GAF @ E3: Impressions from the E3 showfloor by GAFfers!

Thanks alot for your impressions guys, can someone tell if the triggers in the WiiU are digital or analog?

I have been looking around and have found nothing clear, and by the looks they seem digital which I find strange.

Thanks again and enjoy your E3
I can't say for sure, but with Batman it felt digital.
 
Metal Gear Rising was amazing, really smooth animation. Only had two minutes with it. They were not shy on the gore.

The way you slice is by holding L2 down, choosing your angle with the right analog stick, then releasing the stick will cut in that direction. You can also while holding L2 press square for horizontal and triangle for vertical cuts. it randomizes the angles a bit when doing so.

Square is hand-held cutting attacks and triangle is foot-held cutting attacks. Both are equal in attack strength. Seems that foot-based attacks had a much wider range and also included stabbing moves.

You can run with R2– pressing square while running slices things up like the crissagrim in SoTN, whereas pressing triangle causes a sliding attack to occur.

Stealth kills are prompted upon being in a certain proximity or scenario, such as being on a roof overlooking an enemy below.

You can launch enemies in the air with a combo that slows down time allowing you to blend things up mid-air. That part was amazing.

You can seriously cut up ANYTHING to Pieces. Limited to geometry of the environment. Every prop could be cut, including huge boulders and large vehicles.

Combos played a lot like Bayonetta. Definitely a Platinum game. Gonna play some more tomorrow.
This is one game that has really gotten on my radar thanks to E3. It looks great.
 
Got to go to the private viewing of Last of Us.

Sweet mother of god, game is fantastic. It deserves all of the Best of Show awards. Nothing comes close.

The embargo lifts at 4pm tomorrow, so expect to hear more then.
 
Day 2 is wrappin' up, so anyone have any new impressions?

Copy and pasted from the other thread.

Messed with some vita games at e3. I tried Jet Set Radio, MGS HD Collection, Lego Batman 2, Ogarythm (don't know spelling), and Miku Hatsune.

All I have to say is MGS, Jet Set Radio and Lego Batman will get my money. JSR didn't use the touchscreen or back touchpad from what I played even though I thought it would. MGS blew me away. Lego Batman 2 was better than I expected. In the demo, you can switch between 2 characters. These games looked really good, I didn't notice framerate issues during gameplay for what its worth.

As for the rhythm games, I guess I have no rhythm. The Hatsune game I had no clue what to do. After watching a video on youtube I realized the shapes matched what button I was suppose to hit. Boy do I feel dumb. I was hitting the screen as the shapes went over the other. Ogarythym I just needed more time with.

Disclaimer: I'm not the best judge of framerates.

For the Wii U, the controller felt good and natural to hold. I tried 4 of the 5 games in Nintendo Land. The Luigi game was fun. Its pretty much a 3-4 on 1 I can't really remember. The person with the Wii U tablet is the ghost and he plays directly off the tablet while the others play off the screen. The ghost is not displayed on the screen unless he boosts.

The Zelda game in nintendo land was 3 player co-op. The person with the Wii U tablet is an archer while the other 2 are swordsmen. All 3 share a set of hearts as life.

Animal Crossing was fun. I think it was a 3-4 on 1. The person with the Wii U tablet plays as 2 armored security guards. Controls both of them with one to each analog stick. The other players team up to gather a numbered amount of candy.

I didn't understand the Donkey Kong game as its using the movement like a six-axis controller to move the roller/vehicle around. This was the only game in Nintendoland I played that was single player.
 
so the day started over at pikmin 3. i spent a while doing the find mii stuff on my 3ds so i wouldn't be spoiled by the guy taking forever on the demo. i spent about 12 minutes at the demo. 7 for the main game stuff and 5 for a boss battle. i haven't played pikmin npc, but i picked up the controls and it was like second nature. point the controller at the screen, push a to call pikmin. push b to throw them. use the z button to switch between types (this one was explained to me).

i haven't played pikmin 2 in eight years, but i think there's a somewhat new thing that each day or area is ranked on how much pokos you can make back at your ship. by the end of the demo, the guy said i had gotten pretty far, so at 955 pokos, i probably did reasonably well. you can get a silver and a gold medal for the day/area (i forgot to ask). the boss fight was using the rock pikmin to break open the shell and the red pikmin to murder the thing. all-in-all, it's pikmin all right. it looks very nice in person, but it was also very obviously a wii game at some point. it's not a graphical showcase, but it retains its charm pretty well.

