So what did people think of the E3 press conferences? The last couple of years I've woken myself up at 2 in the morning to watch the events, but this year I'm in the northern hemisphere so I could watch them on the iPad at a respectable hour! Hurrah!
I'm generally disappointed at the lack of new content revealed, especially from Nintendo, who had a new machine to unveil and (so I thought) a whole parade of new games to show off. Don't get me wrong, Pikmin 3 and Mario U look fun, but
a) We already knew they existed, and
b) They don't look very much different from previous games!
This whole "New Mario" thing is actually starting to bug me a bit. By the end of this year there will be FOUR games carrying the "New Mario" title, and aside from a few individual gameplay quirks, the look largely the same and have mostly all the same gameplay features! I watched a video of the game's director talking about how "there are some elements that are just distinctly Mario, like the flag poles, and we can't change them."
Say what?? Whatever happened to Miyamoto "turning over the tea tables?" Think back to Mario 2, Mario 3, Mario World or Yoshi's Island. They were games that took elements of the past but redesigned them into something completely new. Back then the only copy-sequel was The Lost Levels, and that wasn't even released here! Now it seems like every game is like an expansion pack. I want to be surprised again, shocked with new visual styles and gameplay! (I've got to admit, the impressionist painting style in New Mario U made me say "wow..." Why couldn't the whole game look like that?)
No one wants to take risks anymore. And while I'm sure Pikmin 3 and Mario U will be wonderful games, I don't think I'm excited enough to get a WiiU at launch.
Rant over. Happy gaming!!
Pretty much the same here, Irvyne. Lokking back, I'm surprised that the best conference was...Ubisoft's! Sony's wasn't bad, but they've lost a few points with that FIFTEEN MINUTES presentation of that interactive book.
ReplyDeleteAs for those Mario titles, they should just change the "New" for "Another" because they<re not so new anymore, don't you think?
By the way, I watched all your vids a few weeks back almost in one go (in three days, I think) and I absolutely loved it! A few years back, I started a blog like that and you make me want to resurrect it (you can watch it here : http://chronologicalgamer.blogspot.ca/ )I didn't take the right approach and gave up on it due to lack of comments but now I'm thinking of resurrecting it in video format in some way, thanks to you, Irvyne! :) I continued playing my games and now I'm finishing Final Fantasy 7.
Hey, glad you enjoyed the series! I've seen your blog before, you should definitely go back to it. Stick a counter up the top and you might be surprised how many people are actually looking at it. (Trust me, if I got discouraged by lack of comments on Blogspot, I would have given up over a year ago!) ;-)
DeleteI think the videos add a really great visual and "personal" touch to a blog like this, but be warned, they can take a whoooooole lotta time to make. (Having said that, I'm kinda missing making them at the moment... It was my main non-work passtime for a year and a half!)
I'd be interested to hear what you think of FF7 in retrospect. As much as I love it (and I think I've finished it 4 or 5 times now) I can't help but feel that the story gets really stupid in the second half of the game, like Square just ran out of ideas and just made it up as they went along. FF8's story felt more planned-out to me.
As for E3, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that it's quite simply not the event it once was. The reason us gamers used to get so excited about E3 was because it was where all the big game announcements happened; you'd come away from the E3 week excited about at least 10-20 new games on the horizon, games that you'd never even heard of before. That just does not happen anymore, we're lucky to get 1 or 2 new games announced. So I'm wondering if perhaps I should cut my losses and not bother waking up in the middle of the night to watch the press conferences anymore. The last few years have brought nothing but disappointment.
I think the only thing in this year's show that made me sit up and take notice was the demo of the WiiU Rayman game where the person with the GamePad basically plays a musical rhythm game while the other players run through the level. That was amazingly cool. Everything else was just "meh." And I'm glad Warren Specter has brought it to everyone's attention that the absurd focus on blood and violence has got out of control and it's getting into the realm of disturbing. No wonder no one outside of the industry takes video games seriously!