E3 is a spectacle. It's a show that opens up with more than a day of fanfare and insanity put on display by the gaming industry's heaviest hitters. We see each company parade out stars, rappers, musicians, pyrotechnics, sexy dancers and a slew of sizzle reels meant to titillate and excite. The problem? That doesn't work anymore. A desperate cry for attention. Six years ago, when...
The familiarity of playing any side-scrolling Mario game is like riding a bike. Or, perhaps a more fitting analogy, like running into an old best friend. No matter how long it's been since you've rescued Peach, the time away from the Mushroom Kingdom is immediately insignificant. The formula, colors and Goomba stomping is the same. However, it's the little things Nintendo does that...
Pikmin 3 is the first full Pikmin title the gaming community will have a chance to play since the series had its time on the Nintendo GameCube. This Shigeru Miyamoto project will also be one of Nintendo’s biggest titles once the Wii U launches later this holiday. I had a chance to play the demo in the press area of Nintendo’s booth earlier today. It’s Pikmin, folks. It’s also gorgeous...
Sanzaru Games were the folks responsible for the recent HD remake of the original Sly Cooper trilogy for the PlayStation 3. After their time spent updating the fan-favorite from Sucker Punch, Sanzaru were handed the reigns for a brand new Sly Cooper title. Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is the fourth in the series and the first from a company beyond Sucker Punch. However, Sanzaru Games...
The NHL franchise is one that's seen a wave of small changes since 08. See, it was NHL 07 that introduced the skill stick to the world of hockey. Since then? It's been years of slight changes and additions. That's the problem with the sports game genre. Every year sees marginal tweaks and additions; that is, until a revolutionary new mechanic comes into play. From the EA Sports rep...
Nintendo Land, during the E3 presentation, looked like a weak collection of mini-games slopped over a bunch of Nintendo characters. It looked like the abuse of franchises in order to make a few bucks and successfully launch a console. After seeing it in motion, hearing about it from Nintendo execs and playing bits of it for myself, I can safely say that Nintendo did not do a good job...
Call of Duty: Black Ops II was offered in eyes-on fashion. Us media folks were ushered into a dark room equipped with a few chairs and a humongous television. The biggest complaint running for fans of the military shooter genre is that Call of Duty is the same game, year after year. I consider myself a member of that camp. It's no surprise, then, that the unveiling of Treyarch's...
I'm going to be brutally honest about something here, and it absolutely shows a fault in my character as a writer for gaming. I put way too much stock in what EA showed during their E3 press conference for Dead Space 3. They showed cooperative gameplay, and it made one of their best franchises look criminally altered. That's the viewpoint I had walking out of EA's presser. I thought...
Here we are at the start of the second showfloor day at E3 2012, and this is the first time I can genuinely say "wow." Wow. Star Wars 1313 floored me. We were brought into a private booth and shown three separate clips while the folks from LucasArts (and divisions like ILM) talked about their development progress. Star Wars 1313 is a collaboration, and just about every major tech...
Square Enix may not have a Final Fantasy game to show off at E3 2012, but that isn't stopping the company from showing off what the next one might look like. Entitled Agni's Philosophy, this short video is a taste of a some work being done by a group called Luminous Studio, and it's being touted as a major leap forward in rendering graphics with a larger focus on making characters more...