E3 2010

I'm definitely looking forward to Zelda Wii, as I would suspect most people on these boards are.

I'll post my (hopefully) excited response to the Zelda Wii revelations in this thread once they're made. 😊

Edit: Some pre-presentation Zelda rumors. http://www.zeldainformer.com/2010/06/breaking-news-latest-zelda-wii-rumors-confirmed.php

Aside from the fact that I had no idea E3 was coming, I'm looking forward to Golden Sun DS, Zelda Wii, and hopefully an actual release date on The Last Guardian. Maybe even Other M, if they manage to not screw it up. Either way, I'll be keeping track to see if there is anything incredibly interesting coming that I haven't heard of..

Also Icey, those "confirmed" rumors seem to be bogus. Just the general picture of what the rumors painted of Zelda seems so.. unlike a Zelda game.

Aww, I wanted to make one thread for each big game maker! I guess it makes more sense to have one thread though.

I'll do a recap of the MS one later today.

Nintendo's keynote is in 7 minutes. It's for a lot of marbles. This is the day that I decide if I want to end my 22-year relationship with them, and I doubt I'm the only one. In the past couple of years, I've downgraded my status from "rabid fanboy" to "fan" to "at least the first-party games are good". Here's my predictions for the keynote:

• Zelda. It's going to require Wii Motion Plus. If it has 1:1 swordplay I'm going to preemptively say at least one thumb down. They've done a lot to water down this series as of late, and if they want to make a casual series out of LoZ I'm through with them.
• 3DS. I have not preemptive opinions. Most of the negatives I hear people say were said about the DS, and it took off. Nintendo's done poor quality control on the library so even if the hardware's good, they might fall on their face.
• Vitality Sensor. I don't know WTF to expect. Neutral.
• Metroid: The Other M. I expect a trailer and I'm pretty excited about this game.
• About a dozen stupid casual games for the Wii/DSi. I'll be working on my tricky source control merges during this part.
• Wildcard: StarFox announcement. I hope I hope I hope.

Less than 5 minutes to go; I'm kind of nervous.

I'm glad to see that the style they're using in Zelda is amazing. I just hope the controls were because of some Steve Jobs-esque wireless glitch, and not indicitive of how the game actually plays.

The 3DS looks pretty cool. It's also nice to see that the competition from the iPhone has made them kick it up a notch with the hardware.

Zelda to be released in 2011... and I wouldn't be suprised if it was the holiday season (late) 2011... yep, nothing to look forward to on the Wii this year.

That was 50,000 shades of awesome.

Not sure how I feel about Zelda yet. I like the return to the cel-shaded visuals, but the controls sound strange. The 3DS looks cool, and I'll probably get one for the new Paper Mario alone... darn Nintendo! They know me too well. DKC Returns is a nice surprise, but the game they showed I'm most interested in is the new Kirby game. It looks really inventive and visually attractive to me.

1) As far as I am concerned, provided the changes in control (MotionPlus) are incorporated properly and don't detract from the experience and/or the amount of content put into the game, then Skyward Sword should be a pretty great game. As was to be expected, with a TBA 2011 release, then my hopes are even higher, with more time for tweaking, development and testing ahead. The "teaser trailer", however, did not build up the hype or interest as previous trailers and demos have in the past. I must reiterate that should not reflect upon the game itself.
2) GoldenEye on Wii. Excited. Sounds good to me.
3) 3DS is something I am interested in. I have not owned a Nintendo portable system since the Advance, but this has caught my attention.
4) Kinect bores me, thus far, and though it does have some interesting features/games, they seem to be trying to fall back on a wider audience, much like Nintendo did with the Wii. Not that that's a bad thing, but I wonder how hardcore they can go game-wise with Kinect, and if they can still draw in some of us older gamers.
5) A number of other titles I am interested in as well, including some obvious titles like Gears of War 3, CoD: Black Ops (not as much as some other games), MGS: Rising and Donkey Kong Country Returns.

EDIT: Another good reason why I am excited for 3DS - Ocarina of Time 3DS

What caught me most by surprise was the 3DS... I was absolutely sure that it'd be a horrible disaster, but from everything I've heard of it, it easily lives up to expectations.

