games. And
boy, there were a lot of them. Some were better or worse than others, but
overall I found myself invested for the whole hour and a half. I got excited
seeing all these new titles. Not enough to shell out $500 to buy a One X
considering all these games will be available on the Windows 10 store, but
enough to strongly consider buying quite a few of them.
Easily the highlight of the conference
for me came in the form of Sea of Thieves.
The latest game to emerge from the tomb of Rareware, this game was notorious
last year for the awful trailer they had. This year felt like a completely
different game, with some awesome looking footage accompanied by some of Rare’s
trademark wit in the form of a funny narrator talking over the whole thing. The
trailer showed off how hunting for buried treasure will work in the game, as it
detailed the quest of a hearty crew voyaging to a mysterious island to find
themselves some loot. There they faced off against foes like sharks, skeleton
warriors, and of course other pirates to try and keep the loot for themselves.
I thought it looked like a ton of fun, especially in a group setting. Pirate
games have always been really hit or miss, so I really hope this one will turn
out good when it releases next year.
One of the biggest surprises for me
came in an unlikely form. Strangely enough the next Assassin’s Creed was announced here instead of at the Ubisoft
conference, being set in Ancient Egypt and telling the story of how the group
of assassins were formed. While at first I brushed it off as just another Assassin’s Creed that’ll make little use
of the cool setting it was put in, the more I saw the more interested I got. It
looked much more like Prince of Persia than
Assassin’s Creed, and the trailer
showing stuff like giant monsters really bookended this for me. Maybe this long
since tired franchise going back to the game it owes its roots to will be just
the breath of fresh air it needs?
Or maybe Ubisoft will screw it up
again. Who knows?
They also announced the next Metro game, called Metro: Exodus. Honestly, at this point whenever I see a game is
being set in a drab and brown post-apocalyptic world I immediately lose
interest, twice so if zombies are involved. I’m sure fans of the franchise are
excited, I just couldn’t get into it.
Speaking of zombies and apocalypses,
easily the worst trailer of the conference came in the form of State of Decay 2. It felt really
mismatched to me, with the voiceover being really intense and serious and
talking about how awful the apocalypse is and how they need to make tough
decisions accompanied by visuals of cartoonish zombies exploding and ripping
people up. It didn’t sell me on the game, that’s for sure.
The conference ended with what was
easily the most anticipated part for me: the reveal of Anthem, BioWare’s new IP. It looked like a hybrid of Destiny and Titanfall to me, with a bit of Horizon:
Zero Dawn thrown in for good measure. This game sees you playing as
freelance warriors of a sci-fi outpost, where you’re given quests from
townsfolk (one of which looks eerily similar to Nolan North) to go on missions,
find treasure, fight monsters and all that good stuff.
The trailer looked awesome. I’m always
up for sci-fi action and adventure, and this game looks like it’s going to
deliver. What I didn’t like was that
this trailer employed Ubisoft’s awful Mic Trick, having voice actors acting
like gamers throughout, which worries me that they’re trying to make the game
seem more dynamic than it actually is. Despite that, the trailer looked great
and I can’t wait to see more of the game.
Microsoft did a great job this year.
Borrowing Sony’s strategy of game after game after game with little nonsense in
between really worked for them, and allowed them to have a high energy
conference with plenty of stuff to get excited about. It did have its low
moments (that yellow shirt guy doing live eSports commentary over a trailer for
a MOBA will forever live on in E3 infamy), but those were easily forgiven.
If anything, this conference made me
get excited about an Assassin’s Creed game,
so I have to give it props for that.
Bethesda
Step right up, folks, and welcome to
Bethesdaland, the only theme park in the world filled to the brim with bugs
that people still say is worth visiting!
Bethesda’s conference last year was
easily my least favourite of the bunch. It was overly long and drawn out, and
focused almost entirely on DLC and expansions for old games with very few
surprises. So did they do a better job this year?
Well, it felt more like two steps
forward and one step back. While they had a few neat things to show off and the
show was mercifully shorter than last year, there wasn’t much to get excited
about.
This wasn’t so much a press conference
in the same vein as the other on-stage showings. It honestly felt more like
Bethesda’s take on the Nintendo Direct format. It opened with a Bethesda
executive coming out and introducing themselves, they played the video showing
off all the new stuff, and then that was it. The “Bethesda showcase” lasted
just under forty minutes, and was basically trailer after trailer tied together
using transitions with a cute vintage theme park ad style. Normally I’m a fan
of this, because this usually lets the trailers speak for themselves without a
bunch of fluffing around in between. Sony’s conference last year was a
fantastic example of how this can work well.
