E3 Day Two Super Notes

Nintendo Notes

• Starfox Zero - Looks pretty good.  Very simple arcade-y space shooter.  The new cockpit view from the gamepad looks alright.

• Mario Maker - Looks like a good creative tool for people to play more Mario.

• Amiibo - More new Amiibos...  This is their huge money maker right now.  Hammer slam Bowser and Turbo-charged Donkey Kong... They're Amiibos and Skylanders Characters in one toy.

• Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes - 3 Player Co-op Zelda Adventure - Finally!?  Solving puzzles and going through dungeons...  You can play single-player still, you get little "doll" AI characters.  Different outfits and abilities/items.  Online multiplayer.

• Hyrule Warriors Legends 3DS - Action Hack n' Slash - Oh my sweet jesus.  With additional Wind Waker characters.  The Warriors games are my guilty pleasure in gaming.  I'm on board here.

• Metroid Prime: Federation Force - 4 player Co-op - Looks like Monster Hunter: Metroid or Halo Metroid.

• Metroid Prime: Blast Ball - Metroid Sports?  I'm so confused

• Fire Emblem: Fates - Turn-based Tactical Strategy - 3DS - Decent trailer with a tiny bit of gameplay.  This will sell like hotcakes

• Some Japanese FE game - No idea what this is.  Nintendo didn't put it in English.

• Xenoblade Chronicles X - RPG - They showed a new trailer.  The gameplay is similar to the other titles, RPG combat is a little slow for my tastes in these games.

• Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer- Creative Home Builder - Cards with NFC chips in them have been added for more stuff and interactivity.

• Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival - Party Game - It looked like Mario Party but with Animal Crossing.

• Yoshi's Woolly World - Platformer - Amiibos are super cute looking.  Little plushy amiibos.  Looks like a creative, pretty looking Nintendo platformer.  I'm not super excited, but it might be fun as a one-time playthrough.  Co-op mode looks like a good addition, can always use more co-op titles in the industry.  If you have a Mario Amiibo, it turns into a Mario Yoshi in game, etc.

• Yo-kai Watch - Similar to Pokemon - Collect/find ghosts, turn-based combat with mini-games.  Poke-fans will buy this game.

• Mario and Luigi: Paper Jam - 3D Mario Game with mini-games - Looks semi-fun.  It'll be one of the better titles out of the line-up.

• Mario Tennis Ultra Smash - Mario Tennis... Stop trying to make tennis happen.  Wii Tennis was it!

• Mario Maker - Creative - They're talking about it again.  Instant feedback to level creation, they're giving a lot of creative freedom to what players will be able to create.  Mario can turn into Amiibo characters when he gets a costume mushroom.  

• LetsSuperMario.com - Upload videos about Super Mario and Nintendo will make a donation to Operation Smile

The presentation was a lot of fan-service, and maybe there's more to come.  But it's nothing ground-breaking from Nintendo.  I'm not sure what I expected... but it wasn't as exciting as it could have been.  The best thing I saw was co-op Zelda for 3DS, but it just doesn't seem like any creative uses of their systems and there was no announcement of the new system yet.

Square Enix Notes

• Just Cause 3 - Open world Action - 400 square miles of open world and lots of vehicles and weapons.You can attach tons of things with the grapple.  80 vehicles.  Lots of mini-games to compete for online leaderboards.  They didn't say anything about multiplayer... when Just Cause 2 Multiplayer mod is the only reason that people care about this IP anymore...  This could be a HUGE missed opportunity.

• NieR New Project - PS4 Nier Game - It was just a super cryptic teaser trailer that name-dropped experienced game developers.

• Rise of the Tomb Raider - Adventure - I'm sure this game will be well-made.  The newer Tomb Raider title was excellent.  I will be more of the same cinematic-adventure that people like from these titles, so it'll do well.

• Lara Croft Go - Tomb Raider Mobile Game - Craptastic.  Turn-based experience.

• Final Fantasy VII remake - This was shown again.  "Stay tuned for more detailed information in the future." They're also releasing the old FFVII on the iphone at the end of summer.

• Kingdom Hearts Unchained Key - It's a japanese browser game that they're bringing to mobile.  It did alright in Japan, but it didn't keep anyone's attention.

• Kingdom Hearts 3 - Action-y RPG with Disney Characters - This will be a story-driven nostalgia-fest.  It will sell at ludicrous-speed.  The game will probably be very polished.  It's one of those games that people want to experience the story... so it might actually be more popular for streamers/content creators online to have people watch it.

• World of Final Fantasy - Didn't show much other than the trailer that was posted yesterday.

