E3 2011: Konami, Microsoft and EA

Over the past week we’ve seen some great announcements, demos and trailer. We’ve had the privilege of watching in on the industry’s biggest press conferences of the year, seeing what the console manufacturers, producers, and developers have had to flaunt on the show floor and have gotten endless hours of coverage from those lucky enough to experience the video games and sleep deprivation from the front lines. Now E3 is gone and done for another year but it’s given us a lot to look forward to and a lot to think about, and thinking is one of my favourite things to do. So, here’s my run-down of what did and what didn’t impress me at this year’s E3.

Despite sorting this write-up by conference I may elaborate on aspects about games that were not discussed in the conferences, for the sake of convenience. I’m also aware that I’m not talking about every single ga,e revealed in the conferences but there are some games I have more to say about than others.

Konami

Okay, so this was technically pre-E3 but it was probably much better off for Konami that way; they’re one of a few companies who have managed to keep their announcements from being lost in the mad shuffle of E3 by showing what they had just before the conference. Nothing that Konami showed really grabbed me but it was good to see them addressing the problems of last year’s hilariously tragic conference by presenting it in a format where it just wasn’t possible for them to run into any more “Very, very exercise” moments. The Mega 64 video was pretty good, although I must say the weird set of sound effects and fiction they set up at the end for the Konami PR guy’s meeting with Hideo Kojima felt poorly tacked on.

Microsoft

Modern Warfare 3

While it was the logical evolution of the stage demos at E3 to get more and more setpiecey I was rather surprised by how much more cinematically focused things seemed than I remembered them last year and that started with Modern Warfare 3. I’m a little tired of seeing the endless CoD sequels by this point but it’s a beautiful-looking game and I’m sure it’ll be of some considerable quality.

Tomb Raider

I’ve never been a big fan of the Tomb Raider games but I liked what I saw with the new reboot. With most action-oriented game heroes going from quiet civilian to gun-toting Olympian god in a matter of days and escaping their every peril without a scratch, it was good to see a game which portrayed an obviously overwhelmed and realistically bloodied protagonist. That being said, I don’t think many American viewers really picked up on it but Lara’s accent in the demo was ridiculously strong. I’m from South-East England and even I was expecting her to break off into a long diatribe about chimney sweeps and steak and kidney pie the whole time.

Kinect

It’s good to see that developers are being mindful of introducing Kinect to more traditional video games in a way that’s both optional and makes sense, but it’s important to remember that for most of us we’re still looking a method of input which is more about fun than practicality. The Future Solider Kinect support also didn’t seem to integrate itself nearly as well into the game as Mass Effect 3s did, but the option of using Bing to vocally search through products on Xbox, is a method of using that technology which seems genuinely helpful.

Gears of War 3

Again, not my favourite series of recent years but certainly a franchise of games I’ve enjoyed. It was a great surprise seeing Ice-T playing this game alongside Bleszinski and much like Modern Warfare 3 this was a good-looking game.

Ryse

What was I saying about motion controls being implemented properly? We haven’t seen much of the Kinect support in this game but I’m very dubious about the number of people out there looking for a Crytek action-adventure game that can be Kinect-controlled.

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary

An interesting point to be made about this game is that rumours about it have existed for even longer than the game itself, it’s sounding like an excellent package though. I’ve gone from thinking “that’s pretty cool” to being outright amazed with 343 Industries offering the entire Reach multiplayer and DLC with the game, seven new maps, and the ability to swap between the original and remake versions of the game with the press of a button. The fact they’re building this on top of the original Combat Evolved code is crazy.

Forza Motorsport 4

Not a ton to say about this but I’m sure it’ll be a very high quality game and those cars look really good.

Fable: The Journey

I really hope Molyneux hasn’t spent too much time on this project. While his efforts to pioneer the Kinect have certainly been a great undertaking for him it’s disappointing to see one of the greatest visionary minds in video games developing an on-rails shooter.

