E3 2014 - Nintendo

An unconventional start for Nintendo with a self parodying and E3 mocking animated intro starring Reggie Fils-Aime. I can only assume it was written and made by or at least approved by the Robot Chicken guys as it is completely in their style. Then the first segment is introduced and the insanity officially takes over as Reggie and Satoru Iwata straight up have a super-powered fist fight...i'm not joking, it actually happens and it's both baffling and kind of amazing.

Even if you watch none of the game trailers, you owe it to yourself to see this.

 This ultimately leads into a Super Smash Bros trailer introducing the new feature of playable personalised mii characters. Not only that but you can define your mii into one of three classes or types. The "brawler", "sword fighter" and "gunner" all of which should be fairly self-explanatory but come with their own unique movesets. Director Masahiro Sakurai goes on to mention how this can pave the way for Abraham Lincoln, Elijah Wood, or any other character you can create in mii maker becoming a Smash Bros fighter. If you've ever seen some of the vast variety of creations made by gamers in Mii Maker, you'll know that this adds a world of comical potential match-ups. Perhaps this is perspective and bias due to being a big Smash Bros fan myself but this signals a strong start to the "conference/digital event/stream thing.

More footage shows old and new features such as the character trophies, mini games, classic bosses, improved online systems and match customisation options. It's never explicitly said but the director also talks about working with a large number of variables on 3DS, which probably translates to fixing bugs and ensuring performance is solid. That may explain the delayed release date of "3rd October 2014" when the 3DS version was scheduled for summer 2014.

We next move to real Reggie who gives details of the "Amiibo". A selection of toys or figurines you may have heard were in the pipeline and were utilised briefly in the earlier Iwata-Reggie DBZ showdown. These figures, coming in designs of all the classic Nintendo characters, can transfer and receive data to and from the Wii U. In regards to Smash Bros this results in supposedly "unique" versions of the character portrayed, appearing in the game and either assisting you in fights or actually being your opponent. Reggie continues in stating that Mario Kart 8 will also implement the Amiibo with a sly bit of footage acknowledging "Luigi's Death Stare" that has become something of a trend across the internet.

A monologue about the greatness of Nintendo and how they'd really please like more Wii U's sold follows into a segment interviewing two Japanese chaps. A vaguely titled employee of Nintendo and an employee or presumed manager of "Good-Feel". A company seemingly specialising in yarn. This appropriately leads into introducing Yoshi's Woolly World due for release in 2015. A sequel to Kirby's Epic Yarn with similar yarn based aesthetics and gameplay features. Besides obviously Yoshi and now a co-op mode i'm unsure how this will significantly differ from K.E.Y but it appears a polished, chirpy, fun platformer and Nintendo are usually very good at those.

Up next is a polished, chirpy, fun platformer called Captain Toad Treasure Tracker, due winter 2014. There seems to be a mining theme involved but apart from that it's classic 3D Nintendo fare of traversing obstacles, simple colourful combat and puzzles. The bigger question is whether anyone has ever actually wanted to play as Toad? He has never starred in his own game before but maybe there's a reason for that. Usually he is the backup, filler character, players are resigned to choosing when all their favourites are taken or who they regrettably end up being as the third or fourth member in a multiplayer Mario game.

It's nice to see 50-a-day smokers can still get voice acting work though.

A short and uncharacteristically tame robot chicken skit later and a new Zelda game is introduced. Open world, with an art style somewhat similar to Skyward Sword. A brief cinematic trailer shows Link fighting some kind of laser demon on horseback (i should clarify Link is on horseback sadly not the laser demon) Then the big reveal seems to be as tame as Link wearing blue for a change although i have since heard rumours and developers have hinted that this character is not in fact Link, so that could be interesting.

A wild trailer appeared for the remakes of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire due November 28th 2014, which confirms that they're also getting the X/Y treatment with full 3D, Mega evolutions etc. Bayonetta 2's trailer promises much of the same Devil May Cry-style action as the first, which they even acknowledge with a direct quote from DMC1. It also includes novelty Link and Samus costumes...if you're into that kind of thing...

Hyrule Warriors footage follows and interviews with the developers claim lots of playable characters, memorable boss fights suggesting requiring more thought than simply "where's the massive glowing weak spot?" and a two player mode through the use of the Wii U gamepad. They treat this as a vast improvement over splitscreen but it just seems to me like an uneven balance of screen size between players. Somebody gets the full television while the other gets the reduced gamepad screen. That's still technically a splitscreen, it's just an unevent split. That aside, the large scale battles and other playable characters  besides Link do intrigue me and there isn't a long wait as Hyrule Warriors releases September 19th 2014.

