It’s over! Another E3 has come and gone. There’s only a few awards left to give out now that all is said and done. Let’s look at our very prestigious winners:
The award for most ridiculous line at E3 goes to: Halo 5: Guardians / Hololens (343 Industries / Microsoft)
Oculus’ booth has to be a close runner up but nothing made me say “fuck that” faster than hearing the wait times for the Halo 5 / Hololens demo. I shouldn’t even really say that because two out of the three days there wasn’t even a wait time to hear about, the whole day was typically booked out before I even got to the booth.
I talked to a few people who on the third day who said they had waited the majority of day one, got turned away as the show closed, and then waited again through all of day two before finally seeing it. They said they enjoyed it, but I have a sneaking suspicion they might also be crazy.
The award for game that might only be fun if you pre-order it goes to: Rodea The Sky Soldier (Prope / NIS America)
Rodea has been out in Japan for some time now. The game was conceived by Yuji Naka who has had a heavy involvement with Sonic the Hedgehog and Nights Into Dreams in the past. The history is obvious, the titular Rodea can soar through the air with a push of a button and has some homing spin dashes that feel very similar to moves Sonic the Hedgehog would be comfortable performing.
What’s particularly notable about the game is that it wasn’t originally destined for the Wii U and 3DS, in fact it was originally conceived as a Wii game, complete with motion controls. Those controls have been stripped out in the Wii U version and many will tell you that the game is worse off for it. But there is hope, first editions of Rodea will feature a bonus disc with the complete Wii game included. Certainly an odd bonus, but one that might definitely be worth considering.
I definitely got off to a slow start with this one, but I’m very curious to see if motion controls improve or ruin the experience.
The award for publisher that best brought out my inner-psychopath goes to: TinyBuild (Party Hard, Divide By Sheep)
TinyBuild keeps very busy. The three man indie publishing team had nine total games at the show this year.
“Which game would you like to see?” Luke Burtis, the team’s production designer asked when I got to the booth.
“Why the game about mass murder of course,” I proclaimed.
Party Hard is what Hatred could have been if it had a soul. In the game you control a man so fed up with his neighbor’s noisy parties that he sees no choice but to assassinate everyone in attendance. Of course once he’s done bringing down one party another one pops up and before you know it you’re on a private yacht tossing fun-loving yuppies overboard and into the mouths of sharks.
The build I played was very close to feature complete and was a lot of fun to play. It sounds like the team is still retooling the game to get it just right, but they expect to release it before the summer is over. There’s a release party you might want to be wary of.
Before I left they also showed me Divide By Sheep, their new math puzzler that involves rescuing innocent sheep from an island, even if you accidentally slice them in two in the process. Don’t worry, any sheep cut in twain can be taped back together none the worse for the wear (though definitely still deceased).
The award for game that isn’t going to be as revolutionary as everyone once believed but was still pretty okay goes to: The Division (Ubisoft)
The Division has some pretty lofty shoes to fill following its detailed demos during the last two years of E3. This show marks the first time the game has been playable at an event and I can safely say it’s..pretty alright.
After Watch Dogs I pretty much expected The Division to have the graphical fidelity of a Nintendo 64 game and be half as fun to play. Instead what I got made me feel slightly less pessimistic than before.
There’s already been talk of the game’s being downgraded graphically and because the demo I played was in the Xbox part of the show I can’t really confirm whether or not that’s the case. What I played certainly doesn’t look like what we saw at E3 two years ago, but I would have been surprised to see something that nice running on the Xbox One anyway.
The demo pairs six players up into teams of two. After dispatching some AI enemies you come across some phat loot and are tasked with extracting it from the level. This is where things get interesting though. You can just stand around and let the loot extract and split it six ways, or you can turn on one another and try to secure the loot all for yourself. Of course the notion of peace didn’t cross anyone’s mind and before you knew it the whole area was a PVP warzone.
The game feels very much like an RPG. Numbers spray out of enemies to indicate how much damage they’ve taken when shot, headshots cause critical hits instead of instant death, And each character had two special abilities that could be activated with the bumpers. There aren’t really any classes to speak of, which means you an pick whatever skills best suit your tastes and really create a custom build all of your own.
It would have been way more fun to come tell you how awful The Division was, but I actually found it fairly enjoyable. I don’t see it being my favorite game of 2016, but it looks like it will be a nice distraction come March.
I still have some odds and ends from the show that I need to get out. You can expect to see a little more out of me over the weekend.
