Jeff ” Scorched Angel” Borsick
Well I will start from Day 1 with Microsoft. Now, I will admit I generally stick with the Xbox as my console of choice, but this is the second year in a row I was very disappointed with Microsoft’s E3 showing. They had some great games on show, however, being Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Mass Effect 3, Modern Warfare 3, Tomb Raider, and especially Gears of War 3. However, it was far too Kinect-heavy for my taste. I don’t own a Kinect, but after what they showed for it, it still did not really make me want to purchase one. They are doing the right thing with some of the hardcore titles like Forza 4 and Mass Effect 3, but the majority of titles shown, like Fable: The Journey, were poorly demoed and were just on-rails games. Hopefully they prove me wrong, but the games I saw from them I were going to buy regardless, and Kinect didn’t add much to them. They did a couple of good reveals, such as Halo Anniversary and Halo 4, but if they had not been leaked two hours prior, it would have made more of an impact.
Next up was Sony, and I was overall pretty impressed with what they showed. They had many games I am looking forward to on display, such as Uncharted 3 and Resistance 3. The majority of the press conference was focused on the PSVita, and I honestly can’t justify purchasing one right away. I generally am the type of person that when it comes to handhelds, I wait until they revamp them before I put my money down, so I can get the most out of the model. Now, the system itself looks really good, and very innovative, as well as the graphics look incredible. I am sure that the people purchasing one at launch will love it, but I can’t justify the money for myself. On the whole though, Sony conference was one announcement after another, and that’s the way it should be. We will see how Sony’s year pans out after they stumbled with PSN, but so far it is looking good for them.
Finally, we have Nintendo. Now, I am a younger gamer, so I really do not have a lot of old school nostalgia, but I have played enough Nintendo games to know that with them, first party is king. They demonstrated that firsthand with the 3DS titles that they announced. They were showing one after the other, from Super Mario Bros to Kid Icarus to even a new Luigi’s Mansion, and any owner of a 3DS should be very excited with this. However, I, due to personal reasons, cannot see 3D images like most people can. So, this system is irrelevant to me, and therefore I kind of glossed over this part of the conference. However, when they finally got to the big announcement, the Wii U, I started to pay attention. It seems to me that it is pretty much what every hardcore gamer has wanted, an HD Wii, that controls without motion control, and plays the same games as all the other HD systems, plus exclusives. They controller also has a very large screen in the middle of it, and if you want to, you can bring the game you were playing on the big screen to the smaller one. I have to say I was overall impressed, even given the little details we were. I feel that if they can pull this off, it will be a very unique system that will for sure give everyone what they want.
Overall, I am not really sure who I was impressed with, but if I had to choose I will say Sony. They had the most announcements and stuff packed into one conference, and constantly hit you with stuff you wanted to see. However, I am still leaning towards Microsoft for the console I will play most this holiday, as all the games that are coming for it are ones that I want, such as Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Gears of War 3, Modern Warfare 3, and Battlefield 3, and that’s how it always has been. I don’t think that any of the companies had a bad showing; it just depended on what you wanted to see. It was a solid E3 year, and there are way too many games to come out this fall regardless of what system you are playing on.
That’s all for this edition of the ZTGD Reviewer Rodeo. Join us next week as we grab onto another bucking bronco of controversy and beat it into submission.
Got questions or comments? Drop ’em in the comment section below or hit us up via email. Suggestions for Reviewer Rodeo topics that you want our opinions on? Hit Mike up at michaelfutter@ztgamedomain.com.
