E3 2016 in Review

A lot of information was revealed over the course of E3. The Source Gaming team provides their thoughts on the event.

E3 has come and gone! A lot of new information was posted, giving fans an idea of what to expect for the next year. As far as Nintendo goes, I’m not entirely convinced that focused solely on Zelda was the best idea. I’m still unconvinced that this year will be a good year for Nintendo…we need to wait quite awhile before Breath of Wild releases. The Wii U lineup is extremely barebone. Hopefully something else will get announced because as of right now it really does seem that Nintendo is abandoning the Wii U.

I thought Color Splash looked interesting. I enjoyed the developer interview that GameXplain posted. I’m still disappointed in the lack of character variety, and I miss the partners. But if I were to judge Color Splash as it’s own game, I would be lying if I said it looked bad. Ever Oasis looks great too.

I didn’t really like the Treehouse Streams. They were highly inconvenient for me (starting at 1 AM) and the information was slowly leaked over the course of the day. I would have preferred a Nintendo Direct to at least announce everything all at once. Watching the live translation was great for me (The Nintendo translators are extremely talented!), but it was also annoying as it slowed the pace down.

The Pokemon Go developers roundtable, one that I was really looking forward to, was a huge disappointment. It felt like they were really trying hard to sell the Pokemon Go Plus wristband, which is severely overpriced. The questions felt planted/ pre-planned, especially the ones that ask about the price and availability. Bill stated he was surprised that Miyamoto shared the release date, but then shortly after the Pokemon Go website launched for pre orders. If they had just announced those details before then I wouldn’t have had an issue with the presentation. All I’m saying is for the roundtable, it just felt dishonest.

Overall, I would say this was a better E3 for Nintendo, but still far from perfect. Nintendo could learn a lot of things from Sony in order to improve their presentations.

I’ve seen my fair share of E3s from the comfort of my computer monitor, but this was the first one I’ve ever been to myself, so I’ll be speaking less as a spectator and more as a participant, as I’m still in the midst at looking at various trailers/conferences.

I caught bits and pieces of the Treehouse live, but the The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild booth was definitely a highlight for E3 for me. An amazing level of detail from the visuals to even the smell, and the demo for the game was a great look into what could be in store for everyone come the full game. The world is so rich and huge, with tons of little secrets hidden around (such as a Fire Rod I uncovered) that’ll keep gamers hooked for hours.

I unfortunately didn’t get to experience much of what Sony had to offer, due to the manner they had their demo stations managed, requiring the Playstation app to even sign up for the lines they had for all the VR events they had planned. Microsoft was a lot more open, offering looks at plenty of their big games and smaller games as well. Highlights for me from their area was Recore, the title made by Keiji Inafune and the former Retro developers, which offered a third person shooter experience which reminded me a lot of Metroid Prime and the Ratchet and Clank games (Note, that’s a good thing) and Bloodstained, a fresh take, yet spiritual successor, to the Castlevania series that retained its chilling atmosphere and expanding on the gameplay made famous in Symphony of the Night.

Other titles that I enjoyed was Capcom’s Dead Rising 4 which brings Frank and the insanity I loved about Dead Rising 1 to a darker world, Ubisoft’s For Honor which offers methodical reflex based weapon gameplay. Personally there was nothing that disappointed me or felt unfun that I personally played, with the exception of the Final Fantasy XV Titan demo (which was a bit of a underwhelming quick time event fest). At the end of the day though, I thought E3 was great, and I hope that this year won’t be my last year.

I will admit that when Nintendo announced their plans for E3 a lot of my excitement dropped. No Nintendo NX and a focus only on one game? Nintendo what were you thinking. Well apparently it was not totally illogical as Nintendo still came out as the company of the show for me. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild looks amazing and after a long hiatus it is nice to finally get actual footage of the game. Plus, it was not all Nintendo showed us. Pokemon Sun & Moon looks so much better than X & Y ever did and Paper Mario Color Splash looks better than Sticker Star (although I am still a bit on the fence overall). Lastly while we got no Mother 3 announced we did get a new Nintendo IP revealed, the company’s 195th IP: Ever Oasis. The game looks really fun, a lot like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles or Secret of Mana and I can’t wait to hear more about it later this year.