I'm a little disappointed that a lot of the 3DS games seem like N64 remakes. I've had enough of Ocarina of Time. It's certainly not my favorite Zelda game. And you can only play Starfox 64 so many times, too.

Was that like the biggest bait-and-switch ever? Nintendo spends four years expanding their market with motion controls and "casual' titles, and by the time the other two have caught up they suddenly do a conference of nothing but like, twenty new awesome games? Seriously, Metal Gear Solid, Street Fighter IV, Kingdom Hearts on 3DS? Not to mention epic looking new DKC and Kirby.

I'm gonna hold off on my Microsoft opinions again; Nintendo left me with lots to say. This is a reconstruction of the Twitter posts I made as I watched the stream when I was supposed to be doing a really difficult source merge.

[list=1]
[*]It was really hard to find a video stream. REALLY hard. The liveblog I was following had no link, GameTrailers had no link and had search disabled, and e3.nintendo.com wasn't working at all. I finally got the GameTrailers stream working about 3-4 minutes into Miyamoto's demo. This is when I started posting comments to Twitter.
[*]The first thing I was greeted with is Miyamoto standing and flailing his arms around. 1:1 sword fighting is the hardest sell to me. I want to play Zelda for 2-3 hours at a time and even Twilight Princess's reduced motion controls made that painful. This is going to suck if I have to stand. It's going to suck worse for people who stand all day at work.
[*]Miyamoto failed to get 2 or 3 of the items to work well and had a lot of trouble. The man that designed the game can't use the motion controls properly. Supposedly there was some interference, but I find that odd since at the end tons of demo kiosks popped up in the same room. You know, the one with the interference?
[*]"Whoops, can't get the beetle working either. The motion controls are so realistic, I couldn't do it in real life either! ha ha" is how I interpret the beetle demo.
[*]The visual style looks like a good hybrid between WW and TP; I'd have prefered to have more WW in my Zelda but this looks fine to me.
[*]Verdict at this point: what a disappointing opener! Maybe I'll pick up the Zelda, but I'm not happy.
[*]Oh boy, Reggie-san. Maybe he's going to announce Miyamoto's retirement.
[*]Mario sports is exempt from my contempt; it's a series of games that I just don't like and there's not much they could do to get me interested.
[*]Wii Party looked like Mario Party without Mario, which is fine by me because Mario Party is fun. Note that only one person clapped.
[*]"Exclusive" Just Dance 2, just like that game you saw in the Kinect demo yesterday and the 3 or 4 other dance games that were announced, but it's *only on the Wii*. Meh. The Kinect version of this kind of game will be superior.
[*]I was totally taken off-guard by the Golden Sun announcement. Too bad 3D on the DS looks rather poor. Then again, the 2D sprites on the GBA were pretty buddy as well. I need to finish GS and GS 2.
[*]I saw the Goldeneye trailer leaked yesterday, but it was really poor quality. It's good to see they're including poorly shaded character models, bad aliasing, and low framerate just like the classic! Or maybe the Wii hardware isn't up to the task? Still excited, but online multiplayer *must* use splitscreen anyway 😉
[*]I had totally forgotten about Epic Mickey. They did a bad demo. I can't believe it took Warren Spector 10 minutes to explain "you can be good or evil and it affects the plot". Just because he made up a tagline for it doesn't mean it's new.
[*]I'm more excited about Epic Mickey than Zelda: Put Your Sword Up (and spin it around your head like a helicopter)
[*]Kirby's Epic Yarn knocked my socks off. Then made a level out of them. WANT.
[*]They did some talking about Dragon Quest IX; I'm not sure whether I want it or not. A trailer/demo would have been nice.
[*]SUPER METROID MUSIC IN METROID TRAILER. Eeeeeeeeeee!
[*]It's interesting how much of Samus's face they showed; is this game going to humanize her more?
[*]Oh yeah, Retro Studios is in Austin, I ought to go barge in their offices one day and demand some swag.
[*]Donkey Kong Country was a cool game, but for some reason I found the sprites and animation lifeless. I'm not as excited about DKCR as I should be.
[*]New hardware... are they going to reveal how the Vitality Sensor is going to blow my mind more than the Aggro Crag?
[*]Oh snap, how could I forget the 3DS? Let's have a look at it!
[*]Accelerometer, cameras, gyroscope, wifi. So far we're playing catchup with the iPhone.
[*]3D camera's a neat gimmick; get ready to see tons of cocks poking out at you!
[*]"Movie trailers" my foot. Prediction: Nintendo's working on Netflix for 3DS. No handheld device can stream 3D movies yet. It'll take Apple at least a year to catch up.
[*]Kid Icarus game. Eeeeeeeeeee!
[/list]
Somewhere in there I forgot to say something about Nintendogs + cats. I think the most appropriate thing to say is something like, "NEW NINTENDOGS. KEEPING YOU ENTERTAINED FOR 3 DAYS UNTIL YOU RUN OUT OF THINGS TO DO. SEE ALSO 8% OF THE WII'S LIBRARY."

