E3 2012: 5th-7th June

[Infinitron]

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/e3-what-games.php

E3 Answers: What Is A Video Game?

Still confused about just what the heck a video game is? Not sure what to say when a family member asks what you do with all your free time? E3 has you covered. According to the press events that I watched this week, video games are:

• Being told to "Move!" or "Run!" or "Hurry!" down a narrow path which must not be veered from. While all sorts of things happen around you. Things that look like they would be really fun to interact with, if you weren't so busy running and being yelled at.
• Bold new directions that involve series of games with more than three sequels.
• Getting to watch ESPN on your TV with a console! As long as you're already paying a satellite or cable provider to watch ESPN. On your TV.
• Watching a nice woman smiling as she tries to ignore the game telling her "Good job, lad!" during an on stage demonstration.
• Using your voice to search Bing, use Internet Explorer, and watch exciting trailers for very specific television shows and movies that paid for advertising, just before thinking about how great Nike is and how thrilled you are that they made the millionth Kinect fitness game.
• Killing foreign people. Being teased with the prospect of getting to torture them.
• Dubstep, LMFAO, Usher, Linkin Park.
• Holding a controller in one hand, your cell phone in another, yelling at the tv. Swiping video game elements on the cell phone while all sorts of cool futuristic sounds play, like a Hollywood version of an operating system.
• Turrets.
• Shooting, punctuated by non-interactive CINEMATIC MOMENTS. Oh crap, my guy just looked at his future watch! Woah, my guy lost his footing when he jumped from a falling turnpike overpass to a dangling jeep, and he looked down at his legs to the street below! A building fell over! Lara opened a parachute and it didn't work and she opened another! The universe exploded while my guy covered his face and yelled, this is the best game ever!
• More Halo horseshit. Cortana just announced that AIs deteriorate after seven years and she has existed for eight! Sure, it doesn't make sense, but that will result in amazing tension and character development if you are a toddler and you have no taste and you don't understand the language you're playing the game in. How about that big Metroid ball and the new lava Chozo enemies?
• People cheering for DLC. Not because it looks interesting or they know anything about it, but because it is announced.
• People cheering even louder for someone begging for their life then having their face blown off with a shotgun at point blank range.
• Slowly moving your gun's sights around while BIG scripted things happen. Not shooting at any enemies until a fabricated moment that seems tense. Letting bad guys get close so they can grab you, making you lose control for a few moments while they snarl in your face then throw you or prompt you to press X repeatedly.
• Horror games. You know, games where you shoot a million dudes and jump behind cover? Dead Space 3? Resident Evil 6? Pretty sure those are horror games.
• The least important part of an interconnected entertainment platform featuring social communication, rich experiences, and a dozen outside devices.
• So much ultraviolence that even people like me, who find it funny by default, are sort of grossed out and hoping that we can focus a little bit more on creativity and interaction.

 

[skuphundaku]

• So much ultraviolence that even people like me, who find it funny by default, are sort of grossed out and hoping that we can focus a little bit more on creativity and interaction.

What's this ultraviolence you speak of? I didn't notice anything that would be worth even a mention at this E3. Also, be careful when you start down that road because by doing that you're just fueling the fire of all the soccermoms and moral panicking retards that want to ban this and legislate that, because, "We all know that playing games makes you a serial killer! If you play GTA and you haven't gone on a rampage yet, it's just a matter of time."

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

• People cheering for DLC. Not because it looks interesting or they know anything about it, but because it is announced.

Sensationalist morons, or even worse, people who feel the urge to show loyality to a certain corporation. The corporation that constantly tells them dis and dat is good for you, and if you don't buy it, your friends will hate you. American corporist brainwashing at it's finest. And the sheeple just played along with it.

People cheering even louder for someone begging for their life then having their face blown off with a shotgun at point blank range.

While violence is part of video games, this is the sort of example that doesn't do anything good to it's reputation, or "emotional impact". "Oh look, watched The Road? That was totally grisly dark and they did the same thing there. We at Naughty Dog are just trying to exhibit that we can be just as mature and serious too ya know?". It's all very sad.

 

[Roguey]

I need to know the name of that pair of tits, she's a fascinating personality to see online, surely

Raychul Moore. You're going to get sick fast.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Everytime I watch an average American game journalists open his/ger mouth, I get the feeling my IQ instantly drops by 30 points. Those people obviously didn't exactly grow up/were educated around the most intellectual environment... Probably Los Angeles or some other dumbshit hole...

 

[sea]

Everytime I watch an average American game journalists open his/ger mouth, I get the feeling my IQ instantly drops by 30 points. Those people obviously didn't exactly grow up/were educated around the most intellectual environment... Probably Los Angeles or some other dumbshit hole...

It's actually kind of surprising how many actually do have journalism/language/media etc. degrees.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Amerikwa, country full of journalists, economists, bankers, lawyers and comedians. All of them with college degrees, of course.

 

[Oriebam]

I need to know the name of that pair of tits, she's a fascinating personality to see online, surely

Raychul Moore. You're going to get sick fast.

would brofist

 

[sser]

Team Ninja: "It seems like we made a Japanese Hamburger for the West"

Hayashi is probably the dumbest game designer today. I really don't know how the fuck that guy still has a job in this business.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Team Ninja: "It seems like we made a Japanese Hamburger for the West"

Hayashi is probably the dumbest game designer today. I really don't know how the fuck that guy still has a job in this business.

