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E3 is over, and it was a great event as ever. Possibly not as good as other years, but that's to be expected. A trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3 was certainly expected considering Square-Enix were having a conference, and the gameplay for it looked great.
Another game I was expecting was the next project from Frontier Developments, after they announced before E3 that the new game and Elite: Dangerous would both be around. Announced as Planet Coaster, it is definitely looking like a spiritual successor of the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, despite not much being shown in its trailer.
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Nintendo's conference can be summed up by what they were using as the event gimmick. Muppets. Oh, I know the Star Fox reveal was great. It showed all that it needed to. How the game will look and play, as well as it's new name - Star Fox Zero. Zero because it is not a reboot or a sequel. It's just there. A part of the series. The Arwing Walker mode has been brought into the new game from the unreleased SNES game Star Fox 2.
But then, while there was some good stuff they showed, it sort of goes downhill. Talks about transforming as a company didn't inspire much confidence after what was shown, though I can give them the benefit of doubt that the Treehouse streams will go more in depth with some stuff shown off, and hopefully give us another game announcement or two. EA started with a sci-fi series and ended on one. And while they showed less of what I wanted, it was all good with what I wanted. I'll still be covering it all, as it happened.
They showed Mass Effect off straight away with a slide of different environments, before adding in some action. Mass Effect Andromeda will be coming soon. Microsoft started big with a Halo 5 Guardians trailer. Then straight into gameplay. Now this gameplay had great looks, and cinematic gameplay. A second trailer was switched to. Both trailers gave us story hints, as well as a look at the game overall. The game itself will feature drop-in drop-out co-op in its campaign, and something big comes in Warzones. Massive online campaigns where teams join up to face off against AI controlled enemies. The game is playable on the show floor.
With less than a week to go, this is the perfect time to do this. A load of rumours circulating, and a load of sites giving their predictions, so it is now time for me to do mine. I've been thinking about some things, and Nintendo is where I'm placing most of my bets. EA do seem to have some good stuff for me this year as well. Microsoft and Sony have some decent things, and Ubisoft... I'll have to wait and see, but I've never bought much from Ubisoft. Bethesda and Square-Enix have conferences this year, and a PC Gaming Show is also set to take place.
Okay, then. Let's go. It really has been a year since I transferred CDS Blogs to Blogger. And what a year it was. And what a month this one will be. Before that though, thank you to each and every person who has read any post of mine. Looked at any video of mine. It does mean a lot to see the views come in.
Today has been all about one certain game, that I'm surprised no-one has dubbed the day Splatterday. The Splatoon Global Testfire announced in Thursday's Direct has finally come to an end. And it has greatly made me look forward to the game even more. In fact, I was so interested in the game, I set a little something up. With no capture card available, I had to pull out my camera and get it on the tripod, but I recorded footage of five matches. Part One and Part Two of the Splatoon demo show off the four primary weapon types, as well as a look at the sub and special weapons, two of the maps available to play on, as well as gameplay in general.
This game is looking great, and most of the Nintendo world are looking forward to it. I am too, as it was one of the games I featured in the latest What I'm Waiting For posts. The Nintendo Direct today was focused solely on the game. It was mostly a recap of what has already been shown off. New things were within the Direct, most of which were at the end. Let's get into it.
The event I called Star Wars Month is at an end. Celebration Anaheim was a blast to follow, and the information we got out of it, as well as the trailers, was excellent. The Bad Batch arc is now online, EA announced yesterday that Battlefront will have twelve multiplayer maps, and just today Disney Infinity 3.0 has been announced with Star Wars content to launch it.
Star Wars Battlefront is some months from release now. After two teasers at E3 events [2013 and 2014], it was about time we had some information for the game. At Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, we had that information. DICE are playing the information game very slyly. We have some info, but not enough to accurately say how this game will play or feel.
Take the main piece of information - that there will only be four planets in the game - and think about that. The developers say multiple maps, varying in size depending on the mode. And each planet will have more than two maps at launch. However, we still have very little information on the different modes to take a guess at how those maps might be set out. JJ Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy opened up Celebration with a panel that was not only streamed on every TV screen in the convention centre, but online and in worldwide cinemas too. So big was the event, that the reveal of the trailer had a massive build up. We have the name of the mysterious planet that so looks like Tatooine. And that is Jakku. The two reconfirmed the use of practical effects over CGI in rather a stunning way. Remember that rolling droid? BB-8? Yeah, he's actually a proper robot. A massive amount of technology went into that, and it was well worth it.
We were given a lot more hints at things to come, met the three new stars, and had a chat to returning members Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Peter Mayhew, and Anthony Daniels. The last thing shown off was the trailer. And what a trailer it was. It suggests a lot with its careful editing. Just who is Luke talking to during the voiceover? What is the Empire these days, and what does it stand for? What kind of battle are those X-Wing pilots in? And just where does the Dark Side stand in the order of this point in the timeline? There were many more besides that as well. The biggest point of that trailer though, was Han's simple words. "Chewie. We're home." There was also that magical quality right at the beginning of the trailer, where we simply have the camera panning right to bring a Star Destroyer - crashed on the surface - into view, as a lone speeder in the distance drives by. You've really got to see the trailer to understand the excitement of the fans. December can't come soon enough, but The Force Awakens was only the start of a number of big and small reveals everywhere. On this day next week, the start of what has become the biggest Star Wars event will commence with a big item. A panel focused on The Force Awakens. Director J.J. Abrams and LucasFilm president Kathleen Kennedy come together with special guests on the Celebration stage on the 16th April at 10:00 [event local time PDT]. The event will be simulcast right over the various stages of Celebration, and even an event in London, UK will be showing it. It's expected that insights into the film will be talked about, and possibly even a new trailer for those at the event itself.
