Nuclear Monster

  • [liveblog]

  • [liveblog]

  • The Playstation press conference starts now:

    • Some dude with a shitty beard is yakking it up about how awesome gaming and Playstation are.
    • The Last Guardian, the next game from the developers of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus is still on. They’re playing a trailer now. It comes out in 2016.
    • Guerrilla Games the developers of the most creatively named game since Bonestorm, Killzone, are making something new. It has some kind of crossover between tree creatures and robot dinosaurs, looks a bit Turok-y and Heavenly Sword-y. There’s a stealth system similar to the one in Assassin’s Creed where you can crawl through bushes to keep awareness down. The protagonist lady has a laser bow that shoots rocket arrows. Also, a gun that binds the giant robot dinosaurs to the ground.  It’s called Horizon: Zero Dawn.
    • From IO Interactive, a new Hitman, seemingly just called Hitman with no colon or subtitle. No gameplay footage, just a new trailer. Playstation beta is exclusive for pre-orderers. Don’t pre-order games.
    • Street Fighter V. Exclusive to Playstation and Windows. Beta starts July.
    • Hello Games is back with more No Man’s Sky. Which predictably still looks amazing. The unpredicted is that they started off with space combat which hasn’t been shown before. I can picture the mythical publisher boss sitting in front of his desk, smashing down papers and shouting IF THIS DEMO DOESN’T START WITH GUNS YOUR GAME IS CANCELLED!  After the space combat, we go to a random planet. “Every planet in every solar system is fully destructible.” This demo is amazing. There are NPC guardians who protect the planets from being destroyed. Release date will be announced soon, but not today. Ends with a Carl Sagan quote.
    • Media Molecule is here to tell us about our dreams. You can sculpt in 3D with your regular Dualshock 4 controller and animate short films as well. It’s just called Dreams.
    • Firewatch from Campo Santo. Some kind of timed exclusive for Playstation. Still looks great. No release date.
    • Destiny: The Taken King. Another expansion for Destiny. If we don’t see Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 before the end of this press conference I will be surprised.
    • More Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Exclusive missions on Playstation 4.
    • Final Fantasy has gone super-chibi in World of Final Fantasy. Timed exclusive for PS4 and Vita. 2016. No real information as to what it is.
    • Final Fantasy 7 remake trailer. Timed exclusive for Playstation 4. Not even a year for a release.
    • A montage trailer from Devolver Digital for a bunch of games, Ronin, Eitr, Mother Russia Bleeds, Crossing Souls.
    • Shenmue III is going to be crowd funded. It’s already on Kickstarter. 2 Million goal for the project. It’s very strange since this isn’t from Sega, instead it’s Shenmue’s creator, Yu Suzuki with a company called Ys Net. $29 for a digital copy for PS4 or Windows. Estimated release is in December of 2017.
    • We’re on to some Batman-related thing. Oh it’s just Batman: Arkham Knight with some very strange exclusive Scarecrow missions for Playstation 4. 
    • Guerrilla Games Cambridge is working on a VR game called Rigs that will work with Sony’s Morpheus VR Headset. They said IP. Stop saying IP. There were a few other games in a montage.
    • Sony’s TV subscription package, Vue, is expanding to more places and will go a-la-carte. I don’t care.
    • Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. Treyarch’s Mark Lamia is on stage to tell us about it. He looks and sounds like a car salesman who got hired to tell us about Call of Duty. Four player campaign co-op depicted in the trailer. It looks like you’ll have Bees instead of or in addition to attack dogs. Next up we’ve got some multiplayer. You can shoot people online. It comes out November 6th, 2015. Map packs come out first for Playstation this time instead of the Xbox. Pre-orderers get a beta. i made a mistake last time by getting it on Windows which was a horrible experience. Treyarch does typically do better on Windows than the other Call of Duty developers.
    • Shenmue 3 is now at $294,035 of its $2,000,000 goal. Kickstarter is going to get at least $100,000 for hosting a website if this project is fully funded.
    • Disney Infinity 3.0 Star Wars Rise Against the Empire Playset. One month exclusive on Playstation 4. The voice actor for Darth Vader sounds terrible. The Boba Fett toy is also exclusive.
    • More Star Wars: Battlefront. Nothing exclusive.
    • Awkward pause between the room going dark and the start of the Uncharted trailer. I need to go back and finish Uncharted 3. More techincal difficulties.They restarted and things are working now. The graphics look so good, but the gameplay looks like exactly what you would expect from a new Uncharted game.

    That’s it for today.

  • Rayman’s Raving Press Conference starts now:

