E3 2014: A (more or less) Fair Judgement

Over the past few years I have become something of a connoisseur of E3 press conferences, and as such I find the simple analysis of how each of the five companies decides to present themselves and their material to be equally as fascinating as the reveals themselves. And before I go into great depth of these press conferences, I want to touch on the tone of the entire year this year.

For years at E3, we have been subjected to misguided companies who have either been confused about the nature of their audience or reluctant to embrace it. This year, every company seemed to fully understand that the audience they are speaking to in every sense is made up of the gaming community. Investors don't give two shits about these conferences; they care about OUR reactions to them. And now that we have all come to this stunning realization, each of the five shows went about a platform of blatant gamer pandering without going so far as to betray or insult the audience the way panderers tend to. Each of the five companies understood what we were looking for and how we wanted to see it come to us, and they did their best to deliver. The show was not entirely without its faults, but the efforts made all around are truly a remarkable reflection of the progress that this industry and the internet's influence over it have made on the developer/publisher-gamer relationship.

All that said, each company still took a unique approach in their presentation and in turn each have their own series of successes and faults to be examined just as any other year. And given how effective the scoring model has been the past couple of years I've done this, I'm bringing it back again with a slight tweak. I'll go over each of the talking points in each press conference, and weigh the percentage of positive versus negative talking points they had to create a base score, and then make adjustments from there if necessary to account for specific happenings that may require emphasis or otherwise would have been ignored. Anything I consider a neutral talking point will get half credit towards the score, meaning that having 5 positive and 2 neutral is the same score as 6 positive.

FAIR WARNING: In its entirety, this post contains over 9,000 words and zero pictures. This is not intended for the faint of heart or the lazy of literacy, but rather those who wish to challenge themselves to endure painfully detailed impressions of one of the most important events in the gaming year. Through, what I admit and must up front apologize for, a poorly written tirade riddled with typos and grammatical mishaps that I personally am far too lazy to go hunting for. For those who will ask, I made this post so massive simply because I refuse to drag it out any further than one post.

So go on, check out the full post... if you dare.

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Microsoft

Perhaps because we are amidst the console wars, and it has been said that war never changes, the order of presentations is once again the same as previous years. That means Microsoft opens the game and sets the tone for the entire industry in this most exciting of weeks. Microsoft has spent the past six months doing their best to control the damage they caused themselves early on with the Xbox One, and have made some serious efforts to make the XB1 a true contender in the 8th generation before it loses too much ground. All the moves for hardware were made before the show, and the gaming community eagerly anticipated to see some software that would seal the deal. The task at hand was not only to be a great console offering, but one that people would choose over the slightly more popular PS4. So how did they do?

Every year the Xbox brand announces more timed exclusive DLC to a wealth of multiplatform games, but no year is complete without the reminder that the Call Of Duty franchise likes to pop its cherry on Xbox whenever possible. And continuing with tradition, Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare led off their show with a trailer and of course the timed DLC announcement. Obligatory and not terribly exciting, but at the very least it wasn't completely boring to see COD try to pull off some MK moments of its own (and basically fail).

The second wave came in the form of Forza Horizon 2, a simulation racing game. Sim racing has its fans and market, but I am certainly not it. I am, however, the exact target market for Evolve, which took the stage next. If I start gushing about this game I will never stop, suffice to say that this was the moment when I really started getting into the show.

After that Ubisoft was invited to the stage to show off the co-op component to Assassin's Creed: Unity. I've been pretty burned out on the AC franchise, but I still somehow manage to keep coming back. This showing did little to sway me to try Unity however. Co-op is a cool feature, and since this revealed (at least to me, don't know if it was truly new info) that you can seamlessly enter buildings and exit them truly makes the possibilities of a living, breathing city to explore seem real, coupled of course with the sheer volume of the street crowds. But again, this wasn't anything that was going to get me excited for an AC game again.

Dragon Age: Inquisition followed. IGN's staff pointed out in post-show that the game seems to be taking a lot of cues from ESIV: Oblivion, which is pretty much how I felt about it. Oblivion wasn't a bad game or anything, but it doesn't feel like DA:I has its own identity so much as it is a transitional game that will establish gameplay features for the next game, which will have an identity. If that makes sense. In any case, it was later trumped within this same show, so it's a moot point anyways, but more on that later.

Next up came a game that last year I was on the fence about. Sunset Overdrive looked like a cool concept when it was revealed, but Insomniac's past attempts at co-op oriented games hadn't impressed like their other titles. The trailer this time for Sunset Overdrive got me well off that fence and did the most important thing it could for me: it made me want an Xbox One. In the group chats during the show I dubbed it Tony Hawk's Pro Anarchist, but I mean that with all the love in my heart. I loved the crazy flowing gameplay of THPS4, and Sunset overdrive seems like that combined with Insomniac's trademark crazy weapons and sense of humor.

Continuing loosely with the idea of crazy stuff going on in these games, Microsoft followed up with a DLC announcement for Dead Rising 3 that has the absolute most ridiculous title ever conceived. But what can you expect of a DLC pack that is basically bringing everything that ever was Capcom into the game in some way shape or form? I hope that they don't take it too personally when this DLC isn't as popular as they clearly think it will be.

