e3 2012
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Wink If You've Seen the Future
You're reading Reaction Time, a weekly column that claims to examine recent events, games and trends in the industry, but is really just looking for an excuse to use the word "zeitgeist." It debuts on Fridays in Engadget's digital magazine, Distro. E3 is always on the verge of devolving into a chaotic, inescapable din of competing mega-screens and marketing megaphones yelling over each other. Everyone is selling their own piece of the future. That's why, whether intentional or not, this year's show felt weirdly and stubbornly on message, as if a tacit agreement between every manufacturer and publisher ensured that nobody would step out of the here-and-now. If a gnawing absence of surprise and excitement pervaded the show, it's because everything we saw and discussed is expected to come out within the next twelve months.Ubisoft was willing to venture much further into the future, surprising attendees of its own press conference with a snippet of Watch Dogs, a game that seemed too good to be true amongst E3's barrage of solid sequels. Here was a new intellectual property, with a serious and topical premise, and graphics too sophisticated to be running on a console from 2005. It's okay to talk about the next generation, apparently, as long as you don't explicitly call it that.
Confusion of war in Medal of Honor: Warfighter's multiplayer
War can be a confusing beast to tame. My time with Medal of Honor: Warfighter during E3 2012 featured as much bombastic action as expected from a war-based shooter, but it also featured another bit of confusion. I was confused as to why I would only get to play one match, but had to watch a 15 minute presentation explaining each class first. And the variety between each class – different damage models and weapon loadouts, and different bonus killstreaks for each – meant for a sharp learning curve once we finally did get into a match. It wasn't the ideal situation, a complex demo on a very tight timetable.%Gallery-157253%
New End of Nations Warfront episode looks back at E3, forward to release
If you missed E3 last week, then you also missed Trion's spectacular End of Nations booth on the show floor. Fortunately the firm has released a new episode of its Warfront series. The clip runs for about five minutes, which is plenty of time to take in the E3 sights, sounds, and a few brief interviews with Petroglyph devs who are hard at work on End of Nations. You should also check out Massively's EoN impressions if you haven't already, and stay tuned for further updates from Trion's foray into the MMORTS space.
The Firing Line: Defiance, Arctic Combat, and other E3 leftovers
Ah, home. A full-screen monitor, a fridge stocked with Diet Sunkist, plenty of columns to be written, and my own vehicle! Public transportation doesn't agree with me, folks, as I learned last week at E3 in Los Angeles. I also learned a lot about PlanetSide 2, a little about DUST 514, and tidbits about Defiance and something called Arctic Combat. For this week's Firing Line, I figured I should pay a little lip service to those last two. And we'll also recap some of this week's crucial online shooter news. To the cut!
Warren Spector: 'Ultraviolence' in games going too far
Epic Mickey producer Warren Spector had only a limited view of E3 from within meeting rooms, but he still saw plenty of gruesome violence. "The ultraviolence has to stop," Spector told GI.biz. "We have to stop loving it. I just don't believe in the effects argument at all, but I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it's in bad taste. Ultimately I think it will cause us trouble."Spector said he left Eidos in 2004 because of the over-the-top violence he saw overwhelming that company's lineup. "We've gone too far," he said. "The slow-motion blood spurts, the impalement by deadly assassins, the knives, shoulders, elbows to the throat. You know, Deus Ex had its moments of violence, but they were designed - whether they succeeded or not I can't say - but they were designed to make you uncomfortable, and I don't see that happening now." To call Spector's newer efforts "Mickey Mouse games" would be taken as a compliment in multiple ways, we expect.The other troubling trend Spector saw is an increased emphasis on non-game apps at E3, including services like Netflix. "When the games are the least interesting part, there's a problem."
