E3 2011 - Part 1

The blog was prophesied and inevitable and so here I am writing about E3 2011. I haven't physically attended an E3 in roughly 9 years, but with the right internet resources it's possible to actually get more out of not being at the show than getting lost in the crazed cacophony of lights and sounds that is the floor at E3. This year as with last I relied heavily on E3feed.com as an aggregate for everything coming out of this years convention. The overall takeaway compared to last year is that this is the year that everyone is making good on the promises made last summer. The vast majority of games being spoken of were projects that I had seen revealed this time last year, so while there wasn't a lot of "new" this time around, it was nice to see so many projects coming to fruition and ultimately leading to what is going to be a very competitive holiday season across all platforms. But that's enough introduction, we're here to talk about games so let's get to it.

Battlefield 3

Going into this show there wasn't really much we knew about Battlefield 3 save that is was being developed by DICE and it looked as if EA wasn't going to be playing nice anymore when it came to the multiplayer military shooter genre. You see, Activision has owned this segment of the gaming population since the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game came out several years ago. Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops only cemented this position. EA wants in on this territory though and while last year's Medal of Honor fell flat, DICE's Battlefield: Bad Company 2 showed promise. Indeed, the Battlefield franchise has always been a force to reckon with and despite some bumps along the road, DICE has been consistent in producing quality games. Having them helm an initiative to unseat Activision is a no-brainer, especially after Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward more or less walked off the job en-masse after allegations of unpaid bonus dividends from the studio heads to Activision. If ever there were a time to strike it was now and strike EA did. We had seen a bunch of footage from Modern Warfare 3 leading up to E3, but nary a peep from Battlefield 3 except for the months old teaser. During the EA press conference, Battlefield 3 was revealed in all it's glory, garnering a much deserved outpouring of praise from the gaming press and fans. Planing to launch a full month before MW3, with an open beta a month before that, and completely free to play online (a shot across the bow to MW3's "elite" program") BF3 is poised to storm PC's and consoles this fall and take dominance over Modern Warfare. Is it a lock? It's still to early to tell. BF3 certainly looks like the better game, leveraging DICE's new frostbyte engine, but is the game play going to resonate with the players? Part of Modern Warfare's appeal is the easy of entry. It's a delicate formula that we've seen before with games like Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, and the original Quake. In order to gain multiplayer dominance you have to look good, play good, and get people engrossed in the game experience from the word go, while still providing a incentives and challenge for the expert players. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was a great game, but it wasn't approachable. Can DICE repeat history and make Battlefield 3 every bit the approachable game that Battlefield 1942 was? I guess we'll find out when the beta goes live in September.

Prey 2

When we first saw Prey 2 several months back, we were treated to a single image that looked nothing like what we had experienced from the series' progenitor. Prey's reluctant Native American hero had been replaced with someone who looked more like Sam Fischer from the Splinter Cell games. We were told that the game was still in the same overall universe as Prey 1, but that instead of being on Earth and dealing with the alien invasion, Prey 2 would take us to an alien world with a human protagonist only marginally related to the first game. Human Head released a proper trailer about a week out from the start of E3 that if anything, assuaged any fears about what Prey 2 may or may not be. Yes, the game is going to be different, but if that trailer is any proof of concept, they're barking up the right tree. Think Blade Runner meets Grand Theft Auto on an alien world. I don't know what they have in store and while it isn't Prey 1, it isn't Splinter Cell either. Whatever the case, I'm interested to see how it pans out.

The Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword

Anyone who knows me knows that while I love the Zelda games (the first installment is one of my two all-time favorites) I am not a huge fan of Ocarina of Time. Chalk it up to never having had an N64 and thus never having played the game until the Game Cube port, or the fact that Ocarina is the first Zelda game for an entire generation (the damn kids these days and their lack of historical context), but I just never got into the game. I appreciate a lot of the things it tried to do, but as the first 3D Zelda I feel it stumbles along the way. I am much more enamored of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. In fact, my love of Wind Waker makes me dislike Ocarina that much more due to the prejudice levied at the game by so-called fans wanting a more mature Zelda game. I'm sorry kids, but just because you were little when Ocarina came out and now you're an angst ridden youth, doesn't mean Link should be too. You know why? 2 reasons: a) There were 4 Zelda games before Ocarina (counting Link's Awakening) and b) every game retells the legend of the Hero of Hyrule, no matter what age he is. The other fact at play here is that Wind Waker was beautiful and I loved the game play. Personally I found the open world sailing to be an excellent spin on the type of open world game play we were already accustomed to in the Zelda series. Anyway, the short take away from all this is that I'm a Zelda fan, but at this point in time I'm a picky Zelda fan. Wind Waker showed me two things about my affection for the series that I hadn't before realized. The first is that I prefer I stylized rendition of Hyrule; for me it fits the tone and my own nostalgia of pixelized Links and the very cartoonish renderings in the game manuals. The second is that I really like when liberties are taken with Hyrule and the Zelda world itself. Ocarina was nothing but a bunch of locales I had been adventuring in for 20 years, but Wind Waker changed all that by flooding everything.

Now, take all this into consideration and then take a look at The Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword. That's right, they are making a Zelda game just for me. I honestly don't have anything to say after watching these videos. I think I've summed it up well enough above that anyone can plainly see this game has no weaknesses from my perspective. I never finished Ocarina, I probably won't finish Twilight Princess, but I am itching to get my hands on Skyward Sword as soon as humanly possible.