My body is ready - Nintendo E3 Conference

Started a few minutes late, but to kick things off, they go straight for their green boy, Link, as Nintendo Celebrates 25 years of The Legend of Zelda. Fully orchestrated music at the front to add to the effect. At the same time, they cleverly throw in gameplay from the upcoming Ocarina of Time 3D, then onto the new Skyward sword, with a new trailer, which looks pretty damned nice from what's shown. On walks Shigeru Miyamoto, talking about the music for Zelda, from what i can make out, he is essentially saying that the music for Skyward Sword is set to be fully orchestrated. They get the orchestra at the front to play some of the infamous music from the game, such as solving a puzzle or getting an item from a chest. This leads cleanly into the 3D eshop, and that links awakening will be the first game available for the GBC on the shop, and of course next weekend has Ocarina of Time launch on the 3DS.

Ocarina of time has Master quest in the game as well as a boss challenge mode. On DSi will be available the four swords zelda game free for everyone. Skyward Sword will be out this Holiday season around the world and will also get a limited edition golden wii controller.

The legend of Zelda 25th anniversary symphony concerts will happen this fall in every region of the world, along side two official soundtracks, one for Ocarina of Time 3D which is available for those that register the game with club nintendo, and the other will be for the symphony orchestra.

Iwata replaces Miyamoto on the stage to talk about the changing of the gaming industry and the way people view each console. He now starts to say that the new home console will be made to bring in all kinds of gamers, and not focus on just bringing in one type. But that will come up later, now he moves onto games for the 3DS

It starts off with stuff like Mario Kart, Star Fox, Super Mario Bros, Kid Icarus, Luigis Mansion in the trailers. Now, on comes good old Reggie. To start off, he covers Mario Kart for the 3DS which looks even better than the one they have on the Wii graphically. Courses seem to be in the air, on the ground, underwater and so on. You get stuff like gliders and rotors for boats as you cover different areas of each course. And the release will be out this winter.

Star Fox is next to hit the screen. You can use buttons to turn and manoeuvre the characters or you can use the built in gyro-sensor to move instead. Much like how the PSV was showing to use it's 6-axis you could say.

Super Mario 3D finally gets it full unveiling with some gameplay. it looks to incorporate 3D and 2D gameplay, and you suits shown are the likes of the tanuki suit and fire flower. And will be out this year.

Kid Icarus: Uprising returns with new gameplay shown, as well as what looks to be multiplayer as well. It also comes with new Augmented reality cards. Multiplayer looks like it will be 3 on 3, and the augmented reality cards can be used to battle other players.

Luigi finally makes its triumphant return with Luigis Mansion 2. Gameplay looks exactly as you would hope, keeping to what it was always good at. It will include more than one mansion this time round.

Now onto the third party games, showcasing Resident Evil: The Mercenaries, Ace Combat 3D, Tetris, Cave Story 3D, Revelations, Driver Renegade, Pac-Man & Galaga, Tekken 3D & MGS: Snake Eater. He touches on the virtual console for the 3DS, covering games even before the NES. You get 3D excitebike for free for a limited time only now the update is available. You can get a free 3D pokedex, which will have 16 in the game when you start. You get others through spotpass, trading with others, augmented cards and so on. And these can be used alongside your camera and for photos.

The new system seems to be called the Wii U. The new controller is shown, it has a 6" touch screen in the middle of the controller, and has two analog sticks, d-pad, shoulder buttons and the regular A,B,X,Y. Games from the new system can be transfered to the Wii U controller. it can be used for drawing as well. Games like checkers and othello are on it too. It can interact with all of the Wii controls and from the look of it, the Wii as well. Video Calls can be done on it also, and it can interact with the internet and TVs.

As said above, it's completely backwards compatible with the Wii. The controller also has a gyroscope, touch screen, microphone and such. To cover this more again, Miyamoto appears again going into detail about how it will work. Developers can decide how they want the game to work with the console. Whether it works with gyro-sensor and the screen, or just for the big screen and such. There is endless ways to deal with it, which is what they where wanting, so that any developer can work on it.

Sakurai has decided to make a Super Smash Brothers for both the Wii U and the 3DS, and not only that, but it will also work together with the game, however it is not really covered on how this will work.

Developers like last year are now saying what they could do with the console. from THQ, EA, Ubisoft and so on. Darksiders 2, Tekken both are set for it on launch, Batman: Arkham City, Assassins Creed, Ghost Recon Online, EA sports, all of which are set for it. Now they go into trailers for the games, Dirt, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Metro: Last Light, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor Light where also ones shown for the console.