The MMO Report: Back in E3 style edition
The MMO Report has been on hiatus since April, and we've all felt quite alone without it. But Casey Schreiner's gotten a new haircut, a new suit, and presumably a new shoeshine to go along with a very special new episode of the show. No, it's not an episode about teenage drug use; it's an episode packed with all of the post-E3 2012 goodness that a fan of MMOs could possibly want in a 14-minute broadcast. Unfortunately, Casey himself couldn't be at E3, but that didn't mean that he couldn't round up plenty of video interviews. That means some video coverage for The Elder Scrolls Online, PlanetSide 2, DUST 514, Age of Wushu, and the rest. Could you ask for anything more? Perhaps to have the video embedded just past the cut? You're in luck on that count, and you should tune in on future weeks for another installment of the MMO Report from G4TV and Massively.
Japan's fastest-growing game publisher isn't who you'd think
Sony's PlayStation Vita may still be brand new, and Nintendo's Wii U has yet to even hit store shelves, but Japanese developer/publisher/social platform GREE doesn't need a new console. Or any console, for that matter. Its platform is virtual, and its growth strategy is extremely aggressive. "We're hiring more than 30 people a month," GREE's US CEO (and international CFO) Naoki Aoyagi told us in an E3 2012 interview.Those "more than 30 people a month" are filling not only GREE's 1,000-person-plus Japanese offices, but also its "almost 400 people" San Francisco-based office. "And we already also have some people in China (around 50 people). And 50 people in South Korea," Aoyagi said. That kind of growth is rare, especially during an international economic downturn. And it comes at a time when both Nintendo and Sony are seeing year-over-year revenue declines – even while new hardware from both manufacturers heads to market."Nintendo, they ship 200 or 300 million [units] for each platform. But I think it's gonna be more than double or triple in terms of the market size," Aoyagi told us. He spoke to the difference between GREE's focus on "smartphones, tablets, probably in the future Android TV or Apple TV" versus that of Nintendo and Sony. "On smartphones we can have access to South America, or East Asia, or the African market, or the Russian market. So it's gonna be much bigger than the consoles."
Orgarhythm combines rhythm and strategy into one weird game
Pikmin 3 might have been the best-known crowd-control strategy game at E3, but it wasn't the most memorable. That distinction goes to Orgarhythm, a Vita game demonstrated to me during a meeting with publisher XSEED.Orgarhythm mashes up two of the least mashuppable genres imaginable: rhythm game and strategy. Players control a giant, strutting god who follows a predetermined path through each level. The god has the ability to direct elemental troops, representing earth, water, and fire, to fight enemy troops who are also elemental, being sure to attack with the element that those enemies are weak against. Each element has multiple attack options, including melee, ranged, and even a catapult attack to affect enemies on a higher plane.
Ranking Japanese RPG publishers after E3 2012
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. As I was going through my E3 schedule, I realized something remarkable. I found that I was actually more excited to be meeting with XSEED than with Square Enix. A far cry from 2009, to be sure, when I practically sprinted onto the show floor to play some Final Fantasy XIII.Now that E3 2012 is over, for my column, I decided it would be an interesting idea to rank the current Japanese RPG developers based on the software lineup they showcased at the event.
The testimony of Damon Baird in Gears of War: Judgment
Memory is a fickle thing. You may think one thing, but the reality of the situation in question could be entirely different. Was that thing there? What even was that thing?In Gears of War Judgment, Lt. Damon Baird is on trial for disobeying COG orders – being a military outfit, they're kind of big on following orders – and must recall the events that lead up to the disobedience in question. His recounting of the events while on trial is the entire campaign, but this being a military trial, certain things are classified. It's an idea that will play out in the campaign: the first time through, certain elements from the game environment will be missing; a second playthrough of the "Declassified" campaign will change events and those in-game elements.%Gallery-157621%
Bullet Run is free-to-play, and worth the price
How much do you want from free-to-play games?It's tough to talk about free-to-play games critically as a writer, because they upend the traditional rules about what video games are "worth," for lack of a better term. A traditional console game, at $60, is a fairly serious investment these days, and so there's definitely a call for insight and dialogue about how effective or interesting a certain game is on sites like these.Free-to-play games, however, are by definition free to start playing. There's no barrier to entry on a price front, so lots of other factors jump into it, from social pressure to free time available to just personal taste or quirks. In the end, it's very hard to determine just how good a game like, say, Bullet Run is, or whether it will be worth playing when it's available to the public later this year.