i checked out zombi u, more specifically, the part that was once killer freaks. i took control of the gamepad and placed zombies around the map. the guy playing the fps game on the cc pro went around trying to capture the flag while i was also using a zombie to capture the flag and using zombies to kill him. you can spend 3 or 4 points to create generic zombies that will hunt out the duder, and 10 points to create a zombie made to capture the flag/zone. you can also spend 12 points to create a superfast zombie. your points as the gamepad guy increase steadily over time. in the end, i won this segment, and then i watched someone play the single-player game.

aside from some weird stuff with the zombies vanishing in a puff of smoke sometimes, the single player was pretty tense, especially with the stakes being that one bite kills you. there are ways around it- you can stab a zombie with a syringe to kill it, or push it back and then aim carefully at the head. i think the longest runtime i saw someone do was about 13 minutes. it looks more like a survival horror game than a traditional first-person shooter. sure is ugly though.

also, the triggers on the back are definitely not analog. or if they are, they're barely analog. this is true of the gamepad and the cc pro. i made sure to double check before i left.

after zombi u i checked out project p-100 it's kinda got the feel of viewtiful joe but in 3d. you use the gamepad to draw a circle around civilians and add them to your gang. i didn't like this because there's no reference point, really. you also use the gamepad to draw up and up-and-right to draw a sword and gun respectively. if you use either one of those you can use it against enemies, but it depletes battery power. battery power can be rebuilt by mashing the x button which makes all the civilians rush the baddies and attack like pikmin. you can also defend and evade attacks as a group.

there was a part where you could go inside a building to solve a puzzle. the game then moved to the gamepad screen. i think everything involving the gamepad screen was pretty dumb and didn't need to happen. for instance, switching between types of civilian-weapons could have been done by pushing a shoulder button or even clicking an analog stick.

i was pretty much done with the nintendo booth after that, so i went over to the sony booth and played littlebigplanet karting. not a whole lot of news here but you drift to get speed, use items to attack, and collect littlebigplanet orb-things. apparently these levels were built just for e3. i got there when there wasn't a line so i got to go right on in. it was neat, but i'm not a huge racing fan.

ni no kuni was next and i played a story segment. i found the localization extremely charming and very reminiscent of dragon quest viii in its style (and how british it was). the battle system was neat. you throw out little guys to attack for you, and you can also cast spells on your own. it's kinda like a tiered-persona system, but you can also move around the battle map. it was almost too much to just jump into, but i think it would make for a fun 30-40 hour time sink when it comes out.

then i played a lot of vita games. i played gravity rush first, and i think the concept is cool, but i didn't actually do much except fly around and get a free shirt afterwards. i played munch's odyssey hd, twisted metal 2 on psone classics (apparently if the psone game didn't have analog support, then neither will these). i also played new little king's story, and it looks and acts just like the wii game. so if you're a vita owner and don't know about this one, i suggest you look it up.

i also played sly cooper: thieves in time. the segment i played was in a circus where sly was robin hood-themed. i could fire an arrow, and using the vita's motion control, guide it to the bullseye if i had initially shot it somewhat off-target. i assume the same works using the motion controls in the dual shock 3 on the ps3 version. the rest of it was platforming up this giant circus, firing arrows with ropes on them to tightrope through the place, and eventually reach a cutscene. i had fun with it, and hope the rest of the game turns out good. it was the only 3d platformer i played at the show, and i'll be keeping an eye on it when it comes out this year.

and then there's sound shapes. this is my game of the show. rayman legends had this great segment where you platform along to music, every jump coming at a beat, and the ropes correlating to guitar parts. sound shapes is like if they took that concept and just made a full game out of it. the game is more about the platforming than the music, and the game doesn't make the music based on the syncing of your platforming. however the more stuff you collect, the fuller the song becomes. the levels i played were very well designed, and the extremely simple look of the game works well in its favor. afterwards, i was shown how to use the editor, and the game actually has a small interactive tutorial anyway. a lot of it used the rear touch pads on the vita, and i thought it worked great, and probably a lot better than a ps3 controller would. this information is probably known, but you'll be able to get the ps3 and vita version together when the game launches, and it's going to go on sale for $14.99. i don't want to sound like i'm shilling for the game, but it's a pretty good price if there are a lot of challenging levels and the game lasts a while. it was one of the few games at the show i came back to later to try again.

i left sony's booth after playing a match of dead or alive 5. i also went on to play persona 4: arena and knowing nothing about fighting games or this one in particular, i thought it was fun. maybe a tad unbalanced, maybe not that deep, but it did its job as a fighter at least. and what i can only assume is sprite-based artwork is fucking gorgeous.

