Daily News - 7th June 2011 - E3 Press Conference Round-Up (FINALLY!)

The only news of the day is obviously that E3 is ON. The press conferences wrapped up today and some crazy shit happened. You can see what was at each press conference and whether it impressed below, but in the interest of me having to be conscious tomorrow, I'm going to just focus on the big 3: Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

Microsoft

What They Showed (In order):

• Modern Warfare 3
• Tomb Raider
• Mass Effect 3
• Ghost Recon - Future Soldier
• Live TV for Xbox in America, live UFC will have extra community features
• Youtube and Bing support
• Gears of War 3
• Ryse
• Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
• Forza 4
• Fable: The Journey
• Minecraft
• Kinect Disneyland Adventures
• Kinect Star Wars
• Double Fine's Sesame Street Game "Once Upon A Monster"
• Kinect Fun Labs
• Kinect Sports Season 2
• Dance Central 2
• Halo 4

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The Good: Modern Warfare 3; Mass Effect 3; Youtube support; Gears Of War 3

Gears, Modern Warfare and Mass Effect all looked superb (as you would expect) but the surprisingly exciting thing for me was hearing Youtube would be on the system. My computer is terrible and so can barely run Youtube on anything but the minimum quality, so I'll actually use this a tonne!
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The Bad: Tomb Raider; Ghost Recon; Kinect Disneyland Adventures; Kinect Star Wars

The less said about these, the better. Bear in mind it's just personal preference but honestly, I hated everything about everything I saw about all of them (though gunsmith was kinda cool). Boo!

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The Worst: Fable 3: The Journey

Imagine Fable 3 as a first person shooter. Now clean up that vomit and go lie down.
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The Meh: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary; Forza 4; Once Upon A Monster; Kinect Sports Season 2; Dance Central 2

For whatever reason, I felt no emotion at all to any of these. Halo does nothing for me, and Forza isn't a series I've ever played. the rest are just run-of-the-mill looking Kinect games. Not much to say really.
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The "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!": Ryse, Minecraft; Halo 4

The trailer for Ryse showed a dog walking around Rome whilst a guy murdered some guy in Kinect-enabled first person with a sword; Minecraft for Xbox is a mental concept and Halo 4. Halo 4 pretty much "whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!"'s itself!
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The Intriguing: Kinect Fun Labs

It's about time they did this. Made a bunch of tools for Kinect that make it do awesome stuff. If I had a Kinect this would be getting me seriously pumped.
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The Star Of The Show: Mass Effect 3

The purpose of them showing the game during the Microsoft Press Conference was mainly to highlight the game's new Kinect functionality (which is actually just subtle enough to make it awesome) but more importantly, it showed that Mass Effect 3 is essentially just way more Mass Effect 2. The story follows on from Mass Effect 2, the combat is the same and the galaxy-faring remains intact. The section they showed contained Moridin, a Krogan female and some combat and totally "lit my wick". Gross. Gross but true!

Sony

What They Showed (In order):

• Apology
• Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception
• Resistance 3
• God Of War: Origins Collection
• Ico and Shadow Of The Colossus Collection
• NBA 2K
• Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest
• Infamous 2
• Starhawk
• Sly Cooper
• Dust 514
• Bioshock Infinite
• Move-controlled Star Trek Game
• PSVita Pricing
• Modnation Racers and Little Big Planet for Vita
• Street Fighter X Tekken

The Good: Apology; God Of War: Origins; Ico and Shadow Of the Colossus Collection; Bioshock Infinite

Right from the start they said sorry and set their sights to the future. They fixed it and now they're moving on. Great. The rest of the conference was... dubious, to say the least, but there were some highlights. Bioshock Infinite looks cool, and I'm a sucker for some HD re-releases, there was definitely some good to be taken from the presentation.
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The Bad: Resistance 3; Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception; Modnation Racers and Little Big Planet for Vita

Resistance looked as generic a game as I've ever seen and Uncharted looked similarly run-of-the-mill to me. I never got the whole Uncharted thing, I played 2 for maybe an hour at a friends house and saw loads of footage from the game on various websites and it all just looked like standard 3rd person shooting but window dressed differently depending on the level. Nothing about it appealed. Similarly, Modnation Racers and LBP for Vita looked as money-grabby as you can get.