The imaginatively titled "Kirby" gets a brief trailer looking like another polished, chirpy, fun platformer where the most interesting thing is the bizarrely lacking title. Are they implying this is a reboot? Probably more likely the game simply doesn't have a name yet since there's nothing immediately obvious to distinguish it from past Kirby games.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is a spiritual successor to Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii, which is apparently praised for reinventing and revitalising the JRPG genre. I'll have to take the critic's word for that because to me it appeared like a thoroughly generic Japanese, sci-fi mech adventure in its trailer. Also the character's faces are a worrying homage to the Gamecube-era of graphics. Adding to the slow descent of excitement in the conference is Mario Maker. A game where you can customise and build your own Mario courses in either the classic or modern style...sure, that's cool i guess...

A fleeting spurt of new ideas breathes momentary life back into the event as Splatoon is introduced. An online (hopefully not solely) multiplayer cartoon third person shooter based around firing ink over as much of the level as possible to mark your territory, whilst wielding an assortment of ink guns, bombs, bazookas and paint rollers. The characters can also transform into squids ('cos ink, i guess) at will that give different abilities and increased speed and such. It's an interesting concept but will it actually be fun or satisfying to play? or will it feel like interior design that never gets finished? Regardless, Splatoon deserves credit for being a new and fairly creative IP, especially amongst Nintendo's worn out and stagnating franchises. It's due for release sometime in 2015.

Aiming is apparently gyroscopic...hopefully that's optional...

 The stream finishes with a Super Smash Bros anime of all things but this is ultimately just another character reveal for someone called Palutena who i believe is from the Kid Icarus series. Considering how hype many people got for this anime trailer alone, perhaps Nintendo should've considered making a separate project of that instead of the bait and switch trailer we ended up with.

Nintendo's "conference" started on a high that Sony and Microsoft didn't even reach in their shows but it fairly consistently slipped downhill from then on. With only one new IP and limited innovation in their established franchises, it's overall a fairly mediocre output from Nintendo when they could've potentially pulled out all the stops (cough, Metroid) to win back support in the Wii U.

E3 2014 - Sony

Sony's conference begins with a mostly cinematic trailer for a generic seeming, clichéd sounding but polished enough Sci-Fi, looking somewhere between Mass Effect and Halo. The end of the trailer reveals this is actually Destiny, Bungie's much anticipated initially PS4 exclusive and first game since leaving development on Halo. Well that's a rather underwhelming start.

Andrew House enters the stage to yammer about Playstation's vision and how Destiny is the embodiment of everything they're trying to achieve, which is a little worrying. He announces a beta for Destiny available July 17th, and an Alpha for PS4 owners the coming weekend. Continuing to try and hype Destiny they announce a new white PS4 and Destiny bundle.

The Order 1886 is up next with some mutant werewolf zombie...thing action. The game seems very cutscene heavy but does transition seamlessly between that and gameplay. This is impressive visually but will it be confusing when actually playing? In the short segment alone i saw manual walking and what i'm pretty sure was automatic running as you just controlled the aim and fire of your pistol as you run. Will it be clear when and what you have control over? or will the game fall back on QTE's to sidestep this problem?

I feel like there'd be some tension here if we could go ten seconds without a cutscene...

Contrasting this comes Entwined, a surreal colourful title involving a bird and a fish in love, who you control simultaneously flying through obstacles and such. Though not technically a race from what i can tell, a racer is the closest genre category for it. Once someone remembers to turn up the guy's microphone we learn it's designed by recent graduates from the company Pixel Opus. Entwined is their first game and possibly the developers' first time on stage as he's quickly replaced by someone higher up to reveal the $9.99 price and immediate release date.

A brief trailer for some Infamous Second Son DLC and we're dropped rather abruptly into a Little Big Planet 3 demo with a host of new characters and some rather cringey commentary from the players. This gets a lot of praise from the crowd but i can't see much of a difference from the previous games which the next speaker rather confirms stating that all old creations from the first two games can be played in 3. A solid but unremarkable looking inevitable sequel due in November.

"Bloodborne" is introduced as the next project by director Hidetaka Miyazaki and From Software, the creators of the increasingly popular Dark Souls games. Instead of a Medieval fantasy setting this appears slightly advanced, perhaps Victorian era but with much the same staples as Dark Souls with darkness (naturally), blade wielding hooded individuals and demonic monsters (though they might be implied to be vampires this time). The trailer is again purely cinematic and fairly short so unfortunately not much else can be gleaned from this besides a vague 2015 release date.