Following that, Harmonix took the stage to talk about Dance Central Spotlight and Disney Fantasia Music Evolved. Neither of which do I care about at all. Fable Legends came next, but I wasn't particularly impressed with what I saw. I'm not what you would call a Fable fan, but this isn't a standard Fable game either. Nonetheless, the game's self-narration went into the annoying territory fairly quickly and the game itself never struck me as anything special.

Project Spark graced the stage next, which was kind of a weird moment. The game itself looks pretty cool, but the presentation of it in this trailer wasn't at all exciting. And then add to that in the final moments of it, Conker (of all the characters it could have been) shows up and tells people blatantly that even thought it is known that people want a Conker game, the only way they will get it is if they make it themselves in Project Spark. Which introduced the interesting idea that characters could be licensed into the game to be used by players in their creations, but at the same time seemed to be a huge smack in the face to Conker fans. I think they were trying to be funny, but it wasn't.

Next came Ori and the Blind Forest, which is a cool looking DD game, but didn't really wow the audience and wasn't explored in any depth.

After that came what most people will probably consider to be the most exciting part of the Microsoft show: the Halo moment. Both the Master Chief Collection and Halo 5: Guardians were shown off and talked about, but it seems that Halo 5 will be taking its time to get to us, and the Master Chief Collection will have to tide you over for a while. Now I need to say something here, but I want to preface first by saying that this is not specific to this collection. I do not get the excitement for these remakes. These are games that in all likelihood the people most excited for are the very same people that played the shit out of them when they released. So why then would you be so excited to spend $60 on these games again? I understand that Halo 1 will not be online and Halo 2 will be brought back online via this, but I personally just don't see the value in it. I understand if you're looking to cut down on some shelf space, or if you missed some of those games somehow. But I see so much hype from people who already experienced these things and likely still have these games that I just do not understand.

Next came the newest title from the creator of Limbo, Inside. Inside was announced to have timed exclusivity on Xbox, and the trailer shown displays a lot of what made Limbo such a hit returning for this game. Another strong DD showing for Microsoft.

After that I was surprised to see the reveal of Rise Of The Tomb Raider, which I am excited for. The reboot wasn't quite a great game in my opinion, but it wasn't far from it. And I appreciate full well that this story is picking up where that left off in Lara's psychological development. She's not suddenly the tomb raider because she survived that one ordeal; she's coming to terms with the fact that she CAN become the tomb raider in order to fully realize what we all know to be her destiny. It's a chapter in many prequel/reboot stories that tends to get glossed over, so I appreciate seeing it here.

This next one though almost made me forget all about that last one. The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. I hadn't been following this game immensely, but this showing really got me onto the bandwagon. Not only was it beautiful in scope and style, but it truly seemed like a fully realized world to get lost in, the way Skyrim always wanted to be but was never technologically sound enough to be (even though I love that game).

It's hard to follow up such an impressive showing at all, but Phantom Dust was simply too obscure and too vague to really capture any of my attention at this point. Having never played the original, I appreciated that IGN looked it up later to see exactly what kind of game this was, but once I heard that it's some kind of weird card battle hybrid I lost all interest. Maybe when there's a build that can show me exactly how everything is going to work I would reconsider, but for now this is meh.

Next was The Division, which was somewhat surprising to me since Ubisoft made an appearance much earlier already for AC:U. But nonetheless, The Division still looks to be an impressive concept that refuses to answer the most important questions I have about it. I appreciate the effort in tactical multiplayer action like this, but I need to know that I can play by myself and I need to know exactly what's up with the player voices I'm hearing. Whether it's poorly scripted actors speaking through headsets or poorly scripted in game chatter, it really killed the mood.

Platinum Games showed up next to show off their new XB1 exclusive, Scalebound. The trailer was fairly brief, but it seems to be a game about a man with a monster going out to conquer other monsters. Platinum has made some truly fan favorite titles before, so I have no doubt that this could be a well received game, but for me the trailer didn't get me hyped. I didn't particularly care for the lead character as he was shown, and I'll need to see a lot more from it to really know what it's all about.

To close the show, Microsoft announced a reboot of the Crackdown franchise. I personally didn't care for the original Crackdown, and never played the second. So more Crackdown isn't exactly exciting to me, but I know it has its fans and I know that they were excited for what we saw. And I must admit it has potential. We'll have to see how it goes over time.

Microsoft really had a good little show for themselves, with 19 talking points altogether if you count the Halo stuff as one (which I do since they did an overlapping presentation of everything Halo). And in truth, only a very small handful of those were bad in my opinion. Microsoft was smart enough not to dwell on those for too long, and kept the pace much more focused on positive stuff. In total, Microsoft had about eight solid positives from me, but in truth only about three or four of what they showed was truly negative. So their base score is a 605. And on top of that, I'm going to offer a bonus 50 points to Microsoft for properly setting the tone with a no nonsense, game after game presentation today, led of course by Phil Spencer who I believe completed his first E3 press conference sober. I don't know if it's true, but this is the first year I've ever seen him at E3 where he didn't look stoned, so kudos to him for kicking the habit (if warranted). Microsoft gets a 655.

