I promise this is the last NWP about E3 this year.
Man, that E3 was a bummer, wasn't it? Or..not? I don't even know anymore. I had a rough week at work and I've spent most of my freetime podcasting, but it sure feels to me like this was one boring show with little to be excited for. Fortunately, I have Jesse and Nick to tell my why I'm wrong!
Way to play it safe, guys.
Well hello there! I have no time to talk, because we recorded this just now and had terrible technical difficulties and I didn't have time to do my normal editing magic so unfortunately you'll have to take a page from Adam Orth's book and deal with it which is why I am doing this massive run-on.
I'm afraid I've got some Bad News...
Come look into our crystal balls as we attempt to look into the future and predict E3. No, wait, come back! I promise you that this is an entertaining pre-E3 edition of Nerds Without Pants. We decided to dream up some wild (but plausible) wishes for the Big Three, and then do a reality check and talk about what we think will actually happen. Before that, Consumption Junction!
Femme Fatale
After 2012’s disappointing Assassin’s Creed III, I was beginning to get burned out on the franchise. The idea of Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation on the PlayStation Vita seemed interesting as it decided to tell the story of a French-African heroine named Aveline, but the draw wasn’t enough to get me to invest in a Vita solely for that game. However, with tales of Assassin’s Creed IV restoring faith to much of the series’ fan base, I grew curious once more. In an attempt to rediscover my interest in the Assassin’s Creed franchise, I went into Assassin’s Creed: Liberation HD – an HD port of 2012’s Vita adventure – with some optimism. Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed.
Thunder rumbles on the Genesis.
If there was one thing that Techno Soft did very well in the 16-bit days, it was shoot ‘em ups. It all started when they created Thunder Force in 1984. It was released on the NEC PC-8801 and several other Japanese home computers at the time, but never saw the light of day in the US. The game featured an overhead free-roaming viewpoint and the goal was to destroy the enemy’s shield generators, using your main shot for air targets and the bomb shot for ground targets in each stage. While it’s tough to gauge the game’s popularity from back then, it apparently did well enough to warrant a sequel. Thunder Force II was released four years later for the Sega Genesis in 1989, making it the very first shoot ‘em up on the system.
The Hype is Real!
I stood in a crowd full of other curious and enthusiastic gamers craving to get their hands on Xbox One’s Killer Instinct. The challenge was to win five matches in a row in a king of the ring style tournament. The prize: bragging rights! Oh, and a Turtle Beach headset. Either way, due to Microsoft’s Xbox One being absent at this year’s show, this was my only shot at getting hands on with the game. I eagerly waited and hoped that I would be chosen to play and luckily for me I was eventually picked out of the crowd to play. What followed was one of this weekend’s most exciting moments for me.
After 3 hours with the Dark Souls II beta, Nick and Chris offer up their thoughts and observations.
Though we all know the next holiday approaching is Halloween, for Nick and Chris, Saturday night was more like Christmas Eve. Starting at midnight Sunday morning, Namco Bandai opened up the first play session for the Dark Souls II beta and the duo got a chance to check out a portion of the game for 3 full hours. While there's quite a bit of coverage from the event forthcoming, this first tidbit is a discussion between the two about their time in the game and the things that they observed and experienced.
Hello darkness, my old friend.
Even after playing, and enjoying games with heavy stealth influences like the Batman: Arkham series and The Last of Us, I wouldn’t say that I prefer stealth games. So, going into Splinter Cell: Blacklist, I was hesitant. My past experience with the series is terribly limited, having spent the most time with 2010’s Splinter Cell: Conviction. Though I initially worried that I wouldn’t find my footing, I quickly found that Blacklist had a lot to offer and by the time the credits rolled, I was more than happy to have experienced it.
Giving a new meaning to Massively Multiplayer Online Shooters.
Ubisoft made good on last year’s surprise of Watch_Dogs with another, this one known as Tom Clancy’s The Division. One of the biggest draws about this title, besides the outstanding visuals, is the way that players engage with one another.
Xbox One has the software, but it still has a lot of issues that weren't addressed.
After a lackluster reveal of the Xbox One and plenty of reason for consumers to be concerned about the new console, Microsoft needed to do something big to counteract that first impression. At their E3 press conference, the company came out swinging hard with games, with a focus on exclusives. However, something was missing, namely any discussion to tell people what benefits—if any—could be expected from an always connected console that requires a camera to be hooked up in order to operate.