at the south hall, konami's booth had castlevania: lord of shadows - mirror of fate(?). the game sorta reminded me of the recent prince of persia remake more than anything. i didn't hate it or anything, but i was annoyed by the loading times. and the fact that there was an actual screen for the loading times.

sega has a game they're publishing called hell yeah and it's sort of a metroidvania in its level design. you can also buy stuff in the game to improve your little guy as you kill enemies and travel around the fiery place you're in. lots of enemies, some different types of qtes (i think i answered a weird trivia question about dead rabbits for one of them). it's a psn/xbla/pc game, and looks pretty interesting.

i played some more rayman legends, and used the gamepad this time. there's not a lot of interesting stuff to do with it, but i wasn't bored. it is also useful in solving some of the environment puzzles for the guy actually platforming through the level.

assassin's creed iii was also in the ubisoft booth, but it was only the mulitplayer. this was another capture the flag type thing. if you were in an area capturing and the other team showed up, you could only stun them. if another team showed up in your area, you could murder them. i had a couple of kills myself, although i took down many civilians on accident (assuming they were actually the other team). one guy did pretty well in stunning two of us, laying down a smoke bomb, and nearly vanishing before another guy from our team killed him. i liked the multiplayer.

as for the single player, i didn't see anything at the ubisoft booth, the microsoft booth, or the sony booth. the only single player game being played was one kiosk at the nintendo booth. and this was being manned by a ubisoft employee only so no one else could play. according to the guy at the booth, the wii u version is 720p, 30fps, and that is the same across all consoles. the game is the same across all consoles (aside from the gamepad stuff on the wii u), and it looks the same across all consoles. the single-player itself looks pretty nice. i jumped in with the second assassin's creed and was really unsure about the change in scenery, but after today, i'm more interested in seeing how it turns out. i thought it was cool how main character man escaped up a ship's sails, bouncing up the ropes to get there. i was worried that setting this new game in relatively new places like 100 year-old boston and new york would make for few rooftops and platforming to be done, but that appears not to be the case (mostly). i'll keep an eye on this as well.

unfortunately epic mickey 2 for the 3ds wasn't at the show, from what i saw. i played theatrhythm, but wasn't really feeling it. i didn't like the disconnect from looking at the top screen while using the touch screen to trace the stuff up top.

i also saw multiplayer aliens: colonial marines. it was gearbox as xenomorphs against e3 attendees as marines. the game looked like left 4 dead zombie vs. survivor matches, and the gearbox guys were ready to go and glad to kill.

that was pretty much my day. i'll be going back to work tomorrow, but if i forgot anything, i'll mention it here.

oh, and i can't forget the swag.
cjvHi.jpg
 
I forgot to mention Papa y Yo or something like that looked really good. I didn't get to play it though as I had to move on.
 
I really dug MoH multiplayer. I like how the mechanics force cooperation with your buddy. Wanted to play more after it was done.

Same with Crysis3. Demoed on a pc. Bow is a great addition to the arsenal. Allows for new tactical options.

I'm down on Forza. Being sold as an "action racer", but Criterion eats their lunch in that style.

Elder Scrolls Online looks like a dead man walking.

Dishonored may be GAF's goty.

Very disappointed by everything WiiU. ZombiU is the most interesting implementation of the screen, but all it's functions could be better and more easily mapped to the controller. Asymmetrical multiplayer games feel cheap. Mario's implementation feels insubstantive and Nintendoland only offers 5 minigames - each fun and fresh for under 5 minutes. After those 5, I was fine not playing it again. Also, I may be wrong about this, but there ZERO DS's at the Nintendo booth. ZERO.

Multiplayer gears is really fun with proper classes. Great synergy of classes, like grenadiers feeding grenades to tickers to make their suicide blast even stronger, and then kicking the ticker at enemies - effectively make them a missile. Rad.

Last of Us is going to blow people away. Very dynamic combat scenarios that play or very differently according to user choice. Be interested to see how ND handles more open kill boxes. So far so goods

Pretty sure David Cage spoiled Beyond for me. Team seemed to mimic cinema pretty well. Camera tracking through a chase sequence was well framed.
 
Oh, and the Pro Nintendo controller is apparently on the show floor...someone get some hands on time with that!
I used it. Felt alright, the sticks being like that felt a bit weird, but it was similar to the WiiU controller.

Thanks alot for your impressions guys, can someone tell if the triggers in the WiiU are digital or analog?

