TCPS 24: EA & Ubisoft E3 2013 Wrap Up

We talk the shows that EA and Ubisoft put on for us at this years 2013 E3. What games are we excited for? What hits are headed our way? Were we surprised or given the same old schpiel? We talk about all that. Take a listen!

The Super Smash Nintendo Change Up

While Nintendo may not have had a press conference this year at E3, they still delivered on game announcements. And if we're being honest, it was probably a good move to save all that money, specially with the big guns of Microsoft and Sony an their new consoles. Nintendo came at us with a Nintendo Direct 40 minute showcase broadcast, a booth at E3, demos, trailers, and a couple of roundtables at the conference, so they weren't absent altogether at the Expo.

So what did they show us and what are we excited to see? There we actually quite a few titles announcements, for both the Wii U and the 3DS. Some old favorites like new Pokeman X and Y coming out this October, including a new fairy class that will be strong against Dragon class. A new Super Mario 3D World including a new cat power up, and Peach! Peach finally as a playable character, and giving everyone an old throw back move from Super Mario World 2. Not a dream this time Nintendo? And of course new Mario Kart 8 that includes a new antigravity driving style.

This is what I think of your franchise and promises

They of course announced their 3rd Party titles, some not so surprising, and some we're no doubt excited about. The expected Assassin's Creed IV, Batman Origins, Disney Infinite, Just Dance 2014, Spinter Cell Blacklist, and Watch Dogs. A new Batman Origins Blackgate coming out for the 3DS, Scribblenaughts Unmasked: DC Adventure for both the Wii U and 3DS, Shin Megami Tensei IV for the 3DS, and hold on, a new Sonic game, Lost World, coming out for both console and handheld. It looks like they took the 3D in semi 2D worlds like they did in Generations. Not even crossing my fingers.

Ta Da! I'm Back!

They threw out a bunch of new eShop titles with no release dates, including Ducktake Remastered, Dungeons and Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara, Oddworld New N Tasty, and World of Keflings which most will recognize from the XBLA library. A new trailer for a game very near and dear to my heart, The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker HD. The graphics will look pretty amazing on the Wii U in 1080p, and they've added some new features including an option to go faster while you're sailing the vast ocean. Although from the trailer it looks like you're only able to activate this while you're catching a certain amount of wind in your sails. I know I'm not the only one who would sail in in zig zags to get to my next destination just so I wasn't moving at a snails pace, or so I didn't have to change the wind directions every time I needed to turn. They've also changed the Tingle Tuner! Obviously you can't connect your GameBoy Advance to the Wii U, (also holy crap, throw to the past with the GameBoy Advance Nintendo!) so they've changed the Tingle Tuner to the Tingle Bottle. From the beaches of Islands you can write a message, take screenshots, and through them out into the water. What good will this do? Your messages will then start to wash up on shore in other players games while they play. An interesting little addition, it seems like it could be fun.

They also teased up with some images and gameplay of The Wonderful 101, a group of heroes that unite against space invaders to their city. They use the Unite Morph abilities to gather together and change into different weapons, like swords, or defensive items. It will offer a multiplayer options of up to five players. That one will release this coming September.

Let's just appreciate how spry Link, Pit, and Samus look here.

The three trailers and teasers we got next might have been some of the most exciting ones. A New Donkey Kong Country, backed up with some old classics tunes in the background that had my little gamer heart excited. DKC Tropical Freeze features the return of Diddy Long and Dixie Kong and her blond helicopter hair. Then they hit us a new trailer for Bayonetta 2, this time featuring a full on look of the sassy Main Character, and her pixie style hair cut, (I'm a woman, yes I know hair styles,) and her new outfit. We saw some cinematic and in game action and while I didn't see a whole lot of changes, there was enough to keep me interested. Then we saw a rather pretty looking trailer for a new game from the creators of Xenoblade called X. So far we know that it's going to be an open world with monsters, and looks like a switch between the city and the wilds, and some mech play. Interesting. Expect that in 2014.

Retro Throwback of Nostalgia

Let's not beat around the bush anymore, it's liable to catch fire from the next announcement. Super Smash Bros. The trailer opened showing us a new character. Villager from the Animal Crossing franchise running to join along. Gonna have to be honest and bet that a lot of people weren't very excited that, he's not your first choice to join the cast of characters now is he? Then we see some of our cast of regulars; Mario, Link, Samus, Fox McCloud, Kirby, Donkey Kong, Pit, Pikachu, and Bowser. First we see them in a cell shaded style, outlined in black. They're announcing a 3DS Version. I think the black outline of the characters is a good move because we know how crazy the battle screens can get on a regular TV screen, and with this new style it makes it easier to pick our our fighters on the craziness of the background paired with the smaller screen of the 3DS. While it's all but confirmed that this will be a direct mirror of the Wii U version, it looks like some levels are going to be better suited for the smaller screen of Super Smash; For instance the train level from the Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks.

