E3 has been and gone, but it is certainly not forgotten. Its time to take a look back at some of our best moments from the show.
Best Presentation: Arguably the most important award of the week. For me its a close contest between Ubisoft and Microsoft.
Ubisoft had some impressive games to show off like FarCry 4, Valiant Hearts, and obviously Rainbow Six Siege. But, and I don’t want this to be biased although it will sound it, Microsoft just nicked it. The Division, Halo, Assassins Creed Unity, Sunset Overdrive, Fable, A whole load of smart looking indie games and Crackdown 3. For me it was an impressive line-up. Phil Spencer got straight to the point, there was no “We shipped X amount of consoles in Q1.” Blah blah rubbish. It was, as they said it would be, all about the games. I know a couple of the games shown by Microsoft were also shown in Ubsisofts show, but they were shown first for Xbox One, they were the ones to get the initial reaction. All in all it was a very positive show, and much improved on last years. Things, I think are really starting to look up for Xbox One.
In reality though I actually think all but EA had pretty good conference shows, its just that Nintendo and Sony don’t interest me as much.
Winner: Microsoft
Best Moment: There is one piece of music that, to me, is so iconic to a video game, that every time I hear it gives me goose bumps. I can’t help but get excited every time I hear it. That piece of music was written by Martin O’Donnell and it is of course the Halo Theme Song. As soon as the familiar sound of monks comes in to hearing, whether it be from the first time playing Halo, or the announcement trailer for one of the sequels, or a reveal at E3, I still get giddy. This year was no different. Even watching it back now, it’s still giving me goose bumps.
Yes we pretty much knew that the Master Chief collection coming but it didn’t stop me being super excited by the official announcement of it.
Winner: Halo Master Chief Collection Reveal
Biggest Surprise: I think there was one game that really took a lot of people by surprise this year. Ubisoft had done a great job at keeping it very tightly under wraps. Rainbow Six Siege was saved for the very end out their conference, and it was a great way to finish it off. I wasn’t expecting it all, I thought they might finish off the show with The Division, but that was shown a lot earlier. But no we were treated to a very nice, albeit very scripted demo of Siege. Where the Rainbow Six team had to rescue a hostage being held inside a house. Was were shot to pieces, floors were blown away, doorways and windows were breached. It all looked very slick and very impressive, and left me wanting to see a lot more of it. If the final game can play like they showed in the demo, then I think it will be an awesome game. I’ve been a big fan of the Rainbow Six series, and put loads of hours in to it on the 360, and I’m very much hoping that this trend will continue with Siege.
Winner: Rainbow Six Siege
Biggest Disappointment: Star Wars Battlefront 3, Mirrors Edge 2, Mass Effect 4, and un-named Criterion racing game, The Witcher 3, all the sports games you could imagine. If I had told you that these were the games spoken about at EA’s E3 conference, you could be forgiven for thinking it would’ve been awesome. In fact what we were shown was basically Dev Diaries, a lot of talk about how EA are doing things differently and are putting the customer first. What we actually saw of each game was hardly anything, and in some cases, nothing but “We are working on making this the best…. blah blah blah.” All in all it was just a massive anticlimax, and in all honesty they should have just not have a conference at E3, and maybe just done a little video showing some of the stuff they have in the works.
Winner: EA
Best Game: For me there were loads of great games shown this year, but there is one game that has stuck with me the whole time and that game is Bungie’s Destiny. It’s no secret that I’ve been hyped by this game ever since it was first announced. But this year we really got to see what we could expect from the game with the launch of the Alpha. Whilst I haven’t actually been able to play it, I have been scouring the internet for every last little detail and video I could possibly find of it. So far everything I’ve seen, has only made me want to play it more. It has become my most anticipated game of the year, and it’s crazy to think it’s now only a few months away.
Winner: Destiny
Worst Game: For this one, I feel I’m kind of wimping out a little, I couldn’t really think of a game that I didn’t like. So I’ve gone for an announcement of a game I didn’t like. Ok, I’m a huge Mass Effect fan, in fact it’s probably one of my favourite series of all time, and I was hoping that something was going to be shown, as we’ve known for quite some time that the next game is in the works. So When EA’s show got going, and I heard the *ding ding dong dong* music which is synonymous to Mass Effect I got excited. In my head I was saying “F**K yea! Mass Effect 4!” But what we actually got was a chat with the team at Bioware and a little bit of concept art and a tiny weenie bit of in game footage, if you can even call it that… WTF? Needless to say I was very disappointed.