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Electronic Arts

EA's presentation was an interesting one for reasons well beyond their showing. The fact of the matter was that EA, for all intents and purposes, simply didn't have very much to say at all this year. So to supplement all the holes in their presentation, they chose to show us some very early shots of some game concepts they're working on, without showing us that those pieces are ever going to really be anything. It was interesting to be sure, and it was presented in much the same way that Microsoft's conference unfolded, but without the true meat of actual things to show it all kind of came up flat.

EA's show started off with a concept trailer for Star Wars Battlefront that was for sure exciting to see, but only served to prove that this game is still quite a ways away. Dragon Age Inquisition followed that, but the showing was weaker here than at the Microsoft presser in my opinion. And Bioware continued on to show us that Mass Effect 4 will have greater scale and freedom than past ME games, and the team that created the Mass Effect franchise is actually moving on to a new IP altogether, which we presumably won't see until after ME4 is at least near release, which won't be for a while. All of which was collectively meh when you look at what they were actually showing, which is a shame because these are undoubtedly the most exciting titles on EA's pallet right now.

After that came The Sims 4, which introduced more control over each particular sim's personality. I've never been a fan of The Sims, and I have no interest in this game, but I would imagine that the franchise's fans would be welcoming this with open arms. For my taste, it's too much like a create-your-own-reality-tv-show game. And kind of creepy.

Next up came a UFC showcase an the announcement that Bruce Lee will be in the UFC game as a playable fighter. Which is interesting as a fact of inclusion, but I'm not a UFC fan. EA continued with NHL15, with revamped physics to make player movements, contact, and puck handling more realistic. The last time they had a major physics AI overhaul it missed the mark in a few key areas of the game, so we'll see how this goes over. Animations looks like they figured out at least some of what they missed last time, so I have hope.

After that, Criterion went behind the scenes with a new IP their conceptualizing right now that will be about more than just cars. Exactly what and how they haven't figured out yet, so don't hold your breath to see it anytime soon. Next up was PGA Tour, which will be utilizing the Frostbite engine to, um, make things better looking? It's still a golf game that doesn't share any relation or resemblance to Caddyshack, so who cares?

And continuing, the Madden franchise was up next to announce that this year is all about defense. And I have to say that everything they brought up sounds really good, until you realize that the pace of the game is so fast you will only have a second or so to react with the proper input. And with several new input options to control your defender, this game might just have a much steeper learning curve than Madden fans will be happy with. Or maybe I'm over thinking it. In any case, the last truly great Madden game was marked by its focus on defense, and I would be lying if I didn't admit I want to try out those new mechanics.

Next up was Dawngate, a MOBA title from a team of dedicated MOBA enthusiasts. I don't have much experience with the genre myself, and I can't say I was excited from the gameplay footage. But it all sounds good on paper for genre fans. Mirror's Edge took the stage next. They showed off some good footage of Faith kicking ass and moving around fluidly, but it was all still a developer diary. The game is still a ways off, and it's hard to get excited about that.

Next up was Fifa 15. Which this year features balls being kicked around by humans. Who would have guessed?

And finally, EA ended the show by showing off Battlefield: Hard Line, a game that's basically like Payday: The Heist with a proper budget. I don't mean to be dismissive of the game due to conceptual similarities either; several moments of the game directly brought the Payday games to mind in what felt like almost direct references. I'm sure it will be fun, provided we can avoid another debacle as we saw with BF4. In any case, they also announced that BF4 owners on PS4 could enter a beta for it today, which is something I hope becomes a trend at future E3's. It's hard for us to be at home and not get anything to play out of this show, and considering how many announcements have something to do with betas every year, it only makes sense to start open public betas immediately following these sorts of presentations. And keeping it to people who bought your last game is smart too, because it may encourage some people who haven't gotten it yet to go out and buy it.

EA showed off 13 total talking points, but with so many of them being vague conceptual showings rather than actual games, it's hard to really determine how I feel about everything. EA took a big chance in presenting this way with these sorts of things, but at the end of the day it killed my excitement for things much more than it helped it. I'm going to say about 4 of these items were positives, whereas four were neutral. EA therefore gets a score of 460. Which honestly is the best way to represent how I feel about the show. I truly do appreciate the chance EA took with its presentation, and might have even been willing to grant bonus points. But the fact remains that nearly everything they showed that was real at this point was either negative or meh. Nearly all the good stuff was more or less a dream at this point. And they spent so much time talking about everything trying to mask what a small offering they really had today that it came across poorly.

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Ubisoft

I don't think any other company's presser is dreaded quite the way Ubisoft has. But Ubi has been much better in recent years, and this year was a significant step up in quality compared to past years, even if their actual showings may not have been. Ubisoft's saving grace in terms of these pressers has been Aisha Tyler, who really was let off her leash today. She seemed much more comfortable on stage than in the past, and did a much better job of carrying the show. And I appreciate that Ubisoft was not afraid to allow profanity to be used on stage. But that's just me.

