INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
After taking a year off, I returned to E3 this week
It always a fun show, in spite of the fact that the show floor has come to rival Comic-Con in terms of the mass of people the show
organizers are able to cram into the aisles of the convention center floor.
We&ve been filing stories all week, but here is a very much
incomplete collection of my thoughts on this year show.
Zombies are still very much a thing
I&d have thought we&d have hit peak zombie
years ago, but here we are, zombies everywhere
That includes the LA Convention Center lobby, which was swarming with actors decked out as the undead
There something fundamentally disturbing about watching gamers get pictures taken with fake, bloody corpses
Or maybe it just the perfect allegory for our time.
Nintendo back
A slight adjustment in approach certainly played a role, as the company
has embraced mobile gaming
But the key to Nintendo return was a refocus on what it does best: offering an innovative experience with familiar IP
Oh, and the GameCube controller Smash Bros
compatibility was a brilliant bit of fan service, even by Nintendo standards.
Quantity versus quality
Microsoft event was a sort of video
The company showed off 50 titles, a list that included 15 exclusives
Sony, on the other hand, stuck to a handful, but presented them in much greater depth
Ultimately, I have to say I preferred the latter
Real game play footage feels like an extremely finite resource at these events.
Ultra violence in ultra high-def
Certainly not a new trend
in gaming, but there something about watching someone bite off someone else face on the big screen that extra upsetting
Sony press conference was a strange sort of poetry, with some of the week most stunning imagery knee-deep in blood and gore.
Reedus &n
fetus
We saw more footage and somehow we understand the game less
Checkmate
Indiecade is always a favorite destination at E3
It a nice respite from the big three packed booths
Interestingly, there were a lot more desktop games than I remember
You know, the real kind with physical pieces and no screens.
Death of a Tomb Raider
I played Shadow of the Tomb Raider on a PC in NVIDIA
It good, but I&m not good at it
I can deal with that sort of thing when my character is in full Master Chief regalia or whatever, but those close-up shots of her face when
I drowned her for the fifth time kind of bummed me out
Can video games help foster empathy or are we all just destined to desensitize ourselves because we have tombs to raid, damn it
I saw the
light
NVIDIA also promised me that its ray-tracing tech would be the most impressive demo I saw at E3 that day
I think they were probably right, so take that, Sonic Racing
The tech, which was first demoed at GDC, &brings real-time, cinematic-quality rendering to content creators and game developers.&
VR still
waiting in the wings
At E3 two years ago, gaming felt like an industry on the cusp of a VR breakthrough
In 2018, however, it doesn&t feel any closer
There were a handful of compelling new VR experiences at the event, but it felt like many of the peripheral and other experiences were
sitting on the fringes of the event — both literally and metaphorically — waiting for a crack at the big show.
Remote Control
Sony
Control trailer was the highest ratio of excitement to actual information I experienced
Maybe it Inception the video game or the second coming of Quantum Break
I dunno, looks fun.
AR a thing, but not, like, an E3 thing
We saw a few interesting examples of this, including the weirdly wonderful
TendAR, which requires you to make a bunch of faces so a fake fish doesn&t die
It kind of like version of Seamanthat feeds on your own psychic energy
At the end of the day, though, E3 isn&t a mobile show.
Cross-platform
Having said that, there are some interesting examples of
cross-platform potential popping up here and there
The $50 Poké Ball Plus for the Switch is a good example I&m surprised hasn&t been talked about more
Along with controlling the new Switch titles, it can be used to capture Pokémon via Pokémon GO
There some good brand synergy right there
And then, of course, there Fortnite, which is also on the Switch
The game battle royale mode is a great example of how cross-platform play can lead to massive success
Though by all accounts, Sony doesn&t really want to play ball.
V-Bucks
Oh, Epic Games has more money than God now.
Moebius strip
Video
You knew that already, blah, blah, blah
But Sable looks like a freaking Moebius comic come to life
I worry that it will be about as playable as Dragon Lair, but even that trailer is a remarkable thing.