The only problem was that quite a few
of the trailers didn’t really speak for themselves. For example, there was a
trailer for a new Dishonored…thing.
Is it an expansion to Dishonored 2?
Is it an Uncharted: Lost Legacy style
spinoff? Or is it a full-fledged sequel? Going by just this conference, I have
absolutely no idea.
Just like last year, a good 75% of
this conference was given up to Bethesda saying “Hey, remember all those games
you loved that we released years ago? Here’s more stuff for those!” This led to
a lot of talk of DLC, VR expansions, and Elder
Scrolls Online nonsense. Thankfully the trailers this year were far less
sterile and boring than the ones we saw last year, leaving me a little more
invested in stuff that I’m never going to play than I would’ve been otherwise.
Easily the highlight for me was when
they talked about how Skyrim is going
to work on the Nintendo Switch. It was very brief, but it gave us a good idea
of what’s going to be included in that version. For one thing, Breath of the Wild amiibo will be
compatible in the game, unlocking awesome gear like Link’s champion tunic from
the game and the Master Sword. They also revealed that you can use the Joycon
motion controls for the combat in-game, but I highly doubt that anyone will
actually use those.
I guess I should also talk about the
big controversial reveal that was here as well. Bethesda’s introducing
something called the Creation Club, which is a really fancy way of saying that
they’re making paid-for mods a thing. In all honesty, I see no way this is
going to work. What’s stopping someone from making a mod identical to the one
that costs three bucks but releases it for free? Plus with so many mods
released over the six years since Skyrim released
I find it hard to believe they’ll come up with something worth paying for that
we haven’t seen a million times already.
We also saw more of Quake Champions, and man, I was really
disappointed. They gave us some actual gameplay, but it just looks like Overwatch minus the charm. The
characters run around teleporting and moon jumping and using all sorts of
powers we’ve seen a million times before, and they all spout edgy chatter
trying and failing to sound badass. It looked really average and not that
interesting to me.
Then we moved on to some actual new
games we haven’t seen before. We got a brief look at The Evil Within 2, which got a really trippy looking CG trailer
involving a guy being engulfed by white goop a lot. It looks like a decent
horror game, just not one I’m interested in.
The big finale game they had was a new
Wolfenstein, which really reflected
the rest of the conference: pretty darn forgettable. It had a cool intro with a
crazy Lassie knockoff starring a
giant robot dog, but after that it looked just like every other generic action
game we’ve seen a million times before. Main character dude is a white guy with
a shaved head and a gun, and he’s angry and wants to kill all the Nazis. While
story isn’t something I really prioritize in games, a good story can take an
average game and elevate it to a good or even great one. This just looked like
something I’ve seen a million times before.
I think I can safely say that Bethesda
really didn’t need to hold a conference this year. They could’ve shown off Evil Within and Wolfenstein at Sony’s or Microsoft’s conference and it would’ve
saved all of us forty minutes of our time. As soon as they learn to stop
relying on patting themselves on the back for games that they released up to
six years ago to fill time and instead only do conferences if they actually
have something to show, I think Bethesda might become one to look forward to.
Until then though, you can skip this conference and miss absolutely nothing.
Ubisoft
Let me start this off by saying I take
full responsibility for this conference. Two weeks ago a wrote an article
titled “Fixing Ubisoft’s E3 Conferences”, where I went over all the ways those
wacky Frenchmen over at Ubisoft could salvage their conferences and create
shows worth looking forward to.
Much to my surprise, they took nearly
every suggestion I made and applied it. This year was just over an hour in
length, had no Aisha Tyler, no extended interviews with developers, no wacky
memes and skits, every game onstage got its fair share of screentime, and best
of all, no annoying fake gamer chat layered over the multiplayer trailers. I
mean, Microsoft did that last thing in their Anthem trailer, but having the ones who originated that stupid
trick seemingly retire it is a definite step in the right direction.
Instead, this Ubisoft conference was
all about games, games and more games, and, to nobody’s surprise, it really
worked. It worked enough to make you forget that you were watching a conference
by the kings of false promises who release games with downgraded graphics, an
infestation of bugs, and filled to the brim with microtransactions on a regular
basis.
We started off with what is perhaps
the worst kept secret of the video game industry in years: Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Much to everyone’s surprise,
Shigeru Miyamoto himself arrived on the scene packing heat. The game itself
looks pretty interesting, kind of like a “Baby’s First XCOM” type of thing. I think if the Rabbids weren’t a part of it
and it was just Mario I’d be much more interested.