FINAL VERDICT: It's finally a good year to be a Nintendo fan. Almost every major franchise has a new game slated. It's a shame StarFox was omitted.

Third party support for 3DS is already strong; since there's few game demos I can deduce that they probably got SDKs within the past few months. To have so many titles committed this early means the third parties are excited about it. If third parties are excited, there's something to it.

I really wish I could put eyes on the 3DS; I want to see the 3D and there's no way for them to convey it over the internet. My Wii will finally see some action this year.

The Zelda still hurts my feelings. I'm going to give it a try, but not out of loyalty. Nintendo is good at doing cutting-edge stuff, so Zelda: Emulate a Lightning Rod will be my test. If Nintendo can't make motion controls work in this game, motion control is going to be a failure no matter what. If Nintendon't, then no one else will.

AtmaWeapon wrote:FINAL VERDICT: It's finally a good year to be a Nintendo fan. Almost every major franchise has a new game slated. It's a shame StarFox was omitted.

Like you Atma, I am not keen on the new Zelda if it means I have to stand up to play it. The only Wii games I stand up to play right now is Wii Sports, and I hardly ever play that. As for Miyamoto and other having troubles contorlling the game on stage... they have plenty of time to work out the hiccups before it's released. They delayed Twilight Princess when they ported that to the Wii to work out the kinks, and this game has many more ambitious uses of the Wii-mote compared to that. (btw I've never played Twilight Princess on the Wii - I got it on the Gamecube)

My thoughts on on E3 so far...

Microsoft. Nothing unexpected really... Saw Gears of War 3. Metal Gear Rising we knew was going to be on 360, but its also on PS3 so that's nothing they can really brag about. Halo I don't care about. Call of Duty also on PS3. A whole ton of crap about Natal and other garbage I couldn't care less about. Bottom line MS had the worst press event. Barely anything worth seeing.

Nintendo. I had written off Nintendo after last year's E3 I believe. I just couldn't care anymore. This year their event was pretty jam packed with interesting things. Some we knew of like Metroid Other M. Others like Kid Icarus for 3DS, Donkey Kong Country Returns, Goldeneye, Zelda, Kirby, and more. The 3DS itself was interesting to hear about. I always thought the DS was rather under powered in the 3D graphics anyway. So it's good there is an improvement. The Zelda I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt to it. It could be fun. I do believe the issues in the live demo were related to radio signal issues which isn't unheard of, Apple had them. Overall, I really think Nintendo had a GREAT press event this year and shows they should have a good year coming up. I think the Kirby and DKC come out this year which is nice. And really the bottom line is that after this E3, I actually think I'll buy a new Wii. I bought the Wii the first year and sold it as I didn't care for what was available at the time. By now there is a good bunch of stuff, it may be more worth it. Plus it's a little cheaper.

Finally Sony. I wasn't sure what to expect. I'll say their event was OK. Definitely better than MS. I didn't care for the 3D bullshit. But the Move still seems like it could be interesting. Probably the most interesting titles exclusive to it for me were Infamous 2, and Twisted Metal looked like it could be bad ass. I liked Twisted Metal on PS1. Overall I rank them with a good performance, not above Nintendo but better than MS.

It was a more interesting E3 than I thought it would be. As I said, I'll likely buy a Wii. I have the 360 and PS3 already so then I'll be set.

