E3 is upon us once more. Each of the big companies have shown off their goodies and now it’s up to me to decide which of them are worth spending my increasingly slim time at the show waiting in line to see. Here’s the standout titles that I looked at today at the show, be sure to come back tomorrow and Thursday to see the rest of my thoughts as well as a couple standout articles for a few titles.
The award for game that’s too complex to demo at E3 goes to: Star Fox Zero (Nintendo)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have you back Star Fox, but Nintendo chose to demo a ridiculously long level for a game that already has something of a learning curve. The Corneria level on display at the show floor takes players through a traditional Star Fox level run, followed by an arena style dogfight, before finally ending with a boss.
Admittedly the game’s controls leave something to be desired. While a traditional target reticle is available to you, you’ll find that your accuracy greatly increases when you look down at the gamepad screen and use the accelerometers in the controller to aim. This doesn’t really work out in the standard level runs because you want to keep your eyes on the road, so to speak. And it doesn’t work well in the arena shootouts because enemies can get behind you in the time it takes to transition your line of sight.
I was third in line and it took what felt like ages to play the game because the two people in front of me struggled so much with it. It’s not uncommon at shows like this to watch someone who’s clearly tired of a demo want to quit but know they can’t until they beat it. That’s absolutely what I saw here. Hopefully Star Fox Zero will feel a lot better when it’s in the privacy of your own home.
The award for game I’m surprisingly excited about goes to: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Guerrilla Games)
I don’t know if I was really sold on Horizon until I saw it in action. The segment we were shown was the same one demoed in the Sony press conference except it was being played live by someone in the room.
The small act of hunting some chump robots for resources quickly escalates into a crazy battle that really shows off the game’s combat. Switching between weapons is critical, your character has a lot of items at their disposal and you’ll have to use them all at different times to take out the game’s biggest enemies. For example, the robot shown in the demo can be stunned with an electric arrow, tethered to the ground with another weapon, and then hit in its weak spot with an explosive arrow.
It certainly wasn’t game of the show, but it made quite an impression on me for something that I didn’t know existed until last night.
The award for game that looks like it actually might be released goes to: The Last Guardian (Team Ico)
You gotta feel for Team Ico at least a little bit. The Last Guardian is as close to vaporware as you can get without being Duke Nukem Forever or Banjo Threeie. And now for the first time ever the team has actually gotten to put a date on it.
The demo shown on the show floor didn’t have a lot of footage to show that differed from what was already presented in Sony’s initial press conference. It opens with the unnamed boy trying to coax his feathery friend to move without much success. A few removed spears later and your animal companion is up and at em though.
The main character feeds his friend a couple of..uh…barrels before they move on and press into the part of the demo we’ve already seen.
All in all the game looks great, it’s slow, deliberate, and spectacularly atmospheric. Let’s hope Team Ico can stick that 2016 landing.
The award for game that does almost nothing new and still got me hyped as hell goes to: Uncharted 4 (Naughty Dog)
Uncharted 4’s demo was also not playable at the show. The version on the show floor offers the same dramatic car chase seen in last night’s press conference, but doesn’t end until Nathan Drake has clambered through a number of vehicles and eventually caught up to his brother Sam and his motorcycle.
Drake’s on-again off-again love interest Elena does make an appearance at the end of the demo, and she doesn’t seem terribly happy about the situation that everyone’s found themselves in.
If you know me, you know Uncharted 2 is probably my favorite game of all time and although I want to remain impartial here I can’t help but say that I’m super thrilled to play this next year. The chase sequence shown in the demo is very reminiscent of a similar car hopping sequence in Uncharted 3, maybe a little too reminiscent. Even so the action is fast paced, and the gameplay looks just as tight as always. This is my guilty pleasure right here, I can’t wait.
The award for face punchingly awful character that I’m glad I killed goes to: Emily from Until Dawn (Supermassive Games)
Until Dawn is all over the place. All the game’s trailers have been promising, showing a group of teens in the woods being terrorized by a man they lovingly refer to as “some maniac”.
The demo I saw didn’t really feature any of that unfortunately. Instead my teens faced off against some..uh..creepy elk. The game plays out similarly to Heavy Rain in that most of the action is tied to cutscenes and the story progression is tied to choice. At least for the segment I played cutscenes are all limited to two choices which come frequently but are ultimately rather minute in detail, sometimes you make big choices, but the majority of the time the game is just asking how you want to maneuver the environment, or whether or not you want to be nice to someone. Without playing twice it was hard to say how much these choices actually mattered in the grand scheme of things, but the implication is that you can change the game’s story pretty dramatically.
But no amount of scary deer could overshadow Emily, your teen Asian companion for the duration of the demo. Emily is a walking example of vocal fry ripped straight out of a Mean Girls fan film. She’s obnoxious, hysterical, and best of all, has the gall to sass you while she’s dangling from a railing and seriously in need of your help.
I’m really not sure if the character was supposed to be likable or not. In fact the voicework and writing in the game feels inconsistent in general. Sometimes you have Hayden Penitentiary (whatever) in a towel, while other times you have some guy reading lines about how scared he is as though English is his second language.
Thankfully not only was I able to chastise Emily for running her damned mouth, I was also able to let her plummet to her untimely demise. Good riddance Emily, I would spit on your grave if you had one.
The award for game that was definitely a game goes to: Rise of the Tomb Raider (Crystal Dynamics)
The fake pine trees and cotton snow littering the ground made waiting to see Rise of the Tomb Raider feel a bit more like waiting to see Santa at the mall. Eventually the line gave way to a twenty minute guided demo.
One can’t help but feel a twinge of paranoia when viewing almost anything at E3. You tend to assume the worst, that game isn’t running on a PS4, there’s a gaming PC behind the curtain, that man isn’t actually playing the game, he’s just pushing random buttons while a video plays, that kind of stuff. So it’s always nice and little re-assuring when you watch someone buy the farm like the guy running the Tomb Raider demo.
The stretch of the game that was shown off is very reminiscent of its predecessor, with a heavy emphasis on survival and combat. There was however the vague promise of more tombs to uncover, and that said tombs would be longer and more intense than the brief fifteen minute puzzles found last time.
Crafting can now be done on the fly with a shortcut key, and there are 16 different resources (8 commons and 8 exotics) that Lara will be able to find to make her weapons.
But the highlight for me was watching Lara die several times while running away from one of the game’s newest threats, a giant bear. In that moment, the game felt real in a way a lot of the other titles demoed at the show don’t. Or maybe that was just what they wanted me to think….
