Monday 22 June 2015

Post-E3 2015 [Events]

E3 is over, and it was a great event as ever. Possibly not as good as other years, but that's to be expected. A trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3 was certainly expected considering Square-Enix were having a conference, and the gameplay for it looked great.
Another game I was expecting was the next project from Frontier Developments, after they announced before E3 that the new game and Elite: Dangerous would both be around. Announced as Planet Coaster, it is definitely looking like a spiritual successor of the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, despite not much being shown in its trailer.
Uncharted 4 also got gameplay, and it looks to be a great one. Sony's conference as a whole seemed a lot better paced from reading around. There was also quite a number of big hitters around. The new Ratchet and Clank was around, and still showing that it has great gameplay. A Final Fantasy 7 remake got announced at Sony's conference, and the fact that Shenmue 3 will be Kickstarted and coming to the PS4.

The Nintendo Treehouse streams were as good as ever, and showed off many of the games seen in the Digital Event, and some that weren't. While Super Mario Maker did get pushed quite a bit, having the most amount of time spent on it, Star Fox Zero featured quite heavily as well. The Animal Crossing games were shown off, and seem to have a lot more to them than first showings indicate. Yes, at the minute they seem to just be games to push more amiibo, but maybe that's the point. Or at least, Nintendo themselves thought the idea could work quite well. They need to push the amiibo cards, and both Animal Crossing games use them. One of the more popular casual game series is Animal Crossing, so it would make sense to do so with Animal Crossing games. Don't be surprised if both games have some unannounced depth to them, though.
As well as the Animal Crossing games, the new Metroid Prime Federation Force had gameplay shown off. I'm still not sure why the game got so much hate apart from it being a spin-off when every Metroid fan ever wanted a main game after such a long time with nothing new. In all honesty, it is a new game, and just like all the other spin-offs announced with Nintendo, it is possible something bigger is in the works, but they need more time working on it. Both spin-off and main game would have to be in planning at the same time, or the main game would still be in planning while the spin-off moved into production. There is no way of knowing. Just be thankful Nintendo still sees Metroid as a franchise to make games for. F-Zero has been in background territory for a decade now.

Revisiting EA and Star Wars for a bit, I think I can see what EA has in mind. Star Wars Battlefront is their first foray into Star Wars gaming. They want it to do well. Now think what other games EA have that are near the territory of Star Wars. Battlefield, and the fairly new Titanfall. Neither was even mentioned during their conference, and apart from a mobile game, no other new Star Wars game was announced. They want Battlefront to be the best, and have the best opening, it can. At least, that's how I see it.

It's definitely been a good week, and now we just have to wait for the new games to arrive. Or at least have new information released on them. And while I'm not a fan of Bethesda myself, they definitely had a good showing, bringing the best of what they do to the conference.