This isn't exactly the "oh I've just bought a new item to my collection" post. I am not even sure why I feel like sharing such a post in my blog. I guess I do it because it's the only place I have to write my own stuff. Not too long ago, what seemed to be a legitimate leaked list of the games to be present on E3 appeared on the internet. The list was amazing to say the least but nobody could confirm if it was fake or real. That created some real expectations on me for the E3 this year, considering how weak I think they were in the last few years.
What I disliked the most about the conferences, especially Sony and Microsoft, were the amount of times they were mentioning DLCs, exclusive contents, closed Betas, Free to Play and other crap that's totally unsuitable for videogame collectors and gamers like myself in particular. I have not bought a single DLC so far nor I plan on doing that any time soon. I don't care about paying for missing bits of games or alternative costumes. That's one of the most frustrating things about collecting games in this generation: even when you buy a brand new retail version of a particular game, you know you're not buying the whole package because many pieces are missing.
I was actually satisfied with the showcase on the conferences this year, comparing to how poor they were the years before. It wasn't too surprising because not all games are suitable for my tastes but there were some pretty cool moments. I am a little tired of shooters, so I was not really hyped with any of that, nor with the many cartoonish games that were showed. But the fact that these games do look good is undeniable. I did enjoy watching Call of Duty Advanced Warfight (such an unoriginal name!), Battlefield: Hardline, as well as as Tom Clancy's The Division. No matter how tiring these shooting games are becoming, they always look good. CoD is trying to look futuristic and I'm perfectly fine with that since I love futuristic stuff (if done properly). I also have to mention Halo Master Chief Collection, which will be a great compilation of the series' most important games. It was a nice move from Microsoft or Bungie (not too sure). Even though I'm not a big fan of shooter, I can easily say I was satisfied with what I saw.
I can't say I feel the same about the so-called RPGs like Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or Fable Legends. RPGs are my favourite types of games, but I can hardly call these RPGs to be honest. The gameplay is heavily focused on action and adventure. While the first two games I mentioned are the same old medieval open world wannabes with costumizable loot and the same type of enemies and wooden villages where you start killing wolves and minions before Dragons and other worn out creatures pop up, the last one looks like inspired by a Shrek movie and it didn't seem half fascinating. And then we have Scalebound, a brand new action (?) game featuring some sort of spoiled younger brother of DMC's Dante and his huge pet. I didn't like the main character looks, sadly. I don't know what to expect from this game but I am not very excited with it. I could tell the same about Crackdown 3 and Phantom Dust (a game that never came out in Europe - why?) and other games I didn't mention.
Another thing that's being exploited to death are zombie games. Dead Island trailers are always amazing and this one was no exception. But the game itself is yet to come. The Order: 1886 seems to try hard to do something different but I'm not too convinced yet.
There weren't many racing games shown this time. Only two actually. I guess people prefer shooters. Forza Horizon 2 is fine but nothing I was impressed with. The Crew actually looked quite interesting due to its length but I'm not sure how well the gameplay can compare to other racing games and hybrid simulators already in the market.
And then we have Nintendo still focused on delivering yet more platform adventure games based in Mario universe, featuring Yoshi's Epic Yarn (I know that's not the name), Toad and "do-it-yourself" Mario. These games used to be cool, but now there's like dozens of them on every single Nintendo console. They will keep selling like hot cakes but I'm getting tired of them and obviously less enthusiastic. Hyrule Warriors didn't look that good either as it reminds me of a lower quality version of Dynasty Warriors featuring Zelda characters. The newer Zelda, on the other hand, was something. Quite something. And I'm not going to mention Xenoblade Chronicles X which looks absolutely stunning despite not being a new announcement. As far as those Mario skylanders go, they are actually very cool and they add features to several games. That was a smart move, especially because Mario and Zelda figurines are tempting to buy. But if they come up with rare variants like Skylanders, oh crap... No wallet can handle that.
Ubisoft... no matter how much I hate that company, they had a decent presentation as well. I'm not really interested in Sims or dancing games, but FarCry 4 looks good and so does AC Unity. I must say that Ubisoft did a terrific job in creating such a popular series like AC, but after the 3rd or 4th game released one year after the other I already grew a little exhausted by it. Again, I will say it: it looks great. It's just that looks aren't everything in a videogame and I don't feel that tempted to play it. There was one exception to this rule though. I might be a little exhausted of shooters or AC games, but even though Batman received several games in the last few years I felt very impressed by the newer Batman: Arkham Knight trailer (as seen in Sony's conference) and I seriously want to play that game.
From EA, the best thing I can take out of that conference was Mirror's Edge 2. I loved the first game despite not being considered by many critics as one of the top games. Sports games... ugh...
Indie games also had their fair share in these conferences. What surprised me the most was No Man's Sky, which is actually made by a small studio but it looks like something that can beat the crap out of many big productions. It wasn't really a brand new announcement, but it's probably the thing I liked to see the most in the entire conferences.
Overall, they were good conferences. They did not create the hype I expected but the proof that companies are doing a good job is the fact that I like to see some gameplay videos and trailers of games and styles I already grew tired of. It's useless for me to talk about Uncharted 4, Halo 5 or even the new Mass Effect. We all knew these games would be coming out eventually but very little was shown about them. Kinda like they were just there to create the hype. It's going to be a while until we trully see their potential (which is very big).
