Like every gamer around the world I was thoroughly excited for this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, more commonly known as E3, but I found it be quite underwhelming for the most part. Let’s first take a look at some notable titles that were announced at last year’s show. They ranged everywhere from big name series such as Gears of War and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare unveiling their 3rd installments respectively to some brand new gems like Dead Island. Some others worth mentioning include the Uncharted, Legend of Zelda, Mario Kart, and Resistance series, along with the introduction of the revolutionary concept of Nintendo’s next-generation console; the Wii U. Keep in mind I’m only naming a few things and that the list could go on and on.
Now let’s take a look at this year. It wasn’t necessarily awful by any means but it was certainly less than what most expected. I’ll start off with the bad side to keep this from straying into something depressing. As a big Nintendo fan I found myself pretty annoyed that there was absolutely no info on the 4th game in the Super Smash Bros. series after being announced last year. It was known that production wouldn’t have begun until Kid Icarus: Uprising had been released, which dropped this past March, but surely they would have some kind of information for the hungry fans? Unfortunately there was no such luck at 2012’s E3. Instead Nintendo revealed the title and release date (Holiday 2012) of Paper Mario: Sticker Star for the Nintendo 3DS along with some new gameplay footage. Normally this would be a good thing but based off of the direction they appear to be taking the series it doesn’t look too promising when compared to it’s predecessors. On another note, Skylanders: Giants, the sequel to Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure, looks like a quick rehash of what we’ve already been playing with some bigger playable characters. Let me guess, more figurines to buy in order to play to the fullest potential? I hope not, but as a gamer I’ve learned that when it comes to video games, hoping never helps and you just have to live with it. The most impressive thing about it was the graphics of the cutscenes in the trailer and not exactly the actual game. However, we should wait for the games to be in our hands before we make a final judgement on them.
Game play of Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Definitely looks different than previous installments.
I’m an impatient person when it comes to release dates for video games and music. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one shaking my head in disbelief when I found out that some games and consoles we’ve been awaiting for awhile such as Bioshock: Infinite, Super Smash Bros. 4 and the Wii U itself were either pushed back, not mentioned or do not have a release date at this point in time. On the other hand it was nice to finally know when Halo 4 and Borderlands 2 are being released; fortunately this year.
Before our train of hope for the future of video games completely derails, we’ll take a look at the top 3 games to be announced this year in my personal opinion. First we have The Last Of Us brought to us by Sony. The game play footage we got to feast our eyes on looked amazing and it was entirely unexpected. I found it to be a breath of fresh air for a 3rd person survival action-adventure game to be so realistic compared to most other games of the same genre. One thing that definitely stuck out to me was the AI being aware of when the player is out of ammo and reacting accordingly to the situation; as they will continue to do for all kinds of different situations throughout the game. Be sure to check this one out next year. Next, there’s Resident Evil 6. If I had to make an educated guess I’d say that the series is taking the action of Resident Evil 5, spicing it up 100x and throwing in some of the survival horror aspects of Resident Evil 4. If this is what we end up receiving later on this fall, I, and many others, will be happy gamers. Lastly, I was excited to see a New Super Mario Bros. title being announced for the Wii U. The graphics look very modern and flashy coupled with some new power-ups for Mario and the gang. Nothing beats some good, old-fashioned, light-hearted platforming seeing as most games nowadays are leaning towards the darker side of things, whether they be survival horror or straight up first-person shooters.
Leon Kennedy as he appears in Resident Evil 6. Who’s ready to shoot some zombies?
All in all, E3 wasn’t too spectacular this year as a whole but there was enough variety to have at least one thing that caught your eye. Most of the highly anticipated titles will be released in 2013 but I’m sure that the few gems that are awaiting us this fall such as Halo 4, Resident Evil 6 and Borderlands 2 will be able to hold us over until then.
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