E3 2012

[Sasquatch421]

I don't know about you guy's and gals, but I usually like keeping track of E3. On the downside though it has been rough lately as most of the stuff announced anymore just seems to be sequels...More COD...More blah. This years in a way has been underwhelming with a few highpoints.

Highs:
Splinter Cell: Blacklist... I've always loved this series and what can I say more Sam is a good thing.

Dead Island Riptide~ I'm probably one of the few here that actually enjoyed playing the first one and I practically jumped out of my seat at the announcement. Though sadly there were no details.

Beyond~ I loved Heavy Rain and I'm looking forward to what Quantic Dreams does with this game.

Far Cry 3~ I enjoyed the original Far Cry, but Far Cry 2? Not so much... Though this is shaping up to be an interesting game.

Halo 4~ Yes, yes I know.... Another Halo, but I'm interested in finding out more about the Forerunners and what's in store for the Chief. Still it has alot to live up to coming after Reach...

Crysis 3~ I did enjoy the second one, never played the first. Am looking forward to this all the same.

Tomb Raider~ I love the younger Lara Crofts looks and pretty much the way they are not afraid to beat her up in this game. Been on my want list since it was announced.

Xbox 360 to get IE~ Nuff said...

Lows:

Microsoft Smartglass~ In typical fashion MS sees something and they have to copy it. The Smartglass will do more, but still....

UFC goes to EA~ I don't mind EA, but this is a blow to THQ. Other then the Saint's Row franchise they don't have much else. I'm not counting WWE games because the last how many have not been all that great.

No Beyond Good and Evil 2~ Nuff said...

Will update more as E3 goes on and I know I've missed stuff, but I went with what stood out to me.

[Callie Del Noire]

Dishonored - E3 2012 Exclusive Gameplay Trailer

Looking through the videos to see which I like. :D

[Marconi Drake]

I thought the gameplay trailer from The Last of Us was utterly amazing. The way the AI reacted to things, like the enemies yelling at you when you were out of ammo and your companion attacking enemies when you distracted them, was great.

I'd most a link to it, but it's pretty violent and has a lot of profanity, might break the PG-13 barrier. But her is the link to the teaser trailer they put out a while ago.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/rWzcYbtZQr

[Chris Brady]

The Last of Us seems awfully linear...  At least from what they showed.

Oh, by the by, Gametrailers.com has the full E3 spread.  They even had an 'all access' /stream show with Spike TV that you could watch online as well.  I spent all of Monday watching it.  Today's Nintendo's press con was a bit lackluster, but it was leagues better than Microsoft's Cut and Paste job.

[Awol]

You spotted the games i picked up on also, Far Cry 3, Halo 4, Splinter Cell: Blacklist (Hes back and we love him.)

Though what I'm most excited for at this very moment is the return and reboot of Lady Croft, Woop. This i believe is going to be the best release of the old classic Tomb Raider series. Just a few reasons why I'm so exited:

1. First game i really played from start to finish and didn't have issues.(As long as the really difficult swan dives into the floor don't count)
2. OMG!! Tomb Raiders gone all 18+ (Have you seen the latest trailer, Scary stuff!)
3. Shes looking great, young again and starting a fresh.

After some previous failures to raid anything but your bank account i do honestly believe this will be worth every penny and time spent falling off things, getting crushed, eaten, shot, beaten up....I shall stop there. Though I'm unsure if the E3 trailer and the xbox one are the same i would recommend a look, either way.

What do you think?

[Marconi Drake]

Chris Brady - that's true, but I don't see that as a bad thing, necessarily. I'm a big fan of open-world games, but the story and "cinematic experience' is definitely the direction that Naughty Dog leans towards. And it needs to be linear to do so, in my opinion. Don't mind a set path in a game, if it serves the style of game, which is does here.

[Chris Brady]

I'm a little leery of Last of Us because, although it is a Naughty Dog game, it's yet another Zombie game.  I never cared for the genre, now it's been beaten to death and it still keeps rising.  Deserves a Dead Horse Award.

Rewatched the Nintendo press on. I was wrong it wasn't lackluster.  It was corporate suicide.  They were going after a market that no longer exists.  They're thinking they can recapture the Wii magic, but they won't.  Everyone who has a Wii for the sports games already has it for the games.  And unlike us, are quite happy to stick with the aging hardware.  And worse, if they do expand, they'll be looking to their smart phones, because that hardware has multiple functions, which is convenient.  And that's what the casual market wants.  Something light, easy and convenient.

