Now that E3 2013 is done, I’ve had some time to recover from my acute gaming overdose. I have had time to process everything that I saw. With two new major consoles battling it out, which one comes out the winner? It’s pretty close, but here’s what I decided. Before I get into the consoles, let me talk about some of the games first. There were a ton of unbelievable games being showcased this year. Last year’s E3 event might have included excellent games like Dishonored and X-COM: Enemy Unknown, but it will be better remembered for Black Ops 2 and the near fraudulent demo for Aliens: Colonial Marines. This year is a completely different story. Watch Dogs, The Division, Battlefield 4, Titanfall, and so many others were all extremely impressive. This really did feel like the next generation of gaming. But there were a few games that clearly stood out on top to me. Here’s what they were. 1. Battlefield 4 While overall Battlefield 4 looks very similar to Battlefield 3, that moment when the skyscraper came down was the same type of jaw-dropping awesomeness that I had when I first saw the reveal of Watch Dogs. This really is what I expected in next-generation games. Amazing destructibility, huge map sizes, and 64 players should be the new minimum for games of this type. I hope that this isn’t an isolated incident, because if similar elements are in every one of Battlefield 4’s maps this will be an awesome sight to behold. 2. TitanFall Call of Duty is the king of close quarters, fast-paced first person shooter combat. But Titanfall has blown all of that out of the water. It’s fast-paced vehiclular and infantry combat, but that wasn’t what made it so awesome. The best part is the fact that each multiplayer match begins with a brief introductory scene all done in first person. You don’t spawn on the map, you’re inserted onto the map. And then, at the end, instead of just showing the scores, the player has to extract out of the map with a corresponding scene in first person. This is the kind of thing that more multiplayer games need to have. Multiplayer should be less of a tournament and more of a true battle. Integrating story with multiplayer capabilities is definitely the right thing to do. 3. The Division Despite my disappointment at the presentation within Ubisoft’s booth at E3 and my internal collapse upon finding out that this isn’t slated for a PC release, this game made a huge impression on me. The idea of a third-person shooter Tom Clancy game with cooperative MMO stylings and the capabilities for friends to actively participate in the gameplay via a tablet is awesome. If this game were coming to the PC, it would almost certainly be a preorder for me. 4. The Crew This game is designed to be a multiplayer experience. So if you can get a crew together and take on the challenges as a group, this is an awesome game. As much as I like Need for Speed: Rivals, it isn’t delivering anything groundbreaking. The multiplayer is good, but The Crew is on an entirely different level. Open-world style vehicle challenges can definitely keep a group of friends excited about this game for a while. 5. Murdered: Soul Suspect E3 was full of shooters and hack and slash games, so having something completely different come along was a breath of fresh air. Murdered: Soul Suspect may have a play-on-words name and some rather simple gameplay, but seeing something that focuses less on combat and more on investigations was unbelievably welcome. I may not be preordering it, but it’s definitely on my list of things to try within the coming year. And now, after performing intense calculations, I have come to a conclusion as to which platform is the clear winner this year. And it is…. The PC! Yeah, alright, I will admit that I am a bit biased. But I actually did do calculations. Out of the 30 games that I saw, 24 had PC versions. That’s even greater than the 21 games scheduled to be released on the PS3 and Xbox 360, and that’s a lot more than those for the next gen consoles. On top of that, all of the confusion for console gamers over “always online” connectivity and used games issues aren’t a problem for PC gamers because our platform isn’t changing. The PC gamers haven’t sold games used for nearly a decade because of the issues with keycodes and DRM. As a result, every PC gamer has turned to Steam, which has given them the insane advantage of extreme sales. Console gamers are lucky to get 50% off when buying a game used, but if a PC gamer times things right they can get AAA titles for less than $10 each. My games are almost all backwards compatible with enough tweaking, and those that aren’t either have community patches created by hardcore fans or are re-released on sites like Good Old Games. But despite my love for the PC, it isn’t for everyone. It’s a high maintenance device, so unless you’re willing to put in the time and dedication necessary for proper use and maintenance, a console will definitely be preferred. And if that’s the case, my recommendation is… The Playstation 4! This shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but there were some very strong objections from the people that I’m close to. If you look at both consoles objectively, the Xbox One has a good number of great properties. Microsoft’s Kinect, while initially seriously flawed, is lightyears ahead of Sony’s Move. And while Playstation’s Camera might be able to do similar things with some firmware updates, so far that doesn’t seem to be happening. The specifics on the pricing models might change, especially when hard drive sizes are finalized, but the lower price point of the Playstation 4 and the relatively clear stance on used games and always online connectivity makes it an obvious choice for most gamers. Even though both of those will not affect me directly since I never resell my games and always have internet, it sends a clear message that Sony is listening to what its gamers want right now. Sony has time to try and sort out some new technologies and innovative features, but the most important thing is telling players that the things we like right now are not going away. Microsoft still has time to turn this around. All they have to do is reverse their confusing policies on used games and always online requirements and they’ll convince me to pick up an Xbox One. I know there will be more Halo games and more Gears of War games, which I am going to want to play. But it’s hard to justify paying $500 for a small handful of games. And this goes for both consoles. As I mentioned, around 80% of the games I saw are coming out on the PC. So it makes more sense for me to wait for a price drop than to buy a new console for less than 10 titles. If you are a current console user, I would highly recommend waiting a few months before buying a next gen console. But when that time comes and you can upgrade, I would definitely recommend the Playstation 4.
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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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