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This Week in Games - E3 Extravanganza: Press Conference Panic!


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AiddonValentine



Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 2203
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 12:58 pm Reply with quote
E3 in a nutshell:

MS: Please tell us what you want. We are out of ideas! Also Keanu
Bethesda: Pay no attention to the glowing neon elephant in the room!
Devolver: WHEEE!
Ubi: We're not political! Look at us make jokes about the shutdown!
Square: Now that we've built up so much good will from the FFVII Remake, let's proceed to completely negate it with Diet Avengers!
Nintendo: DRAGON QUEST AND BANJO IN SMASH BROS. LUIGI'S MANSIONS. FIRE EMBLEM. CONTRA. WITCHER 3. MARIO MAKER 2. MARVEL ULTIMATE ALLIANCE WITH FIVE BILLION CHARACTERS. NO MORE HEROES III. SEIKEN DENSETSU III (BOTH ORIGINAL AND REMAKE). LINK'S AWAKENING. ANIMAL CROSSING. NEW STUFF FROM PLATINUM. BREATH OF THE WILD SEQUEL. SANTA CLAUS IS REAL AND HE'S GIVING OUT ***********. NINTENDO, WE OUT!

Just...wow, this E3 was a mess until yesterday (well, it'll still be a mess, just with a shining beacon of joy rising from it). Anyway, individual thoughts.

-Keanu: Okay, that happened. You can do worse than the best human being on Earth right now.
-PSO2: To really get the feel for how disjointed and unorganized, despite the reputation of PSO2, they dropped this like it was another game even though I saw so many outlets go "Wait, WHAT!?" This wasn't the only example either with MS dropping Crossfire just in there despite it being the hot thing in Asia with literally over half a billion players. What the heck?
-MS overall: This was a mess and MS has no clue what they're doing anymore

-Ghostwire: Looks neat. Though Nakamura gets pegged for her personality, she's something of Mikami's protege with a great pedigree
-Doom and Wolfenstein: SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY! The only other bright spot in the presentation. The Id and Bethesda halves of that company are like night and day. Overall the presser was just patronizing and cowardly

-Watch Dogs: Memetic geriatric assassin hackers aside, this is a gimmick that will wear this. And that's before getting into Ubisoft's abject cowardice.
-Gods & Monsters: Looks neat...but then Nintendo's presser came. Ouch

-FFVII: Eh, still reticent. The changed story is questionable (not surprising, what with Kitase and Nomura constantly misreading the game they claim to have worked on) and I predict the battle system is going to be flashy, ultimately another hybrid system mess. It also doesn't help that Kitase then reminded that, oh right, this is modern day Square making it and he doesn't actually know how many installments it's going to be. What. The. HELL? I'm getting seriously JK Rowling vibes crossed with the return of FFXV's undisciplined development. Nice to see Tifa, though.
-Saga: Cool
-Last Remnant Switch: Okay, why does this keep coming up from Square? Is that team working on a sequel or something because despite its cult status it's still an odd title to revive.
-Avengers: Hooooooo, boy. This did not go over well. Like, at all. The game just looks so BLAND. The problem is it's clearly TRYING to evoke the MCU, but because they can't use the actors from the MCU it just looks off, like a fan film with a huge budget. It's Diet MCU. The tepid roster also didn't help. Plus we don't actually know what the gameplay is so what's the point of showing it? I also don't buy their claims of "no lootboxes/microtransactions." With them claiming they'll broaden the roster and add new locations there has to be SOME way for paying for all of that. All in all, you could a record scratch when this dropped.

-Smash: Cool, DQ is in. Which means it has music from Sugiyama...awkward. Banjo is neat too, even if those games haven't aged well.
-Trials of Mana: HOLY CRAP, WHAT IS GOING ON!? Not just the original, but a full-on remake in development!? Okay, okay, catching breath. Just...WOW.
-Panzer Dragoon: Cool. Let's hope we get Saga at some point.
-Luigi's Mansion 3: Rock on
-Animal Crossing: You just KNOW people who love building stuff are going to go nuts with this.
-Link's Awakening: Oooh, custom dungeons
-Fire Emblem - Three Houses: Called there being a time skip and your choice of have meaning that you had to pick sides. It's like Genealogy crossed with Fates. AWESOME.
-Astral Chain: Looks cool. I also like the crime solving stuff the Treehouse showed.
-Contra: At least you can play as a panda
-No More Heroes III: HE'S BACK! NOW PUT HIM IN SMASH!
-The Dark Crystal: Looks cool. Now get the Netflix app on the Switch already!
-Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: I summarize this as such
Like I've said elsewhere:

Square Enix Avengers: We went with the classic roster, but we'll update as a live service. We are VEEEEEEERY serious about representation

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: We got a dozen Avengers (not just white boys), we got Guardians, we got Defenders, we got X-Men, we got Spider doods (and gal), we got Inhumans, we got Deadpool, we got Ghost Rider like out of a heavy metal album, we got Elsa Bloodstone to make you go "Who?" We got Marvel Knights, X-Men, and Fantastic. Frickin'. FOUR DLC.

LOOK
AT
OUR
ROSTER


To think NINTENDO has the hot Marvel game.

-Breath of the Wild II: Oh....HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!? YOU CAN'T JUST DROP THAT OUTTA NOWHERE! I THINK THAT JUST SENT PEOPLE TO THE HOSPITAL! Just...WOW, that was a heck of a way to end things. Short-haired Zelda is also going over well. Now to see how they're going to do something new with the more open style they've adopted.

To be honest, every presser besides Nintendo's was a mixed bag at best (besides Devolver, but that's a different beast). Nintendo just had more variety and quality, ending with a megaton like Breath of the Wild II that nobody saw coming. The fact that they dropped it so nonchalantly just....WOW. Talk about a mic drop.


Last edited by AiddonValentine on Wed Jun 12, 2019 5:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2544
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 1:03 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Unlimited SaGa has a reputation of being one of the PS2's worst RPGs


It should be noted that this reputation is only abroad, however, because in Japan the game was generally well received & even sold nearly 500,000 copies in Japan alone. Personally, I have a ton of fondness for Unlimited SaGa, it's my very first SaGa game, and I love it BECAUSE of how it bucked tradition, which is where I feel a lot of its disdain outside of Japan comes from, i.e. the whole "Everyone asks for something different, but once something does just that it's hated on for being just that" conundrum.

I'm also honestly shocked that people still bring up the whole "The Reel System is too random!" falsehood, because it's been long shown that it's not random at all, or at least not in the way people think it is; hell, I realized that it wasn't random back when the game first came out. I mean, come on, it's a slot machine-esque reel, which means that it loops back around to where it starts, which means that it's never randomized! When I played the game back in high school, I got good enough to be able to consistently get exactly what I wanted with up to 3 attack reels going on at the same time, which I'm guessing would literally make the minds of those who think this game is unplayable melt. Now, sure, outside of battle there is a bit of randomness, but it's just in how, when using field skills, the reel will randomly move an extra 0-4 slots after you stop it, but that's simply so that the player can't abuse useful skills like Quick Fix repeatedly. Also, once you level up skills, you get more & more success slots in a row, which lessens the impact of said randomization.

Really, people's hatred with Unlimited SaGa doesn't come from it being a "bad" game, though the magic system is totally convoluted, but rather it comes from the fact that it doesn't do what people expect from an RPG, and instead of simply figuring out what the game wants them to do, they instead decry it as crap, even though there are much, much worse RPGs out there. If anything, Unlimited SaGa is the "Most SaGa" entry in the entire series, one which prides itself on not being like most RPGs.

All that being said, I am totally excited for Romancing SaGa 3 &, more importantly, SaGa Scarlet Grace.
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Hoppy800



Joined: 09 Aug 2013
Posts: 3331
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 2:14 pm Reply with quote
I'm definitely getting Daemon x Machina, it has improved drastically since the demo and now I know what Femto is for. I want to buy Link's Awakening but not for $60, it should be a $40 game. Pokemon looks good but after the Treehouse gameplay which pretty much had an out of the blue announcement that many Pokemon will get cut from Sword and Shield, I'm having second thoughts on buying it.
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
Posts: 5915
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 3:01 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
But then you add on a great-looking Avengers


Where's the sarcasm Razz


AiddonValentine wrote:

Ubi: We're not political! Look at us make jokes about the shutdown!


To be pretty fair Brexit is pretty much a joke......one that's kind of lost something with May's resignation.

AiddonValentine wrote:

Square: Now that we've built up so much good will from the FFVII Remake, let's proceed to completely negate with Diet Avengers!


Yeah not for nothing but the FFVII remake has had a "interesting" reception so I wouldn't go out of the way to actually argue the Avenger's game is eroding the goodwill SE has supposedly built up given their recurring problems. Unless I missed the joke in there.