Ubisoft's show started before it actually started, with a real highlight moment being the Rabbids instructional video on how to prepare for this presser. It was a nice little touch to their whole show, even if it was followed by five minutes of awkward shots of the patient crowd. In any case, the real show started with Far Cry 4. Ubisoft decided to show an opening sequence to the game to really give you a glimpse of the lead antagonist's personality, and it was pretty cool. I wasn't sure if I was going to go for FC4, but I was definitely more interested after this showing.

Next came Just Dance 2015, which proved to be the "Ubisoft moment" of their show. Meaning that they had a big demonstration for it that not only was completely uninteresting and unnecessary, but was made worse by just how long it went on for. Even so, it wasn't as bad as these sorts of things have been in the past. Given how well the rest of this year went though, this is a top contender for Worst Moment Of E3 2104 for sure.

Ubisoft started up again with The Division, which in my opinion has really entered overexposure territory for what we know about it. I really don't want to see any more of this game until the major questions are answered, and you can find those above.

Next up was The Crew, which is incredibly ambitious in its scale, but practically speaking is not an attractive prospect to me. They mentioned that two of their missions were designed to last over two hours, taking you from Miami to Los Angeles while passing through New York and other major cities that in no way resemble a direct path. I'm not the biggest racing fan, and the thought of spending more than two hours on the same race is frankly daunting. Not for me, but impressive ambition nonetheless.

After that was Assassin's Creed: Unity, and this was the moment where I started coming back around to it. Seeing how you can discover the side missions, seeing more of the changes to traversing environments made by entering buildings, and ultimately taking in the new setting have piqued my interest. I agree with the group chats though that it's particularly odd that this French company made a game about the French Revolution and had many if not most of its in game characters speak with American or British accents. Here's hoping that little oversight gets remedied. And while we're hoping, please, PLEASE let the developer finally remove all traces of the modern storyline from this franchise.

Next came a fitness game called Shape Up, which is priding itself on trying to trick you into working out by playing to your more competitive spirit. In truth, if you are out of shape like me you are not going to do a bunch of pushups just to beat a high score. Fat asses like myself use games to relax and entertain; we know where to go if we want to get in shape. It especially doesn't help the case for this fitness game that they opened by reminding us that fitness isn't fun.

After that Ubisoft showed off a potential tearjerker called Valiant Hearts: The Great War. It seems like it'll be a nice little DD game, but I'm still a bit unclear as to what the actual gameplay is going to be like, so I'm a little cautious about it. But story-wise, this game looking like it's going to be quite the emotional journey.

And finally, the show ended with some alpha gameplay of Rainbow Six Seige. The gameplay looks intense and awesome; basically like a tactical version of Counter-Strike's hostage mode. Given that it's only alpha, the game is looking incredible. I can only imagine where this going with the layers of polish to come. Being that it has a dedicated online focus, I'm not quite as excited for it as I could be, but we'll have to see what happens when we get nearer to the final build.

Ubisoft's show was the smallest this year with only 8 talking points, but I'm going to call a solid five of them to be positive. Which gives them a 630. I wanted to give a bonus 50 points to them for their Rabbids video, but the extended Just Dance presentation earned an equal deduction.

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Sony

With every other company so far sticking to a "by the games" presentation style more or less, a part of me made the assumption that Sony would be the one who simply couldn't resist going off into other, talk heavy topics. And especially with Microsoft's show being a strong one, what Sony had to do here was present at the very least an equally solid lineup of exciting games, with a major heavy hitter to put it over the top (which Micro did not really have). Did they succeed?

Their first showcase was Destiny, Bungie's next big shooter experience. While I'm very excited about this game, it's been known for quite a while now, so it's not a terribly exciting thing to see on stage, even if they do have an open beta next month. The white PS4 bundle is a nice touch for people who don't already have a PS4, but I do.

The second game on the ballot was The Order: 1886. Thefootage here did a good job of showing off the atmosphere of the game, though some concerns still remain. I'm much more excited about it to know that it'll be playing more to the horror side than the action side of things.

Entwined was next. It's a DD game available now that controls similarly to Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons. Artistically it looks nice, but I'm not entirely sold on it. Following that was a standalone DLC announcement of inFamous: First Light. Having not yet played Second Son, I have to withhold my feelings about it.

After that LittleBigPlanet 3 was revealed very un-dramatically. Before anyone can even say "Hello", the title was on the screen behind them and the crowd got a little hyped. I'm excited to see that there more characters not than just Sackboy. Each has its own unique uses, but I have to wonder how this will work through the single player story. In any case, it was both endearing and disappointing to see that LBP3 is still handling about as roughly as any other LBP game, though it's never killed the game before. It's also nice to know that all past LBP community levels are playable in LBP 3 with a graphical facelift.

Since we've already done one dramatic tonal shift between game styles in this show, why not do another by moving from LBP to Bloodborne, the latest From Software title. It was basically just a teaser, but we don't need a full on gameplay demo to know what to expect from it.