The big announcement of the conference
for me was Skull and Bones, a brand
new pirate game from Ubisoft (making this the second swashbuckling game we’ve
seen at this conference. I personally am all for a pirate game renaissance).
While it looks like the type of game that’s doomed to be filled with bugs and
microtransactions, it looked like a lot of fun. It’s definitely a more
realistic pirate game than Microsoft’s Sea
of Thieves, and I really like that we’re going to have two very different
games in the same genre next year. I’m really excited to see more of what this
game has to offer.
They also introduced Starlink: Battle for Atlas, which looked
like an interesting concept, while also seeming kind of like a money pit. From
the looks of it Starlink looks to be
a game in similar vein to Skylanders
with a sci-fi twist. You can mix and match pieces of a ship in the real world,
and then attach it to a terminal tied to your controller to have it appear in
the game. It’s a neat idea, but one has to wonder if this’ll actually work. For
one thing if the ship parts are expensive, sold separately, and necessary to
progress in the game, I feel this one’ll sink quicker than Disney Infinity did. Only time will tell.
Despite these highs, there were a few
low points as well. For one thing the trailer for The Crew 2 went on for way too long while at the same time showing
us absolutely nothing of what the game would actually look and play like. There
was also a big wacky dance number to advertise Just Dance, complete with Mortal
Kombat knockoffs and a very disheveled looking panda. It was thankfully
short, leading me to believe that EA is the only company left that doesn’t
understand they should get the games that are only at the conference for the
investors out of the way either early on in the show or in a very brief
segment.
Much to my surprise Assassin’s Creed had barely any presence
this year. We actually saw more of it at Microsoft’s show than at Ubisoft’s.
What they showed still looked really interesting, and as I said before the
Egyptian setting has the potential to be the breath of fresh air this exhausted
franchise needs to survive.
Just as it looked as if the conference
was going to end with a Far Cry 5 trailer
(which looks pretty boring to me), Ubisoft announced they had one last thing.
And guess what? After nearly fifteen years, Beyond
Good and Evil 2 finally debuted. I’m completely unfamiliar with the first
game so I’m not super excited for it, but I’ll admit the trailer looked really
unique. The character designs looked really cool, and the action was very well
animated. The swearing made it feel kind of juvenile to be completely honest,
but other than that it looked like something fans of the first game will be
excited about.
Ubisoft really wowed me this year. They
finally did what we’d been asking them to do for years and trimmed all the
unnecessary fat that’s plagued them in the past. With no memes, extended breaks
for interviews or overly long sketches, we got to see a lot of stuff in a much
shorter amount of time. If this is their first steps on the road to redemption,
I’ll happily walk with them the whole way.
Sony
Sony has changed the way E3 has been
presented just with their last conference alone. The reason why Microsoft and
Ubisoft really dazzled this year was because they borrowed a lot of the tricks
Sony used for their 2016 conference. So this year they decided to do the same
thing again and…it was underwhelming.
Don’t get me wrong, this conference
wasn’t bad by any means. They showed a lot of trailers for games that looked
really cool, but there wasn’t really a big “wow” moment until the very end of
the show, nor was there a big surprise that turned a lot of heads. Compared to
how Microsoft had stuff like Anthem
and Ubisoft had Beyond Good and Evil 2 and
this conference felt like it was lacking a bit of oomph.
(I’m also not considering the stuff
announced in the pre-show as part of the actual conference so Undertale on PS4 doesn’t count)
We started off with a look at Uncharted: Lost Legacy as well as some
DLC for Horizon: Zero Dawn entitled The Frozen Wilds. A Horizon expansion of sorts was very high on my list for Sony’s
conference, so I’m very happy to be returning to Aloy and her mechanical world
later this year. Uncharted looks
delightful as well, as we got more of a look at the story. I did feel we saw a
bit more than I would’ve liked (for example it looks like Nadine is gonna
betray Chloe at some point in the game), but it got me very excited to play the
game come August.
We then got another extended look at Days Gone. Last year they wowed us with
how many zombies they were able to render onscreen. This year…there was nothing
in it that really impressed. I think zombie apocalypse games’ days in the sun
have come and gone, and this kind of feels like a “me too!” game instead of a
release worth getting excited over. I personally am so sick of the genre that
this didn’t interest me even after it showed a zombie bear.