The Casual Kinect Stuff

I’m a little surprised that people seemed so shocked that Microsoft were heavily showcasing the Kinect at this conference when it made them millions last year, but I guess that’s the way it goes. From a technical standpoint the Kinect Fun Labs stuff was really impressive and it looks like Tim Schafer really knows how to develop a good kids’ game (and call out the eerily plastic fake families in these demonstrations). I will say though, that one thing a lot of the Kinect stuff has reaffirmed this year is that using motion controls as a means to navigate 3D space is still completely unviable, with Kinect Star Wars in particular falling way short on this front. Oh well, at least this section of the conference provided us with some amusingly bad acting and for those who are heavily into that kind of thing Dance Central 2 looks genuinely good.

Halo 4

Man, I wish I hadn’t read all that leaked-stuff pre-conference about what Microsoft were going to show, otherwise this genuinely would have come as a very pleasant surprise. Ideally I’d like to see 343 make some big changes to the current Halo formula but I know that’s unlikely to happen. I must admit there was also a loud, nerdy voice at the back of my head screaming “The Mark VI MJOLNIR armour doesn’t have rocket jets” throughout this trailer. I also wonder what logical place do they take the narrative of Halo next? And a whole new Halo trilogy? And what did Mattrick mean by “on Xbox 360”? Okay, I know I’m being a little overly-critical on this one but I am genuinely interested to see what 343 cook up here, it could be something genuinely great if they do it right.

EA

Mass Effect 3

More Mass Effect is always a good thing and I’m sure Bioware will do a fantastic job with this final instalment in the trilogy, but an on-rails shooter section right after they talked about improving the combat in the Microsoft press conference? Come on Bioware, you’re better than this. To be fair the stuff shown off-stage did look very promising and on-stage they managed to make that Reaper seem very imposing, but Bioware are better than rail shooting in their game demos.

Need for Speed: The Run

I can only assume that EA Black Box were compelled to include on-foot sections in this game to make it more palatable for the action movie crowd (especially that one movie where things go fast and everyone’s really angry). Still, QTEs, in my driving game!? Oh well, the real judge of the game will be how good the driving sections are and I can’t say I’ve been watching the NFS franchise too closely recently. Let’s just hope this isn’t a step back from Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit which actually looked pretty good.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

My, this trailer looks familiar, doesn’t it? For those who like Star Wars this could be a very enjoyable adventure into that universe but taken as a straight MMORPG from what I’ve been hearing this game sounds like it has the same problem almost every AAA MMO of the last several years has, it just plays it too close to WoW. I can really see this being yet another huge project tanking and crashing under the dominance of Blizzard’s unrelenting MMO regime. I’d like to be wrong, I really would.

EA Sports

It’s probably important to note that I’m not a big fan of sports games but the whole NASA-mapping SSX thing seems pretty cool, at least in theory. I also thought the whole idea of people playing as part of online football clubs in FIFA 12 was an exciting idea, and it’s nice to see that FIFA and Madden at least seemed to be doing something more than the yearly roster update they’re get often accused of.

The bit where it began to fall apart for me was when the showcase of sports games seemed to devolve into a soup of marketing buzz phrases like ‘Player Impact Engine’ and how three professional American football players had somehow injected revolutionary mechanics into Madden. It must be said, one of my favourite parts of the press conferences was the EA briefing opening with the line about how they don’t need flashy stages or celebrity guests and the stage then illuminating itself and lifting up about half way through the conference to reveal the three American pro footballers.

The Sims: Social

Okay, I know there’s this general perception that any game connected to Facebook is inherently bad but the idea of a Sims game that responds to the information on your Facebook account is kind of a cool idea to me. How much Facebook would really be integral to this game though seemed very vague and it showed more like a poor, cut-down version of The Sims 3 than anything else. Let’s just hope it doesn’t fall into the dark void of addicting players and then trying to heap microtransactions upon them like previous entries in this genre.

Overstrike

A very nice trailer and this game could have a good sense of fun to it but it didn’t really drag me in like a lot of the other stuff at E3 did.

Battlefield 3

Holy mother of God was there a lot of Battlefield 3 in this conference. I’m all for on-stage demos showing off more raw gameplay rather than just cutscenes and pseudo-cinematic sequences, but this game did not show well. I’m sure this third Battlefield instalment will deliver pretty much exactly what fans want but watching through it in the conference was just a grind.

Duder It’s Over

Thank you one and all for checking out this blog post, I’ll aim to have the next part up by this Wednesday. Good luck, have Power.

-Gamer_152