Early Reveals Killed the E3 Surprise

We are less than two weeks away from E3 2015.  It is an exciting time as everyone from video game aficionados to casual fans speculate on what's in store for the show.  During these two weeks, rumours, predictions and even leaks spread across the web like wildfire due to increased levels of interest in E3.  To combat third-parties from leaking their lineups for E3, some game companies adopted the practice of revealing some of their titles in the weeks leading up to the show.  Some people love getting these reveals early because it keeps the games from getting lost in all the hustle and bustle of E3.  On the other hand, these early reveals kill the element of surprise that is a key part of the show's success.

Let's take a trip down memory lane.  What E3 moment made you fall in love with following the event from beginning to end each year?  It certainly wasn't for leaked/revealed games like Titanfall, Gears of War: Judgment, Beyond: Two Souls or Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.  It was surprises that made your jaw drop, got you to sit back in disbelief and possibly left your crying tears of joy.  Some moments that come to mind include Shigeru Miyamoto appearing onstage wielding both the Master Sword and Hylian Shield at the Twilight Princess reveal, the legendary Metal Gear Solid 4 trailers, the return of Kid Icarus and Sony's PS4 reveal.  Everyone has a moment that stands out in their mind, but they all have one thing in common: the element of surprise.

By revealing games early or making these secrets vulnerable to leaks, these companies are hurting the show that serves as a massive marketing push for their products.  Seriously, a product's showing at E3 can make or break it.  Case in point, look at the success of Watch Dogs and Destiny or even the continued struggles Microsoft faces with the lagging sales of the Xbox One.

Speaking of Watch Dogs, nobody knew anything about the game or even the fact that Ubisoft would unveil a brand new property at the end of their E3 2012 press conference.  The surprise of the game's reveal coupled with the scarcity of information about it started a frenzy surrounding Watch Dogs.  In the end, it lead to one of the biggest disappointments of 2014, but not before selling millions upon millions of copies.

Now look at Fallout 4.  Yes, the game's existence has been one of the worst kept secrets in gaming history, but that is beside the point.  Fallout 4 was all but confirmed before Bethesda dropped the trailer earlier this week.

Now, just imagine if Bethesda waited until their E3 press conference this coming July 14th, where hundreds of journalists and millions eyes around the world would be focused on this one event, to reveal the Fallout 4 trailer.  It's not hard to image the audience, both live and at home, would have lost it and Bethesda would have seen a dramatic spike in interest for the game.  By trying to get ahead of third-parties, Bethesda has missed out on a golden opportunity and took a great surprise away from the biggest event of the year for the video game industry.

As much as E3 is about impressing investors and marketing products to a worldwide audience, it is about the gamers.  We are the audience that tunes in every year hoping to be surprised, entertained and ultimately excited for the future of this industry.  Taking the surprises out of E3 only leaves people feeling disappointed.  My advice to game developers and publishers: resist the urge, keep your secrets close to your chest and make E3 2015 an event we will never forget.

The Game Awards 2014 Impressions

No fancy intro.  No intricate back story about the failures of the Video Game Awards.  I am getting straight to the point because I cannot think any other way to say it.  Although the Game Awards were a great improvement over the VGAs, I still found them disappointing and boring.  I understand a lot of good people put a ton of time and effort into making this show a celebration of games, but the show as a whole did more to make me question the point of it outside of the game reveals.  I spent three hours of my life starring at a computer screen to see about an hour of watchable content and I personally find that unacceptable.

Before diving right into all the flaws with the Game Awards, I will admit there were some good to great moments in this show.  There were a good amount of reveals with Metal Gear Online, Adr1ft, Human Element and the new Legend of Zelda being the standouts in my opinion.  Speaking of the new Zelda, that gameplay footage, albeit being short in length, made me feel all giddy inside.  Just the sheer size of Hyrule made my jaw drop.  While I found them unneeded, most of the musical performances were done well especially the collaboration between Imagine Dragons and Koji Kondo.  Geoff Keighley's friend Greg from Scotland stole the show with his performance of classic game tunes from Mario, Sonic, Street Fighter and Tetris using lasers to produce the music.  After a performance that spectacular, Greg definitely deserves a job in the video game industry.  It is up to the developer and publishers now, give the guy a chance.