Miyamoto was standing because he was doing a presentation. It's going to be just like twilight princess but more refined and you'll have more control over the sword than before. You can sit and play at the same time. The nunchuck has no idea how far away it is from the wiimote and it has no idea whether it is in front of you or not, you just shake the thing to pull out the shield and then at the most it controls the position of the shield with rotation of the chuck, but more likely the control stick. Also, none of the failures to control the game had to do with the ease of controlling the game, it was because of all of the IR lights on the press' cameras in the audience confusing the mote. 😃

I am bummed that it's not coming till 2011. Donkey Kong Country Returns should be a good placeholder though!

After vegetating in front of my laptop for literally 15 hours straight (minus an hour and a half to eat dinner), I've finally gathered my thoughts of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

I most certainly was hoping for realistic graphics, potentially a Monster Hunter Tri approach. When I saw the opening trailer to SS, however, I initially felt as if I had been punched in the throat. Then the stomach. Then the face and the liver. Miyamoto's troublesome demo didn't help, naturally, as Bill Trinen nervously joked about Steve Jobs and "wireless devices" (a joke that, I'm sure, 90% of everyone did not understand).

HOWEVER! After watching a half dozen videos and reading plenty of impressions, I am whole-heartedly excited for SS. I'll admit... the graphical style has grown on me like moss grows on the north side of a rock. I love it. The common phrase on the Internet is that SS looks like the baby of TWW and TP, which is very much true. Also, the controls of SS are not buggy and work very well. With a year (give or take) of development time remaining, the "rough edges" can be polished out. /me can't wait to take sword and shield... er, Wiimote and Nunchuk in hand.

ALSO! Y'all might be interested in some new (as of Tuesday night) story details of SS. Well, spoilers beware, click here.

I like how we're bold letter wording "facts" that are based on what reviewers have said. Unless you've put your hands on SS please stop reassuring me that the controls will be so perfect that Link will pop a boner when I do.

Miyamoto's job is to sell games to me. He has ruined my trust in him over the past two years, so I don't care if he claims it's normally better. A reviewer's job is to provide an evaluation of a game, but I've often disagreed with reviewers. There's also the slight chance of corruption, since access to exclusive content for their company relies on good relationships with the vendors. I don't trust people on forums because it's very unlikely they have played it and their opinions are rose-colored views of the observations.

I am a scientist and, with the exception of magic sky people, I base my opinions on facts I have observed. Here's what I've observed:

• Miyamoto's arm movements were wild and exaggerated. This won't fly on the couch if my wife is trying to read a book.
• The sword swings did correspond to Miyamoto's movements. This leads me to believe if I make smaller movements I will not get results that are as good.
• The demo kiosks require standing. This isn't non-standard. But unlike any other Wii game that's been advertised, they didn't show clips of a family enjoying Zelda on the couch. In fact, no clips of a person playing the game at all, which they usually do to show how "fun" the motion controls will be.
• I have seen no statement backed with a demo or from a source I trust that smaller, deliberate movements will work.
• Twilight Princess hurt my wrists. An hour of TP was roughly equivalent to a 3-4 hour session of a game that didn't use motion controls with respect to how much wrist fatigue it caused. Don't forget that some people use a mouse and keyboard all day long and are already susceptible to RSI.

I'm still on the fence about motion controls. Little bits of it here and there, like the shaking for the propeller hat in NSMBW, and FPS controls are about as much motion as is tolerable for me. I greatly favor the GameCube TP over the Wii version, so we'll have to see. I'd be content with just IR controls for the bow.

One thing I noticed about the demo and the various video grabs from the show floor is that while the sword movements map pretty well in terms of angle, direction, position, etc, they don't map well in time. The same thing happened in TP. If you make three quick movements with the remote, it will give you three slashes, but it will queue them up so that the animations can catch up. And while I'm ready to move on, Link will still be slashing at some long-dead enemy.

And speaking of motion controls, while Move looks okay and Kinetic looks interesting, I can't really see how Sony or MS are going to really make a lot of money with them. The vast majority of PS# and 360 owners don't seem to care, and neither do mom and pop. The advantage that the Wii had was that the motion controls were included with the purchase of the console, and were somewhat-integrated with normal controllers. I'm certainly not going to be plopping down the $80 for a new set of PS3 controllers and what, $150 for kinetic?

Regarding the new Zelda game, I have to say, although I know it was a huge embarrassment when Miyamoto couldn't play his own damn game, I haven't seen those issues crop up in any other videos I've seen of people playing it. Yeah, I know "interference" seems like a pretty damn lame excuse, but when you watch the Miyamoto video where the friggin' creator of Zelda can't seem to play the game, and you watch random people on the show floor seeming to have no problem with the controls, it leads me to believe there was something else beyond the game or hardware simply being buggy.