Well, Peter Molyneux still has a job, too...

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

The E3 of Disillusion

What sealed the deal for me was this apparent obsession with violence and vulgarity. Violence in media doesn't bother me. Some of my favorite media (including games) utilizes violence in a very directed way. Self-aware gratuitousness can get a point across. Use violence as a satirical tool, by all means. Use it as a way to develop a tame character into one that becomes a psychopathic murderer.

E3 2012 was unabashed pandering to the lowest common denominator, more than ever before. The video game industry wants to be respected as a medium that can be held up to the same creative standards as a New York Times best-selling book or an Oscar-winning movie. Instead, the games industry is complacent in further developing its relegation as a semi-interactive Michael Bay mocking bird.

"Oh yeah moar of it bitch huurrr!"

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Hayashi is probably the dumbest game designer today. I really don't know how the fuck that guy still has a job in this business.

After three massive failures (Shitma 2, that shitty Metroid game, NG3), his head really should be on the chopping block. His fate probably rests on how well his handheld ports work out and how DoA games sell. If any of those bomb, expect some ritual suicide or something.

 

[Jigawatt]

The video game industry wants to be respected as a medium that can be held up to the same creative standards as a New York Times best-selling book

I'd say they're exactly at the same creative standard

 

[deuxhero]

So what was at the Polish Embassy booth anyways? Just CDPR stuff?

 

[Tehdagah]

Zeno Clash 2

 

[Hellraiser]

I was expecting some new on cyberpunk 2020 - potato popamole edition. Sadly nothing new surfaced.

Instead we have even more than in the past.

 

[Gord]

Just read about some interview where a Microsoft spokesman at E3 said that the next XBox won't be out for another 2 years, as XBox360 is still in it's prime or some shit like that.

Great news, another 2 years of shitty console-ports written for 6 year old hardware.

 

[Menckenstein]

Just read about some interview where a Microsoft spokesman at E3 said that the next XBox won't be out for another 2 years, as XBox360 is still in it's prime or some shit like that.

Great news, another 2 years of shitty console-ports written for 6 year old hardware.

Same as it ever was.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Just read about some interview where a Microsoft spokesman at E3 said that the next XBox won't be out for another 2 years, as XBox360 is still in it's prime or some shit like that.

Great news, another 2 years of shitty console-ports written for 6 year old hardware.

Gord cannot into reading. Phil Spencer said the 360 has ~2 years more lifetime, that doesn't mean there won't be an overlap with new hardware.

But who really cares about Shitbox? It's clearly geared towards US/UK mass-dumbfuck-sheeple who spend their whole time watching Hulu and Netflix Streams, chatting with friends, showing of their man titties on Facebook and occasionally play a game with friends (Halo). Because if you don't use all that junk, you're anti-social, right? Riiiiiight.

It's really like that thing Edward Bernays was talking about.

 

[Gord]

Well Morgoth, to my defense: if anything the guy who wrote the news piece where my info comes from cannot into reading and didn't offer a link to the original interview, either.
Anyway it might be interpretation to some degree.

And why would we care?
I care because shitty console hardware is holding back technological advancement, thanks to stupid multiplatform in PC gaming as well. Neither will my inner graphics whore be satisfied, nor will we get cool stuff like widespread use of OpenCL, better multicore support, etc.
And before the bitching about how that's irrelevant for gameplay starts: sure, but there are enough things about current generation of consoles that damage gameplay, as well.

 

[Dexter]

 

[Menckenstein]

 

[ArcturusXIV]

What did you guys think of this year's E3?

And is anybody looking forward to The Secret World? http://www.amazon.com/The-Secret-World-Pc/dp/B006ZPAXYW

The Secret Society test was annoying, and very dumbed down, but the concept methinks resembles the Illuminatus! trilogy if done right, building on Cthulhu and Lovecraftian lore.

The other game that intrigued me is Watch Dogs, where all technology is tied together in the future, and you can stop and start traffic lights (causing traffic jams), spy in on cell phones, and even cause the downfall of major corporations. It is an Ubisoft special, so no guarantees we won't have a hammy-handed Assassin's Creed handling of this one, but the fact that it plays like Grand Theft Auto meets Syndicate or something similar is great! (not a great parallel, but you get what I mean. Sandboxy, like Deus Ex, only more of a GTA Feel from what I Gather.)

Lastly, you just need to see the trailer for Beyond: Two Souls to understand what having a telekinetic alter-ego can do. A very bad, bad, bad one. It is a choice-and-consequence game, by the creators of Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, so forth, and follows fifteen years of a girl's life with an alternative personality, or "poltergeist," that seems to take control and do what she wishes? That, or you can wreak as much havoc as you want, even going so far as to cooperate with the police and get arrested, changing the future destiny of your character. Or, for that matter, gather scars, based on your choices, that guards will notice, and so forth, based on trailer (Guessing!).

Special mentions, of course, go to Dishonored and The Last of Us.

I'm not too interested, but wanted some thoughts on these games from You guys!,

A14

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Should have given a thumbs down.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

You look like Moore's bastard son.