Disappointment at offerings for E3

E3 2012: Sony and Nintendo

Here are two companies which I was mostly curious about when it came to brand new announcements and while it seems that Sony are struggling to keep their PS3 console fresh in players minds they do have a decent selection of games on the way, even if they’re not entirely new, but hey, what’s considered “new” nowadays.

Most of Sony’s offerings were announced beforehand, the Smash Bros-esque “Playstation All-Stars” looks very much to be a carbon copy of that game but with Sony characters, and a new God of War game is on the way, but as mentioned earlier, these were revealed before E3 so what did Sony have to show? Not a lot, by the looks of it. Quantic Dream, the overly praised development team of their “interactive narritive” games are coming out with a rather impressive looking game called Beyond: Two Souls.

Not much is known about how the game will play but once again, you’re in control of a story which has the possibility to branch itself down many paths much like its predecessors Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit.

Naughty Dog, the creators of Crash Bandicoot and Uncharted are coming out with a brand new IP (Hallelujah!) called The Last of Us. While on the surface this game seems to be just another Uncharted game you’ll find the more you look into the finer details the more you realise it’s pretty much the ‘anti-Uncharted’. No longer are you mowing down hundreds of enemies in a row but rather fighting for survival in a barren post-apocayptic wasteland and one, maybe two guys are a serious threat.

Nintendo was what I was here for though. The brand new console which obviously meant brand new games and more excitingly brand new ideas but what did they have to show for themselves? Once again, not a lot.

Charming as ever, the creator of Mario, Zelda and Wii Music (sorry) ran onto the stage as charming as ever and revealed to us the world’s worst kept videogame secret: Pikmin 3. While this provoked me into pre-ordering a Wii U I can’t help feel that Nintendo could’ve something more to get the “casual” market interested.

They showed off New Super Mario Bros U which is exactly as you’d expect it to be but with some semi-interesting tablet based co-operative gameplay with a friend. Using the new fangled “gamepad” tablet, you as Mario can be helped or hindered by a friend placing platforms by touching the device in time with your platforming skills.

After displaying a game which has been out for almost a year already, eg Batman Arkham City and showing off a new version of the mini-game compilation “NintendoLand”, I found that UbiSoft’s showing of ZombiU and Rayman Legends were far more exciting use of the technology which Nintendo has created. All round, a rather disappointing E3.