One of my main complaints with the VGAs was their complete lack of respect and effort put into the awards aspect of the awards show.  The Game Awards fixed some of that by putting together credible award categories, having most of the awards selected by of panel of industry veterans and highlighting more awards on the show than ever before.  While I do have some complaints about the handling of awards outside of the main stage (more on this in a bit), the Game Awards did a job leaps and bounds better than any of the VGAs.  Also the awards look much better than the stupid monkey statues they use to give out.

For everything good about the Game Awards, there were two or three things wrong with the show.  For a three hour show, it had no sense of pacing.  Some segments like Conan O'Brien's videos on the nominees for Game of the Year and Lindsay Stirling's performance of Dragon Age: Inquistion's theme song felt rushed, while others such as Keighley's asides with others in the crowd went on for far too long.  Speaking of Keighley's asides, these moments made two key problems with the show evident: the lack of rehearsals and poor representation of awards not shown on the main stage

It is understandable that a level of improvisation makes the show feel organic, but every conversation, speech and introduction came off as awkward and highly unprofessional.  The fact that you forget a member of the Hearthstone team was in the audience to accept their award for Mobile/Handheld Game of the Year, overheard a musical performance tuning their instruments on the main speakers or had a Sony representative call out the existence of a teleprompter is just unacceptable.  These unfortunate instances make the video game industry as a whole look like a laughing stock to casual viewers and people from other mediums.  These mistakes would have been ironed out with a few rehearsals before the show.

Building off of the lack of rehearsals, the awards given out off of the main stage were handled poorly.  Nobody is going to take these awards seriously if Keighley and company are just going to hand them out with little to no context.  Time may be a constraint, but have a pre-show or cut unnecessary segments in order to make these awards feel credible rather than awkwardly pulling people out of the audience to hand them their awards.  These parts just reinforced how unprofessional the show was.

Apart from the Game Awards itself, my brother and I found it next to impossible to view the show on our Xbox 360 and PS3.  We tried everything from looking on the dashboards to searching on the Youtube and IGN apps to no avail.  When we went to search for instructions on how to watch on our game consoles, all we found were press releases boasting the show was available on all platforms without any instructions on where exactly to watch it.  It is one thing to boast about the show's availability, but to not provide a means of helping people gain access to it added more frustration to this entire ordeal.

While the Game Awards is a disappointing and boring show, it is a small step in the right direction.  Sadly, this step has created a plethora of new problems that Keighley and company will have to overcome before the show can gain widespread credibility.  After this year's show, I believe efforts should be made on creating an awards show that competes with the DICE Awards and the BAFTA Game Awards rather than the Grammys and Oscars.  Despite the Game Awards having a few moments that are worth watching, I cannot recommend spending three hours viewing the Game Awards in its entirety.

E3 2013: Microsoft Press Conference Impressions

The next generation of consoles starts now.  Today is when Sony and Microsoft pull back the curtain on their new machines and next wave begins.  There are going to be tons of huge announcements and yours truly is here to follow them all.  Following each press conference, I will be writing my impressions.  I will take a look at the good, the bad and the utmost ugly for each conference then wrap it all up with a final grade at the end.  Like usual, Microsoft is first at bat.

After such a poor Xbox One reveal, Microsoft needed a home run with this press conference.  Sadly, the house that Bill Gates built got thrown out trying to round third base.  Microsoft kept their entire conference focused on the games, which was a step in the right direction.  The fault of this conference was that Microsoft focused on too many games for their allotted time.  They jumped from one game to the next with no real sense of pacing.  Case and point, the Killer Instinct reveal.  The reveal of Killer Instinct was easily a high point for this conference, but Microsoft just showed off a trailer for the game and went on to the next game instead of taking their time to let the surprise sink in and show off some actual gameplay.  Microsoft did show some gameplay later in the conference as part of their Xbox Live demo, but it felt too little too late.  Games such as Minecraft, Forza 5, Quantum Break, Dark Souls 2, Black Tusk Games' teaser and Battlefield 4 could have been cut from the conference to help properly pace the show and give more time to interesting games like Below, Crimson Dragon and Sunset Overdrive.  Another thing that plagued the Microsoft conference was a slew of technical difficulties.  The audio cut out during the Metal Gear Solid V demo and the Crimson Dragon trailer and the Battlefield 4 demo failed to start.  These mishaps felt like problems that Microsoft could have been prepared for say by doing a dress rehearsal or running back-up demos backstage if something does not work properly.  Out of the sheer number of games and announcements shown at the Microsoft conference, there were a few that caught my eyes and ears such as all the 360 announcements, Killer Instinct, Crimson Dragon, Metal Gear Solid 5 and Witcher 3.  The final reveal at the Microsoft conference was Titanfall, the long-anticipated game from Respawn Entertainment.  Revealing this game would have been a grand finale if Titanfall was not leaked just under a week ago.  Microsoft should have kept Titanfall much closer to their chest in order to avoid such a huge leak.  The leak was not the only problem with Titanfall.  Considering it is made by the same team that developed Modern Warfare 2, Titanfall pretty much looks like a futuristic Call of Duty.  Not a good comparison to have considering how tarnished the Call of Duty name is.

