E3 2012 has come and gone. I have had a full night to collect my thoughts and reflect back on everything that I saw this year. I took the time to check out 28 different games over 21 hours. It was a pretty hectic three days. But I found myself repeating questions when talking to the developers who were showcasing these games. “What can we expect to find that’s different from [previous game(s) in series]?” “What are you doing to separate yourself from [competitor game with similar style / features]?” I was subtly trying to ask “Why should I pony up another $60+ for this game?”. In reality, there were far too many games that required those questions. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Dead Space 3, Crysis 3, Gears of War: Judgment, etc. Even Medal of Honor: Warfighter fell into this category even though the multiplayer did feel different from its current competitors. I don’t mind formulas. Sometimes, when you get something right, you tend to repeat that process because it’s worked in the past. Why try to improve on something that’s clearly working? And there are lots of good reasons to continue with this process. The console technology is practically ancient. The down economy has made consumers much more risk-adverse, meaning that games that aren’t tried-and-true aren’t selling as well regardless of how innovative they are. Take a look through the list of games that I reviewed and count how many are not sequels / reboots. In fact, let’s be lenient and include games that are part of a series as long as they aren’t sequels (i.e. Neverwinter). Here’s what you have:
10 out of 28 games that I saw were at least somewhat original. Or, to put it another way, 18 out of 28 games were sequels or reboots that required / included very little innovation on the part of the developers. Yes, I am using a broad stroke of cynicism that includes Far Cry 3 (one of my favorite games of E3), but my point is still glaringly obvious. Now take a moment to seriously analyze which titles you’d be willing to preorder. To me, that’s the ultimate test. If I believe that a game is so awesome that I would be willing to shell out full price early regardless of what “preorder bonuses” Gamestop throws my way, that game has done its job. Here’s my list:
That’s it. Yes, you’re probably yelling at your screen “But Carmine! I would preorder Borderlands 2 and Call of Duty and Medal of Honor etc. etc. etc.”. Those don’t count. You already know whether or not you will enjoy those games because you’ve played the previous game(s) in the series. There’s no more risk involved in your purchase. You and I both know that Borderlands 2 will be well worth shelling out $60+ to preorder because Borderlands was so awesome that I bought it twice (once on PC, once on Xbox). I knew Borderlands 2 would be amazing because Borderlands was amazing and because I trust the developers at Gearbox to keep going with that same winning formula. But how many games have you seen or heard about and been willing to buy at full price without testing it beforehand? My guess is very few. And unfortunately the gaming industry is partially to blame. For years developers have been able to get away with creating games like X-Men: Destiny (games the industry refers to as “AA-titles”) and charging people $60 only to have those poor unsuspecting consumers find out that they’re not going to get awesome mutant powers, they’re going to get balls of energy that shoot out of each player’s hands. You’re no more a mutant than the Sentinels. So now when your wallet is tighter of course you’re going to be more hesitant about spending money on a potential nightmare of a game. This, in turn, made the number of these games dry up. Ever wonder what happened to all of those movie games that we used to see every time a comic-based movie came out? Ever wonder what happened to music games? Ever wonder what happened to Tony Hawk’s game series? Eventually gamers stopped shelling out hundreds of dollars to get crappy games with crappy peripherals and the profitability of the series ended. Sure, we’ll still see an Avengers game or a Rocksmith come out, but their numbers are few and far between. But unfortunately the pendulum has swung a bit too far to the other side, which is clearly evident by what was shown at E3. And while there may be excuses for this behavior, the result is that games that could potentially change the way we approach a genre, or even just games that could be an awesome new series, are getting poor marketing from the industry and unfairly blasted by a skeptical consumer base. If you know about the Kinect you should be at least somewhat familiar with its current issues. The amount of lag is horrible, there are no good games on the system right now, and its capabilities are severely limited by the fact that there is no controller to hold. How do you tell your on-screen character to move forward? You either lean forward like a moron, awkwardly run in place, or the game moves for you. All of these options suck, but the movement problems are nothing compared to the first two problems on my list. If there are no games worth buying the Kinect for, why bother buying a Kinect? The developers at Lionhead are using Fable: The Journey to solve those first two problems. Yes, it’s a rail-shooter (meaning the game moves for you most of the time), but it’s a fun rail shooter. VirtuaCop was a rail shooter as was Time Crisis and those who have played arcade games know that both of these games were worth shelling out quarter after quarter just to be able to shoot a plastic gun at poorly pixilated lines and angles that vaguely resemble people. But, more importantly to me (and to Kinect users), Fable: The Journey practically solves the lag issue. I have no idea how they did it, but the responsiveness of the game is almost always spot-on. It’s a game that should have been released with Kinect when the device first came out. After testing this game out I told one of the developers that this game makes me want to buy a Kinect and I meant it with all sincerity. So what’s different? Everything. This year was almost certainly a preparation year. Next year we’re going to get two new, big, powerful consoles with new capabilities that will make the Xbox 360 and PS3 look like the original Xbox and PS2. I’m going to go ahead and make some predictions which will be proven or disproven by the end of next year’s E3: 1. Both Microsoft and Sony will unveil their new consoles at E3 2013. New consoles boasting new technology have been long overdue and the problems being faced by the current generation need to be addressed. The state of the economy and the lack of disposable income on the part of the consumers has made the two biggest players hesitant about releasing anything before Holiday 2013, but I don’t think they can afford to wait much longer. Also, both consoles will be ready for market in Holiday 2013. Any delays would be extremely costly for the system as a whole, so they’ll be ready by that date or won’t be released until Holiday 2014. 