AiddonValentine wrote:

-Last Remnant Switch: Okay, why does this keep coming up from Square? Is that team working on a sequel or something because despite its cult status it's still an odd title to revive.


It's not like they're remastering Blue Dragon.The game that's only noteworthy for Akira Toriyama designs.

AiddonValentine wrote:
Banjo is neat too, even if those games haven't aged well.


Don't know people still hold Super Mario 64 in high regard despite the game having aged no better than Banjo.


AiddonValentine wrote:
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: We got a dozen Avengers (not just white boys), we got Guardians, we got Defenders, we got X-Men, we got Spider doods (and gal), we got Inhumans, we got Deadpool, we got Ghost Rider like out of a heavy metal album, we got Elsa Bloodstone to make you go "Who?" We got Marvel Knights, X-Men, and Fantastic. Frickin'. FOUR DLC.

LOOK
AT
OUR
ROSTER

To think NINTENDO has the hot Marvel game.


And this is with the existence of Lego Marvel Superheroes 1 & 2.
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Northlander



Joined: 10 Feb 2009
Posts: 901
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 3:19 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
So... you ever hear a piece of music in these press conferences that sends a chill down your spine? Well, when I heard the first few bars of Meridian Child from Seiken Densetsu 3, that's exactly what I felt. Turns out that the game is getting a serious, from-the-ground up remake as Trials of Mana, and it's looking really, really good:

Well, that's... I...

*sigh*

OK, Nintendo, you win. I'll get a goddamned Switch. As long as this is also released in Europe/Scandinavia, that is.
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LightningCount



Joined: 04 Mar 2018
Posts: 229
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 3:45 pm Reply with quote
Regarding Contra, Konami teased a new Contra back at E3 2011, but nothing ever came of it. Not sure if this is from that era, or unrelated. Nevertheless, this Contra is actually more official than it looks. Konami wrote on Twitter: "From the mind of Producer Nobuya Nakazato, CONTRA: ROGUE CORPS is a brand new canonical entry to the franchise that picks up following the events of CONTRA III: THE ALIEN WARS." Nobuya Nakazato has been a frequent producer and/or director on the Contra series since Contra III.

Rogue Corps is super over-the-top quirky, but for better or worse, it's not completely out of line with the trajectory of the series. Contra ReBirth and Neo Contra had a lot of especially goofy ideas, and going back to Hard Corps, you had, what, a wolfman with a gatling gun arm and a tiny robot soldier called "Brownie." Rogue Corps is not immediately appealing visually, but if you look closer at the gameplay and all that is going on, it looks like it is capturing the nigh unparalleled action concepts of the series, complete with the iconic rolling jumps. The camera angles shifting all the time allows for multiple experiences in a series that has played with its camera time and again, even on the NES. Initial hands-on impressions seem to say it's actually quite good: https://techraptor.net/content/contra-rogue-korps-preview-e3-2019

As I stated in the Animal Crossing post, Nintendo's future plans are curious: I wonder how the delay of Animal Crossing affects the rest of the timeline of Nintendo games for 2020. Presumably, Animal Crossing will be the first big one, and it'll be in March. What will fill out the rest of the year? I think it's too early for Zelda BotW 2 and Metroid Prime 4, so I'm guessing some combination of a 2.5D Metroid 5 by Mercury Steam, Mario Odyssey 2, and/or Pikmin 4. I think at least one of those will have to come out to anchor the year.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 4:29 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
If there's any company that has “won” E3 by the bizarre, obtuse nerd formula we use to calculate the “winners” of these dick-waving contests, it has to be Square Enix


You mistyped nintendo there, even the best of square enix was at the nintendo press conference...
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AiddonValentine



Joined: 07 Aug 2006
Posts: 2203
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 5:55 pm Reply with quote
meiam wrote:
Quote:
If there's any company that has “won” E3 by the bizarre, obtuse nerd formula we use to calculate the “winners” of these dick-waving contests, it has to be Square Enix


You mistyped nintendo there, even the best of square enix was at the nintendo press conference...