Next came perhaps one of the most interesting revelations of the show, glossed over by the fact that it was hidden within another demo of Far Cry 4. The gameplay shown here got me even more hyped for FC4, even though some of the buildings in the fort you take over look almost EXACTLY like some of the buildings in FC3's outposts. Still, the most exciting thing that was announced about the game was that it will allow co-op with players who don't own the game. That's right. You can invite ANY other PS4/PS3 owner, whether they have the game or not, and they can play with you. That is incredible. I wonder if there's a limit to just one person who doesn't own the game, or one non-owner per owner, or if four people can potentially play co-op with only one of them owning the game. Is it four player co-op? I don't know, but if it is, that's something to wonder about. Also, will PS4 and PS3 owners be able to play cross-platform? And if so, will PS4 game owners be able to invite PS3 non-owners? Lots to be clarified, but certainly an exciting prospect.

After that came Dead Island 2. I enjoyed the first game, but it certainly wasn't anything special. And in true DI fashion, the trailer is really well put together. I did notice at the end that the dude who stopped to take the shoes off a dead zombie sounded an awful lot like Jack Black. Could it be? And if so, why not announce it?

Next they announced Diablo III getting a Last Of Us themed dungeon, also gave a reminder about The Last Of Us PS4. Quickly after that, Sony decided to change their presentation style to one where they pretended to be answering letters from fans. With this, they brought up Battlefield: Hardline and its PS4 beta. Fortunately it wasn't too long spent on it here, since the beta's already available to BF4 owners.

Disney Infinity 2 was brought up next to quickly announce a partnership with Disney, but Sony quickly went back to gushing about Destiny. It was kind of weird, made moreso by the weird, non-prompted "Hulk Smash" sound effect. After that, Magicka 2 was announced with a charming little trailer. It's a nice DLC co-op game about colorful wizards avoiding unemployment. Nothing too exciting, but nothing they dwelled on for very long either.

The next thing Sony did explained exactly why they did this entire "letters" theme. It was a poorly executed, elaborate and humorous tie-in to the announcement of Grim Fandango's remaster, which apparently is also due to the Disney partnership. After that came a montage of DD games made by a company whose initials are actually DD. Sometimes things just work out. Anyways, it wasn't as exciting as last year's indie showcase, but good stuff nonetheless. The Talos Principle in particular looks interesting, being a philosophical puzzle game.

Let It Die was next, and it came off to me like some sort of cross between Manhunt and that crappy Sam Jackson movie Arena, in terms of style. Could be interesting, but I'm holding back my enthusiasm right now. Especially since it's a Suda 51 game, which is always kind of hit and miss. I always appreciate what those games are trying to do, but playing them is often more frustrating than its worth from my perspective.

Sony next changed the tone dramatically again, this time by blatantly asking, You know what that last game doesn't remind me of?" This has happened often enough that I wonder if the person who organized the show hadn't been listening to Opeth's Watershed album too much while putting it all together. In any case, Abzu is another game in the ilk of Journey, so I have no doubt that people will love it. These types of games aren't my thing honestly, so I don't care.

Next up is an interested game with loads of potential. No Man's Sky is visually artsy, while conceptually intriguing. Being able to explore any planet ever (plus a bunch of new ones all the time) just by randomly flying around the universe is a fascinating concept when you take into account the lack of loading. The layer of combat shown in it is somewhat at odds with the other parts of the trailer, yet everything flows seamlessly together. Truly one of the more interesting ideas on the stage, but I'm not sure if I ever put together what the point of the game is.

After that Sony gave us some VR talk, complete with jab at M$ about the PS camera being optional from day one. The jab itself was very weak, and the crowd reacted to it accordingly. Sony's not getting away with pure attitude and trash talk this year. In any case, the purpose of bringing it up was purely for the people in the house who might get to try it out at the show, so it's nothing important for those of us at home.

Following that moment, Sony brought out the CEO of Sony CE America, Sean Layden. Layden was obviously a bit jittery about talking to the crowd. But I'm not bringing it up to harrass the man about such a common fear as speaking in front of a crowd; I just want to point out that in preparation for this event, it's clear to me that Layden wasn't quite sure what to do with his hands. So he turned to other public speakers to see what they did. And given that his title is president, he clearly looked to one particular American President from the 1990s. Layden's hand gestures resembled Bill Clinton's so strongly at times, I couldn't help but imagine Clinton's voice through his whole segment. Which I encourage you all to do as you read over the next two paragraphs.

Layden came out to talk about the launch of PS Now, YouTube, Free To Play, and some stats. Basically, the types of things that every other company did their best to not talk about in their conferences. About the items themselves, PS Now is an interesting concept as an in-house digital rental service, but I still wonder if it's all by the title, or if there's a bigger subscription you can pay to get a better value. Either way, I won't be using it much, if at all, because I prefer to buy the games I like anyways. YouTube is exciting to me, as is the fact that new content is coming to the video editor. I can already think of a TON of cool things I can do with that now that I don't have to sign up for Facebook or Twitter.