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The Worst: Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest

Gamecube style graphics, unbelievably obvious puzzles and virtually no gameplay, surely one to look forward to!
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The Meh: Infamous 2; Move-controlled Star Trek Game; Street Fighter X Tekken

A sequel to a game I never played, a game we have no info about and a cross between 2 fighting games I don't like. About as meh as you can get.
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The "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!": Dust 514

A first-person online shooter based on the universe of an MMO (EVE Online) that not only runs off the game's economy but also affects it depending on which side wins a battle and how. Dude WTF?!?
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The Intriguing: Sly Cooper

The Sly franchise is definitely quite a prolific one, so a new entry sounds like something to look forward to, even though I haven't played any of them myself I still find myself intrigued.
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The Star Of The Show: PSVita Pricing

So the Vita will sell for $250 in the US for the WiFi-only model and $300 for the 3G version. That's a fantastic price! The general consensus seemed to be that it would have to be atleast double that for what it was offering but at that price point, Sony have given themselves a real chance to break the handheld market wide open!

Nintendo

What They Showed (In order):

• Zelda: Four Swords Adventrue free from DSiWare
• Zelda: Skyward Sword out for Christmas
• Zelda 25th Anniversary Concerts live worldwide and also in album form
• Mario Kart 3D
• Super Mario 3DS
• Luigi's Mansion 3DS
• Star Fox 64 3D
• Kid Icarus: Uprising
• 3rd Party 3DS Support
• Wii U
• Smash Bros for both 3DS and Wii U
• Massive 3rd Party support for Wii U

The Good: Four Swords for free; Zelda concerts worldwide; Super Mario 3DS; Luigi's Mansion 3DS; Star Fox 64 3D, Kid Icarus; Smash Bros mentioned

Freebies, the chance to hear Nintendo music live from an orchestra, quality 3DS games on the way and... what's that?... Did someone utter the word Smash Bros?!?! Excuse me while I change my underwear and sleep for a year.

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The Bad: Mario Kart 3D

Looking back at the press conference, just about the only thing I thought looked awful was Mario Kart for the 3DS. Gimmicky, bland and dated, the game looked about as poo a version of Mario Kart as you could imagine. It didn't even look like a Nintendo game. Made me a depressed panda!

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 The Meh: 3DS and Wii U 3rd party support; Kid Icarus: Uprising; Skyward Sword release date

3rd party support was inevitable, granted hearing games like Arkham City, Assassin's Creed and Battlefield will be on Wii U lends a certain legitimacy to the system but it's still about as standard an announcement as you can get. Kid Icarus and Skyward Sword look pretty uninspired to me, although they are Nintendo games so they'll obviously be good. I dunno, they're not jerking my chicken. so to speak. I. Umm. Yeah. Sorry.
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The "Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!": Four Swords Adventure for free

So Nintnedo, you're just going to give away one of the coolest sounding multiplayer games ever made, based off one of the greatest games of all time? You're insane and I love it!
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The Intriguing: See below!
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The Star Of The Show: Wii U

Nintendo's next console is insane. Somehow they continue to find ways of making absolutely new tech that blows my (and apparently everyone else's) minds. The console is so far a faceless wii-looking shell, what they're showing to get us excited is the controller. A "proper" controller with a 6.2 inch screen in the middle. the screen has touch capability, the controller contains cameras, speakers and gyroscopes and the console can stream content directly to the controller, so theoretically you wouldn't even need a TV to play Wii U games. the console will be compatible with all the wii peripherals so you probably wqont need to buy anything but the console as chances are you'll already have enough Wii-motes to go around. The graphics look good so far but they're very early, eventually thay'll be comparable with PS3 and Xbox though. It'll have online and make you happy. If you can't picture it for yourself then take a look at the video below.