Don't Hate Me Because I'm "Moose"iful! ;-p

Someone needs to change their pants!

clubkayden:

Just once I want to make someone react with this much feeling.

clubkayden:

Coppertone baby horse.

clubkayden:

First he took the dog’s food… Now he took the dog’s bed… It must suck to be emasculated by a rabbit.

So cute!

clubkayden:

This thing is a little suspicious looking if you ask me

I’ve been addicted to Skyrim for the past 3 weeks.  Best game of the year and I hate RPGs normally.

jennarationx:

Just picked up the new Final Fantasy! So stoked! Between these two games, I’m gonna be in nerd heaven for a while! (Taken with instagram)

clubkayden:

This is my wardrobe. I’m not apologizing.

So cute no need to apologize.

Is it wrong that after seeing this I want to have sex with a Pikachu?

Ok so I’m a little late on third part of my E3 coverage but I’ve been trying to catch up on sleep after last week.  Anyway, there wasn’t much in the last couple of day of E3 coverage in the way of announcements but there were some things that were shown in the demos of some of the games.  More specifically, for two games I previously mentioned, Gears of War 3 and Batman Arkham City.  And two games that I haven’t, Star Wars Kinect and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.

I’ll start with the two I haven’t talked about yet.  Star Wars Kinect, as the title implies, is a game for the 360’s Kinect.  I had big hopes for the Kinect when it was announced as the possibilities for the technology were, at the time, astounding.  The ability to control a game without any controller, for the game to respond to your voice commands and to bring life like interaction to the games sounded ground breaking and maybe a little to good to believe.  Well, it turns out that it was too good to believe.  When the Kinect released all the games were on rails, the camera in it was not very good and although the Kinect did allow you to control the games with your body and voice, There was a delay, a bit of problems with body tracking confusion and it just didn’t live up to my expectations.  This E3 showed that while developers are advancing the tech behind the Kinect to include finger tracking and fixing some of the body tracking problems, the real problem is that the tech just hasn’t caught up to the vision.  Maybe in the next console generation or the one after that we will see the real potential of what the Kinect can do, but enough on the Kinect itself, back to Star Wars Kinect.  Star Wars Kinect (or SWK as I will refer to it now) didn’t strike me as being worth it during the MS press conference because it looked like another rail game for the Kinect.  However during the demo it was explained and shown that SWK in fact is not on rails, movement is prompted by looking in a direction and leaning forward which does give you control all be it limited, over the movement of your Jedi.  From the announcement of the Kinect, Star Wars fans have had this fantasy of standing in front of their TV holding a light saber and getting to play as if they are the Jedi in the game, each of the swings of their light saber exactly reproduced by the avatar on the screen.  A question that was presented at the end of the MS press conference was if actually holding a light saber while playing the game would cause confusion with the Kinect’s sensor as that has been the case with holding objects while playing already released games for the Kinect.  Once again, during the demo this was dispelled by the rep from the production company, however it was only stated that you could actually hold a light saber while playing with on problem and not shown.  SWK to a point will work to bring that Jedi fantasy to life but keep in mind that ultimately it is a Kinect game and will most likely be very basic, repetitive and very short on replay ability but casual gamers that are fans of Star Wars might want to check Star Wars Kinect out.

Now for the other unmentioned game, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.  The Ace Combat series has been a top notch series for years in the arcade flight simulation genre and although this genre is low on titles that does not reflect on the quality of the Ace Combat games.  Ace Combat: Assault Horizon looks to continue that lineage.  The graphics look improved.  The game play looks as tight as ever and all around Assault Horizon should be another great entry in the Ace Combat line.  For an added bonus Ace Combat: Assault Horizon adds Helicopters to the line-up of beautifully rendered aircrafts that have always been in the Ace Combat series.  This should add some new blood to the series and help let Assault Horizon stand out from the rest of the titles in this great series.