2. Both new consoles will have Blu-ray capabilities, but neither will have Blu-ray games. Sony’s Blu-Ray may have beaten Microsoft’s HDDVD, but it’s a totally different story in the video game department. Blu-Ray based games are an awful mess that requires gigabytes of information to be installed on a hard drive before the game can be played. Sure, Sony’s Blu-Ray discs may be able to hold 50 gigs when they’re dual-layered, but a lot of that information can’t be read directly from the disc. Ever wonder how Microsoft can get away with selling Xbox 360s that only have 4 gigs of internal memory? It’s because nothing has to be installed onto the hard drive (aside from the standard stuff like the Operating System) in order for a game to run. I believe that both Microsoft and Sony have devised some sort of solution that will not involve the installation of games onto a console’s hard drive before a game can run. I believe that gamers will have to download and install some sort of extra content (like how Xbox gamers could install a high-definition graphics pack for Skyrim). There may be games that will require such content in order for the game to run, but I don’t believe that Blu-Ray discs will be used for games on new consoles. The read-time for Blu-Rays is far too slow to be efficient for gaming. 3. Games released in 2012 and 2013 will be compatible with the new consoles. I don’t necessarily mean that there will be backwards compatibility for disc-based games (digital games will carry over though). I mean that the newer disc-based games will still work on the next generation of consoles. At E3 this year I noticed that many titles were being released on PC as well as on the Xbox and PS3. I believe this is because developers are preparing for the next generation of consoles. If the current generation of games are already high-definition on PC, then they can be updated (or, in some cases, re-released) for the new generation of consoles with updated graphics (the same that are already on PC) with little to no effort. 4. The famine of games seen at E3 2012 will sharply contrast with the plethora of new games at E3 2013. With the release of new consoles will come a flood of new games. Some of the big titles can already be ruled in / out based on their release schedule. There will not be a new Crysis or Dead Space (since those were released this year), but we will see a new Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty (since those are released annually anyway). Also, I am predicting that there will be a new Fallout game. This may only include the planned Fallout MMO, but I would be somewhat surprised if a new single-player Fallout game was not announced. I’ll finish up by giving out some unofficial awards to some of the games at E3: 1. Best Game that I Saw – Far Cry 3 This game has been seriously improved from its predecessor. I mentioned to one of the developers of this game that there are few games quite like Far Cry 2. The story was so absolutely horrible but the game was so awesome that I would still recommend it to friends. Far Cry 3 looks like what its predecessor should have been. Runner Up: Borderlands 2 2. Best Game I Didn’t See – Ghost Dogs Leave it to Ubisoft to hide this game in a tiny theater and keep it reserved for appointments only. This game left me practically desperate to find out more but entirely unable to do so. The only thing they were even showing was what was already shown at the Ubisoft press conference. This could have beaten Borderlands 2 and Far Cry 3 for “Best of E3” in my book, but ended up failing because of its secretive nature. Runners Up: The Last of Us Beyond 3. Worst Game that I Saw – Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Now before you go discounting this vote because you’re a huge fan of the Tekken series, I believe that I have a legitimate reason for calling this the “worst” game that I saw at E3. First, take a look at the list of the games that I saw. Tekken Tag isn’t really designed to compete with Call of Duty, Crysis, or Borderlands. It’s just an entirely different game. Second, when I think of awesome fighters I think of games like Soulcalibur. These games feature a wide variety of characters each with individually awesome combos and throws that can make for some fairly spectacular gameplay. My biggest problem with Tekken Tag Tournament 2 is that, other than graphically, I didn’t see any significant difference from every other Tekken game that I’ve tried. I wanted to get a reason why I would shell out even $30 for a copy of this game but when I played could never really justified spending more than a few quarters on the total package. Runners Up: Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale Avengers: Battle for Earth 4. Worst Game I Didn’t See – NBA Baller Beats I saw a brief demonstration of this game. I seriously thought it was fake. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are essentially dead but someone thinks this is a good idea to develop? It’s a music game using Kinect where the player has to bounce a basketball in time to the beat of a song (usually rap or hip-hop). You switch hands when the game throws up a prompt. This is basically the sports video game title for street balling. I laughed out loud as I walked away. Seriously.
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The Legendary Carmine
Andrew Clayton (a.k.a. The Legendary Carmine) is SSG's Executive Editor. He toils at the stone to make sure this site brings its readers valuable content on a daily basis. Like what we do? Want to see more? Donate to the site using the button below!
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