Yeah, it's kind of hilarious how Square built up ALL that goodwill with the FFVII stuff in the presser...and then proceeded to completely blow it with that Avengers game. The presentation of it was one thing, but then you hear "live service" and that's when people start abandoning ship. We've been here before, even with their claims there will be no lootboxes. The internet reactions have been hilarious and SE bungled the landing to their presser. Then Nintendo just bombards us with stuff nonstop, it was no contest
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CrownKlown



Joined: 05 May 2011
Posts: 1762
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 9:19 pm Reply with quote
Lord Geo wrote:
Quote:
Unlimited SaGa has a reputation of being one of the PS2's worst RPGs


It should be noted that this reputation is only abroad, however, because in Japan the game was generally well received & even sold nearly 500,000 copies in Japan alone. Personally, I have a ton of fondness for Unlimited SaGa, it's my very first SaGa game, and I love it BECAUSE of how it bucked tradition, which is where I feel a lot of its disdain outside of Japan comes from, i.e. the whole "Everyone asks for something different, but once something does just that it's hated on for being just that" conundrum.

I'm also honestly shocked that people still bring up the whole "The Reel System is too random!" falsehood, because it's been long shown that it's not random at all, or at least not in the way people think it is; hell, I realized that it wasn't random back when the game first came out. I mean, come on, it's a slot machine-esque reel, which means that it loops back around to where it starts, which means that it's never randomized! When I played the game back in high school, I got good enough to be able to consistently get exactly what I wanted with up to 3 attack reels going on at the same time, which I'm guessing would literally make the minds of those who think this game is unplayable melt. Now, sure, outside of battle there is a bit of randomness, but it's just in how, when using field skills, the reel will randomly move an extra 0-4 slots after you stop it, but that's simply so that the player can't abuse useful skills like Quick Fix repeatedly. Also, once you level up skills, you get more & more success slots in a row, which lessens the impact of said randomization.

Really, people's hatred with Unlimited SaGa doesn't come from it being a "bad" game, though the magic system is totally convoluted, but rather it comes from the fact that it doesn't do what people expect from an RPG, and instead of simply figuring out what the game wants them to do, they instead decry it as crap, even though there are much, much worse RPGs out there. If anything, Unlimited SaGa is the "Most SaGa" entry in the entire series, one which prides itself on not being like most RPGs.

All that being said, I am totally excited for Romancing SaGa 3 &, more importantly, SaGa Scarlet Grace.


I think Unlimited Saga is garbage for one reason and one reason only, same reason Lunar Dragon Song is garbage. Gameplay. That stupid LP system in US where it was like a life bar but wasn't, not to mention the difficulty scaling has the closest thing I have ever seen to a brick wall. I literally breezed through the game, and when I made it to the final boss, my character literally couldnt beat the final boss no matter what, and it was too late to go back anywhere and grind or level up so I was stuck. Dragon Song had that stupid, auto target battle system, that was also terrible.

On a plus note, I do think Unlimited Saga was actually a pretty decent looking game, but I dont think too many people would complain about it being on any bottom list of jrpgs. Also using how it was received in Japan is kind of moot, considering any JRPG, even some of the more disliked ones outside of Japan always seem to average in the 30s out of 40 from Kotaku. I honestly cant think of any JRPG that actually came out west that did particularly poorly in Japan. So saying it sold 500 K copies in Japan isnt really saying much.

Also for the record FF8 story is no more convoluted than any other FF including X and 7, or especially 13.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2544
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 9:42 pm Reply with quote
CrownKlown wrote:

I think Unlimited Saga is garbage for one reason and one reason only. Gameplay. That stupid LP system in US where it was like a life bar but wasn't, not to mention the difficulty scaling has the closest thing I have ever seen to a brick wall. I literally breezed through the game, and when I made it to the final boss, my character literally couldnt beat the final boss no matter what, and it was too late to go back anywhere and grind or level up so I was stuck.


Then you'd hate almost every single SaGa game, because HP acting as a buffer for LP is a series standard since at least Romancing SaGa. Sorry, but that's not a complaint that's exclusive to Unlimited, but rather a complaint of SaGa, in general; a valid & understandable complaint, however. I wouldn't call it game breaking by any means, however.

Quote:
So saying it sold 500 K copies in Japan isnt really saying much.


Yeah, sure, whatever you say... If Japanese gamers love every single RPG that comes out, then Metal Max Xeno, which scored similarly to Unlimited SaGa in Famitsu, should have also sold ~500,000, instead of the ~30,000 it sold in Japan alone; remember, Metal Max is about as much of a cult classic series there as SaGa is. Look, I get that Famitsu scores aren't exactly the nicest thing to rely on, hence why I didn't mention it, but don't go acting like selling half a million isn't anything special.

