E3 Special 2014

It’s E3! E3! Are we excited yet? INNOVATIVE Well, I’m trying. But it’s hard to get very excited this year. NEXT-GEN But there were a few things that caught my eye. First up though, let’s talk about the conferences. EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

Microsoft were up first. They opened their show to no one’s surprise with the latest Call of Duty, which I have to say looked rather terrible. CREATIVE It wasn’t all bad, but I think it was the Indie showcase that most peaked my interest, with some visually interesting looking titles, including featured games such as Ori and the Blind Forest and Inside. There was also a ‘Master Chief Collection’ whereby you get to buy games you probably already own. Again. PLAY IT FIRST

EA were up next, and for once I was actually looking forward to it. SPORTS I probably shouldn’t have. After being announced last year at E3, I was hoping to see something more substantial from Battlefront and Mirror’s Edge 2. But no. POWERFUL Nothing but a couple of short videos for each. There’s another Battlefield coming out though. Yay? And then we had to sit through the expected yearly updates to their sports franchises. YOU HAVE THE LOOT

Ubisoft followed and, like the last few years, they really know how to put on a good show. DANCING There was the new Assassin’s Creed: Unity, now with 4 player co-op, which seemed to be a big new thing this year. CO-OP But for me, games either need to be designed around co-op or not at all. And if they aren’t, then you end up with a tacked on element that only serves to water down the single player component. Or maybe I’m just not much of a fan of co-op because I don’t have any friends. TAKING IT TO THE NEXT-LEVEL

There was another showing of The Division, but we still really know sod all about how it actually plays. Oh, and there’s a new Far Cry, hopefully one which will address many of the issues I had with 2 and 3 (I’m not counting on it though) There was also a new Rainbow Six game announced, but it looked a lot like CS:GO. Will it be MP only? Or will there be a SP campaign? AWESOME

Sony were next, with a far too long conference that I watched on catch-up and mostly skipped through. I don’t recall much about it. There was an updated Last of Us for PS4. There was The Order: 1886, which may just as well have been a movie – ‘press X to cut-scene’. There was a new game from the Dark Souls guys, but it was just a CG video which didn’t really tell us much. EXPERIENCE There was also No Man’s Sky, which I thought looked neat.

I didn’t see the Nintendo conference, but I saw a few videos of stuff, nothing that really interested me. OPEN WORLD So did any of them make me want to rush out and buy an X-Box One, PS4 or WiiU? Nope! Maybe in a year or two when some games actually start coming out. COMING 2015

Anything else? Well, The Witcher 3 is looking great, but we’ve got a long wait for that. Arkham Knight also looked nice, but that’s been delayed to next year too. There was a new Tomb Raider game announced with a hilarious title – The Rise of the Tomb Raider. And there was also Alien Isolation, which looked very good. Oh, and GTA5 finally got announced for PC, although I’m not sure how much I really care. I would have rather had a PC Red Dead Redemption. It would have been one less reason to keep dusting off my 360.