Yet we KNOW that dedicated games are coming to it.  Darksiders II, Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed 3, all games that we gamers are interested in.  But there was no mentioned them.  Even the 3DS got shafted in the presentation.  Instead we got "Nintendoland".

Hell, at the end of the press con, all the journalists didn't believe it was over, they expected more (you could see it, none of them actually moved out of their seats), but nope that was it.  In fact no one moved for more than ten seconds, but if you watch the EA, or Sony , or MS, or even the Ubisoft one, they were half way out when it was over, all hurrying to report what they saw.  Not here.

That was...  Incredible.  I'm shocked I didn't see it, the first time!  I guess it was because I didn't get much sleep the night before.  I guess.

[Kunoichi]

Personally, there's only one game at E3 that I'm excited for:

XCOM: Enemy Unknown E3 2012 Trailer [HD]

XCOM : Enemy Unknown. ;D

[Chris Brady]

I just hope X-Com will come with an Easy Mode.  Cuz it's STILL kickin' mah ass.

[Kunoichi]

Oh, it will. ^^ And also a 'Classic' mode, set up the be the exact opposite of Easy mode. :P

I'll probably be playing it on easy, myself, though. ^^;

[Chris Brady]

Same.

[Kunoichi]

IGN shows off an XCOM demo.

Ah, and I've just been reminded of another game at E3 I'm excited about:

E3 2012 - Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time Interview with Mat Kraemer

Sly 4: Thieves in Time. ^^

[NotoriusBEN]

Personally, there's only one game at E3 that I'm excited for:

XCOM: Enemy Unknown E3 2012 Trailer [HD]

XCOM : Enemy Unknown. ;D

This Game. So HARD.

I dunno if you've seen Let's Plays of the Original Game, but I know a couple that are absolutely fantastic over at the Penny Arcade Forums. The guys that played UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep asked other forumers if they wished to sign up and be a named person in the game. Only 2 or 3 people are left from the original team that went on the very first mission.

If you got a few days to read 400 pages of gameplay and comments its worth it. I'll start you off with Day 1.
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/70136/the-bastards-have-landed-x-com-lp/p1

[Sel Nar]

This Game. So HARD.

I dunno if you've seen Let's Plays of the Original Game, but I know a couple that are absolutely fantastic over at the Penny Arcade Forums. The guys that played UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep asked other forumers if they wished to sign up and be a named person in the game. Only 2 or 3 people are left from the original team that went on the very first mission.

Preordered the CE already; gonna get me a genuine XCOM badge for my jacket of choice.

As for X-COM let's Plays, consider GuavaMoment's and Jade Star's 'Suicide pact' Let's Play of All the X-com games (except enforcer, that shit was just bad) and the UFO Aftermath trilogy, which Jade Star somehow managed to form an unholy fusion of XCOM and UFO canon.

In rough order of playthrough;

http://lparchive.org/X-COM-Apocalypse/
http://lparchive.org/UFO-Aftermath/
http://lparchive.org/X-COM-UFO-Defense/
http://lparchive.org/UFO-Aftershock/
http://lparchive.org/X-COM-Terror-from-the-Deep/

Also; Terror From the deep has the 'Proper way to deal with a Lobsterman Terror Mission' video.

TFTD - The Proper method of dealing with Cruise Ship Terror Missions Part 1

[Chris Brady]

I'm looking forward to this:

Darksiders 2 E3 Trailer

[Xanatos]

X-COM is not that hard... I played a Superhuman game once and was murdering Mutans and Ethereals with Plasma Pistols! I did prefer to play on normal because it was smoother, yes, but I can say I played on Superhuman and did not get raped. I actually had one of my first missions against Mutans. I kicked their asses with piss-ant rifles and pistols. Buyah!

Now... Terror from the Deep was hard. I never managed to beat it on normal for two reasons. One it was hard as hell. Second, my dads MS DOS machine died. The second time I got super far, but my Steam account information got lost as I had to overwrite my machine and completely forgot about my Steam information -sighs-.


The new X-COM looks awesome. So long as its actually a Strategy game and not some FPS game, I'm probably going to drool over it. If they make it like Enforcer, I will gag.

[Sel Nar]

X-COM is not that hard... I played a Superhuman game once and was murdering Mutans and Ethereals with Plasma Pistols!

Did you get the patch that locks the game's difficulty, instead of having it be auto-set to 'Beginner' if you save?

