Enjoy our wrap up and see you next year!
Favorites:
EC: Fable III. Rock Band 3. Nintendo 3DS. Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. So I guess it was a spectacularly girly year for me at E3. I played just about everything I could get my hands on, and of those playable experiences, I took the aforementioned four away as my favorites of the convention.
Muse: Fable III, Rock Band 3, Nintendo 3DS, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Green Day Rock Band (yes I know it's out already), Your Shape for the Kinect
Hottie female hero
Fable III
EC: [This section will be cross-posted over at GameRant.com, with more footage and in-depth review of gameplay!] Fable III takes the solid interaction ideas and progression of character abilities established in Fables II and makes them organic and tactile. No longer is there a three foot buffer, a magic force field between your hero and the world. Everything from fighting to hugging to playing with your dog has become an exercise in direct contact. Like a combination of The Sims and Red Dead Redemption, suddenly your fabled hero can directly manipulate the world as they come into contact with it, instead of being a kind of warping force that passes by and generates a reaction. This major step forward in gameplay is going to be enhanced by the fact that your hero is fully voiced, something a certain Star Wars game is also- rightfully- getting much press for. The models have been reworked so your hero isn't quite as hulking and genderless. The world is as bright, vibrant and carefully animated as Fable II, but looks even more lush. Your quest and end goal, also, are better defined. At the end of Fable II, you must make a personal choice, but the end result is ultimately that you can continue gallivanting about, hero-ing or villain-ing as is your want, extorting people for money by jacking up real estate prices or killing waves of balverines til your blue in the face. The goal for Fable III is more personal, and the way you get there will have as much effect on the outcome as your arriving. The voice talent is also RIDICULOUS. I am so excited.
Muse: I too loved Fable 3 and probably terrified the lovely British Lionhead producers who had to deal with 45 minutes of non-stop questions from myself & Eruditechick. BUT THERE WERE THINGS I HAD TO KNOW, OKAY?!?!?! I wrote about everything we learned here, but wish I had gone back on Day 3 to chat some more. In Fable 2, you could marry anyone who wanted to marry you, regardless of gender, and subsequently sex them as often as you wanted (...well...as long as said spouse is in the mood, of course.), but the sweet sweet love makin in Fable 2 happened entirely through sound - the screen always went black when anything dirty took place. I wanted to ask and make sure that nothing has changed in terms of same sex love & marriage. I saw plenty of the demo's hot female hero kissing decidedly less hot men, but will she get to kiss women as well? Does the kiss/touch feature play a role in bedroom seduction or does the screen still go completely blank? Am I total weirdo for wondering these things?!?! Would it have been totally awkward for me to ask the producers a slew of avatar-sex questions?!!? Probably. But don't act like you aren't curious also. Punk.
Awesome new drum set
Rockband 3
EC: Pro Gameplay. In the words of Brodie Bruce, holy shit. Nevermind that the game looks beautiful, nevermind that all of your Rockband content dating back to the first game and including all DLCs, expansions and band-specific releases are exportable into Rockband 3, leaving you with a library of almost 2,000 songs, nevermind that the intricacies of gameplay- harmonies, difficulty levels- have been made exponentially more interesting- one of the controllers if a freaking Fender guitar.
Let me say that again. One of the controllers you can buy for the game is a Fender guitar, that plugs into an amp, and is a guitar. It's a guitar. It's an electric freaking guitar. And not just an electric freaking guitar. It's a goddamn Fender, and it's beautiful. This freaking electric Fender guitar also happens to be a game controller. In Pro gameplay, you are presented essentially with scrolling tablature. It teaches you how to hold chords, how to pick lines. It shows you what string to strum and what fret to hold. You play actual guitar. If you unplugged it from your console and plugged it into your amp and followed along on the screen, you would still be playing the song. Because IT'S A REAL GUITAR, ARE YOU PICKING UP WHAT I'M PUTTING DOWN? JFC, WHAT? WHAT? ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT? WHAT IS THIS, THE FUTURE?! WHAT?!
So I liked that.
Muse: Again, I'm right there with Eruditechick. HOLY FUCKING SHIT YOU GUYS. WE HAVE TO USE CAPITAL LETTERS FOR A REASON. THAT REASON BEING THAT PRO GAMEPLAY IS SO EFFING COOL YOU DONT EVEN KNOW TIL YOU SEE IT WHAT THE FUCK EFF.
We have similar ways of expressing our excitement, Eruditechick and I.
For the specifics we discovered regarding Rock Band 3 - head here and prepare for your head to explode.