Mario jumps out and breaks from his cell shaded 3DS style and we get to see the Wii U's HD graphics come into play. Link takes on the look of the Wii U demo we saw him in last year and some of his Skyward Sword apparel. Samus how shed the old classic armor for her Prime look. Looking snazzy there, girl. We don't see Zero suit Samus, but we only have a handful of the confirmed line up so far, so she could make her return in both versions. Pit takes on his more stylized look from Kid Icarus: Uprising, and some of his new attacks, including two shields for an upper punch. When will this Nintendo Powerhouse come out? 2014 of course.

But they weren't done with Super Smash yet. Last year they big names were Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog. This year they throw another one at us. If you arne't excited for this one then I don't even know you. Mega Freaking Man. He gets the classic pan up, hair blowing in the wind, and then the helmet is on, it lights up and he opens his eyes. Game. On. They throw in some Mega Man 2 theme in there, until he gets beat down, shown the way of Super Smash. Then we see the powers of Mega Man int he game. Hit with some rock of Wily's Castle theme and we see what we can expect form our little blue dude in the game. You need to see the trailer (linked above) to see the awesomeness. 

And stretch. And hold. Good Job

One day after announcing Mega Man as a playable character, Nintendo showed their next new character. No one saw this one coming. The Wii Fit Trainer. Don't knock her yet, check out the trailer bewlow. I think she could be a bit of fun. 

TCPS 23: Microsoft E3 2013 Wrap Up

Here is epidose 23! It's back the podcast is back! And we're kicking off with E3 and the Press Conference from Microsoft. Did they go a good job? Did they miss the mark? What about the Xbox One? We talk about all that and more!

  

Still Not Dead: E3 Edition

As I type this I am currently editing our first pocast in a year. And it's the Microsoft E3 wrap up podcast. I'm also watching the Nintendo direct E3 announcement, but I would lying if I said I was getting any information from this. The lag is so bad, even in 240p, that it keep buffering every 5-10 seconds. This is not a good start for Nintendo to announce their titles. I want to think that I haven't missed anything since it's taking forever. I don't know how long this was supposed to take (as it's all pre-recorded it looks like), but the buffering and eventually skipping was not good.

I'm having to rewatch the stream to get the information that I missed. We'll talk about what this means later on the podcast.

We're recording podcasts today, and writing blogs, and posting videos as E3 officially opens to the public and trailers and news comes out. Stay tuned. We're back, and we're going to be doing some cool stuff. More videos coming to the Youtube channel as well!

Revolver: Bullet Points for a Podcast

*Presses Start*


Friends, Romans, Countrymen.

Small little updates for those of you who are wondering.

*Extra Life earned $500 dollars this year. Thank you!

*As far as I know, project hiatus/cancellations are all over the board, we just need to sift them out. Stay Tuned.

*I'm going to bite the bullet and start updating the Youtube, regardless of my slow internet.

*Ports: Episode 1 is finished, and is in the long process of editing.

*Game reviews and Fight Nights will return, thinking about making a series out of them.

*All this turnover should happen in Nov.

Loaded and Ready to Fire.

~Continue?

No Excuses.

*presses start*

So, instead of saying why we haven't really been around (which we have, just check out the tube), I'll going to go ahead a put out there that there is a reason WHY we haven't been as pushed up about the blog and other things lately.

Mostly because, holy shit, did games really blow it for me this year.

Don't get me wrong, there are a ton of games that dropped this year. Hotly anticipated games that I expected to blow my mind away. Sequels and Series endings and.....well.....most of them ended up actually under preforming this year. Ninja Gaiden 3 being the absolute biggest one. Month after Month, a game that I was looking forward to ended up tanking big time, or just couldn't do it for me. Mass Effect, Ninja Gaiden, Street Fighter.....that's right, I said it. There have been 2 games that I knew were coming out that I was actively looking forward to that didn't dissapoint: Max Payne 3 and Ghost Recon. But alas, those were in May, so until then, I was forced to deal with lackluster games.

That's not to say, however, there wasn't any good games. I was surprised by Kingdom of Amaular, UFC Undisputed 3 really hit the spot for a bit, Final Fantasy DDR was suprisingly good and I did enjoy Darkness II, among others. However, it's the case of games that I didn't think were going to be any good at all, turned out to be surprisingly well done. This half of the year really can't do it for me. I am looking forward to the latter half of the year. Borderlands, Assassins Creed, FarCry and the space marine game with the 4 in it all look really good. I'll be looking forward to seeing the release. Until then, It's DLC games and old school goodness.

Continue?

TCPS 22: E3 Microsoft Wrap-Up

We had a few minutes to spare between the Microsoft Conference and the EA conference, so we decided to do a short podcast summarizing what was announced. We'll later go into detail about what was announced, about what it means, and what we think about it. But until then, we didn't want to leave you all hanging!