    • South Park: The Stick of Truth is getting a sequel with superheroes instead of medieval stuff. It’s called South Park: The Fractured, but Whole. Get it?
    • Lots of dumb butt-hole jokes with Matt Stone and Trey Parker on-stage. Apparently it’ll be using the same formula as the first Stick of Truth game, so expect more RPG in the same engine.
    • So many dumb jokes about other things including “tea-bagging.”
    • Reddit jokes.
    • Trailer for something called For Honor. Medieval dudes fighting. Vikings too? There’s a dude with a way too well manicured beard on stage with a cane. Two teams of four are now playing a demo. Looks like it is a cross between Chivalry and Mount & Blade.
    • The Crew is getting motorcycles and monster trucks in The Crew: Wild Run. November 15th.
    • A horse is galloping and shooting fire out of it’s nostrils with a weird cat thing that has a ray gun. It’s a new Trials game.
    • More Tom Clancy’s: The Division. Third-person multiplayer shooting. Sphero’s. A wilhelm scream as an NPC dies. Your team can betray other teams that you come across in the multiplayer. Or you can betray your whole team and take their loot for yourself. Betas for console and Windows early next year. The Division comes out March 8th, 2016.
    • Anno 2205, November 3rd. It’s Ubisoft’s city building game. They mention a beta later this year so I’m not sure if that is 2015’s November or 2016. The PC versions of these games have been pretty terrible in terms of DRM that only has a few activations before you can’t play it again.
    • They’re trying to make meme jokes with some dude in the audience who is wearing the most embarrassing cosplay and is not prepared for this at all.
    • Just Dance 2016 on all motion platforms. Xbox One, Playstation 4, Wii-U. There’s Jason Derulo singing to a completely unresponsive crowd. Even the host of the show won’t get up and dance with the singer when he attempts to pull her on stage. After the song Derulo even mentions how awkward it was. There’s a subscription streaming service called Just Dance Unlimited for Just Dance 2016.
    • Of course what follows up dancing and singing better than terrorism in Rainbow Six: Seige. Angela Bassett was in the trailer, now she’s on stage. Bassett is your boss in the game. Terrorist Hunt is in this, if it’s anything like Vegas’ Terrorist Hunt mode I will be psyched. There’s an on-stage demo, it looks awesome. You can break through walls with battering rams. Beta starts September 24th, 2015.
    • Trackmania: Turbo is up. Francois and Francois are here to show us some single player. It looks amazing. There’s a procedurally generated track mode. Francois flubs it the first time on the new track and hits a sign on a jump, flipping his car over.
    • Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Horse-drawn carriages and mutton chops mean it’s victorian England business. Not one assassination yet. Guns and wrist-blades are seen at the end. There’s some kind of in-person demo kiosks available in various locations around the world but the only United States location is in Los Angeles.
    • We couldn’t go through another press conference without mentioning “IP” and you bet it’s “new IP.”
    • The new IP is Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands. It’s some kind of open-world third-person shooter. Tom Clancy’s name is getting a real workout for so much that he isn’t involved with. I guess that counts as new IP since the gameplay is kind of new,

    That’s it.

  • Here’s the news from the EA E3 press briefing:

    • The new Mass Effect has a name, it’s Mass Effect: Andromeda. “Discover a new galaxy.”
    • Need for Speed. No subtitle. Customization, what a surprise. “A new narrative.” with five ways to play. November 3rd. Looks good. I’ve been playing a bunch of Wreckfest lately and getting back into arcade racing.
    • Star Wars: The Old Republic has a new expansion, Knights of the Fallen Empire. October 27th. Free to paid subscribers, free 2 play players are left out I guess?
    • “…next two original IPs…” STOP SAYING “IP”
    • Unravel. A cat made out of yarn called Yarny. Puzzle-platformer. The yarn that Yarny is made out of unravels while you move. It’s nice to have a completely different tone to this than the extreme bro-ocity of Need For Speed.
    • Of course we have to revisit Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2. A zombie walks out on stage in a super hero outfit. The Zombie is ushered offstage while a joke, “You can’t take Zombies anywhere.” is delivered flatly and received by the audience with no reaction. Excuse me while I take a 5 minute power nap. Zombie co-op mode called Graveyard Ops. Local split-screen. A timer on-screen reminds us that it is only 35 minutes to Star Wars: Battlefront. Garden Warfare 2 launches spring 2016. Free content updates are promised.
    • NHL 16. Lots of Tim Hortons advertisements on the boards.
    • PGA Tour.
    • EA Sports Ultimate Team. It’s the same dumb card game thing.
    • NBA Live 16. “Rooted in self-expression.” Hoop God is here to show us how to do stuff. Face scanning. Face scanning is the stuff Hoop God is here to show us how to do. September 29th. Phone app for the face scanning. Apparently it’s spelled THAHoopGawd. “Up your swag.” No, up your swag. Dude only has one tweet.
    • Here’s a little secret between you and me, I didn’t even know that the Golden State Warriors were a professional team and I’ve been in Oakland since 2011. I thought they were a college team.
    • Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes collectible card game for phones.
    • Minions Paradise. I’ve never see any of the Despicable Me movies. This awful game has two currency systems on screen already.
    • Pelé is on screen talking over a montage of football video. Now he’s on stage. The crowd rose to all take cell-phone photos. Nobody think about the current FIFA scandal. Nothing is wrong in the world of football. Pelé is here to make you feel better.
    • FIFA 16. “Tons of innovations in our game.”  We’re once again reminded that it there are only 15 minutes until Star Wars: Battlefront. “Women’s teams are in the game.” Okay, that’s legitimately innovative.
    • “What would life be like if we willingly gave up our privacy?” I don’t know, is Eric Schmidt up next to tell us about how we’ve been doing that for years? Oh, never mind. It’s Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst. “She doesn’t need any guns.” Correct, Faith doesn’t. Please don’t ruin Catalyst with them. In-engine footage. February 23rd, 2016. Awesome. The game looks like they’ve been inspired by the lens-flares of Mass Effect.
    • Madden 16. Some dude from ESPN 2. I just hear the trombone sound of the parents from Peanuts speaking. Draft Champions is helpfully on-screen because I had forgotten what they were talking about. Fantasy football. That’s what they were talking about. I’m checking on my Fallout: Shelter on the iPhone.
    • Fuck the timer, the Battlefront trailer is already on YouTube:
    • Peter Moore is speaking about Star Wars: Battlefront but not showing the trailer.
    • They’re finally playing some Star Wars music in the background and trying to convince us how much they care about Star Wars.
    • Multiplayer and AI battles for singleplayer.
    • They’re still not showing game footage on stage. They just keep talking.
    • They’re finally playing the exact same trailer that is on their YouTube channel. The view switches between first and third-person. The schwartz is strong with this one.
    • No Battlefield 5 mentioned during this one. Did they not want to confuse people or what?

    That’s it.