Wii U designed to allow free-to-play games
Nintendo president Satoru Iwata is notoriously less than jazzed about free-to-play games, but the Wii U's online architecture will be set up to support them, just in case someone else feels like doing that. "We have designed the system from a technical standpoint to allow developers to freely take advantage of things like free to play and micro transactions," Iwata said in an investor Q&A held during E3 and released today. The 3DS was recently updated to allow DLC as well; the architecture for Wii U microtransactions is likely the same.Don't take that as an indication of Nintendo's own interest in the model, however. "Currently, we are not actively looking at free to play for our first-party content and I don't think that's a direction that we should go in right now," Iwata said. "But that doesn't mean for the future that there may not come a time where we have specific content that might be suited to that model."
Lost Planet 3 and the dichotomy of man and machine
There's an interesting clash of play styles I discovered during my preview session of Lost Planet 3. When within his rig – a giant biped mech armed with a huge drill and claw – protagonist Jim is nearly invincible, try as you might to get to the soft, fleshy core of this hulking mechanical giant.Yet Lost Planet 3 won't let you get away with cruising through the campaign from within the safety of Jim's rig – often he'll be forced to get out, navigating the cold tundras of E.D.N. III alone. It's at these times when I felt weak and without a safety net during my E3 demo. It's an interesting dichotomy not seen in many other games out there right now.The dangers of a blisteringly cold ice planet are obvious, and the segments where Jim is on foot are incredibly hazardous. Exploring a web of caves, I stumbled upon an akrid nest. Think: the next scene in Aliens. There were eggs everywhere, hatching and releasing akrid spawn. My assault rifle quickly became ineffective at crowd control. Good thing I found that shotgun, which had the just the right amount of oomph.It wasn't long before I found momma akrid, a large crab-like thing with pincers. It was a boss with an identity crisis, continually charging me like some bull who spotted a man in a puffy red parka. Shoot, roll to the side, and shoot some more.I felt vulnerable and completely outmatched – the perfect combination of terror and panic only well-crafted scenarios can produce. I didn't have massive wells of ammo to draw from. I had to be nimble and crafty. I had to be smart about when I shot and where. And because of this, the reward of finally bringing this thing down was ever so sweet. Taking on such a thing in my mech would've been a decidedly different gameplay experience, one I feel would've lost all of the characteristics I enjoyed in the tense encounter.These contrasts of feeling incredibly powerful and invincible within the rig, and feeling alone and desperate and vulnerable on foot, instilled a variety in Lost Planet 3 I haven't seen in many other games. If Spark Unlimited sustains that trend throughout the entirety of Lost Planet 3, I think they'll produce a fine game – and, dare I say, perhaps the best entry in the series yet.%Gallery-156930%
IndieCade at E3: Sizing up Scale
I also ran around the IndieCade tour at E3, and while our own Jess Conditt took a lot of creepy pleasure in the grim philosophical horror title A Mother's Inferno, my tastes ran more simple and colorful: The best game I saw in that section of E3 this year was called Scale.Scale, developed by Steve Swink (who teaches interactive design in Phoenix, but might be better known as Kyle Pulver's roommate?) is similar to Portal, which is a quality ascribed to a lot of great indie games these days. That's not surprising, given that Portal was also an indie student project, before it got processed through Valve's chaotic engine of creativity. Scale is similar to Portal in that it too has a gun that doesn't kill, but is instead used to manipulate a colorfully-rendered 3D world.Portal, it could be said, played around with the functions of space, creating portals to bypass and bend it. Scale, on the other hand, is all about that stuff in between space. Namely: mass.