Winner: Mass Effect 4 (Or lack of)
– Will
Best Presentation: I Know, it seems to obvious that I’d pick Nintendo given my love for them, and to add insult to injury they didn’t even have a live stage conference but a recorded event. But that’s where you’d be wrong. Microsoft had 90 minutes, Sony had 90 minutes, EA had 60 minutes, Ubisoft had 60 minutes, Nintendo… well they had round about 3 days. Yes there main digital event was just under an hour, but that show alone was fantastic with the ‘robot chicken’ approach to open the show, then to make fun of their selves with things such as “Oh great another Mario Game” and “Where’s Earthbound 3”. Then it was nothing but games games games some we knew about, some new ones altogether, not a hint of a Mario game in site, new IP’s were revealed and the fantastic addition of Amiibo to Smash bro’s and other future Nintendo titles.
And then as I said their E3 presence didn’t end there. They streamed live continuously for the remainder of E3 their newest titles being played by press and public alike. They gave each title they had more live reveal air time than other rival companies’ conferences. They hosted a Smash Bro’s competition for people to get their hands on the new title. They had so much going on they had to reveal games after shows, a few hours after their digital event we’re informed Mario Party & Devils Third are coming out, then a new 3DS game the next day. They had E3 completely covered and it was awesome. I spent about 4 hours watching their tree house events seeing Mario Maker and Splatoon, 2 titles at first I was a bit unsure of, but now after their tree house events and seeing so much game play of them both, know for a fact I’ll be buying.
Kudos Nintendo, you really made your presence at E3 felt.
Winner: Nintendo
Best Moment: I loved the Sony conference, there were numerous games that I got very excited about, then the conference took a bit of a turn and went onto PSN/PS+ statistics, PSTV and things not quite as exciting, but once we’d sat through that the mood picked up again as we got another trailer real of upcoming PS4 games. One trailer that appeared…Grand Theft Auto V. YES GTAV is being touched up and brought to the new generation of consoles. I’ve played it and completed twice in the launch week and loved every moment of it, The prospect of playing It again on my shiny new PS4 with improved everything is an amazing thought. From the trailer it appears much work has gone into improving it with more traffic and animals present in the game, in fact some eagle eyes pointed out a cat in the trailer (YES A FREAKING CAT). I cannot wait for this!
Winner: Grand Theft Auto V Reveal
Biggest Surprise: I’ve opted for Splatoon for my surprise of the show as it ended up turning to be one of the games I’m most looking forward to playing. It started out looking like another standard kiddie friendly Nintendo title, but after watching more of it on the Tree house events Nintendo did, and seeing just how much thought they have put into the strategy and game play mechanics in this, it really could turn out to be a lot of fun. Plus visually it looks fantastic to boot! Hopefully this can build up a nice following for some decent online verses games.
Winner: Splatoon
Biggest Disappointment: We’ve had some incredible game reveals across all the conferences and my wallet is going to hurt, but the real pain in the ass is 2015. That year appeared to show up at the end of so many trailers for games. Yoshi 2015, Xenoblade 2015, Halo 2015, Division 2015. 2015 is certainly shaping up to be a mammoth year for gaming. And I thought 2014 was going to take all my money.
Winner: 2015 Launch date for games
Best Game: I don’t know how many more times I can write how amazing this game is going to be. Or at least I hope it will be. The reveal trailer for it during Sony’s conference was incredible; the premise of completely unrestricted exploration is incredibly exciting. I can’t wait to start charting new planets & life forms. The visual of this game look beautiful and how much more can I say, this game is going to be awesome I’m sure of it.
Winner: No Man’s Sky
Worst Game: We were told that Nintendo would be unveiling a surprise 3rd party exclusive for Wii U after their Digital Event. As always the Nintendo hype train was at full speed, fortunately after their stellar event it seemed that it wouldn’t derail this year. Okay the announcement of Devils Third didn’t derail the train completely. In fact it caused quite the hype reaction when people found out me included, but when I finally saw gameplay of the title I was seriously disappointed. It’s great that Nintendo are picking up titles like this and Bayonetta 2 for their console exclusively. But this game looked so unpolished. It’s probably some way off from being released, but in its current guise it looks atrocious. The snap from 3rd person to 1st person is terrible, the character movement looks laggy and there was a point on the video I was watching the main character was climbing a ladder and appeared to take an extra step at the top, perhaps an invisible part of the ladder there? So we can rejoice as Nintendo fans we have another 3rd party exclusive game, but it’s a game that won’t be finding its way onto my Wii U collection unfortunately.
Winner: Devils Third
– Murr
