Today was the first real day of E3 and I was blown away again and again. First things first is scale. Here is the Microsoft’s Xbox Booth staring down Sony’s PlayStation booth.
I know its hard to imagine but those are the short sides of their spaces. The Xbox booth was packed! PACKED! I loved the energy in that booth and show big named games like Tomb Raider, Halo 5, Forza 6 and The Division were right there in the mix with Gigantic, Fable Legends, Smite and a bunch of ID@Xbox games like CupHead and others that I swear I will play and write down tomorrow!
I had a chance to talk to one of the Devs of Gigantic. Gigantic plays as 3rd person MOBA that has each team’s guardian in their base. As the team dominates their guardian gets stronger. If the team strengthens their guardian before the other then it drives across the map and drops the other team’s guardian. That leaves that guardian vulnerable for attack. 5 on 5 player online with the guardian being controlled by the AI.
Fable Legends was playable as well which is nice as I have been playing the Beta off and on for a while and it felt a lot more polished than when I last played it. I was also happy to hear that the game will include a campaign which is not available in the Beta as of yet. You will be able to play through the campaign as the hero and again as the villain with a minor exception. You always play the first level as the hero and the second as the villain. After that the choice is yours.
I also spent some time with the new elite controller. This thing is bad ass! You have probably heard this is going to retrial for $150. My first reaction was WTF?! After playing Forza 6 with it and seeing how this performs I changed my WTF to Take My Money! See those bits down there is the pic below? You get the controller, the case and all those bits which snap on magnetically for easy switching.
The back is rubberized but textured so it gives you good grip without getting all sweaty. The green buttons below are easily accessible to quickly switch from full trigger to hair trigger. Those paddles? They feel so, so right. I haven’t had a chance to play a game with them yet but when I do I have two fingers on each hand that have done nothing game wise for the last ten years or so and want to get in on the act.
Sony on the other hand was more spread out which made it easier to walk around but it felt like Sony had five areas of real interest and then everything else was “meh” in their eyes. People gravitated to these four areas which were Star Wars Battlefront, Uncharted 4/ Horizon / The Last Guardian/ Destiny, Black Ops3 and Project Mopheus. The rest in the middle was sparsely populated.
I got to play a little bit of Ratchet and Clank and some of Terraway and I could have played a number of other independent games as there was not a lot of demand but I had one thing in mind – Star Wars: Battlefront. I played a survival campaign with a fellow by the name of Seth from Mosaic (I noticed quite a few MS folks in Sonys camp and vice versa which was cool). We killed it the first 5 of the 6 waves but fell apart in the last wave. Maybe we got cocky, maybe I let us down who really knows. What I do know is that it’s awesome! I am a Star Wars fan through and through and was pissed about jet packs on the rebels and Stormtroopers and don’t get me started on Jedi Luke fighting Darth Vader WHICH NEVER HAPPENED ON HOTH! But even I thought it was cool to watch.
The Morpheous VR Section was split in two which made the Destiny line confusing but what really blew me away is the lack of line at COD:BO3 compared to Morpheous, Destiny and Star Wars: Battlefront and the biggest draw was the triple threat (“1 line 3 Games” the sign screamed!) of Uncharted 4 / Horizon / The Last Guardian. I want to hit that up this week sometime.
There is like 20 guys lined up for Black Ops 3 but the lineups went around the booths for the others. I have a feeling people are starting to get tired of yearly release-itis.
I also got to play with some classic games I haven’t played in years. Check these beauties out!
There was an Atari Jaguar there as well that I lusted after as a kid but the guy playing it was all over it and I couldn’t get a chance with it. It was kind of awkward watching him with that controller and all the grunts he kept making.
