Despite the fact that I’m “press,” I’m a lot like most of you readers. I have a regular day job that doesn’t involve video games, chores I need to get done, friends and family that don’t really get my hobby, etc. I only have so much time for games (these articles don’t write themselves!), so I have to choose my titles wisely. I have to cut through a lot of the marketing BS you do and try to experience the game for what it is and figure out how I can work it into my life. Well, that, and I’m cheap enough to be able to resist a lot of sales, so I’m not buying up everything and leaving behind a huge pile of partially played games.
For me, E3’s not only a convention I go to for work, but like many of you, I try to use it to figure out what might be worth following and what just seems like media hype. If you want some no-spin insight into E3 2014, I’ll be your guide to this year’s events.
Microsoft’s Sunset Overdrive is getting a lot of hype, but was barely mentioned on the showroom floor by other industry folks. I didn’t get any hands on, but most of what I saw and heard at the booth was that it’s as fast and hectic as it looks, but still the kind of third-person shooter you’d expect. Don’t think you’re going to go around sniping people, this game really wants you to keep moving.
Dragon Age 3: Inquisition seems to be coming along nicely. It seems like a good blend of the openness we got from DA1 but magnified, with some more action oriented combat we received from DA2. The action vs. tactical view switches rather smoothly, and the tactical view seems better than previous titles. The demo seemed to show a character’s route they’d take when you give them an order to move, which can help you determine if you’ve perhaps asked a character to stand in an area you didn’t realize was off limits. The story I was shown wasn’t particularly moving, but then again, I wasn’t invested in the characters yet, so we’ll see how things go.
Evolve‘s got me excited and depressed at the same time. This is another title I didn’t get hands on with, but I had been kind of watching the game for the past year or so. I saw one match that just got me to stop and watch it for about fifteen minutes, and I don’t usually do that at E3. One thing I feel that the game isn’t showing enough of is how much the environment acts as a third player. When the monster’s health is low and there’s no nearby game to eat, it’s punishing. While she’s on the run, the other four players might suddenly get eaten by a carnivorous plant, attacked by several mutant dog things, or just have to clear away a lot of mobs to get onto the right ledge to follow the monster. A lot of the videos with commentary try to be funny, and it really hides the action. I’m not usually a commentary guy, but whoever was doing it on the showroom floor really added to the action, explaining strategies and mechanics so that even a casual like me could follow. The game’s got so many interesting mechanics that it’s one of the few games I can really enjoy watching and not playing, and that’s very rare for me. The only problem is that the game comes out in October and I don’t have a lot of non-MMO PC pals that’d jump into this. It was the same thing with Titanfall. If you’ve got a group for these kinds of games, I wouldn’t resist this title. I even wonder if it could be a title used to draw in non-gamers.
MMO wise, there isn’t a whole lot I’m excited about that I saw at E3. Dawn of the Immortals is a solid look at where the genre might be going in my opinion, at least in terms of mobile MMOs. I’ve seen a few before, but this was the first one that made me feel like I was actually playing an MMO and not specifically a mobile MMO. It does have auto targeting, and if you’re tired of dailies and grinding, it’s nothing new, but it does have me re-evaluating mobile versus PC gaming, and I think that’s saying something.
Skyforge is a bit of a gamble. At the moment, it’s just another action MMO. There hasn’t been a lot on the non-combat aspects. However, without levels, less need to reroll, and fresh mechanics (each class honestly has a different play style: cryomages are like playing with Guild Wars 2 combat, while beserkers felt more like DC Universe Online or Dragon’s Prophet). The latter is also it’s strength. I’ve done combat to high hell, and what I played in my limited hands on was fun enough to catch my attention. I know I need more though, so we’ll see how things go.
I feel H1Z1 is a good game to bet on. It’s got what most of the alphas of other horror-survival games have been promising for a year or so, but they’re actually in game, working, and fairly well polished. It’s the difference between pre-ordering a car and driving one off the lot, and H1Z1 is the one you can take home.
