PixlBit

I'll give a listen to this when I have free time. I think the future is just full of the same numbered sequels with dark themes, except for Nintendo, which is why I think Nintendo won this year IMO. Microsoft dug themselves into a hole last year, so they couldnt do worse. Sony was the same as last year, except with more services and electronic equipment added. Nintendo had a fun colorful palette of games and Japanese wierdness that I like in my gaming choices. I guess Batman is exciting. I guess? Dat No Mans Sky though!

Update: Ok. Great podcast. It's true that gamers are informed about games before release so there isn't much surprises to show. Overall, I thought that Nintendo Tree House was great and showed off their gameplay really well as opposed to just trailers like everyone else. 

I think I'm going to have to spend the next couple weeks checking out some of these streams just to see the coverage I didn't get from the websites I visit.

This was the best podcast of all time. Julian was right, this was custom built to put a smile on my face. You resurrected the ghost of Pixlbit past in bringing on JBone, and on top of that this was the first time that you had JBone and Nick on an NWP, right? It was funny, entertaining to listen to, and to place a cherry on top you all embraced the truth. Golf got no limits. I never thought about it that way until Jules brought it up, but EA could totally mine that idea out with other EA properties. Golf courses with a Mass Effect twist etc. That sounds ripe for DLC to me, I hope somebody at EA thought of that. If not they better listen to NWP.

As E3 went on I found that the press conferences that each company held were the worst way to show off the games. The conferences only went skin deep, and only on a handful of games. The good in-depth stuff all came during Twitch live-streams afterwards and news coverage afterwards.

I watched a bunch of the Nintendo Treehouse stream and saw a ton of 3DS and Wii U stuff they didn't show at the Direct. I watched the Gamespot stream and saw like 45 minutes of Shadow of Mordor gameplay which finally sold me on that game and blew my mind, and I watched a bunch of the Giant Bomb live-streams and video content. I learned more about Bloodborne and MGS V: Phantom Pain by watching the Giant Bomb stuff and now I'm super excited for both of those games. Patrick Klepick went to the showing of Bloodborne and asked a lot of question directly to Miyazaki that Souls people should be excited about. If you're interested in hearing their impressions of Bloodborne and MGS V they have that archived on youtube in this video: Giant Bomb - E3 Coverage Uncovered

Splatoon looks like a pretty fun riff on the types of paint mechanics and tech that were used in Tag: the power of paint, and eventually found their way into Portal 2 when Valve hired the Tag people from Digipen. I loved the paint tech in Portal 2 and Tag, I was wondering when somebody else was going to riff on those ideas and do something with them. It figures Nintendo would be the guys. Splatoon looks pretty fun, but in the big picture it's only a curiosity. I can't get hyped for a multiplayer only shooter on Wii U that will probably be downloaded and might even have some free-to-play in it at some point. Nintendo is surprising a lot of people lately and really going out of their historical comfort zones, I wouldn't be surprised if some F2P happens.

In the sense of just being a curiosity, the same might be true for No Man's Sky. They have a beautiful visual style to that game, but I haven't seen any gameplay that's compelling, so for me that game is all rhetoric right now. They're literally promising us the universe. Not just that but a procedurally generated infinite universe (and it's an indie team with 4 guys working on it). No Man's Sky is like Peter Molyneux multiplied by infinity, literally. If ever there was a time to keep your hype at a reasonable level and be skeptical, No Man's Sky is that kind of game. I don't doubt they'll deliver on the procedural infinite idea, with those 4 people they could make the algorithms and programs to do that I'm sure, but can that world possibly be interesting for very long? By it's procedural and infinite nature that world can't possibly feel handcrafted. It might feel that way for a little while but eventually you'll start running into familiar tile sets, patterns, and combinations of variables so that the procedural nature of it will begin to shine through.

To wrap it up, I liked this years expo overall to not be sour on it. I'm most excited for Shadow of Mordor, Bloodborne, MGS V Phantom Pain, the new Zelda, Halo 1-4 collection, Destiny, Dragon Age 3, and Far Cry 4.

I agree that No Man's Sky may not be as as nearly infinitely fun as it might be infinitely infinite (), but this tech is the future, and a hundred years from now when our descendents are frolicking in AI crafted autonomous worlds, it's going to be games like this that led them here.  Even if they're not as handcrafted as some games, their creator's DNA will still dominate their existence as the foundation of physical laws govern our universe. 

I know a lot of you aren't excited by procedural worlds, but when I think of the future of them, I'm frankly flabbergasted. 

I like the *idea* of procedural worlds, but it depends on what you're actually doing in said worlds. If No Man's Sky can deliver on interesting moment to moment gameplay and the combat doesn't completely suck (I'm looking at you, every Bethesda-designed game), then we may have something special. I'm not excited for it, but I'm hopeful that it succeeds.