But, hey, I'm not saying that Unlimited SaGa is one of the greatest RPGs of all time, or even one of the greatest on the PS2. I love the game, yes, but I fully acknowledge that it really isn't for most RPG fans, & I understand why people wouldn't like it. That being said, calling it "one of the worst RPGs" is nothing more than hyperbolic language to get attention.

SaGa Frontier is literally unfinished yet is still looked at more or less fondly, but Unlimited SaGa simply going insanely against the RPG grain makes it "one of the worst"? I'm sorry, and no offense to Frontier (which I really should finally play one day), but that's ridiculous.
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DRWii



Joined: 16 May 2007
Posts: 636
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:11 pm Reply with quote
Of the four I actually watched live, I'd rank them Nintendo>Microsoft>Square>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Ubisoft.

Seriously, the new Watch Dogs looks good, but literally nothing else from that conference interested me at all. I wish I had a time machine so I get that hour-or-so of my life back.
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Commander Cluck



Joined: 02 May 2019
Posts: 123
PostPosted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 10:48 pm Reply with quote
The stark difference between the Marvel games is fascinating. The Crystal Dynamics one looks generic and bland. And despite swearing up and down it's not the MCU it's essentially the MCU. The giveaway is they treat Black Widow as anything other than a C lister.

Meanwhile Ultimate Alliance 3 looks colorful, comic book-y, and has a nice roster, including the actual founding woman of the avengers, Wasp. It's also got X-Men, Spider-Man, Heroes for Hire, Daredevil and Elektra, and other random characters surprising to see. I also applaud Team Ninja for not shying away from the sexy and revealing outfits and curvy models on the heroines.

Negatives is they're forcing the Thanos and Infinity Stones plotline again, but I suppose story isn't important in a game like this. Fantastic Four is DLC, and Ant-Man isn't playable. It also shoehorns in the usual Miles, Gwen, and Kamala trio, but then I'm pretty sure that's a global policy at Marvel these days to push them into everything so I suppose I can't fault them for that too much.

Overall, me and mates will have a few fun nights with it at the very least.
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BadNewsBlues



Joined: 21 Sep 2014
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:06 am Reply with quote
Commander Cluck wrote:
And despite swearing up and down it's not the MCU it's essentially the MCU. The giveaway is they treat Black Widow as anything other than a C lister.


By that same logic Iron Man should be treated the same given that's what he was regarded as until the movies came around.

Commander Cluck wrote:
I also applaud Team Ninja for not shying away from the sexy and revealing outfits and curvy models on the heroines.


If this game is anything like it's predecessors most of it is going to be played from overhead perpesctive so all that "fanservice" is going to be pretty moot outside of the cutscenes.

Commander Cluck wrote:
Negatives is they're forcing the Thanos and Infinity Stones plotline again,


Just like the Comic Books?

Commander Cluck wrote:

but I suppose story isn't important in a game like this. Fantastic Four is DLC, and Ant-Man isn't playable. It also shoehorns in the usual Miles, Gwen, and Kamala trio.
but then I'm pretty sure that's a global policy at Marvel these days to push them into everything so I suppose I can't fault them for that too much.


You're complaining about them "shoehorning" in characters that are popular.....just like the Fantastic Four who unlike those three were in the first two Ultimate Alliance games and whose inclusion isn't anything worth getting hyped about for that reason alone..
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4367
Location: New York
PostPosted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 9:12 am Reply with quote
I think I can appreciate “Infinity War, but with the X-Men” in UA 3.

Bethesda has two things worth thinking about. Doom and Wolfenstein. That’s about it.

Middling E3 but a lot of Nintendo’s stuff looked fun. Also Tifa.
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Shar Aznabull



Joined: 12 Jan 2015
Posts: 236
PostPosted: Thu Jun 13, 2019 3:55 pm Reply with quote
I'm excited for the same things everyone else is (ESPECIALLY No More Heroes 3, which btw if you haven't go play TSA because it's great and sets up everything for 3) but two reveals I feel went horribly underappreciated are Contra Rogue Corps and Arkane's new game, Deathloop.
Yeah Rogue Corps looks kind of ugly, but the gameplay looks like a lot of fun and it's being directed by the same person who directed Contra III, Hard Corps, and Shattered Soldier (AKA the BEST Contra game).
Deathloop only got a CGI trailer, but the concept sounds a lot more intriguing than most other western games revealed and Arkane Studios typically does good work.
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