Far Cry 4 receives a decent length but fast paced demo. As you'd expect it sticks closely to the formula of Far Cry 3 in mechanics and engine from what i can tell. The only noticeable new additions being the new Himalayan setting where tigers have been replaced by elephants and those kind of things. as well as a co-op mode. That said, the gameplay still seems solid, fun and exciting so if there's a another well-told storyline accompanying it then Far Cry 4 should be a great, if familiar sequel.

To tangent slightly, the game appears to be attempting the entire narrative through a first person perspective again, which worked well in 3. This means we don't directly see our protagonist in this demo but i'm disappointed that he sounds like another regular North American guy. The box art that sparked racism controversy, i assumed was a blatant copy of the Far Cry 3 box art style, where the protagonist is trapped or dominated somehow by the main villain who takes prominence in the artwork. This is true again here to a point but the man dominated in the box art appears to be an Asian native to the Himalayan area and yet is apparently not the protagonist of the game. Perhaps this is nitpicking but there's a real lack of diversity for protagonists in games. Wouldn't a native of the land, that presumably gets upset by the villain's intervention, have more interesting backstory, connections and motivation than what seems to be another American tourist caught up in foreign conflicts?

With all the speakers i used to mock leaving their respective companies, we're left with one i found genuinely infuriating. The smirking pumpkin presumptuously talks about "when" you buy Far Cry 4 and a type of download play for the co-op requiring only one person to have bought the game.

Next we move into a strange kind of letter time and apparently someone told Sony we want more zombies...cue a Dead Island 2 cinematic trailer (thankfully far more tonally appropriate than the trailer for the first game) along with Last Of Us zombies cameoing in Diablo 3 for some reason.

Continuing with bad jokes and his misplaced "down with the kids" attitude grinning irritant talks about Battlefield Hardline and its three features. These are as follows, "buzzing buzzword" "buzzing graphical buzzword" "and a grappling hook!" To which he gets a thoroughly deserved concrete cold silence from the audience.

Grappling hooks and ziplines are his "jam"...

A so called "gameplay" trailer shows off snippets of generic first person driving and shooting under a "cops and robbers" theme before Boyes talks Toyes (Fuck, i'm as bad as him) detailing some stuff about The Avengers appearing in Disney Infinity. A segment that never really ends as yet more talking about Destiny and its exclusive features is unintentionally interrupted by the shout of "Hulk Smash!". I'm starting to think even The Hulk could achieve better audio mixing at this conference.

"Brand new things that you've never seen on the platform" apparently equates to a Magicka sequel so mindblowingly innovative they had to pad out the trailer with a live-action sketch, leaving about ten seconds of gameplay that looked like your standard Diablo with wizards. Boyes is interrupted again by a "special" joke letter about Tim Schafer and old adventure games which leads to revealing a Grim Fandango remake for PS4 and Vita. I've not played Grim Fandango but know of its cult popularity and it gets huge cheers from the audience so we'll assume for now this was a good move.

A montage of upcoming indie games follows, again sold as initially exclusive to Playstation and all published under Devolver Digital. Broforce, Titan Souls, Not a Hero, Hotline Miami 2 and The Talos Principle offer mostly visually retro shooting and action with the exception of the last title that's full 3D and looks more like Portal. Next up is "Let It Die" Suda 51's new title, exclusive to Playstation. Other than violence, gore and guns the mostly live-action trailer tells us very little. At the opposite end of the spectrum comes ABZU. From the makers of Journey which appears a similarly styled and atmospheric game this time set under the ocean.

No Man's Sky is an open world procedurally generated indie Sci-Fi looking like a first person spiritual successor to the best parts of Spore. Exploring alien planets, discovering new species and vast space battles all feature in the trailer and whilst the gameplay appears a little sparse, the concept, visuals and potential look great, apparently inspired by classic Science-Fiction literature this was the closest to a "wow" moment that i really got from the whole conference.

The transitions from within the planet's atmosphere to outer space appear seamless.

Andrew House returns to briefly talk about the Playstation camera and the virtual reality headset endeavour "Project Morpheus" For which they state two demos are playable on their show floor. Obviously i can't say any more about that, not having been there but many consider VR to be the real step into the future for gaming.

The slimiest businessman ever slithers onto stage and rattles off statistics about online play and social connectivity. How Playstation has advanced its stream and gameplay sharing capabilities, directly through Youtube and seemingly Twitch. As well as this, a ton of Free To Play games are introduced by objectively the worst possible hand wringing oily suit to do so. I've never completely felt comfortable with Free To Play games if only for the deceptive title of the format and it feels even more money-grabbing being described by Lord Business.