Layden continued with Playstation TV and some Vita talk. I don't care about handhelds anymore, but PlayStation TV is an interesting idea as well. Rather than a full on console, you can buy a $100 plug-in for your TV that gives you the PS Now rental service. To me, this sounds like it's something that was made to bring gaming to hotels. Which again, is an interesting sort of idea and I can see how it would appeal to some people, but not me. For those of you who actually did it, now is the time to stop reading this in Bill Clinton's voice, if you can actually manage to stop.

Following Layden's segment, Mortal Kombat X brought us back to the gaming gauntlet. I love this franchise and I am super hyped about this game, but I'll try to stay specific to what was shown in the presser. Aside from some brutal gameplay footage, we were also shown two new kharacters, both of whom showed off plenty of reasons why you should give them a run through the arcade ladder when the game comes out. I also want to note that there were no life bars still, and none of the footage I've seen yet has them. Have we finally reached the point where we don't need them anymore; when bruises and damage to your fighter are enough to give you the same information?

Next up, Sony showed off how they are going go compete with Microsoft's ventures into TV series. Powers, which is based on a graphic novel and is being brought to life by the man responsible for it, will headline Sony's PS4 specific TV efforts. And it's going to be completely free to Plus members, which is the smartest way to make sure the widest possible audience checks it out and displays the most ideal size of such an audience on the platform. But Sony isn't only working on TV. Ratchet & Clank: The Movie was also announced, though it will be a full on theatrical release. And along with it, Sony announced a remaster of the original R&C PS2 title, though I have to say that's really disappointing when you consider that the R&C collection on PS3 has the first THREE R&C games together.

Next came a reprise of The Last Of Us PS4 via a trailer. I've said it before, but I just don't get the excitement for these remasters. And there's something else to be said about this trailer. I am more than a little sick of this trend in gaming trailers to take sad songs from the '80s and '90s and find some random band's shitty cover of it. I get that you wanted a song to add to the depressing mood of what's being depicted, but why couldn't you have gone with the original Nirvana song here? The version you picked is just terrible; it completely misses the point of the song in its delivery.

After that was Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which is easily still my most anticipated upcoming game of all (even though MKX is REALLY up there right now). And I am so ready for this game, it's not even funny. And just because I commented on music in the last trailer, let me point out here that Kojima has on several occasions introduced me to some really good songs that I had never heard of before, and this is one of those occasions. This is what a proper song selection sounds like for a trailer like this; it really does a great job matching the mood we're supposed to embrace with the knowledge that this is the game where Big Boss turns to the dark side. Beautiful.

This next bit is one of my favorite moments of the show, for a very different reason than I think most people would say that. Grand Theft Auto V is coming to PS4, which in and of itself doesn't excite me (unless they can promise me that this version won't take 10 minutes to get through the initial load every time). The really exciting part is that the game will accept save transfers from last gen versions. Not just from the PS3, but also from the X360. You know, the one made my Microsoft. Yeah, Sony's console is going to be able to transfer a save file from a competitor's console when you swap it out for the PS4 version. Does that not make your jaw drop? What better way to convince people to jump ship than to promise them they won't lose any of the progress they've made in their favorite multiplatform games?

Next up was Batman: Arkham Knight. I have to admit I haven't been paying any attention to this game before. I'm just not as big on comic books and superheroes as most other people on here are. Two games felt like plenty for me, and I felt no desire to have any more. But then I saw this gameplay, and dat batmobile. And yeah, I'm back on the bandwagon. The announcement of exclusive Scarecrow stuff was kind of flat to me though, because I never found the old Scarecrow stuff to be all that impressive. Here's hoping it's better than that.

To end their show, Sony rolled out the official unveil of Uncharted 4: A Theif's End. From the title, we can assume this is to be the last game in this franchise, and I am stoked about it. I am a big Naughty Dog fan, but it's always been their style to define one particular generation with one particular series. I know that's going to change with them splitting into two teams now anyways, but I still don't want that to be any sort of excuse for them to get stuck on any one franchise. I'm glad to see they won't. They'll send Uncharted off in style, and move on to greener pastures next time. Sony actually ended the conference with a recap montage of all the games shown in the show, but that's barely worth the mention I gave it.

Sony's showing had a whopping 28 talking points in it, which was easily the most of all five pressers. And that's with me lumping things like the R&C move and remaster announcements together based on the way they were presented. Of those 28, I have 13 as solid positives and another 10 as neutral. For the record, I am counting the Last Of Us reprise part of the show a negative simply because it was retreading in the same show, despite being a bigger showing there. Sony's score is 640. I was going to do bonus points for having the most talking points in total (and still the most games when you take out the other stuff), but I decided it would be negated by a deduction for being the only company to go back to prosaic talk of non-games.

