E3 has a bevy of games that are mind blowing and insanely awesome to sit down and play even if it is just a demo. Unfortunately it also has a slew of games that aren’t quite ready yet, so they don’t let you touch them, you just get to look while they show you what to expect… later. Or you just get a trailer with a horribly vague date of when to expect more. Either way, there’s still some good and bad stuff that is completely hands off, so here’s the best and worst of what I saw this year.
WORST
Homefront: Revolution
To be fair to Homefront, I did just wake up from a nap (more on that below), but this was a picture perfect example of how not to promote a game. A power point by someone extremely nervous who couldn’t follow the very power point he was delivering, which was then followed up by an 8 minute demo that was actually 6 minutes of preparation for the mission. The voice acting in it was reminiscent of early PS2 days and the demo mainly consisted of acquiring materials, getting your weapons ready (Molotov cocktails, putting your gun together etc.) and mapping out the mission. Then, right as they got into a firefight, the demo faded out. So, this game could end up being really awesome, but from what they showed me, I would never know. They’re going to need a serious ad campaign to sell me on this one.
Hellraid
The Hellraid presentation was a full demo that we got walked through as one guy explained some of the mythology and backstory to the game as the other fellow went through a dungeon raid. It looked fine, but I couldn’t help but notice how similar it looked to Skyrim with only the monsters looking a little different. They also were vague on the storyline, saying wasn’t finished yet and they also didn’t have any backstory for your character, either. After a 20 minute demo, I could tell everyone else was equally unimpressed. They didn’t do anything wrong per se, but these presentations are supposed to get me excited for the game I’m seeing, not thinking about which games did a better version of it.
Dead Island 2
I talked about how much I dug what Techland had done with Dying Light here, and Deep Silver has plunged onward with the Dead Island franchise with new developer Yager. Both games are slated for the spring, but I highly doubt Dead Island is going to be ready. I sat down and was given an incredibly boring power point presentation on all the things Dead Island 2 will have. Afterwards I was shown a demo build from 2013 and was told that the finished product would look nothing like what I was seeing, they just wanted to show us the tone for the game. Considering it’s supposed to come out in a few months and the best you could show me was a nap inducing (unfortunately true) power point on what I COULD see with nothing to back it up but tonally similar ‘early build’ that is radically different from the actual game, you may want to rethink that release date. The E3 trailer is horribly deceiving at this point as it really makes the game look a lot better than what I saw.
BEST
Mortal Kombat X
When I saw Mortal Kombat vs. DC a few years ago, I thought for sure that this was the swan song of the hyper violence of Mortal Kombat. Instead, WB is bring the MK series to the next gen consoles with a brand new game that was easily one of the most violent things I’ve ever watched. New characters, new environments and new fatalities that actually made people in the crowd cringe they were so graphic. Faces sliding off, spines being ripped out of bodies in tremendous detail and knives through the head were just some of the things that MKX is going to be bringing us next year. Oh, and in case you were wondering, you can hear Sub Zero choke on his tongue when you cut his face in half.
Assassins Creed: Unity
We all saw the 4 player co-op that was on display at the press conference (and good god do I want that!!), but I also got a look at some in-game stuff too. The game is MASSIVE! The buildings are to scale, the city map is enormous, they can have up to 5,000 NPC’s on screen at any given time and each NPC has its own ‘personality’ and will react differently than the others. It doesn’t stop there, either. There are factions in the city (guards, rebels, revolutionaries etc) that will interact with each other and will have their own ways of reacting to you. You also need to learn to read the crowd and the environment as it can lead you to side missions or help you out in getting around guards or carry out an assassination. There’s also a new way to scale up and down buildings that makes you pretty much a parkour master and allows you get up and down buildings in record time. There are no more guards on the rooftops, so rooftop races and getting the lay of the land won’t be interrupted by any more overeager guards looking to be impaled. In addition to all that, they use the processing power of the new consoles to full advantage, rendering some of the most awe inspiring environments I’ve ever seen. They showed me the Notre Dame Cathedral and wow! This is definitely going to be a competitor for game of the year in 2015.
Batman: Arkham Knight
My colleague said I basically sounded like Charlie Day’s Benny in the Lego movie (Spaceship!) when I’d talk about Arkham Knight (Batman!), so it’s little wonder this was my top choice. If you’re a fan of the Arkham series, good lord, get ready to be blown away by this one. The final chapter in Rocksteady’s trilogy, they did not disappoint. First, it steps up the graphics once again from Arkham City and they are mind blowing! Perfectly capturing the dark and moody tone of the previous ones, even the damn rain was rendered in extremely high definition. At one point, one of your batarang devices does a 360 degree tour of the exterior of Ace Chemicals that not only showed every little detail of the massive factory, but also showed the city in the backdrop, all the enemies that were racing around the factory, the crashing waves of the ocean as a storm gripped Gotham and then right back to Batman and directly into gameplay seamlessly. Of course, there’s also the Batmobile! Rip through Gotham at ungodly speeds in Pursuit Mode, morph into Battle Mode and blow the crap out of everything and slide back into Pursuit Mode without even slowing down! Want to beat up guys instead of shooting them from the comfort of your tank? Simply get shot out of the Batmobile and directly into combat and start kicking ass with the several new combat techniques they’ve incorporated. Basically, the whole theatre was cheering when this was over because it was so damn cool! This can’t come out fast enough!