We then segued into several short
trailers for various smaller games being released, including Monster Hunter Worlds, an HD remake of Shadow of the Colossus, and a further
look at Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite.
While I’m not a fan of the franchise at all, I really thought that Monster Hunter looked really cool. Shadow of the Colossus also looked great
on the PS4. I wasn’t a fan of the Marvel
vs. Capcom trailer though. The cutscenes honestly looked like something off
the PS2, with unsynched mouth movements and frankly very poor voice acting. I
get the feeling the story mode in the game won’t be one that impresses.
The conference then decided to
faceplant as it showed off ten minutes of games for PlayStation VR. I thought
that VR was dead and buried, but I guess Sony felt the need to drag its corpse
out of the mausoleum for all to see. None of the games looked even remotely
interesting, and they ranged from yet another
new version of Skyrim to a Final Fantasy fishing minigame. If there
ever was a way to kill hype in an E3 conference, it was what Sony did here.
Thankfully, God of War swooped in to try and save the day, and it looked really
cool. I would’ve preferred a longer gameplay demo instead of the sizzle real we
got, but I did enjoy seeing Kratos rip into some Norse goblins. The dynamic
between him and the boy (confirmed to be his son here) also looked to be a huge part of the story, and it looked to be a great relationship. I really like how the
game seems to be a departure from past God
of War games, giving newbies to the franchise like myself a jumping-on
point while also giving the devs a chance to try something new.
Next up was Detroit: Become Human, the next game by David Cage of Heavy Rain fame. Last year it looked
like a really interesting concept as a sort of massive choose-your-own
adventure game, and this year it still looked like just that: an interesting
concept. I still think like I need to see the real meat and potatoes of what
makes this game tick before I can really be interested in it. That, and the
storyline they showed off looked considerably less interesting than the android
investigator we saw last year. It’s yet another rebellion/uprising story, one
we’ve seen done many times before. If that’s the route they’re going I can’t
say I’m too excited.
They say it’s best to end on a high,
and Sony did just that with their knockout punch: the gameplay reveal for Spider-Man. And what a reveal it was.
This looks like it’s going to be the Arkham
of Spider-Man games. The combat, webslinging and Spidey-sense all look like
they’re going to be a blast to work with, even if there did seem to be a
reliance on quick-time events. I also liked that a lesser known Spidey villain,
Mr. Negative, was represented as the main villain here. I really want them to
cram as much into this game as possible, and having a ton of missions involving
a bunch of Spidey’s rogues gallery sounds just plain awesome.
And that was it! While I really
enjoyed this conference, I couldn’t help but feel a little unsatisfied at the
end. There wasn’t really a big reveal of a brand new game. I knew Uncharted, God of War, Detroit and Spider-Man were all going to be there,
and while those all looked really cool, I felt like this conference was missing
a crucial part of E3: the surprises. Their biggest surprise in my opinion was
the Horizon DLC, which still has me
stoked, but just like how Bethesda had an over-reliance on past glories, I
didn’t feel like Sony had anything new to
show me.
But that Spider-Man trailer was incredible and I don’t want to wait until
2018 to play it.
Nintendo
Nintendo’s never really taken E3
seriously. Since they hold a Nintendo Direct once every few months, there’s
really no need for them to rush all their latest news out the door in June.
Instead they usually take this opportunity to show off what they’ve got planned
for later on this year, and save their announcements for what’s coming later
down the line for around November.
This conference was easily the
shortest of them all, but it moved about in a way that still left you feeling
fulfilled. I left this conference feeling like I got everything I came for: new
info on games coming later this year plus some surprises for the future.
While we got some more of the expected
stuff like Mario Odyssey and Xenoblade (more on those in a second),
Nintendo also had quite a few surprises. First off, both Kirby and Yoshi will be
getting new platforming games on the Switch next year. While I’ve never been a
huge Kirby fan, the mechanic of
turning enemies into your own personal army looks like a lot of fun. On the
other hand I love the Yoshi series,
and while I think I would’ve preferred a Woolly
World sequel, this game looks to be taking some inspiration from Yoshi Story, a nostalgic favourite of
mine.
Oh yeah, and they also announced Metroid Prime 4. Seems cool.
In all seriousness, this was
definitely Nintendo’s big bomb they were packing this year, and they knew it.
While this trailer only showed the logo, it did it in a way that was still
awesome. This year marks a decade long wait since the last really good Metroid game, and while I’m guessing
it’s still quite a ways off, I’m glad fans of the franchise finally have
something to hold on to.
