E3 2012

[harv]

You can see my run down of the other conferences above ross. For the first time in years Microsoft actually had a strong showing.

[AVFCRoss]

I was impressed with everything Sony showed. They proved they're still graphically superior to any console on the market, and it's scary to think a console in it's 6th year can still keep raising the bar graphically.

The Wonderbook felt like I'd been transferred to the twilight zone for 5 minutes....It's definitely a kiddies thing though, but it does look quite novel and interesting.

The games that caught my eye the most were Beyond and Last of Us though, absolutely jaw dropping graphics, and with the developers of Heavy Rain and Uncharted behind each, you just know they're GOTY material.

Also, you can't stress enough the importance of exclusive CoD and AC titles for the Vita this year. The PS1 classics, including the whole Final Fantasy library will help the Vita shift an absolute boat load. I can tell Late and Jman will be all over a Vita after that, they said they wanted something solid from it and it doesn't really get bigger than that.

[harv]

Not going to be enough to boost sales significantly in Japan though, which means not a great deal of support from the likes of Capcom, Sega and Konami. If they had announced a new and exclusive Final Fantasy then you'd be talking but you can just bung in the PS1 SKUs of those games into a PS3 and get the same thing, albeit not on the Move. Still, good news with CoD and Assassin's Creed though.

And no sign of Diablo 3 for the PS3 or 360 either, so it's looking like we're going to see that on the U, along with one other Blizzard title.

Can't wait for Beyond and God of War 4 though, they both look stunning.

Bloody hell, I've just realised that GTA V hasn't made an appearance at Sony or Microsoft's conferences...I'll wet myself laughing if it makes an appearance at Nintendo's lololol

[jman]

Depends on the pricing of the ps1 games Ross, given they won't be remakes I'd expect a low price otherwise the vita can sod off seeing as I still own the originals, any word on release date too?

[AVFCRoss]

Yeah, they said "holiday season" this year....So anytime between October and December I suppose. The PS1 classics you can buy on the PS3 are only between £3-5....They'll most likely be the same on the Vita too, and will be downloadable titles.

[harv]

There's a HD trailer of ZombiU here. Gotta love zombie apocalypse games!!!

Still not too happy that they chose to ditch the Freaks though, I'd much prefer them doing both tbh lol. And I was really looking forward to the multiplayer, not too sure how they'll have the same sort of thing with zombies instead of aliens, having generators for aliens made a great deal more sense in terms of plot. Still, I've wanted another Left 4 Dead style game for years and if they do have the same sort of setup for multiplayer games as they did in the proof-of-concept demo last year it should have a more entertaining multiplayer.

I have to say that one thing that's really annoying me these days is the fact that just about every developer is shoe-horning co-op play into every single game. Christ on a fucking bike, if I wanted to be sociable I wouldn't be playing bloody video games lol. The biggest disappointment regarding this is Dead Space 3. It makes absolutely no fucking sense and the game will be worse off without it - so much so that I won't be buying the game!!!

[ancelotti]

Have to say I wasn't blown away by the Microsoft conference. Not interested in Halo but Forza looked decent. Black Ops 2 looked good but isn't it about time they created a new engine? Every game looks exactly the same now and its fun factor is wearing off. Tomb Raider looked awesome, even if they've seemingly gotten rid of Lara Croft.

Xbox Music and Xbox Smartglass were pretty cool. I bet the US fans will be buzzing with the announcements of NBA and NHL coverage on Xbox in addition to ESPN and MLB. Shame we can't get that kind of coverage here for our sport!

EA's was a bit boring. Like Harv says, more boring shooters and no new Fight Night.  FIFA 13 looked exactly like FIFA 12 (shock) and they even had the gall to advertise two "new" features that are already in FIFA 12.

Caught a bit of Ubisoft's and wow... Watch Dogs looks incredible. Anyone who likes GTA should give this a watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dTOnyp58NM

Missed Sony's but looks they've hung the Vita out to dry a bit.

[harv]

Sony's conference is normally a waste of time for new announcements as 90% of the conference has been leaked before it starts lol.

I was really impressed with Microsoft's confernce, although 99% of Gaf have been slagging it off lol. It was very well put together and right from the start had some 'BOOM! Headshot!!!' moments. The trailer for Halo 4 from the start was impressive, and when we saw some gameplay you can certainly see some influence from the ex-Retro staff. Was looking very Prime-esque, which is great. I personally thought that Need 4 Speed was more impressive than Forza, not sure how they've done it but you get more of a sense of speed in Need 4 Speed. I think they may have the framespeed locked at 60fps when the car is moving slowly and are upping it to around 80fps when you put your foot down. Could be wrong, but that's the only thing that I can think of them doing to have that sort of effect.

