So it’s been a few months since I wrote something on this
blog, even though I said I would start writing for this, but now that I’m
finally finished college, moving, and starting a new job, I’m going to start
writing again. I currently have something huge in the works, but I’m going to
wait until E3 before I release it.
Speaking of which, E3 happened this week and a bunch of
games were announced. Even though I’m not really a fan of press conferences,
there were some interesting things that I saw during the show, so now I’m going
to spend some time talking about them.
To begin, let’s talk about Bethesda. I’m not usually a fan
of their games, but I am a fan of iD, and especially of Quake. When they
announced Quake Champions, I was ecstatic that there is a new arena shooter in
2016…but then that hyped died when they decided to turn it into Overwatch. Don’t
get me wrong, I love Overwatch, but it’s just sad to see a classic franchise
trying to play piggyback on a completely different concept. Oh well, at least
there’s still Unreal Tournament.
Next, let’s talk about EA. Once again, they announce
absolutely nothing, but Titanfall 2 looks good. I actually liked the first game
and actually want to see how they expand upon the idea, and it seems like they’re
remaking Transformers for their campaign. Although Battlefield 1 as a concept
seems interesting, their recent announcement on no French and Russian soldiers
in the game irks me. These two countries played a major role in the war and it
seems disrespectful to leave them out in such a fashion. Unfortunately I don’t
see this game treating WWI with any sort of decency. Oh well, at least we’ll
always have Valiant Hearts.
Last of the third parties is Ubisoft…South Park looks cool.
And now we get to the console manufacturers, starting with
Microsoft. I find it pretty ballsy of MS to actually announce their next
console when it’s still 18 months away. It seems like they are going all in
with treating Xbox as another extension of Windows machines and focusing on
making more powerful systems every few years. Personally I’m very skeptical
about this direction since it may cause confusion among current Xbox owners
worrying if all games going forward will be focused mostly on Scorpio and Neo.
Plus, if I’m interested in getting the best graphics in any game, I’ll probably
stick with PC gaming, and even with the most powerful graphics card out there,
I would still not be able to game at 4K and 60 FPS. But still, it’s cool that
they’re releasing a new console with a cheap 4K Bluray player as well as releasing
all future games on PC, even though I’m skeptical about that front too, especially
after the Games for Windows Live fiasco.
Next we have Sony, which I got to commend them this year for
not having a press conference that put me to sleep. I have to complement their
show layout, but I can’t really say that I am interested in their content. It
seems like Sony really liked The Last of Us and decided to implement all ideas
from that game into all other games they’re currently making. Whether it’s
attacking robots in a post-apocalyptic scenario to attacking zombies in a
post-apocalyptic scenario to…changing a character action game into a third
person swordfighting game, it seems like that style of game is dominating Sony’s
development teams. At least Crash is coming back…in remastered form.
As for Nintendo, where is my Picross 3D 2? I know Zelda
looks good, but seriously, I need my sculpting fix! (Note: I’ll write more
about Nintendo in the next post).
Well there are my thoughts on this year’s show. Not really
much that I’m really excited about, but hell, I still have a ton of games in my
backlog to get through.