OK, so now let’s talk about the games I had already mentioned in my previous posts.  I’ll start with Batman Arkham City.  The first announcement that was made for Arkham City was that Catwoman would be a playable character, which is a great addition to the game but the improvements over the great Arkham Asylum don’t end there.  The glide system has been overhauled, now you can change pitch to descend faster or slower and even boost dive to travel longer distances which considering the much, much larger map this time around should make getting from point A to point B a lot faster.  You can also use the grappling hook to sling-shot from grab points up into the air for even more boosts to your glides.  Detective Mode has also gone through some changes.  Anyone who played Arkham Asylum will remember the amount of time spent with the some what grayish screen that turned the brilliantly rendered Arkham Island into a mono-tone, dull landscape.  Detective Mode in Arkham City will be a little different as it has been altered to be more focused; the look of it seems to be more like looking through a digital scope of some kind instead of a complete change to the visual of the world.  However, if you used Detective Mode like I did, to find where enemies were on the map, then you might have to take more time in each section but that was a little un-clear in the presentation.  There were some other things that I noticed that wasn’t actually talked about.  While engaged in a fight during the demo’s screen time I saw a prompt for a new move called the Bat-claw Slam the move was not demonstrated but the prompt was clearly show non-the-less.  Also, during the demo when the player was stealthily moving in above two enemies a prompt for a double takedown was shown and then demonstrated with Batman leaping down onto the two and quickly taking them out.  As a side note, I am looking to get Arkham City and therefore went looking for any pre-order deals and specials there might be.  What I found was that Best Buy is offering some extra challenge maps for pre-ordering Batman Arkham City and these maps feature Robin as the playable character which could mean that Robin is in the game as a playable character to but nothing has been said about that so far from the developer so it could just be a skin change in those maps but lets hope its not.

And now there is even more news on Gears of War 3 specifically on Horde Mode 2.0.  This time around Horde Mode will have a much different feel.  There will be upgradable barricades to help fortify areas of defense so you can hold off the waves and waves of enemies without scrambling for the shields dropped by the Maulers when they die.  These upgrades will be done by purchasing them through the new monetary system in which you earn money for your kills.  The money will also be used to buy ammo and possible weapons but I’m not sure on that.  Now as for the waves of enemies, this time around every 10^th wave will consist of a boss fight what was shown was a Lambent Berserker, if you thought Berserkers from Gears 1 looked menacing then just wait until you have one with giant tentacles that explodes when it dies!  Finally, one last bit of new info, anyone who played Gears 2 remember the first time they were charged by a Butcher, the Boomer look-alike with the giant machete, well now that machete can be yours when you turn that Butcher into worm food.  I can’t wait to hack through a wave of Locust.

Well there you have it, all the information you need to know about the games coming out from now until the end of the year, well, at least in my opinion.  One last note, Star Wars the Old Republic is supposed to actually get a release date sometime before the end of the year but then again I thought it was suppose to last year.  I guess we’ll see.  Anyway, I hope this post and my previous helps you to make some decisions on the games you buy this year.  If you likes these posts let me know and maybe I will have the motivation to do it again next E3.  So until my next post, thanks for reading.

TJ

E3 day 2, where to start?  I know lets start with Nintendo.  Nintendo held their press conference today and with it the first details of their new console and a look at the new Zelda game, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword were presented.  Also, the first footage of Prey 2 that I have seen showed up today.  And finally I will go over some game I skipped yesterday that on a second look today I was interested in.