[Sasquatch421]

I can't believe that I forgot about Darksiders 2.... I did find a couple more things that I found interesting. Left 4 Dead is getting a prequel so we finally learn how all the Zombies got there. It has also confirmed that Valve either can't count to three...Or just doesn't like the number. Though if they come out with Half-Life 5, Half-Life Episode 5 of Left 4 Dead 5 next I'll laugh....

Next really isn't a game or anything just a revelation from the head of Microsoft Studios that says that the 360 has more than 2 years left. I'm not ready for a new round of consoles and with this economy I think if they tried for a new round, they might not do to well.....

[NotoriusBEN]

X-COM is not that hard... I played a Superhuman game once and was murdering Mutans and Ethereals with Plasma Pistols! I did prefer to play on normal because it was smoother, yes, but I can say I played on Superhuman and did not get raped. I actually had one of my first missions against Mutans. I kicked their asses with piss-ant rifles and pistols. Buyah!

Now... Terror from the Deep was hard. I never managed to beat it on normal for two reasons. One it was hard as hell. Second, my dads MS DOS machine died. The second time I got super far, but my Steam account information got lost as I had to overwrite my machine and completely forgot about my Steam information -sighs-.


The new X-COM looks awesome. So long as its actually a Strategy game and not some FPS game, I'm probably going to drool over it. If they make it like Enforcer, I will gag.

Yea, there was a patch that actually set the game to their intended difficulties. TFTD is a lesson in pain.
With this new Xcom: Enemy Unknown. It's being developed by 2K Firaxis (ie Alpha Centauri developers) This version is indeed what we asked for. A new reboot of the original gameplay. (some of the E3 trailers make it look shooty, but it is most definitely turn-based) There has been some streamlining to the game to take care of some of the rough edges of the first, but it is true-blue Xcom.

There *is* an XCOM shooter in the works. (made by 2K Montreal. same publisher as Xcom: EU). The last gameplay vid placed it sometime in 1950's 'Red Scare' America, and only had the most tenuous link to the original Xcom games. And it was 'supposed' to be a prequel of Firaxis' game. The only remote link I could find in any of their released footage or documents was only the name, XCOM. Public (or rather Fandom) outrage has supposedly sent 2K Montreal back to the drawing board a 4th or 5th time, hence, their no-show at E3.

Personal Opinion for the shooter:
1) Let it die
2) Brand it as "Men in Black: Invasion America"
3) I dunno... maybe actually use the lore of Xcom if you plan on using the name... enemies, UFOs, the whole shebang...

[Kunoichi]

Yeah, their original release date for the shooter was going to put it out in competition with Mass Effect 3. :P They changed that release date quickly enough, but now it seems like they've taken it back to the drawing board again.

The sad part is, the actual gameplay seemed rather intriguing, from what I saw.  If they stripped away all the XCOM stuff and tried to sell it as its own independent property, it seems like it would have at least sold reasonably well.  On the other hand, without all the controversy over 'XCOM in name only', Enemy Unknown might not have gotten nearly as much attention as it's getting now...

[Brandon]

Yeah, their original release date for the shooter was going to put it out in competition with Mass Effect 3. :P They changed that release date quickly enough, but now it seems like they've taken it back to the drawing board again.

The sad part is, the actual gameplay seemed rather intriguing, from what I saw.  If they stripped away all the XCOM stuff and tried to sell it as its own independent property, it seems like it would have at least sold reasonably well.  On the other hand, without all the controversy over 'XCOM in name only', Enemy Unknown might not have gotten nearly as much attention as it's getting now...

I agree the shooter X-Com would be much better recieved as a new IP. As is, well I cant say anything except its not XCom. Putting XCOM on the title just alienates old fans that might have bought it and lessens the good word of mouth that would have been spread.

Now to the Firaxis XCOM I find myself extremely concerned because Firaxis dont want people filming any actual gameplay except what they say is ok. It sets a bad precedent IMO because I see these conventions as a way to let gamers and obviously game journalists get unfiltered glimpses of things in the works. Trailers are bloody useless for getting an honest to god feel for a game but theres no tool that can inform a consumer or journalist more then actual gameplay

Time to get off my XCOM soapbox and talk about my favorite game that was presented with actual gameplay. Planetside 2. I didnt play the original but since Battlefield bad company 2 Ive always loved the highly tactical squad based FPS genre. For a long time Ive felt like battlefield had a monopoly on that experience but having watched some streams of Planetside 2 I find myself extremely interested in it. I like the idea of logistics managment in a real world where there are clear front lines and the chance to create new footholds in enemy territory. Support isnt a dirty word in that game, in fact its required to be successful.