At this point, I can only gleefully speculate at what preventative countermeasures are in store for us once the Wii U gets out into the wild and YouTube videos start cropping up of people damaging themselves and their belongings with it. I mean, this IS the company that shipped free gloves to protect overzealous Mario Party players (like myself) from painful blisters and could not rest until every Wiimote was sheathed in a rubber prophylactic cocoon. Hopefully their impending Wii U freakout will be just as amazing.
Mario Party, man. If you weren’t grinding that N64 thumbstick directly into the palm of your hand to achieve maximum RPMs, you were doing it wrong (and probably still winning).
As I recall, Mario Party also made a pretty good drinking game. The computer cheats you out of victory at the last possible moment - DRINK. You develop an open wound on your hand - DRINK. A verbal disagreement with a life-long friend escalates into a fist fight - DRINK.
Good times. Anyway…
As the curtain falls on E3 2012, relief is washing over me. I actually considered trying to get back in this year despite no longer possessing the proper credentials to do so and for the briefest of moments during the pre-show, when new hardware speculation was reaching its peak, I was kicking myself for not putting forth the effort. The urge to attend is based on the shortcomings of a long-defunct system of information delivery and usually resurfaces on the cusp of a new generation of hardware due to an equally defunct fear of missing something. Before the Internet flourished into the high-speed pipeline of vidjagame news it is today, I got my E3 scoops though mail-order bootleg VHS tapes of the show, and by the time those dried up I was working a job that provided me both the disposable income and the industry cred necessary to do the show up for reals. And while the notion of revisiting E3 held momentary allure, as it turns out, I’ve reached the point in my life where it’s no longer worth dropping a couple grand to fly to Los Angeles on the off chance they’ll debut something cool – a debut I can now just as easily stream to my PC in the comfort of my living room at the low, low price of not a goddamn thing.
Does my increased frugality and now ever-present desire to remain in an inert state on my couch in any way diminish the satisfaction of gorging oneself on the buffet of new information E3 has to offer? No it does not. So let’s get to it!
Star Wars 1313 came from out of nowhere and is looking pretty slick, and by pretty slick I mean Star Wars 1313 is the best-looking video game I’ve ever seen. The characters in the demo are supposedly placeholders, so it's unclear as to whether this game will star familiar faces from existing Star Wars lore or will focus on original characters designed specifically for the game. 1313 is set between trilogies and there are no Jedi, so there's at least some chance (never tell me the odds) we'll all be Nathan Drakeing it up in a galaxy far, far away next year with a young Han Solo. Either way, it makes one hell of a showpiece for what next gen hardware is capable of (what was shown was running on a PC) and although no specifics were announced regarding its release, for the first time in a long time, I'm excited about Star Wars. Nicely done, Lucasarts.
Ubisoft managed the only other real surprise of the show when they unveiled Watch Dogs during their press conference. While not quite on the same level as Star Wars 1313, Watch Dogs proved visually impressive enough to make us question which generation of hardware it was for (the demo shown was running on a PC). Even more impressive perhaps, was the novelty of the game’s premise: accomplish your tasks through the acquisition and manipulation of personal information, by hacking your surroundings, and… guns, but that first 2/3 of the pitch is more than intriguing enough to set a hook in my eager, gaping mouth. As of now, Ubisoft’s website lists Watch Dogs for release on PC, PS3, and 360, although creative director Jonathan Morin went on to say he’s not discounting the possibility of the game making its way to yet-to-be-announced consoles.
I’ll probably type up another round of E3 impressions over the weekend sometime and update this post, but Watch Dogs and 1313 were referenced in the comic and I wanted to go ahead and talk about them now.
If you made it to the end of this post, you, sir or madam, are a complete fucking champion. Allow me to reward your diligence in the face of all those words with some shameless self-promotion by suggesting that you follow me on Twitter. Click your mouse on THIS LINK and drop the hammer on that follow button or look me up the old fashioned way (SO 1998!) @LittleTMart.
See you next week!
-Mattout.
Mario Party 3 was the best. I was damn good at it, played as Wario just to be annoying, and got even better at it the more I drank. Is it bad that I’m still hoping for a VC release of it? Who knows… I mean, Pikmin 2 comes out for Wii next week (finally).
All I know of E3 is Last of Us looks very intriguing.
Last Of Us looks like scripted mess and I’m not going to stop saying it until the naughty dog fanbois grow a second brain that is capable of recognising the difference between a playable cutscene and a game.
Yeah this E3 was pretty sucky at least there are new games and a new console to look forward to.
Love that Last of Us!
I’m completely on board with The Last of Us. From what I’ve read and listened to, it’s a pretty big departure from the Uncharted games. Overall, though, E3 was pretty blah.
Big departure? Oh No, there is a little girl in there, this is a BIG DEPARTURE! Its called a escort mission, with guns and unnatural cover shooting. Is this what gaming has come to? please, 1 trailer and its big departure.