While I have complained quite a bit about the Microsoft Press Conference, it was an okay showing.  At one point, I personally thought they could pull off the unthinkable and give us one excellent conference.  It was not the train wreck this writer expected, but it was not the knock out performance Microsoft direly needed.

Grade:  C

On the Download: February 12-18

Finally after weeks of begging, Nintendo has delivered what I have wanted for a while.  We got a new game for the 3DS Virtual Console.  It is not a Game Boy or Game Boy Color game as Nintendo released Super Mario Bros., which the Nintendo Ambassadors received a while back, to those who did not pick up the 3DS at launch.  For those who already have Super Mario Bros. for their 3DS, you can download the update that adds the save system that can be found in all 3DS Virtual Console games.  Also the Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D demo landed on the Nintendo eShop this week.  In short, the demo gives a nice small slice of the game's opening level, but nothing substantial enough to convince undecided gamers to go out and buy it this coming Tuesday.  If you are wondering why I talked about all the Nintendo downloadable stuff in the intro?  It is because I have a full order of downloadable games to talk about in this week's edition of On the Download from the new PS Vita to XBLA and PSN to the iOS.  On the Download is packed to capacity, so let us not waste anymore time.

Released alongside the release of the First Edition Vita Bundle, Super Stardust Delta can only be downloaded on the Vita's PlayStation Store.  Super Stardust Delta is the newest entry in a series of twin-stick shooters made by Housemarque and published by Sony.  In Super Stardust Delta, you control a ship orbiting a planet, which is the game's play area.  While in said planet's orbit, you must dodge and/or destroy incoming asteroids and enemies in order to earn the highest score, which you can then upload to the online leaderboard.  At it's core, Super Stardust Delta is an arcade shooter in the vein of Geometry Wars.  It includes game modes such as Arcade and Planets and mini-games like Crush and Disc Slide, which use the Vita's other features to the best of their abilities.  For those itching for more Super Stardust Delta, there already is a DLC that adds a additional four game modes for you to download.  For those interested, Super Stardust Delta will set you back 10 dollars, which should not be much trouble to Vita owners who are sick of playing Little Deviants (the game that came in the First Edition Bundle).

As the first game to release in Microsoft's XBLA House Party, Warp is a unique, cute yet extremely gory puzzle game.  You play as Zero, a cute looking creature who has the cool ability to warp through and even into animate and inanimate objects.  Zero's warping powers play into the game as you try to escape your captors' laboratory. That means tons and tons of animated blood and gore as you can warp into enemies be it scientists or armed guards and cause them to explode from the inside out.  Even though it is a Mature game, Warp looks like a very promising puzzle game.  You can buy it now on XBLA for 800 Microsoft Points or wait until the game releases on PSN and PC for 10 dollars on March 13th.

Back last summer, I downloaded the best platformer you can find for the iOS in League of Evil.  So I was surprised and excited when I saw a trailer for League of Evil 2 last week.  The biggest upgrade with League of Evil 2 is with the new hand-drawn graphics, which does not carry over the 8-bit aesthetic from the first game, but still look very good.  League of Evil 2 also adds over 100 new bit-sized levels to play, boss battles to beat and costumes to wear.  At 1 dollar, it is very hard not to pass up League of Evil 2, but be warned there are quite a few bugs with the game.  In my experience playing League of Evil 2, I have run into some problems with the touch controls not responding at times and a severe stability problem.  In the forty minutes I played League of Evil 2, my game crashed close to 10 times, which made me lose all my saved data.  Actually if you completely close down the app to free some memory on your iDevice, you lose all your saved data.  That is unacceptable Ravenous Games and I refuse play League of Evil 2 until these huge problems are fixed.  So download at your own peril, but at 1 dollar grab League of Evil 2 now before it goes up to 3 dollars and wait for the inevitable update to make this game playable.