15 minutes to go for the second part of Nintendo's E3 showings...although technically the first part (the Nintendo Direct) was before E3 started. Can't wait.

[AVFCRoss]

So much for the hardcore market then Harv......Luigi's Mansion, Paper Mario, Super Mario, Lego, Rayman, Pikmin.....Absolute Yawn.com, turned it off.

[harv]

I can't believe they had a golden opportunity to blow the other conferences out of the water and fucked it up. Typical Nintendo lol.

ZombiU is looking good...but where were the announcements for BlOps 2..? FIFA..? Tiger Woods..?

I'm shocked tbh, I thought that third parties would be all over this given that they lost a fortune backing the PS3 6 years ago and not supporting the Wii.

[AVFCRoss]

I can't believe they had a golden opportunity to blow the other conferences out of the water and fucked it up. Typical Nintendo lol.

I can believe it, we're talking about Nintendo here Harv, they've been doing this for almost 15 years...Can't believe I actually watched their conference believing we might actually see something worthwhile.

Oh well, at least I no longer need to be convinced that the U is gonna piss all over the 4/720 when the relevant consoles are finally released and that if you want your hardcore gaming thrills for next gen, the U ISN'T the way to go.

[ancelotti]

Gotta admit, Luigi's Mansion was an astonishingly fun game. I'd love to play a sequel. Wasn't it announced at last year's E3 though? 

I've got a bit of the casual in me that Nintendo feast on. 

[harv]

You'll still have titles on the U for the hardcore crowd. ZombiU looks great and has a nice game mechanic that has you switching protagonists when you die. Your previous protagonist is now a zombie and you have to find and kill him to get your survival bag. Great use of the touchscreen too.

Nintendo have plenty of franchises to appeal to the hardcore crowd, the biggest two will be the titles that Retro and Monolith are working on. Very disappointed that we didn't see anything of them though. You've also got the likes of Zelda, SSB, Metroid, F-Zero, Wave Race and perhaps Ice Climbers in the not too distant future too.

And there's a difference between hardcore titles, casual titles and titles that will appeal to everyone. People often get the last two mixed up. Luigi's Mansion, Mario Kart, 2D Mario games and 3D Mario games aren't casual titles. They are mainstream titles designed to appeal to everyone.

Edit: I'm very pleased to say that ZombiU has kept the multiplayer idea from last years proof-of-concept demo where one player uses the U GamePad with a top-down view to give the player a Dungeon Master type role. Fantastic.

[AVFCRoss]

Harv, for the past god knows how many months, you've been banging on about the U's specifications and how it's power is gonna attract alot of 3rd party support for more games you'd associate with the Xbox/PS....So where were all these games....?

It was just the usual First party rubbish you'd expect from Ninentdo......All this alleged power under the hood and they're still churning out their favourite Mario games that will just waste alot of power (unless the specs are complete BS and it's nowhere near as powerful as people say....)

Reality of it is, Nintendo knows where their market is. People get excited about Nintendo because of Nintendos own games...Why would they change their focus now? All these big guns from the third party developers obviously aren't coming, so isn't about time to accept that Nintendo will always put their own games first....?

Edit : This conference is getting slaughtered by the press.....Finally realising the Wii U will be shit

[harv]

It's getting slaughtered by everyone mate. It seems that Nintendo have learned nothing at all from the 3DS launch, and the 3DS reveal was a million miles better too.

All Nintendo had to do was have a hardcore first party title to showcase the graphics capabilities of the U, showcase the new controller and attract hardcore gamers. I just can't see the reasoning behind the decisions they've made. Unbelievable.

And I'm really disappointed with the third party efforts too apart from Warner Bros. and Ubisoft. FIFA, Madden and Tiger Woods are made for the new controller. No BlOps 2, no Far Cry 3, no Medal of Honor, no Tomb Raider, the list goes on and on.

Arkham City and Aliens Colonial Marines will be greatly improved with the GamePad and ZombiU, Assassins Creed 3 and Rayman Legends look great too but what else is there..? Terrible. I just can't understand why the likes of EA, Capcom and Activision aren't on board for launch or during the launch window. You're guaranteed to have 1m+ sellers at the launch of a console and Nintendo are giving away tens of thousands of pounds worth of middleware with dev kits. Madness.