Matthew Przybysz
Hello everyone and welcome back to GADD! I’ve come back home from my latest assignment JUST in time for E3, I literally got home around 9 PM last night, so I decided why not do an article every press conference going on today, and the fake press conference by Nintendo tomorrow? First up is Microsoft, who I feel will have to do a lot to impress me. I still haven’t bought an XBox One (nor do I really have any desire to do so anytime in the near future) and I haven’t even plugged in my 360 since sometime in February. I just hope we have *anything* coming out in 2014, because it seems like every day there’s a new game being delayed til 2015. Unfortunately it looks like the big games for the Microsoft conference are going to be Halo 5 and Gears of War 4, both games that I have absolutely zero interest in. Both from the perspective of I don’t give a shit about those series at all anyway, and I freaking want new IPs damnit. Let’s start off by simply discussing every game shown in the conference, and my personal level of interest in them
SO DAMN HYPE I WANT NOW:
Obviously these are the games that as soon as I saw I knew I wanted, and if there were enough of them, might sell me on an XBone
Fable Legends – This was looking generic as all hell and I didn’t give a damn for the first half of the trailer, but then they introduced VILLAIN MODE which looks so freaking awesome. You’re basically DMing a Fable game, setting up all the traps, monsters, spells etc the world will use to combat the other players in the game.
Ori and The Blind Forest – Although it would be way better if it was Ori and the Bling Forest as Spike TV kept calling it for whatever reason. I still don’t really know anything about this game, but the Rayman reminiscent art style instantly made me fall in love with it. Everything about it looked so gorgeous and I’d buy it right now even though I don’t even know what type of game it is
Rise of the Tomb Raider – FUCK YES, the last Tomb Raider game was just so awesome, even if some people gave it flack for either being sexist or being too much like Uncharted or whatever reason, and I can’t wait for the next one. I really should finish it though.
Need more information first:
This is for games that looked like they could be good, but I don’t really know yet.
Assassin’s Creed Unity – The main difference for this game looks to be up to 4 player multiplayer co-op in the story mode. The gameplay looks to still be basic AC gameplay, and I question the need for multiplayer in story mode. Do you really want someone messing up your stealth by running around and being an asshole? With that said, I’m still interested because it just LOOKED next gen. The crowd they ran through looked amazing, and something as stupid as that was enough to pique my interest.
Witcher 3 Wild Hunt – The Witcher games always have my interest, but I’ve never played a single one despite owning the first once since it was first released. If I ever bother to actually play Witcher 1 or 2, this will probably go up into my SO HYPE list.
Crackdown – To start off, I can’t believe they’re freaking calling this just Crackdown, and not Crackdown 3. I loved the first Crackdown, especially fucking around in multiplayer, but then Crackdown 2 happened, and it was literally the exact same fucking game. If they can make a GOOD Crackdown 3, I’ll be all over it.
Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Edition EX + – Ok this is cheating, since it’s actually just DLC for a game I don’t care about, but that ridiculous trailer they showed was awesome, and I like the idea of turning Dead Rising 3 into a minigame collection.
HAVE NO FUCKS TO GIVE:
The name of this category makes it pretty obvious how I feel about the games here. I may not be completely writing them off, but at this point I just don’t care about these games at all.
Sunset Overdrive – Both the trailer and the gameplay demo looked awful and were stuffed full of forced edginess, and looked like they were made by someone who still thought Sonic the Hedgehog was still relevant and cool. However it is being made by Insomniac, which means I’m not ready to write it off completely yet.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare – I feel like longtime GADD readers know that I just don’t care at all about generic FPS games. NEXT
Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Halo 5 – See Above. NEXT
Forza Horizon 2 – I know Jeff Gerstmann of Giant Bomb loved the first Horizon, but I don’t know anyone else that even talked about it. I saw nothing in this to make it look like a compelling driving game, and a 1000 person drive club is just way too much. Why have a club if it’s not going to be exclusive?
Evolve – Be part of a team vs a monster or be the monster sounds like an interesting concept on paper, but in video that game just looked so completely lifeless and dull.
Dragon Age Inquistion – I wasn’t really a big fan of the original Dragon Age: Origins, but wasn’t the whole reason people liked it was that it reminded them of old school hardcore RPGs? Why make it look so damn action based now?
Fantasia: Music Evolved and Dance Central Spotlight – I know that whenever I do wind up getting an XBone I’ll wind up getting the Kinectless model, so Kinect games aren’t even on my radar.
Project Spark – I seriously don’t want to hear anything about this game ever again. Yeah, congratulations, you made a Little Big Planet. I’m so happy for you. RELEASE IT AND MOVE ON.
Inside – Eventually this will likely go into my SO DAMN HYPE category, since it’s being made by Playdead Studios, the creators of Limbo, and this trailer seemed to be leaning towards a Limbo feel. However, the trailer also showed fucking NOTHING, so at this point I don’t really care.
Phantom Dust – Just an announcement trailer, and I really didn’t care about the first one on the original XBox, so I don’t really care about this one either. It could move up when we actually see something of the game itself, but for now? Don’t care.
The Division – Can someone please just tell me one thing that separates this game from the tons of other online squad based cover centric shooters out there? Is it because the ghost of Tom Clancy endorses it?
Scalebound – Zero gameplay was shown in this trailer, but from what the CG trailer showed it looked like a Monster Hunter game designed to try to appeal to Western audiences. For now this failed, but I try to not get excited when no gameplay is shown.
Those are all the games shown in the press conference (I think) and damn it was a lot. I was actually planning on doing a live-blog of this conference, but at the ridiculous pace they moved, it killed those ideas fast. But that’s a good thing for Microsoft, and even though there were a lot more games that I didn’t care for than ones that I did, I loved that the conference was just GAMES, and no time at all was spent on trying to sell services. It definitely felt like they were humbled since last year and knew showing off game after game after game was the best way to try and win people back. For me personally, it did the job and I feel more likely to buy an XBox One now than I was before the press conference as they showed a lot of exclusives (or games with exclusive content) and a decent amount of games coming out in 2014. Good job by Microsoft, next up is EA in….10 minutes. Crap, I should have finished this article sooner.