Oddly enough, you may want to start watching the MMORacing genre. I got my hands on both World of Speed and The Crew and was pleasantly surprised. These aren’t just racing games. WoS falls closer to this category, since it’s mainly racing, but there are other objectives like clearing a turn while drifting 5 times to make it feel questy, which may or may not be your thing. It will also have territory control, but details on that are still scant. The game’s controls and stats are less about real world fidelity and more about fun, but not on a Mario Kart level, so I think it’s easier to get people to try it. The Crew, on the other hand, is pretty open world. By RPG comparisons, World of Speed is like Final Fantasy games, The Crew is more Elder Scrolls… and more punishing in terms of controls. There is a button to let you catch up with friends (not tie, but at least be able to see them) or be closer to objectives, like your “raid enemy” in take down missions, which have you ramming cars to destroy them, but you are more likely to flip your car or mess up a tight turn than in WoS.
I’m probably one of the last people who should have tried it, but CCP’s Valkyrie is virtual reality that a motion sickness-prone glasses-wearing gamer can appreciate. The Oculus Rift is a great piece of work, and the way the game handles is a well executed marriage between fun gameplay and the first beginnings of virtual reality for this generation.
For me personally, Nintendo was the most impressive. I love Big N, but I think I’m usually pretty critical of them as well. The Wii U has been out for quite awhile and I only recently felt the need to bring my system to Japan after letting it collect dust state-side. Naturally you have the two Smash Bros games coming up. The levels we had access to weren’t crazy, but some weren’t too dull either, and not because of their backgrounds. The new characters have their own feelings and don’t feel like some shoe-horned remake or clone. I had my biggest doubts about Little Mac, but I felt like getting back on the level with him wasn’t nearly as bad or as punishing as I thought he’d be. At the same time, I thought Mega Man would be more long ranged, but he feels more close to mid-range to me.
But there was more to Nintendo than just Smash Bros. Zelda’s coming back for the Wii U, and in a big way. The New Zelda reveal caught many of us media folks off guard. It was probably one of the most talked about games on the show room floor that wasn’t present at E3 itself. Open world Hyrule? Yes please!
I’m not sure if it helped add to hype around Hyrule Warriors but most people who played HW said, at the worst, it’s a mediocre game that wouldn’t be worth your time if it wasn’t a Zelda title. I will admit that from the demo, it didn’t have a lot of depth, but it had more action than I’m used to from the series, so it was a lot of fun for me, especially seeing that the Princess wasn’t going to need saving yet again and would wade into the fray. Add in some multiplayer, and at the right price, I’ll buy it.
Speaking of multiplayer, Splatoon really caught me off guard. Most shooters are kind of interesting, but feel familiar. Splatoon might have that for some people, but for me, it added a certain kind of fun I’ve been missing for awhile. The basic idea of the game is that you win by paint. Want someone dead? Cover them in your paint. Win the game? Paint most of the field your color. It sounds simple, but ends up being fairly tactical, especially when reloading means ducking down into your team’s colored area in squid mode. At times, it feels like a mindless shooter, only to suddenly change into having the other team “stealthed” in pockets of ink you’ve missed, waiting for you the turn the corner so they can resume painting.
Finally, there was Project Guard and Project Giant Robot, both simply tech demos but interesting nonetheless. Both may never make it to your hands, but in some ways, that might be good. I can’t see them as games in their own right, but each felt like a nice sort of mini-game, or something that could be a feature in a game. Guard is simple: there are many cameras on the TV screen, but the player with the touch-screen controller can’t see them on the controller. Mainly, the controller acts as a very simple radar device to pick which camera’s laser to control to fight off robots trying to destroy you. Friends watching the TV yell which number camera you should take priority in controlling. It can be frantic fun, but only for so long. Giant Robot, on the other hand, actually felt too big in the design department, and too thin in the mini-games. You could do so much when making your robot, but with tons of other industry folks waiting in line behind you, there’s a lot of pressure to make something quickly and just get on with it. I ended up just using a pre-made bot after the first two rounds with mine went very poorly. It took some time to get used to the controls, but it was fun enough, just… when you have a game about building robots, that’s really want you want to do, and anything after that should feel equally meaningful. Again, I had fun with both games, but I’m hoping Nintendo uses the demo’s feedback (which we were asked to give) to turn those games into something solid.
Obviously there was a lot to do and see at E3. More than I could handle on my own with so little time. However, those are the games I played, saw, or heard about the most while on the show room floor. What gets reported to you guys is often paid for in ad space and free t-shirts, but this post is just one lucky gamer telling other gamers what he thought.
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