Speaking of brief announcements,
Ishihara of The Pokémon Company arrived to confirm that they were working on a
brand new main series Pokémon game
for Nintendo Switch. He also added that it was still at least a year away from
release, so this tells me that they only threw this in there to silence those
who were whining about Ultra Sun and
Ultra Moon being on the 3DS. It’s still really exciting to think that we’re
finally getting a real Pokémon game
on consoles after all these years, and it’s not some knockoff like Colosseum or Battle Revolution.
We also got a glimpse at some new
content for Breath of the Wild,
including a release date for the first DLC pack as well as a tease for what the
second one will hold. It looks like it’ll focus on the story of the four
Champions, which was further hinted thanks to the announcement of amiibo for
all four of them. They look really well designed, but I’m gonna be waiting to
see what they actually do before I pick them up.
As for the stuff coming this year, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 got a story
trailer showing off what it’s going to look like. As someone who isn’t a fan of
active-time battle RPGs whatsoever I’m not really interested, but it looked
like something the fans would enjoy. We also saw a glimpse of Fire Emblem Warriors, which I’m guessing
is a crossover between the Fire Emblem series
and the Dynasty Warriors games in the
same vein of Hyrule Warriors. While
I’m not huge on Fire Emblem I do
enjoy Warriors games, so I’m looking
forward to seeing more.
And then it was time for the big man
in red himself to finally show up.
No, not Santa. The other guy.
Super
Mario Odyssey has easily been the most anticipated Switch game ever since Breath of the Wild launched, and it was
obvious Nintendo was going to have it be their big name this year. What we
didn’t expect was exactly how it was going to look. The Mario Odyssey trailer gave us a better idea of how the game is
going to work. While it’s similar in style to stuff like Mario Sunshine, the two big hooks this time is that Mario can
change his outfit and use his that to possess enemies, animals, NPCs, and
basically whatever he wants. You want to be a t-rex with Mario’s mustache? You
can do that. Despite the terrifying implications of that, I really like it as a
mechanic. It’s a clever twist on Mario’s standard power-ups.
Nintendo’s conference was short but oh
so sweet. They packed a ton of fun trailers and info into those twenty-five
minutes, leaving me with a huge smile on my face. I’m also glad that a lot of
the games they showed off are releasing sooner rather than later, because a
gripe I usually have with E3 is how they so often showcase games not coming out
for up to two years later. Good job, guys.
FINAL
SCORES
(Friendly reminder that this is just
my opinion and doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things)
1. Microsoft:
8/10 (Great)
2. Ubisoft: 8/10
(Great)
3. Nintendo: 7/10
(Good)
4. Sony: 6/10
(Okay)
5. Bethesda: 3/10
(Bad)
6. EA: 2/10
(Awful)
We live in a world where Ubisoft had a
better E3 this year than Sony. Let that sink in.
Honestly, it was pretty hard for me to
decide where to place the top three this year. I shuffled them and changed
their scores a lot, but ultimately I made my decision once I considered the
sheer amount of interesting and exciting looking stuff Microsoft showed off. They
stuck to their promise of showing forty-two games, and while not all the
trailers were created equal, a lot of them really piqued my interest. They even
found a way to make the next Assassin’s
Creed look cool!
Ubisoft and Nintendo both had
extremely stellar showings packed with surprises. The Beyond Good and Evil 2 and Metroid
Prime 4 reveals were some of the most memorable parts of the entire
conference, and with good reason. Having those games finally shown off after
long absences really encapsulated what makes E3 great for me: being surprised
and wowed by what the games industry is packing next.
And this is where Sony was sorely
lacking this year. People joked that their conference was “2016 Remastered”,
and I’d have to agree with them on that. While they had some awesome trailers
for stuff like Spider-Man and God of War, we knew those games were
coming. The lack of something new really made the conference lose some of the
“oomph” it’s had in the past.
Leading up the rear are Bethesda and
EA for obvious reasons. Bethesda honestly shouldn’t even have held a conference
this year, considering they had barely anything to show. Plus the paid mods
announcement made people way angrier than it did excite and interest them. EA,
on the other hand, traveled further down the path of adding more and more
sports into the conference, leaving us with a real snoozefest.
As always, I really enjoyed watching
E3! Even the worst conferences make me more excited about being a part of the
game industry, and I love seeing what the companies have in store for us each
year.
But I’m not done yet! Come back Monday
as I count down my best and worst trailers from the entire show! See you then!
