[WIP] E3 Highlights

Using this as a dumping ground for things that have twinkled my eyes from this years E3. This won't really be in any sort of order, too much for that.

WIP Links to content to blow out for post.

The Last Of Us

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Interview video is good.

Beyond: Two Souls

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Watch Dogs

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Fuck man, there's some moments when you see something that really makes you glad that you enjoy video games so much. Watching this game makes me feel really happy, like games are super rad again. Could use less shooting though, why did like half those pedestrians suddenly start opening fire on the player exactly? Seemed like they could think of a way to have slightly more creative ways to do things instead of kinda giving up at the end there and requiring some shooting dudes in the head.

Assassin's Creed III

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Splinter Cell: Blacklist

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Hitman Absolution

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Scribblenauts Unlimited

Scribblenauts Unlimited

Borderlands 2

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Halo 4

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Need For Speed Most Wanted

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Hawken

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I think the original footage below shows the game in a better light, or at least highlights the reasons I'm into the game better (hint, it's the tone and weird attention to detail with the mech world).

Tomb Raider

Lost Planet 3

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Devil May Cry

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Sacrilegium

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Announced from the Two Worlds devs.

Star Wars 1313

Brad wrote a bit about what's going on with the ILM partnership in this game, and what that's doing for the game's visuals.

Pikmin 3

This just looks visually pleasant, stunning even.

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/06/forza-horizon-trailer.html

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/06/fable-journey-trailer.html

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/06/amazing-spider-man-game-trailer.html

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/06/zeno-clash-ii-trailer-psn-xbla-pc.html

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/06/papo-yo-trailer.html

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/06/human-element-is-robotokis-first-game.html

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/05/tokyo-jungle-tv-commercial.html

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/05/guacamelee-announced-for-ps3-vita.html

http://www.allgamesbeta.com/2012/05/cd-projekts-new-rpg-is-cyberpunk.html

Sometimes I feel like a pageant mother, pushing Skyrim to be more pretty than it ought to be...

A vast or significant amount of the 100+ hours I’ve spent playing Skyrim so far has been tweaking the game back and forth between playable and beautiful, often shifting many times every day. While messing with uGrids in the Gamebryo Engine can destroy save files and create massive instabilities within the game it offers some of the better enhancements to visual quality and is the actual limiter for many standard tweaks. uGrids are literally the game world itself, how much the of the game world the engine will actually render and calculate at any given time, broken up into ‘grids’ around the player with the default being 5 and playable being 7, though more adventurous users going for great still images opt for 13+ uGrid for what I can imagine is not so much a game but rather a crash fest.

Besides playing Skyrim and tweaking it endlessly, taking screenshots has to be the third highest use of my time within the game and while I’ve not focused on this aspect as much I have managed to rack up almost 400 images. I’ve submitted some of the more notable images I’ve taken over at http://skyrimphotography.net/, just navigate over to the Star Photographers section to see some of them. I do sync my Steam screenshots folder for the game to Picasa as well so ‘all’ of the screens I’ve taken thus far will always be located here with newest at the bottom.

Found this and forgot I'd even wrote it, it's just a review after finishing stalker that I apparently needed to write. I haven't even re-read it I just think it needs a better home than google sites :S. May read it myself later, either way here it is: 
  

Story

Stalker has a relatively nice plot that threads throughout the game, it's not going to win any awards or anything but it does more than just sit there to hold the game together and if you want to get really into it you can get lost in a bit more depth. There is a problem with this, however, as the game really doesn't do a good job of pushing the story on you and I found myself not really caring and only having a vague idea of the plot for most of the game. When I stopped to read messages in my PDA and other things it was nice, and I liked the voiced dialogs (only the first few paragraphs or each quest are voiced but it helps get you into it to start). That's actually a really good idea because the developers get away with less recorded voice work and save space on the game but it also isn't a pure 'read piles of text for hours to follow the plot' either. It basically voices the first parts and if you are interested there is the rest waiting for you, and that's generally what the whole plot is like. Pretty nice and has some depth if you want, but nothing truly compelling and often left aside.

Technical  (Visual, UI, Control)

Controlling your character is alright and just as fine as most PC FPS games, although I've always disliked the keyboard for crouching and this game is no exception. You must hold 'ctrl' to crouch and hold 'ctrl+shift' to crouch further (no prone however).  Not a huge deal but it was kinda weird having two crouches, and not being able to go prone even for using a sniper. Other controls like zooming with the right mouse button and others are general FPS controls and feel fine if you play PC FPS games.

Gameplay

You may ask why I actually continued playing the game  after saying all that negative stuff about the combat...   well I used cheats to help alleviate my frustration. I didn't use god mode but what I did use was infinite sprint which was very nice since I always ran our and was forced to stop walking due to carrying like 3 guns or something. The weight system is actually very forgiving if you are looking at it in real terms.. but it really hampers your ability to stockpile items which is what every RPG player does... at least you can stash all your items in random.. stashes and it stays there.

Any monsters/mutants you encounter in the game are very difficult to kill, mostly because they run at you or jump at you and get in close, which makes it hard to aim at them and just like most pc shooters using your knife is ridiculously... it's near impossible to aim a knife in pc shooters yet in real life you just freakin' stab and it's easy. With these games it always feels like you are stabbing with a needle and you gotta get your pixel right on something to hit it otherwise you'll miss, which is hard with those marine jumpy mutants which lunge in your face and constantly move around and whack you in a bent over position (sometimes you have 3-6 on you... which can all kill you instantly or within 2-4 hits... on easy...).

  Some really good points for this game is the atmosphere, it really pulls off the  living area very well and you really feel like you are in this mostly desolate area full of radioactivity. The random wind that blows by, the sky in the day and the darkness at night really create a sense of tangible loneliness and fear.

Last night the xboxalypse live stream had me running around trying to play with them as they switched games. Luckily I got into one Halo 2 match, for which I was able to see myself teabagging Drew on the stream, and I also got 'into' Chaos Theory but due to the 10 minute intro video and the training exam level you are required to do I was unable to get into their specific match in time. That game in particular didn't seem like it held up that well anyways, at least compared to Halo or even forza (dude... it's a racing game). 
 
I was wondering if anyone else caught themselves sacrificing sleep time just to have a chance at playing some games with these gentlemen, and if it was worth it when/if you did.

 I have to say, each day comes and brings more anticipation for Forza 3 from me. I dropped out of racing games around the time of PGR 2-3 and Forza 2. I was originally a big fan of the break-neck thrills of some great rally-esque games like Collin McRae and Rallisport, so I guess my disinterest was due to less about fun driving and more about the dry, calculated none-fun of perfect circuit racing for the 'Arma 2' crowd of racing. That is to say the backyard tuner crowd too poor to own a vehicle they want to drive, and instead invests the little funds they do have on replicates and 1 to 1 scale blueprints and drawings to pretend to tweak and tune.