In terms of gameplay, I only tried out the keyboard and the drums, but I can tell you this much - with the addition of the symbols to the drum kit, drumming just got A WHOLE LOT MORE FUN. When you see a red, yellow or orange, I believe, you have the option of hitting its cooresponding symbol instead of the drum. This allows for a bit more flexibility & interaction and also makes you feel really cool. The keyboard was incredibly difficult for me at first, but by the end of the song, I had the hang of it. I'm looking forward to mastering the technique. I felt like I was in Josie and the Pussycats playing a keyboard up there and I LIKED IT.
Only PART of the line for Nintendo 3DS
Nintendo 3DS:
EC: Oh, that's right, it IS the future. It MUST be the future, because I'm holding what's one step away from a freaking holographic projection in my hands and using it to play with a puppy. While waiting in line at the Nintendo booth for my turn with the gadget that had been having its virtues be so vocally extolled since the press conference the day prior, I had a lot of time to think about what glasses-less 3D meant to me. In my head, I could see it. I could see a shiny square with a screen that had 3D images on it. I know what 3D looks like, this wasn't difficult. I had remarkable ease, during the waiting, conjuring a mental image of what the technology should look like. Should. Not necessarily would. Then they put it in my hands and it did. My mind was sufficiently blown. Other than the severe ghosting on even the gentlest of 3D settings for the Resident Evil non-interactive trailer, the technology was insanely effective. It's like peering into a diorama, and every once in a while something is thrust up out of it, into your face. Truly impressive, also, were the 3D camera capabilities which freaked me right the hell out and made me cackle in a rather unlady-like manner (quelle surprise!, cry those of you who know me and also happen to speak French), and the movie trailers. Tangled, in particular, the next 3D animated princess-centric fair from Disney looks almost painfully enjoyable, and even more so on the 3DS. Everything is probably going to be more enjoyable on the 3DS out of sheer principle.
Muse: Yes, we had to wait in line for about an hour and a fifteen minutes to get our hands on a 3DS, but it was worth every minute. It didn't hurt that Nintendo's booth was carpeted with white, plush happiness that was quite pleasant to sit on. I'd been dying to check out this new innovation, as, unlike Eruditechick, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it could POSSIBLY look like. The idea didn't make sense in the head and I could not conceive of an image. When I finally looked at the 3DS screen, I was overcome with a sense of awe. Yes, you have to hold it a certain distance away to acheive the full effect, but a small price to may for utter brilliance. The first game I tried out was a Samurai fighting game, and all I found myself being able to say were things like "HOW THE FUCK" "WHAT THE FUCK" "HOLY FUCK"...you get the idea. I also tried a driving game (looked amazing, but I don't like driving games), watched some 3D trailers (How to Train Your Dragon) and gameplay footage (Kingdom of Hearts), took a 3D picture (I'm obsessed with it), took a photo of myself, which automatically modeled a 3DS Sims 3 character after me (fucking cool), and possibly my favorite bit - PLAYED WITH A 3D PUPPY. I was sad to have to say goodbye. Cause it looked like an actual puppy was stuck inside and it made me sad. Upon exiting the 3DS arena, my cohorts and I looked at each other and screamed loudly "SO. WORTH. IT." Cause it was.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.
EC: I'm not saying it's okay to go around surreptitiously stabbing people in real life, or not-so-surreptitiously jumping off of rooftops and stabbing people as you fall upon them from great heights in real life, but I am saying that doing these things to people over XBox Live is going to make my life substantially more awesome. The environments are the same we loved so dearly in ACII, the character models are compelling and fun, and the system of who is killing whom and who is marked for death is satisfyingly complex, but presented in a straightforward manner. Do want.
Muse: I also loved this demo. Eight people got to play at once, two sessions in a row, one to learn the controls and one to actually go for it, doing your best to assassinate your target - one of the 7 people beside you. This mode was instantly more enjoyable than most Xbox Live games I've partaken in. Sure, I still got pwned by the dude who clearly plays a lot of Assassin's Creed or just stabs people a lot, but I also got one really badass aerial kill, for which I was awarded 400 points! The concept is this - Pick your assassin, pick your special ability. A photo of the person you must kill pops up in the upper right hand corner. There is a blue indicator that gets more full, the closer to get to your target. When you see your target, kill him (or her - YES, there is a playable female character!). Of course, it's never as easy as it sounds. You are not only a predetor, but prey yourself. As you are stalking your target, someone is stalking you, and more than once I found myself dead JUST as I was about to make a kill. Also, if you start running after your target, he is alerted and will in turn run away and find a place to hide. You also get points for successfully evading your predator once the chase is on. Special abilities include throwing knives, smoke bombs, changing your appearence, creating clones of yourself and more. I gotta say, it was also wonderful to revisit that universe, the controls, and the gameplay. I've missed you, Assassin's Creed, and it's only been about two months!
A whole lot more after the jump!
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