3DS digital releases to include Epic Mickey, Scribblenauts Unlimited, Kingdom Hearts [update: Nintendo says only first-party games]
We knew that Nintendo planned to release the "majority" of its retail 3DS games digitally on eShop going forward, but a note in an E3 investor presentation from NOA president Reggie Fils-Aime reveals plans to release third-party games digitally as well."We've got a massive list of AAA content on the way from all of the biggest names in gaming," Fils-Aime said, "that are all proven franchises, all exclusive to our platform, and all coming to stores both in physical and digital formats in the second half of 2012." Accompanying this statement is a slide featuring confirmed eShop/retail releases New Super Mario Bros. 2, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, and Paper Mario: Sticker Star, along with third-party games Kingdom Hearts 3D, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate, Scribblenauts Unlimited, and Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion.Unless this slide isn't meant to lay out the "massive list of AAA content," we can expect to see all of these games on the eShop alongside their retail releases.Update: Nintendo added text to the explanation of the slide, to say "refers to first-party titles only" in regards to the dual digital/retail releases. It was just a super misleading slide, then.
Shigeru Miyamoto on how the Wii U could change games
The Wii U is designed to enable new gaming experiences, through the combination of motion controls and a small, personal screen. At E3, Nintendo showed games that rely on "asymmetric gaming," or giving different players different experiences; it showed games that use the Wii U's new controller as a touchscreen interface for a game on the TV; and it showed games being played on the WiiPad for situations when the TV is in use.I wondered which of these would become the central message of the Wii U, the feature that would become emblematic of the system. For Shigeru Miyamoto, Senior Managing Director and General Manager, Entertainment Analysis & Development Division, it's none of those. "For me, personally, what's most important is the idea that when the family goes into the living room, that the first screen they'll interact with will be the Wii U screen," Miyamoto told me in an interview directly following Nintendo's E3 2012 press conference. "Whether they're doing that for social elements, or for watching television, or for games, that to me is the most important element of this new Wii hardware."
Demons' Score is Elite Disco Demon Fighting Agents
Hidden in Square Enix's booth, among the dapper murderers and fluffy dimensions, was an iOS rhythm game about a flying, sword-wielding woman and her animate teddy bear who fight demons together in gothic-looking tunnels. Powered by Unreal Engine 3. Sure, why not?Demons' Score isn't just inspired by Elite Beat Agents and Ouendan.; it marks a return to touchscreen music gaming for iNiS, who created both of those (along with the brilliant Gitaroo-Man), which makes it a pretty cool rhythm game by default. You tap icons in response to an indicator – when a clock-like hand hits the top of the icon, you tap, and you receive a score based on your timing. You'll also have icons that require swipes, multiple timed taps, lines that you drag at a certain speed, and icons that you tap as many times as you can before they disappear.Taking advantage of multitouch hardware, Demons' Score also features multiple simultaneous icons for you to tap at once. Oh, by the way, all these icons appear in front of enemy demons that you kill upon successful contact.Along the way, as you fight through disco-musicked demon gauntlets, the boss is constantly bothering you with funky, funky taunts. Why is all the music and dialogue disco-themed? I have no idea!%Gallery-157238%
Jason Rubin and Danny Bilson: a tale of two THQs
During Danny Bilson's tenure at Saints Row publisher THQ, the company went from license-dependent (think Nickelodeon) to "Core-focused" (think ... uh, Saints Row). And eventually, the publisher's entire direction turned, from a split between casual/family-focused titles and those of its "Core" division, to one solely focused on that "Core." THQ today is essentially just the "Core" division.When Bilson was fired from THQ and Jason Rubin was appointed president just over a week ago, the publisher's messaging didn't change. "Rubin's appointment comes as THQ realigns its focus from a maker of licensed games for broad audiences to a developer of AAA 'Core' games for multiple platforms," Rubin's appointment PR reads.But Bilson arguably lead THQ's charge into "AAA 'Core' games," pushing for games like Metro 2033, Darksiders, and Saints Row: The Third, and brokering deals with Guillermo del Toro for a three-game survival horror series called "Insane," with Turtle Rock for an unnamed FPS, and Ninja Gaiden creator Tomonobu Itagaki for a (since dropped) project called "Devil's Third." Why he was fired remains unknown. "I don't think it's a question for me," THQ president Jason Rubin told us during an E3 2012 interview.