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Nintendo

Nintendo enters this E3 in a troublesome place. The WiiU has unimpressive in virtually every way, and the gaming world has rather wholeheartedly focused itself the other two consoles. But a glimmer of light came about from the ever popular Mario Kart and its Luigi death stare meme. So Nintendo at long last had a real chance here to get itself back in the hunt in the 8th generation. To do so, it would need to convince gamers that the WiiU library was going to have a bunch of must have titles, and that the company itself at the very least understood what we want from them. How did that go?

To Nintendo's credit, their E3's are almost always memorable for doing things differently than everyone else. Sometimes it's a good thing, sometimes it's Wii Music. This year, it was an epic collaboration with Robot Chicken to poke a little fun at itself, its fans, and its franchises all throughout the show. And it worked. Nobody was expecting this going in, and I guarantee everyone watching this show got at teh very least a big smile from at least one of these moments throughout the show.

Of course, the part that stood out the most had to do with Ninty's head honchos themselves, which then transitioned into a live action ridiculous Smash Bros. battle between them. I've never seen a more entertaining opening to an E3 presser than that. All of it was paid off as a way of introducing the Mii as a playable fighter in Smash Bros. Or to put it another way: customizable characters will be in Smash Bros. This is made possible not only by the in game class system and customizable move sets, but also by the next announcement.

Amiibo is a series of figurines that you can use as a flash drive of sorts specifically for customization with specific characters. With it, you can bring your Mario custom move sets to your friends house to play with, and also load Mario into other games he might not normally belong in, so long as its amiibo compatible. Whereas other consoles might achieve this idea with simple cloud sharing, Nintendo took a cue from Skylanders and wants you to have some shelf decoration as well. I wonder how exactly you can tell your figuring from your friend's when you bring it over to their house though. It doesn't look like there's room on it to label or customize the figure without kind of ruining the figure, and I assume there's only so many poses of each character, if even more than one.

The next game up for show was Yoshi's Wooly World, which appears to me to be basically a new Yoshi's Island game with the art style of Kirby's Epic Yarn. I imagine, given the response to the video, that there might be some hand-knit Yoshi yarn dolls available as pre-order incentives, but that's just an assumption. The game is built with a co-op function that features two differently colored Yoshis. One Yoshi can even eat and digest the other, allowing the cannibal Yoshi to throw the other as it would any other egg. This should be an interesting mechanic to get around, but it's a little weird being cannibalistic in a Nintendo game.

Next up was the reveal of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker. Toad's big adventure looks to have taken inspiration not only from other Nintendo franchises, but also from a few indie games like Fez. Definitely an interesting new franchise here, but I wonder what it's going to feel like to play. Will Toad control similarly to how he handled in Super Mario Bros. 2, or will he have a new approach to him? In any case, it wasn't a terribly exciting title for me. It's the kind of game I might check out if I had a WiiU eventually, but not one I would go out and get the system for, or even really be anticipating heavily if I had one already.

After that was a Zelda WiiU reveal. This time, the Zelda franchise is going truly open world, allowing you to enter areas as you so choose and how you so choose. The scale looks impressive compared to past Zelda titles, but I'm still not digging the art style. That halfway to Wind Waker look is just not doing it for me. I like the almost clay-like look the landscape had, but the character model doesn't feel like it quite matches the other aspects of this game.

Next came the Pokemon remakes. Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire are Nintendo's part of the remake bandwagon this year. I have to say that I see the appeal of these slightly more than other remakes, but still not enough to ever want them. Perhaps if they had remade them into full-on console experience I would be going girl crazy about them. I'm still holding out hope that a real console Pokemon game will happen, probably with a handheld version as its pair. And if it does, I would honestly buy a WiiU for it. But remakes like this aren't splitting my banana.

Following that was a quick trailer for Bayonetta 2. It was a bit odd because every other game so far had been given LOTS of talk and demo time, but this game was held to just this trailer. Probably because it's a third party game, but still.

Hyrule Warriors took the spotlight next. It's an interesting mash-up to see a Dynasty Warriors game in the Zelda world, but we've known about this for a little while now. Some of the playable characters announced was new info, but the DW franchise is known for its gameplay getting old, so overexposure should be a concern.

After that, Nintendo premiered Kirby The Hedgehog, which is actually going by the name Kirby and The Rainbow Curse. The end of the trailer showed other forms besides hedgehog, but most of this trailer showed Kirby doing his best Sonic impression and being guided along his path by drawn platforms on the gamepad. Games like this are a must for Nintendo right now, because it's showing that the gamepad isn't some useless, gimmicky, uncomfortable piece of junk that nobody wants to use over a traditional controller; it actually can be a useful tool to add drawing into game mechanics. Making use of the gamepad in positive ways is something that people have wanted from the WiiU since it launched, but few titles have made a decent effort of it. Kirby looks to be coming to the rescue.

Next up was Xenoblade Chronichles. I have never been a fan of the series, but I know there are plenty of gamers out there who herald it as one of the best. So those gamers went nuts to see this. For me, it wasn't really exciting.

What was really exciting to me was Mario Maker. The latest Mario game is one that's all about level creation. You can create your own custom Mario levels, using the styles of virtually ANY side scrolling Mario game. I haven't seen any word yet if there's online share functions like some other platformers that are built around level customization, but I hope so. This is another game that is really making me consider a WiiU. And even the gamepad looks like it'll be easier to use than a standard controller when it comes to the actual editing.