For the past month rumors were circling that Nintendo would present a new console at E3 this year.  Nintendo in fact backed that up and today they showed off the new controller for the console entitled, Wii U.  I hope that next year the decide to change the name as the Nintendo Vision would be a much better name for the console, but then again I liked Revolution more there Wii.  The controller has 2 analog sticks, 2 triggers, 2 shoulder buttons, 4 face buttons, and a D-pad putting them on par with the rest of the available consoles out there.  The big difference and the real innovation of the console is that in the center of the controller is a 6.2 inch touch screen that allows you to get video streamed from the console to the controller.  The demo trailer showed that you could actually play games from the controller instead of on you TV allowing you to be able to watch TV while playing.  Also the screen could be used to enhance game play in several different ways from being the sites of your gun in a FPS to holding your items menu for games like Zelda.  It also works with all the peripherals of the Wii so for a golf game you place the Wii U controller on the floor and us it as you tee for the ball and then the Wii mote for the club just like now on Wii Sports.  Personally I see so many possibilities for this new controller that I am actually excited for a Nintendo console for the first time sense the 64.  As for Zelda, the demo looked great.  I am ready to play it despite the fact that swinging the Wii mote makes me look like an idiot.  However, I have a few questions.  Nintendo says that Skyward Sword will be out this year but it seemed to be featured pretty heavily in the demo trailers for the Wii U.  So does that mean that there will be another version at the lunch of the new console or maybe this game will just have built in features that will enhance game-play for on the Wii U?  It wouldn’t be the first time that they pulled back a Zelda game in order to get more people to adapt their new console.  In fact they did that with Twilight Princess and the Wii.  I guess I will just have to wait.  A lot of developers have pledge support for the Wii U but they pledged it for the Wii and all we got was a bunch of party games that had little to no interest for hardcore gamers like myself.  Only time will tell.  Nintendo, despite the below sales numbers of the 3DS, showed off 5 big titles for the 3D handheld that lunched earlier this year.  Kid Icarus: Uprising was shown off again and is supposed to coming out before the end of the year as are the rest of the 5 titles.  The others included Luigi’s Mansion 2 and an all new, from scratch Mario game that shows the return of the raccoon suite.  Both look amazing and should improve those sales numbers for the 3DS.

Most of today was filled by Nintendo’s big reveal but there were a few other things that stood out to me.  The first was the first footage and details I have seen on Prey 2, the sequel to one of my favorite games from a few years ago.  This time you play as an alien bounty hunter on an alien planet.  This is a different story from the first game but maybe they will tie it in with the first somehow in the new story.  Also different this time, they dropped the multiplayer which is a good thing because no matter how much I loved the first games campaign, the multiplayer was horrible.  Now yesterday I skipped over The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the reason being that I am not an RPG fan and so I usually just skip them but today I decided to take a second look.  I have to say that Skyrim has me interested.  The game looks good and the idea of it is intriguing.  However the 300 plus hours of game-play has me hesitant to put this one in my must column.  Finally, I will finish with a PS3 exclusive, Starhawk.  Starhawk is the spiritual successor of Warhawk but unlike Warhawk, Starhawk will have a single player campaign.  The demo they showed today was awesome.  You build up a base to defend areas of interest and you do so by calling in these gigantic creates from space that land and build the structure you ordered.  This can be done anywhere so some strategy comes in to play with how and where you place stuff.  The rest of the game play is 3^rd person shooter fun.

So, all in all, today was a great day in gaming news.  I’m sure that I missed or just skipped some more that was shown but you get what you get.  Anyway, the first two days usually have the most so I may make my next post a summery of days 3, 4 & 5 on Friday or Saturday but I won’t know until I see what’s shown tomorrow. 

Until next time,

TJ

                I spent today watching coverage of the E3 press conferences on Spike and G4.  There was so much that I loved and some not so much but with it only being day one I have to say, “Man what a start!”  Microsoft lead-off with game-play from Mass Effect 3, COD Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and Gears of War 3.  They ended with the announcement of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, a HD re-mastering of the original Halo game, coming this year and then the announcement that next year will be the start of a new Halo trilogy with the release of Halo 4.  Master Chef is back, yes! 

I was concerned about MW3 because of the turmoil at Infinity Ward and the addition of Sledgehammer Studios to the development team but after the nearly 20 minutes of live demo footage that spanned 2 levels of the game, I am not only put at ease but excited that MW is back.  Battlefield 3 had a good showing but I am a little cooled on this game now, however I think it will be the best in the Battlefield series.  Mass Effect 3 adds Kinect support in the form of voice commands and also adds a new melee weapon for close courters combat.  Now to the juggernaut that is Gear of War 3.  I participated in the Gears 3 multiplayer beta last month and I have to say that the online will be much improved over the previous 2 installments in the franchise.  But today for the first time Cliffy B. showed off part of the campaign and it looks like it will be an “Epic” and fitting end to the Gears trilogy.  I can’t wait!