XBLA's Happy Wars attempts to bridge East and West with adorable melees
I saw a lot of games at E3 about war, but none were anywhere near as adorable as ToyLogic's multiplayer XBLA game, Happy Wars. It's an online multiplayer (15 versus 15) action game about capturing territory and defeating everyone in sight, but with a distinctly rounded, cutesy look that makes it stand apart from its peers. Finding myself put off by all the gore and elephant monster brains that featured in this year's games, I welcome a more family-friendly take on fighting.You control one of three classes to storm the enemy's part of a map. I was a warrior, who could use sword attacks and a variety of special attacks, like rock throws and spin moves, that rely on a refilling meter. You capture territory by destroying enemy statues and working together to rebuild new ones – which become spawn points for your team. The match ends when, using a giant battering ram weapon, you break into the enemy fortress. Before that, there's a lot of rushing into crowds and mashing on buttons to attempt to survive the pandemonium.The combination of cute characters and chaotic fighting seemed incongruous, until Toylogic CEO Yoichi Take told me his influences: "We played the Battlefield series and Castle Crashers." Take believes that Japanese gamers will find a cute war game more palatable than other realistic, brutal and bloody war games.Why, then, is it on Xbox – the least popular console in Japan – if it's hoping to capture a Japanese audience? "I would like to play Happy Wars with people worldwide," Take said, and the Xbox is more popular worldwide. "Happy Wars is a multiplayer game, and Xbox multiplayer is most played."%Gallery-158054%
Status Report: the PlayStation Vita, three months in
"Three months, forty titles in. I think it's a fantastic machine. Of course we'd like to sell more of them, and we have key plans to do that," Sony's VP of Product Development and Worldwide Studios, Scott Rohde, told us in an interview during E3 2012. We asked Rohde for a status update on the PlayStation Vita, which launched in North America in late February. Despite less than stellar sales of the handheld and a light upcoming game lineup, Rohde's positivity on the Vita is unshaken."We're building a lot of additional titles internally. A lot of good third-party support, you saw that announced at our press conference. So, we think that it's certainly on the rise. Still doing well. Would we like it to do better? Of course. And we're doing everything we can in terms of providing great new content – sixty titles next year – to insure that that will happen," he said.Despite Rohde's claims, Sony reps hardly mentioned the Vita during the company's E3 2012 press conference. Across an hour and a half, the three-month-old console only warranted three mentions, and just one for a first-party Vita game (PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale). As host, SCEA president and CEO Jack Tretton promised 60 new games on Vita in 2012, but didn't show a single one. Outside of PS All-Stars, the only two Vita games shown were third-party juggernauts Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified and Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation. Both of those are scheduled to launch this year."You know that Sly will also have a PlayStation Vita presence. Some things that we're not announcing yet. You saw LittleBigPlanet Vita ... if I can sit here and say you've got PlayStation All-Stars, you've got Sly, you've got Assassin's, you've got Call of Duty, and you've got LittleBigPlanet – that's a pretty nice set to build a foundation on," Rohde added. "And there are a lot of other bigger and smaller things that we just haven't announced yet."Of the system itself, Rohde said he "wouldn't change anything" about it. As for the launch, however, he said, "If I could go back in time, maybe I would've spread out some of the software releases a little bit." 25 games of varying quality launched alongside the PlayStation Vita this past February, with 10 more in the console's "launch window" (that window is apparently still open, as Silent Hill: Book of Memories has yet to come out).That latest game from Sony's internal studios for Vita is the critically acclaimed Gravity Rush. PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale is planned for a "holiday" launch on PlayStation 3 and Vita.