Penny Arcade does it again: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/16/ 😃

The biggest suprise for me was Donkey Kong Country Returns, as I loved the the original series. The new Zelda is just as exiting I expected, and if they get the controls right, it will probably be one of my favorite titles next year. I haven't decided if I like the cel-shaded graphics better than the TP.

Also, I heard rumors of a remake of OoT and Starfox 64 for 3DS. I want to here more about that.

I didn't watch the Microsoft press conference, but I already know what I'm looking forward to. Fable 3 and Gears of War 3.

Neither are rumors. They confirmed Star Fox and OoT are coming to 3DS. I agree with you about MS. We already knew what would be coming and all they had to blabber on about was crap.

PennyArcade's strip sums up E3 2010 very well. Nintendo is the big winner atleast of perception for now.

rock_nog wrote:Regarding the new Zelda game, I have to say, although I know it was a huge embarrassment when Miyamoto couldn't play his own damn game, I haven't seen those issues crop up in any other videos I've seen of people playing it. Yeah, I know "interference" seems like a pretty damn lame excuse, but when you watch the Miyamoto video where the friggin' creator of Zelda can't seem to play the game, and you watch random people on the show floor seeming to have no problem with the controls, it leads me to believe there was something else beyond the game or hardware simply being buggy.

My biggest fear has been put to rest. Skyward Sword is not first person. The art style looks interesting, but frankly, the graphics themselves aren't too great (Trees?), compared to Galaxy 2, for example. Maybe this means the game is huge, and they spent more time on dungeons, and environments? That would definitely be awesome. Either way, I have some faith in the game. It does look interesting.

3DS. Ocarina of time with upgraded graphics? Yes. Kingdom Hearts, MGS, and other big franchise titles on the 3DS? Hmm. Maybe Nintendo might reclaim its place at the top once again this decade. Let's face it, it's no lie that the mid nineties to late 00's where kinda... lackluster for the most part.

Maybe we fans get our reward for sitting through the last eight years with our thumbs up our ass rabidly eating up the... 12 franchise titles we got.

Maybe good things truly come to those who wait. Either way, I'm exited for the next 18 months in a way I haven't been in years, and in a way I didn't think I ever would be again.

I'm pretty certain most of the graphics in the demo are not final as they are exceedingly low quality, worse then Twilight Princess (yet more colourful!) even.

In the SS trailer, I saw Link rolling on a ball. It looks like the same thing from Mario Galaxy. Seems fair since Mario Galaxy 2 took the flying thing from TP.

Since when was the graphical style the reason you bought a Zelda game? Let's not have the stupid WW argument again. "HURRRR HURRR IT'S LIKE A CARTOON MY PENIS IS TOO BIG TO PLAY THIS GAME HURRRRR"

It's a new Zelda. Most of us are gonna buy it, and of those who do, most of us will love it. It's ZELDA. What else was gonna happen?

As for the other games... eh.Some may tempt me, others definitely won't, but there was no real 'Tales of Monkey Island' this year (IE: A game I actually screamed 'YES!' at, to the consternation of my parents), which is a bit of a shame.

The 3DS has me interested, but not enough to buy it without actually trying it. The problem with a 3D console is just how impossible it is to advertise or preview without actually holding one in your hands and playing it.

I'm still not bought on the whole 'resurrection of 3D as a credible gimmick' thing. A grand total of one film has used it to any great effect (guess which one) and everything else has just been gimmicky and not worth it. Tron Legacy (or whatever they're calling it these days) could tempt me, but we'll have to wait and see.

I was also a little bothered by Skyward Sword's graphical style, or rather, its lack of one. A lot of people have been complaining about the engine or whatever, but I don't think that's the issue. To me, the problem is just that, from what we've seen, everything just looks so... generic. When I think of style vs. power, the game that comes first to my mind is World of Warcraft. Technically, the engine isn't very powerful, and it's that way on purpose so that a lot of people can run the game. However, the game artists do incredible things with that engine despite that limitation. That's what I want to see in games - not games that push the envelope, but rather, games that make the most of what they've got.