'Tis the Day After E3...

And after all that they showed… e3 won me over, with a video of Captain Toad.



I’m sad to say that the Sony conference was the worst of the three, and this comes from a Sony supporter since the Playstation One days, but me picking up a PS4 is not something I see happening until late 2015 at the earliest... I want Final Fantasy Type-0 (I played part of it on PSP, it’s solid), but a game like that is not a system seller. Uncharted, cool.  Bloodborne, maybe. LittleBigPlanet 3, does anyone like this franchise anymore?  Oh, and please never talk metrics at E3 ever again.  Sucked the air out of the room and it went on forever.

Microsoft did a decent job, but I don’t see anything from them that makes me want to buy their console.   Sunset Overdrive didn’t do it for me, I’ve never liked Fable, but D4 I want to know more about because it’s SWERY and I loved Deadly Premonition. Their presentation, like Sony’s, was heavy on action and shooter games and plenty of CG trailers instead of gameplay.  Their showcasing of Assassin’s Creed made it look like it will be cool, but nothing they’ve done yet has convinced me to ride the X-bone.
 

The winner, and the company who gets my money in the very near future, is Nintendo.  Their Digital Event was a slick production, with a great sense of self-awareness (without being too smarmy about it).  The teased open-world-style Zelda game has huge potential, Mii Fighter, Palutena and Pac-Man in Smash, Yoshi’s Woolly World, Bayonetta 1 & 2 together in one pack (Haven’t played the first one yet, so the combo pack makes all the sense), Xenoblade Chronicles X is going full Gundam space opera which is awesome, and finally a standalone Toad game in Captain Toad!  The rest of Nintendo’s conference was so well done, with small Robot Chicken segments, the fight between Satoru Iwata and Reggie Fils-Aime, the softly-shot interviews with creators for Wool Yoshi and Hyrule Warriors were nice and the strict focus on games and explanation of said games was everything a gamer could want and more.  I felt like I learned nothing about the games for PS4 and Xbox One, but learned a shit ton about what Nintendo is offering.

With that said, my gripe earlier in the week was that E3 should be a place where exciting ideas and games from the best in the business should be on display, instead of blockbusters that are certain to move units.  This was still sorely lacking at E3, so if I have to critique E3 based on my previous post which sought more innovation, this conference didn’t deliver the goods.  The kid in me was excited to see almost everything Nintendo was showing off, but… With the exception of Splatoon, what we saw are all known properties.  Nintendo is shoring up its base, by taking their best known characters and franchises and polishing them up for the Wii U.  These games all look great, but are they ground-breaking? No. 

The Destructoid guide to E3 had me crying a river, and while I was wooed and enticed by a few offerings from Sony and Microsoft, that river reached its delta, flooding into an ocean of tears as I was largely disappointed by the two powerhouses of the industry… Maybe I’m not their target demo… Though I am a male in my late twenties… I should love all this, yet somehow I was just sad.  On the other hand, Nintendo delivered in spades and the ‘dead’ Wii U just shot to the top of my list.  It hit that threshold number of games I would play that make system purchase worth it, so in the coming days or weeks I will be a Wii U owner… Like my buddy Captain Toad, I’m ready for adventure!

What games stood out to you?  If Iwata and Fils-Aime actually had a fight, who would win?  Also,let me know if one of those pew-pew games is actually better than the rest!

*credit for the Captain Toad image should go to deviantart user mbluebird2*

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Sab0tender