He's been to "every E3 except the very first one" and still has no idea how to do a good conference...

Next a significant section talking about Playstation Now. The backwards compatability download service being very slowly implemented to allow PS4 owners to play PS3 games. Then some stuff about a device allowing Sony TV owners to play games without needing a Playstation. Snake Oil continues to drone on about Playstation's vision, history and his own personal anecdotes until we finally get a gameplay trailer of Mortal Kombat X (10). A lot of knowing how well a fighting game works is playing it yourself but the noticeable changes in the trailer are graphical enhancements, new characters, and fatalities that seem pretty brutal even for Mortal Kombat.

Riskily talking about television for a while, we're introduced to an adaptation of the graphic novel "Powers". This basically follows two homicide detectives in a world full of superheroes and i guess it could be alright but all they currently had to show was concept art. Also there's a Ratchet and Clank movie coming and a PS4 remake of the first game. Andrew House mercifully returns and shows us a purely cinematic trailer for Metal Gear Solid V (5) and an announcement trailer of Grand Theft Auto five for some reason coming to PS4.

As the excruciatingly long conference draws to a close (only fifteen minutes longer than Microsoft's, but fuck me did it feel a lot longer) there's a gameplay trailer of Batman: Arkham Knight. Showcasing the Batmobile driving sections, it seems they were either controlled by an expert or are very fluid and transition quickly to and from normal gameplay. The batmobile also apparently has Bat-Tank capabilities which is nice variety even though it looked a bit generic in action. The trailer finishes with a threat from Scarecrow and a brief look at his seemingly disfigured face. House bookends the trailer by announcing exclusive levels for PS4 owners of the game. While i'm incredibly cautious about getting hyped for a fourth Batman game, this footage does show promise and PS4 exclusive content will help persuade gamers to their cause, even if the tactic feels rather sleazy.

The conference finishes with a solely cinematic announcement trailer for Uncharted 4 where the story narration and subtitle of the game suggest a conclusion to the series. Take this with an overburdened truck full of salt however since how many times have you heard characters like Nathan Drake taking "one last job" and even if it is, assuming it's successful, the industry sure as hell won't let it die.

So a pretty mediocre performance from Sony as well, rivalling but not really surpassing Microsoft or Nintendo. No Man's Sky is personally a highlight from all of E3 and not just this conference but then negating that for Sony is the unsettling, tedious and overly long presentations from Captain Corporate. Besides that there was the similar problem of generic looking games and far too many CG or cinematic trailers without gameplay.

E3 2014 - Microsoft

With an introduction that basically says "you're in charge of Microsoft now, we dunno what the fuck we're doing so we'll just listen to you." Phil Spencer also claims this will be an "entire conference dedicated to games" That's a pretty good start i have to admit, it's almost like they're capable of learning. He goes on to talk about "new ip's" and the "next generation" before showing us a demo of the next Call Of Duty...

So Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare appears to have Metal Gears, Michael Bay levels of explosions, somewhat futuristic weapons, jetpacks and what i initially mistook to be the Kryll from Gears Of War. They are in fact swarms of robot drones and you can tear car doors off to shield yourself from them. Of course there has to be a noble team-mate sacrifice at the end of the demo and whilst they resisted having you black out, you don't leave unscathed.

An explosion knocks you back and the expected shrapnel flies past but for once in a rare element of realism for COD, your arm has been severed off and your shellshocked character doesn't seem to realise until he's being dragged to safety. Now a friend thought this was just hilarious but to me it seemed like hinting at a greater exploration of the real horrors of war and that would be interesting. Unfortunately i then realised this would never happen in any other iteration and is probably just so you can have a Bionic Commando replacement.

Forza 5 gets a fair amount of stage time just like last year, detailing DLC that is available immediately which as release dates go can't be faulted. Aaron Paul shows off his new voicebox and introduces the sequel; Forza Horizon, with a trailer, the likes of which i have absolutely seen a hundred times before.

Assassin's Creed Unity has its world premiere demo, although describing it as having the biggest game world of any AC game is not necessarily a good thing. Online four player co-op however could be, and it seems to work quite well within confrontations at least. I'm going to assume at this point it won't also be available through splitscreen...

With Unity, the series appears to be returning to its roots of infiltration, crowd-based stealth and actual assassinations. All enhanced from the original with the advancements in speed, combat and fluidity we've seen since. It's possible all the bells and whistles are still present outside of this demo, but initial footage is promising and the setting feels more alive than in some of the previous games.