Now Star Wars Celebration is a big event, bringing fans from around the world together for a four day event with enough content to fill a Star Destroyer. There will be a load of panels from the various corners of Star Wars outlets, and I'll be covering some of the bigger ones here. Those at the event itself will have a load to do while there, while the rest of us will have to stay tuned to Star Wars.com for the various live blogs that will be happening. There were dozens of live blogs and articles posted during the Celebration Europe event in 2013, and while it's not guaranteed that live blogs will be happening for everything, there's a good chance to still grab the news after the event. And with that, I'll continue the panel talk. Like I've been saying, it's been near enough two years since I covered any gaming event of any type. So to warm up for E3 this year, I decided to cover one Nintendo Direct. And this Nintendo Direct covered pretty much what I expected, along with some I didn't see coming.
Before the introduction from Iwata, a Super Smash Bros. 4 trailer played showcasing Mewtwo. Once the trailer ended, Iwata then introduced us to the Direct as a whole, and gave a few words about Mewtwo before giving his release. To those who registered both Super Smash Bros. 4 games on Club Nintendo, you'll be getting him free on the 15th of this month. The rest will have to wait until the 28th, and will need to pay up for him. A small update will also be released on the 15th, allowing for more Mii Fighter costumes in the form of download content. These will be crossover costumes, like the Mario Kart Racing Suits. The pricing, while not confirmed for Europe, will be $0.75 per pack on one console or both for just $1.15 in America. So, I said that I hadn't got most of the gaming related material posted, owing to the fact nothing at the gaming events interested me, and a Nintendo Direct didn't happen... um... last month. It happens today. Hopefully I can get full coverage of it, since I will be watching.
Now, owing to another event happening this month, and as I'm a massive fan of the franchise anyway, I'm naming this month Star Wars month. From today up to May the Fourth, I'll have numerous content relating to Star Wars, as well as what coverage I can of the Star Wars Celebration event itself. And there are numerous things I can be covering from the event. The last one of these did a recap before getting to the main subject. However, the first one only covered vague notions, it needed a recap to say what had and hadn't been confirmed. This time, the games from Volume 2 were those already announced, but since I gave my notions on them, I can still recap them in some way.
Since Nintendo first gave us the Mii's and Wii Sports, many ideas have circulated about expanding them. Then came Wii Sports Resort, which expanded the sports on offer and introduced us to Wuhu Island. The ideas since then imploded. Whether focused on one part of the island or the whole of it, there has always been an idea. Then we had Pilotwings Resort on the 3DS, which used Wuhu Island as its setting. The Wii Fit games use Wuhu as a basis for the jogging stages. Other games have kept the island alive, with two tracks in Mario Kart 7 and two stages in Super Smash Bros 4 WiiU. Of course, no full game set on the island has been announced yet, but maybe there's a reason for that.
Wii Sports came out in 2006. Nintendo recently released a reversion of it for WiiU in 2013. Wii Sports Club is different from its predecessor though, in the fact it has online multiplayer - though it hardly appears to get any use. And it is also different in the way the sports are delivered. Either a 24 hour pass for all the sports or buy them individually for quite a sum. Now Wii Sports Resort released in 2009, and while I'm not suggesting a date pattern, in a way, I also am. See, there is a massive list of games coming this year for WiiU. Splatoon, Mario Party 10, and Star Fox are just three games coming this year, and at E3 a game featuring Wuhu Island could be announced. It won't be released until 2016, roughly two and a half years after Wii Sports Club started rolling out [unless they are particularly generous], but it has to take Wii Sports Resort and do more than reversionise it. The second part of the tenth anniversary of Star Wars Battlefront 1 video was just recently uploaded, making it just on the fringe of the end of February. And in terms of videos this month, I don't have any planned as of yet. However, the Game Developers Conference starts tomorrow, and runs until the end of the week, and there might be something announced I could do a video on. I am, of course, talking of PC game demos or betas. If anything gets announced that gets my attention, and I can do a video on it, I will be sure to. I'll definitely get a blog post up about anything announced that I find interesting.
This one is going to be short and to the point. Simply, the game is only worth your time if you like exploration games with speedy elements. Said it would be short, didn't I?
All joking aside, Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal is good, but still won't be winning any awards. First we have the story, which - just like its WiiU counterpart - is barebones. Amy is fighting Lyric, then when he's knocked down, calls for 'help' on the communicator. Lyric then knocks Amy out. Sonic decides to gather his friends and go rescue Amy - and that's it. The cutscenes in the middle don't even matter. They don't even impact the story whatsoever, apart from saying where you are and how you got there. Now, I'm fairly new to the Battlefield series, but I can certainly see the differences between the main series and Hardline - a cops and robbers spin-off. We have the way you earn equipment, the equipment itself, the vehicles, and even the opposing factions. Now, since this game is in beta form, I won't be doing a full review. But this post is to give an insight into just what the beta holds, and how that reflects the final game.
I don't normally start the news out this way, but there was something announced within the last days of January that really struck my interest. Frontier Developments, hot off the release of Elite: Dangerous in December [and with continual updates to it] have now announced another self-published game. This one is something a bit special though.
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