E3 2015

[curseoftheninja]

So, I am surprised this hasn't been talked about yet in this forum.

What say ye? How was Microsoft's conference? Did you like the announcements? What stuck out to you? Any 3rd party action you enjoyed?

 

[DavidinCT]

I watched all 3, Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo (I have all of the systems, Xbox one, 360, PS3, PS4, WiiU and 3DS/Vita).

I thought over all, Microsoft won E3, the Compatibly for 360 games was huge, Over all upcoming games for this season look great, easy 3-4 games that will be pre-order for me. Their presentation was very well done. Games Must own that come to mind Forza 6, Tomb Raider, Gears 4 off the top of my head.

Playstation's was pretty good over all, I liked the way they moved game to game (last years was very laggy and seemed to take forever), A few titles looked really good, and of course I will lose sleep till Uncharted 4 hits (One of my all time favorite game series, almost my only reason to have a PS4). Over all, not as many of exclusives as Microsoft and most things are next year or later. It also seems like they forget the Vita, 1 title and was noted on a PS4 title, There was a drinking contest on Twitter on Sony's press statement, Every time they said Vita, you had to drink, trust me, I was very sober. A MAJOR disappointment. Other titles(PS4) that stood out for me as must buy if good reviews....The Last Guardian, Horizon and Hitman

Nintendo. they used puppets to run their show ? Really ? Over all, was expecting (hoping) for some bigger titles, a bunch of 3DS and WiiU stuff but, nothing that Wowed me by any means. A new Zelda 3DS game, Start Fox Zero for the WiiU and Super Mario creator were the big titles in the show.

Although Super Mario Creator looks cool, it only covers the older (Mario 1-3) games, so you can create games based on that, cool but, this would of been great 5-7 years ago, Those games although great titles, seem dated compared to anything today. Still could be fun to play with...

Sorry I could of forgotten a title here or there, I have been following E3 like crazy and there is a lot of cool stuff coming out.

There is my 0.02 on E3 from the big 3.....

 

[curseoftheninja]

I agree that I thought MS conference was more impressive than Sony. I, too, have 3-4 games I will buy in the fall. I think MS's good-will toward the gamer showed throughout the conference. I am most pumped for Halo and Tomb Raider. The Rare collection is a cool little title that I will probably pick up as well. I am interested to see a gameplay demo of Rare's pirate IP. It looked nice, but I want to see what the gameplay is like.

Sony's conference was lacking. Sure Uncharted 4 looked amazing, but I'm not aboard the Hype Train for Last Guardian. I feel like this game is so hyped because it has been a mystery for so long. Long delay does not necessarily mean the game will be great. The game play demo shown at the conference was definitely lackluster to me. Also, I have not ever been a Final Fantasy fan, so the FFIIV announcement does nothing for me. Also, that game will most likely be coming to Xbox One, so I don't see that as a point in Sony's favor either.

Nintendo's lack of WiiU announcements tells me that the NX is coming sooner rather than later. It seems that Nintendo might be abandoning ship on WiiU. Honestly, after the Wii (I was a day 1 Wii buyer), Nintendo has left a bad taste in my mouth. The NX will really have to dazzle me to buy a Nintendo console again.

As for 3rd party, I am most excited about Fallout 4 and the new Deus Ex. The original Deus Ex is one of my most favorite games of all time. Deus Ex: Human Revolution was a step back to its Deus Ex roots, and I am fully confident that Eidos will make another great game. Bethesda makes great games. Although I prefer Elder Scrolls to Fallout, I am excited to play Fallout 4. They seem to be adding more color to the world, which I think will make it more fun to explore the world.

 

[Keith Wallace]

I wasn't overly impressed with any of the announcements. Nintendo totally flopped for me, as the only surprise of interest was Mario Tennis, and a lot of it is 2016 stuff (Fire Emblem, SMTxFE, and some other stuff I had no interest in). Nintendo just needs more IPs to work from. I mean, we're not getting Pokemon this year? That's pretty indicative of how poor their options are right now.