Now onto the non-Nintendo stuff. This was a weird event for me because despite all the Watch_Dogs and the lack of Beyond Good & Evil 2 I actually think Ubisoft had the best presentation of the three I watched. The South Park demonstration was hilarious; Steep, Eagle Flight, For Honour and Trials of the Blood Dragon looked pretty good; we got an NX game in Just Dance 2017 and then everything else I was not bothered about but the way it was presented was very nice.

Most people probably disagree with my above statement and say that Sony had the best conference but for me, Sony was really boring and underwhelming. There is always one every year and usually it’s Nintendo but now Sony stepped up to the plate of not delivering all the cool stuff they had, and I am not even sure why. The biggest surprise of their conference was Resident Evil 7 and the fact that Call of Duty Infinite Warfare does not look like garbage. God of War looks unbelievably cliche in the gameplay department and everything else was basically a short VR teaser, and I mean teaser. Horizon Zero Dawn looked really cool although it was completely overshadowed by Zelda the next day. The Crash Bandicoot remasters are a good idea in my opinion but they revealed so quickly with no time to focus on them. Spider-Man and the Last Guardian were cool but we saw nothing of them basically. Lastly, the game they chose to focus on and end the conference with was Days Gone, another generic Zombie game. No amount of Kojima at this conference can save it from being under-par, but it was still better than Microsoft.

Microsoft announced two consoles at their conference that you don’t even need because everything is coming to Windows 10. I have never felt less enthusiastic about picking up their system. No fancy and expensive controller will persuade me either. Admittedly, in hindsight Microsoft showed more games that I cared about than any of the other companies from Gears of War 4 to We Happy Few but they also had Forza and Battlefield which I just don’t care about. My problem with Microsoft was solely on the presentation this time and not the games and in the end I was left feeling unsurprised and underwhelmed.

Overall I still wish Nintendo had done more but E3 was not as abysmal as I expected it to be.

My perspective of E3 may be a bit different as I actually went. One thing I can say is that I don’t blame Nintendo for only bringing one game. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was by far the most popular game at the show, with lines wrapping around Nintendo’s booth. I doubt journalist will say Nintendo won, but there could be a strong case for it given its reaction on social media and at the show itself.

Even though Nintendo did not have a Digital Presentation, they showed off quite a few games. One of the more interesting surprises was Ever Oasis from Grezzo. The game looks interesting and has a certain charm to it not seem in most RPGs. One thing I felt was that Nintendo trust Grezzo. Nintendo doesn’t just give anyone The Legend of Zelda, but they have done a lot of the remastering, including Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask and co-developed The Legend of Zelda: Tri-Force Heroes. The litmus test for how much faith Nintendo has in this game is if they release amiibo for it.

Nintendo also showed off Mario Party Star Rush. From the Treehouse footage, it seemed interesting. Moving simultaneously and on a grid based board works well for a handheld. The game looks interesting. If it has download play, then it could be a hit. As an aside, although the newest Mario Party titles have been criticized to hell and back, Mario Party 10 sold over 1.6 million units. Nintendo also showed off Paper Mario: Color Splash. This game basically looks like Paper Mario: Sticker Star 2. I don’t have much faith in this game, but that will be for another time.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch the conferences as I was traveling to the show itself. Microsoft had some interesting titles with Sea of Thieves and Recore. Recore, specifically, was a unique surprise, and I would recommend checking it out if you own a Xbox One. Additionally, a lot of the smaller titles were interesting, such as Cuphead. That said, we didn’t get to try as much of Sony’s stuff since they relied on the Playstation Experience app. It was a mess and we weren’t able to check out any of the games they had. So to you Playstation fans wondering where our coverage of those games are, that’s why.

I will say that Nintendo should at least had a smaller Digital Presentation as they showed off a ton of games during their Treehouse stream. All and all, it was an interesting experience, and I hope we can go again next year.