So E3 2015 has been and gone, it was incredible. But we have to get back to normal now, be patient, the games will come.
For most of last week I was on my own. My girlfriend was in New York for work (jealous!), but that also meant I had all that time to play games as much as I wanted – well between all the E3 stuff going on.
I decided I wanted to try and improve my Counter Strike game, so I’ve been playing Global Offensive a fair bit over the last week. I picked up the Operation Bloodhound pack, as part of this you get access to ‘missions’ that you have to complete during certain game modes. They are pretty standard things get X kills with a certain weapon. I thought this might be a good opportunity to improve with certain guns.
Over the week I think I might’ve improved a little bit, but I still feel like I’m constantly being out classed by other players. I just don’t know what it is about it, I just can’t quite get to grips with it. I think what’s more annoying is that I’m pretty competent at most other shooters and can regularly find myself among the top players in matches, but CS:GO? Hell no. Bottom two every time.
A group of us also spent time just messing about on it on some of the random custom maps like Library and a kitchen map where you are basically tiny and running around in cupboards and fridges. We played using only one weapon, i.e. handguns only, we played invisible. It was a good laugh and a nice change of pace from normally getting blown away.
With Microsoft announcing the preview games programme at E3 coming to Xbox One, starting with Elite: Dangerous and The Long Dark, it got me in the mood to play them. So I downloaded the Elite ‘demo’ to see what it was like on Xbox One. You only get an hour for free and within that hour you only get to play the tutorials.
The first thing that I noticed was that on the Xbox One version it’s a lot easier to aim and shoot, your guns semi auto lock on to a target to you only have to keep the enemy within a certain line of sight to actually be able to hit them. Other than that I didn’t really notice much of a difference. I’m thinking that I might buy in to the preview of the game as I can get it for £25 which I don’t think is too bad. Plus I feel like I’d play it a bit more on console.
I also got back on The Long Dark, but only on the PC version. Previously I’ve only played for a couple of hours and since then I think a fair bit of new content has been added, so I wanted to check it out. I’m actually thinking I might start up a YouTube series for this game, just to see how long I can survive – probably not long if I stumble across some wolves.
I kind of wish I had started recording on the life I was playing as it was going pretty well, I managed to find a rifle pretty quickly and I was stocked on other goods, but I will start again to start recording it.
I had also had a bit of a mini break from the Witcher 3, not intentional, just other stuff got in the way, so I got back to playing more of that. I’ve now finished the quests for Triss Merigold and I’m just about to hit level 20. I’m starting to feel like I’m ready to head over to Skellige as I’ve finished most of the main and secondary quests in Novigrad. The ones I have left are at a much higher level than me.
All in all it’s been a pretty good week for gaming and the week ahead is looking the same as this time my girlfriend is off to Glastonbury festival – I’m having a fallow year.
– Will
What a week, I’m still recovering from E3 both physically and emotionally. It’s common place now and over all news sites that Sony broke the internet with the announcements at their conference of The Last Guardian, Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Shenmue 3. Watching the conference live in the early hours of the morning I was ecstatic but unfortunately due to it being stupid o clock in the morning UK time while watching I had no one to vent my excitement out to, so was sat in a room watching what was unfolding trying to be quiet to not wake my wife up who was sleeping in the room next door.
What I find most amusing is that you ask ask ask for something. When someone hears you and does their utmost to make it happen, when the dust settles people can still find things to moan about. “We want Shenmue 3″… “Okay here we go, Shenmue 3 but it’s gotta $2m fund first via kickstarter”. After the sheer emotion of this you can now find posts and threads about how this was a shitty move by Sony only announcing a kick starter for the game at their conference. Surely this is a good move as it gets the kickstarter noticed and therefore funded?
Anyway moving on from E3 and the hype of the conferences. I went out and watched Jurassic World with my wife in the week. Have to say that I did really enjoy it and there were some lovely little throwbacks to Jurassic Park one. And it’s weird that there were times in the film I actually felt bad for the dinosaurs. One scene where baby triceratops are in a like petting / riding area of the park, well when shit goes down and the Pterodactyl and other “flying” dinosaurs are released and they target humans and these baby triceratops I wasn’t worried about them carrying humans off, but leave those adorable baby dinosaurs alone you monsters. Moving on I recommend was a good film.
I’m also happy to say I finished Witcher 3 over the week. In fact it was exactly a month after purchase that I finished it. It took me a while to warm up to the game. I was probably one of few people that wasn’t completely blown away by it visually at first. And found the lack of auto save and fall distance deaths frustrating. In fact you could say my first few hours in White Orchard I didn’t like the game. I admitted to a friend there was a moment I contemplated trading it in before even leaving White Orchard. But I stuck with it. The game was reviewing well and there must have been a reason for this. So after getting to grips with it properly, I found myself warming up to the visuals and found the real fun began when out of White Orchard. I went straight to Novigrad and from there the rest was an epic journey that I loved. I found it a little bit annoying near the end of the game where you know you’re close to completing it. You know what’s round the corner yet, despite going straight to the end game mission, you’re still tasked with a few side quests that feel like a waste of time. Just let me at the Wild Hunt already!!
Other than that the weekend was filled up with watching WWE NXT and then Lucha Underground. The 60 minute Iron Man match between Prince Puma and Johnny Mundo being an incredibly entertaining affair.
Saturday I dug out Kirby’s Epic Yarn and had a blast on that, However my WiiMote was struggling to pick up on the WiiU sensor bar. I checked the cable only to find that it had been chewed by one of my cats. Great so that’s the WiiU gamepad charger and now the WiiU sensor bar cable my cats have eaten. I then dug out the PS2 and played some Need For Speed Underground 2 in anticipation for the new NFS game releasing this winter and then moved onto Burnout 2 as I loved the crash mode on this. I then saw Saturday off with watching Terminator 1 with my wife.
Sunday was fathers day so there was little geek done, just spending time at parents house, a few beers with the old man then when back home back to Need For Speed Underground 2. I ended up calling it a night about 9:30 falling asleep to South Park. Good week and weekend.
– Murr
NEWS ROUND-UP
Obviously there has been a lot of E3 news over the last week. We have multiple round-ups for you to check out. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Ubisoft, EA, Square Enix, PC, Oculus & Bethesda.
You can check out our page dedicated to E3 2015 coverage for more news here.
