June 15, 2010
E3 Day Two Roundup
The Facts:
Ubisoft’s conference and they take the floor and introduce… a game teaching you to breathe… It’s not a -bad- idea, per se… breathing is important… but… breathing for the two hours I might be playing the game sounds like hard work… I’d better get on Wii Fit and train up! … Seriously, is this it?
Don’t worry, Ubisoft make things a little weirder by selling you laser tag. Honestly, this looks like a laser tag set. I think I’d rather just go to a laser tag place where they have all fancy shapes and props and things because… my living room isn’t big enough for four people to take cover…
Then Ubisoft goes totally normal with the announcement of a new Micheal Jackson game. Saying that it measures dancing and singing and uses Kinect, tells me I’m supposed to dance in front of a camera and try to pull off this guy’s dancing moves… that will be… painful…
Ubi also showed a trailer for a new game called Project Dust. I’ve got to agree it looks a lot like Populus and it makes me wonder where all the god games ever went? There used to be such a run of them then they seem to have died out.
And Ubisoft’s mascot, Rayman is back. In 2D too? Wow! With the new Sonic game as well, we seem to be going into a new era! Of 2D games and Live Action games (see Crytek)… I feel like I’ve been here before… You should watch the trailer either way. Since Raving Rabbids, the Rayman team has had a skill at making me giggle at least .
A new Driver game which shows that Ubisoft havn’t gone completely sane yet. When you’re about to crash you can teleport into a different car… because Tanner was in a coma… and now he has superpowers… Well, Kotaku saw it demonstrated, I havn’t so I’ll reserve judgement until what the hell are they talking about?
A trailer for the mostly forgotten I Am Alive. I was really hoping this wasn’t dead and it looks like I won’t be disappointed. Kotaku makes a good prediction that seeing as this wasn’t shown at the Ubi presentation, it’s probably going to be console exclusive. And those don’t look like Wii graphics…
And big 360 news, more importantly… I PREDICTED THIS :D. Kinect games are going to have purple boxes instead of the classic green. Okay, not so big news, but I predicted it and that means something to me!
Trailer for Lord of the Rings: War in the North. I’m not saying this is a bloody affair, but with no Wii release and what I see in the trailer, this may not be an E for Everyone title, which for content about a war is actually a good thing, in my opinion. It doesn’t show gameplay or really anything at all, so the trailer isn’t too exciting, but it’s there.
The full Kinect Star Wars trailer is out and… I think they would have been better off not showing it. It reminds me of the Force Unleashed game on the iPhone. I imagine myself just doing a series of pre-learned actions in specific situations. Kind of like the Wii swordfighting game on Wii Resort.
The Crytek Live Action game…. well, there’s a trailer now for Kingdoms. I was expecting a few Live Action games with the release of Kinect, but… Crytek aren’t the team I’d expect to be doing it. Also, the This Is Sparta style doesn’t seem to fit with my expectations for Kinect -or- Crytek. I know they said they wanted to get out of the jungle but…
Now this is probably one of the more interesting things I’ve seen so far this week and it might surprise some of you. A new Scribblenauts trailer. The first Scribblenauts was a neat thing to show your friends, but it didn’t really work as a game because the controls were iffy and the levels were… well… “lame”. Both of these appear to have been adressed (maybe not fixed). I just hope I don’t end up using Cthulhu on every level like in the last game…
Kotaku has a nice gallery of Kinect launch titles and… they look good. I’m shocked, but happy. Even the Wii Sports ripoff looks good and Kinectimals, despite being hard to say, actually looks nice. I will be watching…
Bit more on the Pirates of the Carribean game. A new trailer that shows less than the one I saw yesterday of the game, but more of the story. That medallion looks familiar, hmm? I wonder if when they said “Not based on the movies, but based on the mythos”, they meant “based on the mythos but cheaper than hiring the actors again”?
UPDATES:
Nintendo announcements… I’m going to go through a few briefly and see if you can spot my problem with the Ninendo announcments:
A new Zelda game. Zelda: Skyward Sword (with 1:1 sword movement with Wii Motion Plus. I seem to remember something similar being offered with Twilight Princess…) (Although Miyamoto’s intro was great 🙂
A new Mario Party game. Mario Sports Mix. (Exactly what it sounds like.)
Another collection of Wii minigames. Wii Party. (I’ve never bought these before…)
A new Donkey Kong game. Donkey Kong Country Returns. (Donkey Kong Country was probably my favourite SNES game after Mario All Stars)
A new Kirby game. (The first one on the Wii.)
A new Kid Icarus game, Kid Icarus Rising. (Bringing back another classic Nintendo character to the new generation.)
Have you perhaps spotted my problems? Nevermind… Let’s carry on.
Some interesting news from Nintendo:
It’s official! Goldeneye is really being made! You thought it was a joke or a lie, but it’s here! (Same link as yesterday but what can I say? The trailer was real.) This is one of the most exciting things this year.
Epic Mickey. (Well, -I- think it’s good news :)) What can I say about Epic Mickey? It could go either way. But at the moment it looks to be going the way of Mickey’s World of Illusion (again on the SNES, but great!)
Time for a bit more on the 3DS seeing as it is (technically) a new console. It’s gone all 3D even in ways that Sony isn’t. 3D camera, 3D screen, 3D content. I’ll have to see how well their 3D content works, but I can’t imagine people wanting to watch movies on their DS. How immersive can it be if characters 3cm high are jumping out of the screen at me? Every movie will be like Small Soldiers!
Let’s move on calmly…
A trailer for the Warhammer 40k MMO. You might not care about Warhammer but some of this MMO’s features are really interesting… if they work. Personally, I lost interest the second I found out I couldn’t play as Chaos.
Paid for PSN. We all knew this was coming, (including me. See earlier posts). A premium version of PSN that you have to pay for. As usual, Sony are trying to spin it as “Elevating your game experience” but we all know it will be “lowering your game experience unless you have it”. I officially stopped buying non-exclusive games for my 360 when they started treating Silver members as second class citizens. Sony learning from Microsoft is not winning any points with me.
Tidbits – The Old Republic’s player housing is a ship in orbit. This sounds great to Star Wars fans, but it just sounds like a good excuse for intanced housing without needing the space to store it.
Portal 2 will be available on the Playstation from launch, including Steam (not multiplayer, just Steamworks.)
The Rumours:
The Review:
Clockwerks Games 