EAs lead director comes onto the stage for the first time ever with Nintendo. Think he just hinted at Battlefield 3 for the Wii U. Reggie comes on to conclude the conference saying how the DS, Wii, 3DS and now the Wii U all have come to change gaming.

So ends the show, with that bombshell.

Ubisoft E3 press Conference

This conference starts off with the main director thanking everyone for 25 years of Ubisoft.

We start off officially....with fail acting of shakespeare. And with Rayman Origins. Gameplay looks to be in 2.5D and chasing after chests, at least for the first part. Now onto some platforming with some music we all should know as Tetris. Pretty nice reference in there. Seems to be going with a very humour based theme, whilst sticking to the usual rayman style. I expect the the tetris music and bit was added in for the 25th anniversary bit for Ubisoft, which is nice. This looks promising from what we can see here, and i believe, it's the way Rayman should have been left, as 2D or 2.5D

Now we have a guy whos had.....a bit too much caffeine. He kinda goes back in time mentioning what everything looks like 25 years ago, and now. This leads to a new title announcement which turns out to be Driver: San Francisco, available to play at their booth, so we may see some gameplay videos appear in the not to distant future.

Now we move onto what looks to be Farcry 3. Trailer they are showing looks to be in game instead of a random trailer. Turns out, it went straight into someone playing the game, and we're getting gameplay straight away. Taking out a ton of enemies in stealth, then to some gun play and after that, taking over a helicopter in an attempt to escape. Farcry 3 is set to be released in 2012.

Gearbox software are here to show off Brothers in Arms: Furious 4. A new WW2 based game with, a twist. As an over the top style approach to how WW2 was fought. 4 men, against an army. No gameplay in the trailer, nor did i catch a date, though there probably could have been one.

Now for a film based game connected with paramount. Tin Tin. Gameplay looks to be again, 2.5D and 3D game. No release date bar "Coming Soon"

Much like at Microsofts conference, we're getting some more on Tom Clancy's Future Soldier. It isn't showing how they are controlling it, but it looks to be done through a controller, instead of kinect. My guess would be kinect could be used for voice commands, or they could use it only for the gun system they showed at Microsoft. It can be played as 4 person co-op, and is very much team co-ordinated. With the weapon customisation they showed earlier, this is very nice. They also announced Ghost Recon: Online as a completely free online game to play. The second one for E3 this year. First one being Battlefield multiplayer, which will be included with my EA post after this.

Trackmania from Mania planet is shown as well, and they announce the next title for it, Trackmania 2. They show a trailer showing off some of the new features for the game. It will also debut in September this year. Mania planet is also adding shootmania(for FPS) and questmania for rpgs.

Now we get Raving Rabbids: Alive & Kicking for Kinect. Kinda involves you just being in a clear room stomping on rabbids through the use of Augmented Reality. It also has bits where multiple people will be working together to make shapes of people or objects. They only did a short preview for it, but its out on November 8th.

Looks like they will be showing off a dancing game, as they did an example of what it looks like on the commodor 64. It's a lead up for Just Dance 3, which looks to be on all 3 consoles, Wii, Kinect and PS3 move.

Thinext game for ubisoft to fire at us tonight, but they are showing off Rocksmith, a game which is aimed to help teach someone how to play the Guitar. It's due out in Autumn 2011.

They are also showing off the new fitness game for kinect which follows up from the one they made for it last year. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 will allow you to work with others who have the same goals as you do and work with them to achieve it.

Now, we have Assassins Creed: Revelations. Showing off a new trailer for the game which looks to be an older Ezio, and has Altair appear as well. The trailer itself shows a fair bit, all of which looks pretty fantastic. Now they show off a demo for the game. Gameplay is very much what you've come to expect from Assassin's Creed, and a lot of the extra weapons seem to have made a come back too, such as the smoke bombs, bombs, swords and so on. Demo seems based in 1511, i can't remember how far after Brotherhood that is though. Based in a new city as well, where you are trying to get access to your boat to leave port and find your way to a templar that ezio has tracked down. Game wasn't given the exact date of release, but it was set up for November.

And that ends Ubisofts show. Quite a good show overall. Shall return with the rest.