After Microsoft, EA held their press conference but not much other then the usual and the already mentioned Mass Effect 3 and Battlefield 3 from them.  So then Ubisoft held their press conference.  A lot of games were presented but in my opinion the only ones worth talking about are Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier, FarCry 3 and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.  FarCry has not been one of my favorite franchises but this installment looked good and there were some funny moments during the trailer when the live censer failed to bleep several curse words at the beginning and proceeded to bleep random words out of panic after words.  Ghost Recon’s game-play was incredible with the reveal of up to 4-way co-op through the game.  Add that to the great visuals and story and you have a top 10 game for this year.  Assassin’s Creed: Revelations look great and will finish the Ezio trilogy in the series.  I’m confident that this AC will be just as good as the last 2.  Oh yes one more game form Ubi that I failed to mention, maybe because the concept of the game isn’t completely a game.  Rocksmith is a new game in the rhythm game genre but this on adds a twist, you us an actual guitar.  Not a guitar controller or a fancy hybrid of a guitar and a controller but any real guitar from Gibson, Fender or any other guitar manufacture.  The game actually teaches you to play guitar.

The last press conference came from Sony.  This conference was long and had a lot of stuff to talk about but much of it revolved around games coming next year and the new portable console, PS Vita.  Basically an updated PSP with a 5 inch touch screen on the front, a touch pad on the back, 2 joysticks, D-pad, face buttons and a front and back facing camera.  A Wi-Fi only version set at $250 and a 3G and Wi-Fi version at $300.  The exclusive 3G provider will be AT&T which sucks.  Add that to the lack of 4G capability and I don’t see this working.  There was even boos from the audience when AT&T was announced.  Sony never really supported the PSP so what is there to make me think that they will support this portable?  They did show one concept with the Vita that was cool and that was the ability with select games to be able to save you game to a cloud drive and continue that same game on a PS3 version of the game.  Whether you get both versions when you buy one version of the game or if you have to pony up for the same game on both platforms has yet to be explained.  The only game announced for next year that I was interested in was, a way to long awaited, PS3 sequel to Sly Cooper, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time.  As for this year the third installment in the Uncharted series and the third installment in the Resistance series are both coming.  I’m very excited about Uncharted 3 it looks great but as with all the games in the Sony press conference there was little game-play.  Some games didn’t even get live demo play just trailers claiming to be made from in-game footage, typical for Sony, but still.  The only other game was Infamous 2 which looked good but I’m not much of a fan.  As for the Move, Resistance 3 will have Move support like Killswitch 3 and SOCOM 4 but nothing else is worth mentioning.

As for other games shown throughout the day a few stand out.  Bioshock Infinite is set in an all new world from the previous 2 installments and might even be considered a reboot to the series.  Surprisingly it will have PS Move support but given the new setting I’m not convinced that it will be as received as past games in the series.  Tomb Raider made a showing at the Microsoft conference but I forgot to mention it earlier.  If you liked the last few TR games you will probably like this reboot and origin story but didn’t look any better then or that different from those that preceded it.  Batman Arkham City Looks bigger, badder and better then Arkham Asylum and Catwoman will be a playable character.  I can’t wait for Batman, I’m a huge fan and this is one of my most anticipated games along with MW3 and Gears 3.  The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim made a showing but seeing as how I’m not a fan I’m skipping it.  I’m Also skipping Prototype 2, Forza 4 and Saints Row: The Third, although SR seems way over the top.  Insomniac, the studio that made both the Ratchet & Clank series and the Resistance series for Sony, is making their first multiplatform game OverStrike.  The game like great visually, the characters were funny and new, and ultimately it looks like it could be one of the best new IPs of the show this year.

Missing so far from coverage is Id’s new IP, Rage which is supposed to be out this year and Ubisoft’s I Am Alive shown last year but there is still 4 more days of E3 to go.  Also missing is any real hardcore game for the Kinect and Move, however each did get some support from hardcore franchises by adding functionality to the games but nothing specifically made for either platform.  Now I may have missed some games or just left them out but to me this was the highlights of today’s E3 coverage.  Tomorrow brings Nintendo’s press conference and their new console plus the answer to the rumors of a playable new Zelda game. 

TJ