Monday 9 July 2012

Return to blogging, E3 + and beyond

Hey guys, it's been a while. I realise i had made a promise to you all that i'd make a blog on E3, and i kind of didn't. Sorry, there isn't really a good excuse to what i can say for that, i got caught up with a few other bits at the same time, and never got round to making a full blog on the matter. So what i'll do now, i'll condense everything worth mentioning from each of the conferences into a paragraph or two, and then move onto july news and my plans for the future of this place.

E3 - Microsoft


Microsoft once again got E3 off to...a start. It wasn't exactly spectacular, but they had made some decent choices in titles to show off. Halo 4 got the show off to a pretty good start, with a very Metroid Prime-like feel to the game. Very much welcome if you ask me. Has huge promise, and 343 studios can certainly capitalise on that. They moved onto the new Splinter Cell title which looks very splinter cell like, but with Kinect voice commands, much like what you saw in Mass Effect 3. Gears of War Judgement got it's teaser trailer reveal showing off Baird mostly, but we know that Cole train will feature as well, and it looks to be set prior to E-Day, so will make for an interesting sequel. After this, Tomb Raider was shown to be fairly nice looking, but it went fairly downhill from there. Dance Central 3 feat. Usher,  Fable The Journey trailer, Xbox Smartglass(controls xbox + extra features on a windows 8 smartphone/tablet), more 3rd party apps for the 360, Black Ops 2, you get the idea. It was a strong show for the first half, then died down after. We got some of the South Park game from Obsidian in there though, so it wasn't to bad nearer the end. Good news was, there was far less kinect this time round. They might have finally caught on how to use it properly

Sony


Sony was interesting, they where by far better than Microsofts conference, with strong showings of games like The Last of Us, Playstation All Stars battle Royale, God of War Ascension., Assassin's Creed 3(+ Vita 3) and the guys behind Heavy Rain showcased their new title, Beyond: Two Souls. They did however, try to get more coverage for what is quite widely deemed a flop, The PS Move. new games for the "Wonderbook" including one written by J K Rowling where shown off, however it didn't impress much. If they removed this and put in PSVita coverage instead, they would have been better off. All in all better than microsoft, but still fairly weak.

Ubisoft


Never was there a day when i though i'd say this but, Ubisoft stole the show. They showed off Rayman Legends for WiiU which looked fantastic. Keeping to the same style as Origins but incorporating the extra things that the WiiU will offer. Moving swiftly onto more Assassins Creed and then ZombiU was shown a little next to some of the other titles for WiiU. What stole it for them however, was the last title they showed off; Watch Dogs. I don't think i could do the game justice by my description, so i highly recommend you check out Youtube or a gaming site for the gameplay they showed off, it was...fantastic to say the least.

Nintendo


Finally Nintendo, who somehow managed to disappoint amidst high hopes. They even did two shows, one focusing on the WiiU, the other on the 3DS, yet still managed to show nothing of spectacular worth. The console itself looks fantastic, Pikmin 3 was shown off, Batman Arkham City Armored Ed was shown, ZombiU, NintendoLand and New Super Mario Bros for WiiU, but they didn't give us an extact date or price range. the 3DS show gave us Castlevania: Mirror of Fate, Kingdom Hearts 3DS, Luigis mansion 2, New Super Mario Bros 2 and Paper Mario, but it just wasn't something new or gripping.

So was there an outright winner? no. You could say Ubisoft for showing proper stuff, but honestly, noone stole it. I didn't see EAs, but all it had basically was Dead Space 3. I just hope the Tokyo Game Show can give us more from Nintendo.

Now, for this month and beyond. July has had a few decent announcements here or there. Many will know that Tales of Xillia has been announced for EU/US possibly alongside it's sequel but that is TBA, but no release date confirmed. Persona 4 Golden has helped the Vita get it's drive back, as you'd expect now it's released, Persona 4 Arena has 30-40 hours storyline content, and of course, there is the continued concern for Mass Effect 3 now that the extended cut DLC is out. That's just a taste of things, but expect a weekly update on news from here on out.

As for what i plan to do, i intend to do 3-4 posts a week, one focusing on my gaming at present, one on news, a review if i can, anime updates, and something else which i'm still considering. It may take me a week or two to get into the right state of mind for it, but please look forward to what i put up here, and if you wish to contact me at all, you can always find me on twitter @ARX7Laevatein or watching over everyone at  www.animeuknews.net.

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