Rock5teady's Reviews: E3 2012 Wrap-up

Since I made this blog post-E3 I'll talk about what I've seen and what I found interesting and what really stood out this year.

This is how I covered mostly everything at E3.

Watching live streams off IGN and following up on GameTrailers and Kotaku while watching Gametrailer's coverage on SpikeTV as well as G4TV's coverage. I believe some of them have posted up videos of the full conferences from E3. If you want you can click on each websit's name for a direct link to their E3 coverage.

Console Wars

The big hardware announcement of E3 was the Wii U. Unfortunately it feels like it still falls short. I think a lot of people there were expecting some crazy from it but what they got was an Xbox controller. Ya sure we can argue that xbox controller copied the gamecube controller and they all copied the snes controller and blah blah blah. What we need to understand is Nintendo needed to do this. Since they've come out and said they want their console to have more 3rd party content. They're after the hardcore gamers now and they needed a controller for those 3rd party developers to use so that when, for example, a new Call of duty comes out it feels the same across all consoles and that's they want to do. Make it more friendly for the 3rd party developers.
Meanwhile Microsoft is trying to take the casual gamers with more kinect announcements. They're really trying to take over all entertainment. They added a whole lot more channels and sports coverage. Who needs a cable box when you can stream everything from your xbox. They say it understands more words that you can say so it's simpler to use and search on Bing. AND they've now added ~~Internet Exploder~~ Internet Explorer. Who even uses these?
Sony tries to reconnect with its hardcore fans with some new exclusives. They spent a little to long with adults playing with ~~that wand thing~~ the move and their Harry Potter game and a story book game of which I can't even remember the name anymore.

The Good
My biggest surprise was that Ubisoft didn't suck. They went from having notoriously horrible conferences to the best conference there. They started off with some nudity in their Far Cry 3 demo, some awesome Assassin's Creed 3 gameplay, a Wii U Rayman title and ended off with surprise game that they kept secret until E3. Watch Dogs.

In the video here you'll see some open world gameplay as a hacker attempts an assassination.What's more surprising is that at the end they switch camera to another character played by another guy on stage. As there is a main character I suspect these guys are just running support in a possible drop-in/drop-out co-op mode.

Assassin's Creed comes back with a vengeance in AC3. We see the new guy, Connor, traverse in this woodland area and some new tactics as you can can ram your way through to get to your target. Also check out the awesome Naval Battle gameplay here from their visit to Sony's press conference.

Halo 4 finally shows off some gameplay with new studio 343 Industries at the helm. New enemies, new weapons and new armor. The feel is a little bit different but I'm excited to get back into some multiplayer which they say is suppose to tie in with a web series. Keep an eye out for that.

Gears of War surprised us with Judgement. A prequel staring Baird and Cole.

The Last of Us has show some stuff before but we take a first look at what gameplay looks like and my oh my is it ever intense.

A nice surprise to Microsoft's press conference was South Park and the Stick of Truth as they reveal the trailer followed by Trey Parker and Matt Stone on stage poking fun at kinect. Also they talk about their game.

A game I was excited to see was from last year's reveal of the Lara Crofts sort of make over in the new Tomb Raider. Here's a great trailer from E3. For this game the creators talk about how its about how they take this girl and transforms her in the Lara Croft we all know.

One huge surprise was Star Wars 1313 with it's magnificent graphics it transitioned from cut-scene to gameplay seamlessly. Take a look. You play a bounty hunter I believe and that's about all I know about it.