With Nintendo hitting me on a surprisingly high note at this point, they kept the hits rolling with Splatoon. Splatoon is a shooter that's all about covering the world in your color ink. The player who covers the most turf in their color wins the match. Navigating the maps is made more interesting by the addition of squid powers, allowing you to dive into your ink for faster movements and help reaching difficult areas. Now, I can't talk about this without mentioning that there was an LBP2 community map built with this exact same concept (minus the squid stuff) that was hella fun. I don't know if these guys had anything to do with it or if they were even aware of it, but credit where credit is due and all that. It's a fun twist to the traditional shooter approach, and I have no doubt that it'll be a hit for the WiiU's online community, assuming they have one. That's the only holdup for this game; it seems to be multiplayer only on a console that is well behind the standard in online gaming. But I'd say it's worth a chance, and definitely added to my list of titles that I'm jelly of WiiU owners over. Which is a list I really haven't needed to keep until very, VERY recently.

Concluding the show was a Smash Bros reprise for another character unveil. It's really quite the roster they've put together here; reminds me of Mortal Kombat Armageddon, though only in the aspect of roster size. Nintendo's final word was that there was to be more announcements to come after the show ended, but I can't include any of those in with this review since they were post-presser.

Nintendo's offering today, at least in the actual presser here, was very small. There were 13 talking points in total, with one of those being a reprise of another. Ninty took their time with each game shown and really went into a lot of depth in most cases. But to know that you have more to show that you didn't, and to know that you showed the same number of talking points as EA did in their presser (even if half of EAs weren't really games yet) is more than a little disappointing for the show. Still, what was here was really good overall. Out of the 13, I'm going to say 8 were solid positives and four were neutral. Which means Nintendo's base score is a 690. And on top of that, I'm going to give 50 bonus points for Robot Chicken, because that was excellent. However, I will have to take those 50 right back due to the slim offering here, especially since it was seemingly more due to poor time management in the show rather than a lack of things to talk about.

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The Part Where I Name A Winner

So who by way of numbers won this E3 press conference battle royale? Here's all the scores for your convenience.

Nintendo - 690
Microsoft - 655
Sony - 640
Ubisoft - 630
EA - 460

As you can see, Nintendo took the top spot this year. But overall, every single gamer and fanboy has lots and lots to be excited about this year, and that largely was due to the attitudes that every company brought to the table this year. It truly is an amazing time to be involved with this little hobby of ours.

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Now as everyone knows, there's more to E3 than press conferences, so here's some more general thoughts about what we learned this week.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT MORTAL KOMBAT X!!!!! How long have I been asking for exactly this? Years. Finally, Netherrealm delivers an MK game set 25 years after the events of MK9, bringing about a new generation of fighters for a new generation of consoles. The promise made entering the 7th gen, finally realized for the 8th. I am so freaking hyped!
I can really admire the way Nintendo stretched themselves out to really own Tuesday on their own. They knew that had it to themselves, and they made sure that their fans had something to tune in for all day. Well done.
If I had to pick a Game Of Show this year, I think I would have a heart attack from anxiety. There's too many contenders to choose from. But if I had to pick one, I would say that the game I am still most excited about is MGSV. But that's to be expected from me anyways. Also to be expected is that MKX is #2. Evolve is probably #3 right now, followed by The Witcher III at #4 and Sunset Overdrive at #5.
For those of you who caught it, yes it's true. I'm actually thinking about trying to be an 8th gen amalgamist. I have seen a few games exclusive to both the WiiU and XB1 now that have made me go into some serious consideration about it. And of course, I am still loving the future I see for my PS4. I think I might need at least two more jobs to keep up with all this, but then again that wouldn't leave much time for gaming. Why must money always come between us and happiness?
The secret phrase of this post is "I didn't start the fire". So if you managed to best all the odds and make it this far through what has truly been a grueling challenge of patience and free time, let me know by incorporation the phrase into your comments below.
I kind of wish that EA's conference had worked out better. Conceptually, it's a cool idea to get a glimpse at some of the fresh ideas being kicked around one year around E3 time and then either follow up at GDC or E3 the next year with the fruit of that brainstorm. But in practice, it just added to that feeling of emptiness about their whole showing. Maybe if they tried it when they had more than 6 games to show off in the first place, with a much smaller ratio of them being sports games to boot.
Before this event began, BullToad asked us to think of songs to commemorate such a glorious holiday. I thought about that on and off again during the week, and concluded that there truly is only one song that could ever do it justice. And when you follow the link to it, you might just smack yourself for not realizing it sooner. I know I did.

What did you think of E3's press conferences this year? Comment below with your opinions of the show itself as well as my post here about them. Feel free to be as brutally honest as you wish with all your opinions and fapinions.

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"Don't make me be literal, it's not as much fun."

-MrsDeanMartin

Quotes Archive

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Today In Music (June 12th)