Sony was very multi-platform-heavy, thanks to minor exclusives from Destiny, BO3, Arkham Knight, and maybe another game or two I forgot. The rest isn't interesting to me. I've never played the Uncharted series, so the new one doesn't interest me. Horizon: Zero Dawn looked like a neat Witcher-Crysis mash-up, but lacked any general release window or serious details. The Last Guardian was highly vague and not an attention-grabbing title for me. The Final Fantasy stuff doesn't register with me. So, it's basically one far-off exclusive with little details that interested me, the rest is stuff I know Sony's fans wil like, but I haven't experienced the stuff and am not dying to at all.

Microsoft was better, but only because I'm living in their ecosystem. Forza 6 kind of showed what a joke of a rushed tech demo Forza 5 was, given the car and track counts and other features (weather, night cycle, etc.). Still, I can only enjoy racing for so long before I get burned out, so we'll see how long that redundant circuit racer holds my attention. Halo is what it is, and I didn't need it shown to make me want it. Warzone was uninteresting, as those hectic, luck-based multiplayer modes never get me excited. I'll need more details before I even slightly consider stepping into a lobby for it. ReCore gave us nothing, Gigantic looked kind of lame, and Sea of Thieves didn't grab my attention, leaving me with nothing to enjoy, in the realm of new IP. Rare Replay is really sweet, but I'd rather they announced a remastering of those games that would release in 2 years or something. I'll still gladly toss my $30 at it, but it could have been better (they're wasting a lot of established IP with a lack of new releases under those IPs, we all know it). Gears of War might just be dead to me now. That $40 price tag on a remaster of a single game is pathetic. It just screams to me that Microsoft needed some quick turnaround on revenue, after buying the franchise from Epic. Plus, the Gears 4 trailer was really lame, as the characters were just awkward and uninteresting. I don't care about Rise of the Tomb Raider, and the devs' sellout exclusivity honestly turns me off to them. Minecraft was fun to see on HoloLens, but it is still a game that I got bored of in a week, and I don't see that tech changing it (especially when HoloLens has no real release date or price tag). I don't care about Fable: Legends, as I don't yet trust its free-to-play model won't be DLC-heavy, and I generally don't gravitate towards fantasy RPGs.

Ubisoft is still leading the way for me, if I pick a preferred developer. The Division is coming, and it looks awesome, like always. Rainbow Six: Siege has a lot of potential. Ghost Recon: Wildlands seems pretty awesome, but I'm not convinced it's not a 2017 wait, or a late-2016 release at best. It's going to be an awkwardly redundant mix of The Division's gunplay and Watch Dogs' open world stuff, I fear. We didn't even hear about Watch Dogs, making me think The Division is early-2016, Ghost Recon is late-2016 or early-2017, and Watch Dogs is early- or late-2017, so keep them spread out.

I think the worst part of E3 was the clear gender pandering, though. So many established series are replacing men with women, or at the very least, adding women to traditionally male rosters (Assassin's Creed, Dishonored, Fallout, FIFA, Deus Ex, NieR, and probably others I'm forgetting). On top of that, most of the new IP that we saw for the first time pushed female leads. ReCore did it. Horizon did it as well. There really wasn't a new, surprising IP that had a male lead (The Last Guardian had it, but it's a title that started nearly a decade ago). It feels like some kind of overcompensation for the outrage by females (and not necessarily female gamers) over the past few years, given the number of male-led games pushing females as a real feature, but female-led games not bothering to add a male option.

I ended this E3 SO JADED from that matter. I don't mind female lead characters. Horizon looked really awesome in its short demo, and if I ever get a PS4, I'd totally look at getting it. Still, I'm not enjoying the industry's decision to act like male characters are a problem, and that we should distance ourselves from being guys. Even Assassin's Creed's "choice" put the female up front, made the male a background voice, and established the female as really being the flagship character of Syndicate (Dishonored 2 did something similar). Engadget bothered to actually write an article about Deus Ex's inclusion of female characters, and acted like it was a huge deal. Maybe this is an awkward mix of the worst of the media and a one-year pushing of female characters, and E3 2016 will have some more male-led IP. If this is just going to be the norm, and we're going to turn gaming into a politically correct equality-fest, it might be time to abandon ship, before gaming becomes the remake, politically correct nightmare that movies often are, in too many instances.