• Hitman - 3rd Person Action/Stealth - HD sandbox game.  Freedom of approach to take out your targets.  Sounds like you get even more freedom.  We'll see!  They reward "complete mastery" of levels.  It's a game about killing.  It'll have to be more than this, we'll see what social options you can do with your friends for the game...

• They showed some quick trailers of some of their newer titles like Final Fantasy XV.

• Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness - Seems like a pretty JRPG.  Combat seems interesting, a cross between real time combat and turn based ability use.  JRPG fans will gobble this up.  Aiming for 60 fps.

• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - Action RPG - Takes place in 2029.  Stopping the Illuminati.  In-game trailer shown.  I want this game to be good.  The others were decent games.

• Project Setsuna - New JRPG from a studio that will only make JRPG's called Tokyo RPG Factory.  They showed some concept art.  Who knows.

E3 PC Notes

Holy crap where do I start... This presentation was a roller-coaster of excitement and boredom. I'll just do more bullet points for games and what happened.

• Killing Floor 2 - FPS/Horror - They showed off new tech that allows gore to be more disgusting, it actually looked really cool haha. This game is always a blast with friends. It definitely rides the wave between frustration and relief.

• Rising Storm 2: Vietnam - FPS - Another Tripwire game. It'll be kinda fun, but nobody will care. More Vietnam and/or WW2 just bores people to death.

• Star Citizen - Action/Simulation - Got a brief look on the mo-cap that they're working and it always looks so good.

• Then AMD talked about blah blah graphics chips, "we're AMD you should trust us."

• Deus Ex - FPS/RPG - Devs came out and talked about the tech behind their new Deus Ex game, it looked pretty cool. I'm sure this will be another "play through it once then done" game.

• Total War: Warhammer - RTS - This is a Warhammer fanboy's dream. I'm excited for it because I support the Total War games... but they always mess up with too much paid DLC.

• Xbox Dude comes out on stage like a patronizing ass. "At Microsoft, we want to show our support of PC gaming because we may not have as much as we wanted to in the past." He had this smug grin I couldn't forget.

• Rod Fergusson came out to talk about Gears of War on PC... So boring. I actually think that game is more fun on consoles with your console buddies. Nobody cares on PC, we have much better shooter games to play.

• American Truck Simulator - Simulation - Best game 2016, GOTY, All the awards. Want. The name says it all.

• EVE Valkyrie - VR Space Shooter - Didn't really show anything new, just talked about VR and designing the game from the ground up for VR.

• Ion - Survival - Dean Hall's new project since he abandoned DayZ. So much hesitation to be hyped at all about this.

• Strafe - FPS - Low rez artsy shooter? Shooters are so boring, do something else with it please.

• Pillars of Eternity: The White March - RPG - This is one of the best designed games for PC and it's getting an expansion. Obisidian has churned out gems for several years now with the South Park game and Pillars of Eternity. This'll be great.

• Planet Coaster - Theme Park Sim - The Elite Dangerous team is reviving the lost roller coaster tycoon genre. If it keeps the visual look that they showed in the trailer, it could be really interesting.

• Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns - MMO Expansion - Unless they have some new end-game loot system in the game, it'll never get the same amount of players back.

• Hitman - TPS - The new freedom of the "sandbox maps" looks neat, but I still want a game that isn't just "kill people in neat ways." So then they presented "well you can interact with your friends in different ways by submitting targets online, etc." We'll see if it actually ends up interesting.

• Beyond Eyes - Artsy/Exploration - Looks beautiful, I'll probably watch someone play a little of it, understand it, then never touch it myself.

• Dirty Bomb - Team FPS - Team shooters have lost their appeal for me. I really could care less here.

• Soma - Horror - This game's trailer made me stressed. Horror games freak me out. No thanks!

• DayZ - Survival - It was neat to see what they're working on... but Ark has dinosaurs. You lose DayZ.

• Take On: Mars - Survival/Creative - Looks like Space Engineers meets space survival? I might check it out to see if there's anything new about it.

• Heroes of the Storm: Eternal Conflict - New expansion themed on Diablo. Monk will be a support character. I still think I'm pretty done with MOBAs in general. They don't provide any new gameplay experiences for me at this point.

• StarCraft 2 Expansion - RTS - I'll play this for the story on the hardest difficulty, then never touch it again. I'm not asian enough to ever win any SC2 tournaments. (that sounds horribly racist, but I'm pretty sure it's a fact)

• No Man's Sky - Space/Exploration - They announced that it will be on PC as well as PS4. "Well we couldn't announce that it was coming to PC as well before for reasons" No shit, you wanted everyone to think it was PS4 exclusive because Sony paid you to do that. I'm glad they are smart enough to realize that the experience will be better on PC. I want them to tone down the color scheme in that game though... it's SO bright and might give a headache during long play sessions. This game + Oculus Rift = yes please.