People have long hoped for AC during the French Revolution.

The Sunset Overdrive trailer mocks modern military shooters then quickly becomes mockable itself with cringeworthy comedy and badly breaking the fourth wall. Irritating presentation aside, "Tony Hawk with guns" does at least then show gameplay footage that looks colourful, comic book inspired and fast. Dead Rising 3 is up next, awkwardly still describing itself as an exclusive despite a PC version already being announced. More cringey comedy as the game tries to get its goofy back with online multiplayer modes through DLC, of which the quality is questionable but again it's available immediately so that's commendable.

Oh and Dance Central is back i guess...

The new Fable Legends brings more co-op gaming along with an interesting RTS Overlord style feature playing as the villain. Initial criticisms would be that the constant quipping from characters will get repetitive and annoying fast but besides that the gameplay looks fine and functional at this stage. All throughout the conference the trailers and demos have been interspersed with odd little Vox Pop interview segments starring different game developers. They add little to the proceedings but help break up the otherwise constant stream of game footage in a 90 minute conference i suppose.

Another inane quipping, cartoon, self-referential title called Project Spark appears, that apparently allows over one million different types of game level creation. As a fan of mapmakers i'm certainly intrigued and there does seem a genuine wide variety of possible creations in the trailer. This ends with a seeming segue into a new Conker game! Now that would be news but in fact it's just Conker as a random feature in the aforementioned game. The wording and introduction of this feature feels more than a little deceptive and cheap, not to mention probably rising, puncturing and sinking the hearts of many starved fans watching.

I believe this is known in the industry as "a dick move"

Visually stylised 2D indie platformer with a sombre story? That's ORI...at least i think that's what it was called, the typography was a bit flamboyant. Halo 5  is then introduced with its iconic accompanying theme, now a little awkward considering the attempted lawsuits by composer Martin O' Donnell. A purely cinematic trailer it unfortunately turns out but some Keith David narration is always nice.

Bonnie Ross enters the stage to wax vague lyrical about Halo before announcing a boxset of all the previous titles. I wonder what kind of insanity that will cost? The "Master Chief Collection" apparently all fits on one disc and transitions so seamlessly between games one can create playlists of their favourite moments. We then see some brief gameplay of an (optionally) graphically improved Halo 2 multiplayer. As well as announcing some other extras to the huge Halo collection the release date of the 11th November is surprisingly soon. I can't really criticise this package at all until i know the cost.

Phil Spencer introduces another visually stylised 2D indie platformer with a sombre story titled "Inside". It certainly doesn't look bad but this style of game is not automatically "innovative" and is quickly becoming tired. Continuing on the indie train we get a montage trailer of indie games with a decent variety, though some still fall into the aforementioned overused category. A few that stood out to me personally were Plague.Inc Evolved, Cuphead, Fru and Woolfe.

Following this, a purely cinematic announcement trailer for Tomb Raider 2 (The Rise Of The Tomb Raider) which suggests a darker more psychological focus that could just be all in the trailer because we don't see any gameplay. Next up a demo for The Witcher 3 which not knowing much about the series appears to be Dark Souls crossed with Monster Hunter and not too shabby in either regard. Ken Lobb talks briefly about Killer Instinct before showing a completely cinematic trailer for a rebooted Phantom Dust, a title i'd frankly never heard of and that this new glimpse does little to intrigue me.

As the show winds down there's a brief demo of Tom Clancy's post apocalyptic third person shooter The Division, a dragon riding mythical thing, sans gameplay, called Scalebound and Crackdown 3 in another purely cinematic trailer. At this point you might have guessed my main criticism of this conference. Too many cinematic trailers without actual gameplay and while i'm not strongly against cutscenes and some of my favourite games are cutscene heavy, it's a different story in regards to trailers. Even in a purely gameplay trailer, it is still a trailer and can be manipulated and edited to look far superior or vastly different to what the game actually is. This is significantly more the case if the trailer contains little or no gameplay and has cinematics made solely for it.

There is also not a great deal of groundbreaking innovation  and whilst that's a problem with the entire industry, it is still prevalent here. That said, Microsoft took about the best strategy they could this year by focusing solely on the games and this actually felt like the kind of conferences we used to get before Nintendo broke the mould with the original Wii and all successors were overrun with hardware gimmicks.

So overall, certainly not a bad effort from Microsoft. A fair few of the titles were exclusive and whilst nothing groundbreaking or mindblowing surfaced i am interested in some of these games shown.

And thanks for not mentioning television...