Quick update

I'm gonna make this one short, primarily because i'm going to make a fairly lengthy post on both The 3rd Birthday from Square-Enix, and Dynasty Warriors 7 of TecmoKoei(which i won \o/, still wondering how). So without further ado, here is a collection of just some of the news this past week.

Starting off with news that popped up yesterday, Capcom launched a teaser site recently which is simply titled DD. People have already caught on through domain acquisitions that this stands for Dragon's Dogma. Now, this would go under the radar, if it was not for a tweet posted by the Breath of Fire V director, Makoto Ikehara, which states what they know about the title, but does him posting on the matter mean this could be a new Breath of Fire title? we'll have to see. A screen of the title can be seen below

The 3DS is finally out! and with it a mass rage to buy the console. Sadly when i went to get mine at the midnight launch, there wasn't half as many people as i originally expected. Speaking with the manager of the place at the time they said that GAME higher ups still viewed the handheld as a console aimed at kids....what? the 3DS has more titles in the first couple of months aged 12 or 16+ than the DS did for a good while, not only that, there is a health warning to any child under 7 who plays it. Seriously GAME, kids handheld? get yer act together.

Anime/Game: News just in as i post this. Bioware and Funimations team up to what was originally going to be a Dragon Age animated feature looks to include more than just that. They now have set in motion, a Mass Effect anime movie set for release in 2012. Little detail is known on this, however they have said that due to the extensiveness of the mass effect universe, there is a lot they could do with it. The article announcing this can be viewed here

And finally. Capcom have released the first trailer for Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, and although it doesn't show too much, it does show at the end that Leon is in it. Backing up the fact that they said you can be given the option to change the timeline, and kill Leon in this game. Again, you can view this trailer on youtube

And that's it for now. I'll post another update after i clock in a couple of hours on Dynasty Warriors 7. So until then, later,

Arb

Here's to new beginnings! - Blog restart

So here i am, wiping the slate clean(literally) of my old attempts at blogging and starting anew. Why the sudden restart/interest in blogging? Well, my time is still rather...limited, so my original plan to create an all news, opinions and attempt at review podcast is on an indefinite halt...at least, until uni is over. So this place shall now be filled with what i was originally intent on doing on there, as well as throwing in the odd bit of anime news when something really takes me.

So without further delay, let's get rolling!

In the news this week:

I'm sure it will come as no surprise to any who keep up to date with everything like myself, but with the 9.0 quake + tsunami in japan, delays are everywhere within the gaming and anime industries, with companies putting release dates which where scheduled for last week and i believe the next couple of weeks off until april. Most notable titles to be affected include TecmoKoei + Team Ninjas latest DOA, Dead or Alive: Dimensions for the 3DS as well as Troy Musou(Warriors: Legends of Troy) for 360/PS3 meaning they will miss their 24th and 31st release dates respectively. As to whether this will affect western release dates? Probably not. DOA is set for May in Europe and i believe the US, and Legends of Troy has reviews flying about already, so don't expect release dates to change here. Please keep in mind these are pushed back because of the earthquake, and so companies should be given the benefit of the doubt throughout, it's not exactly an easy time for anyone over there. Please donate if you get the chance. Anime fans can donate at Crunchyroll, or anyone for that matter. So please do.

Capcom have announced that they will be releasing Resident Evil: Revival, which has been confirmed to have remastered versions of Resident Evil 4 and Code Veronica: Directors Cut within it, set for release on the 360 and PS3. As for any other titles, we're still to find out, but shall be kept posted when we know. Release date is also TBA.

The 3DS is due out in just under 36 hours, with it getting a midnight launch everywhere around Europe. Expect queues to be....at least a little long? hah. I shall be leaving to get mine early enough to be able to get in and out at a decent enough pace, without having to wait hours in a queue miles long. I'll post my initial thoughts here and hopefully will have more than one or two games to throw initial thoughts up of(money permitting). Are you hitting the midnight launch?

Finally, Mass Effect 2 has it's final DLC announced called "Arrival". Officially confirmed for the end of the month despite popular belief it was out in April, and after it's accidental leak through a patch on the PS3 showing the trophies for it. It's set to bridge the gap between 2 and 3, and hopefully will live up to Lair of the Shadow Broker. Hopefully Bioware won't hit it with the same bat they did Dragon Age 2, but that...is for another time

So here we go, a collection of the news i found most interesting for the past week and a bit. Will try to get this up once a week at least with the latest from the industry, release dates, rumours and event info. Stay tuned and later peeps

Arb