I have been looking around and have found nothing clear, and by the looks they seem digital which I find strange.

Thanks again and enjoy your E3
Digital. They actually felt pretty deep (the triggers). I actually sat there messing with them and they go much deeper then the PS3's controller triggers. I liked em. The controller though... was weird. It will take getting used to having a touch pad in the middle of your hands, because we are so used to just using buttons when playing games on our TV.


Elder Scrolls Online looks like a dead man walking.

Dishonored may be GAF's goty.
Goddam, I forgot to head over to Bethesda. Wanted to see the mess Elder Scrolls was in!

Last of Us is going to blow people away. Very dynamic combat scenarios that play or very differently according to user choice. Be interested to see how ND handles more open kill boxes. So far so goods
Yes! I want to say a particularly amazing combat moment (completely procedural (you could tell)) but I wont say anything till tomorrow.
 
Awesome impressions AniHawk. Sound Shapes GOTS? Whoa.

Is that a Move waterbottle?

catotheyounger said:
Elder Scrolls Online looks like a dead man walking.
Yikes. It looks like Oblivion reskinned, did you get that impression?

Darknessbear said:
I used it. Felt alright, the sticks being like that felt a bit weird, but it was similar to the WiiU controller.
Did the build feel solid, like the 360 pad?
 
Yikes. It looks like Oblivion reskinned, did you get that impression?

SWOTR in a generic fantasy skin. They played up the action combat, but I feel Tera does a much better job. They were also very selective in how they addressed the game. They only said "MMO" once in the thirty minute demo. "This kind of game," 3 times. And "an online game," 6 times. Felt odd, as if they knew to avoid saying the word in order to avoid creating correlations between itself and the poisonous market.
 
yep! and you can't see it, but you can get a name embroidered on the back of the oswald hat. that was my favorite item from the show, and worth the wait (30-40 minutes).

Haha awesome. E3 swag seems like the best swag.

SWOTR in a generic fantasy skin. They played up the action combat, but I feel Tera does a much better job. They were also very selective in how they addressed the game. They one said MMO once in the thirty minute demo. "This kind of game," 3 times. And "an online game," 6 times. Felt odd, as if they knew to avoid saying the word in order to avoid creating correlatives between itself and the poisonous market.
Oh gawd, that sounds painful to sit through! Jeez. "This kind of game"...who are they trying to kid?
 
yeah no walls of text from me today. kinda don't like how they brought out nsmb2 to the show floor for today instead of you know, any other time.
 
I got some hands on time with Planetside 2 and my hype levels are now through the roof. It's like a Battlefield 2142 MMO with modern graphics. It was really accessible if you're already a BF vet. They even mapped spotting to q and seat switching to the F# keys.

And unlike BF3 the game isn't vehicle starved. You can purchase whatever vehicles you need at the base with the in-game currency unit. The air units were able to put down some impressive ground fire so they're not just there for decoration.

You also get an array of customizable load-outs. There's even a class with an armored suit. I saw the usual array of game settings. Looks like you have the option to use raw mouse input. It seems clear that it's a PC native game.

Overall, I was very impressed. F2P is giving retail a run for its money this year.
 
I got some hands on time with Planetside 2 and my hype levels are now through the roof. It's like a Battlefield 2142 MMO with modern graphics. It was really accessible if you're already a BF vet. They even mapped spotting to q and seat switching to the F# keys.

And unlike BF3 the game isn't vehicle starved. You can purchase whatever vehicles you need at the base with the in-game currency unit. The air units were able to put down some impressive ground fire so they're not just there for decoration.

You also get an array of customizable load-outs. There's even a class with an armored suit. I saw the usual array of game settings. Looks like you have the option to use raw mouse input. It seems clear that it's a PC native game.

Overall, I was very impressed. F2P is giving retail a run for its money this year.

very nice
 
Yeah I didn't know where like half of the Nintendo games were... I asked where all the 3DS games were and nobody at the Nintendo booth seemed to know other than the girls randomly walking around with 3DSes around their necks. I did get to play 3 different NintendoLand games yesterday (AC, DK, and Luigi's Mansion). Animal Crossing's mini-game was my game of the show, actually. It was really, really fun and required some tactical coordination for the Wiimote players and some crazy multitasking for the pad... you actually controlled 2 guards simultaneously with each stick. I really think NintendoLand is perfect as a pack-in because each mini-game is extremely fun, but unless there are more versions of each level, I don't see there being enough content overall to justify a full price. Another game that really surprised me was Rayman Legends. I was pretty down on a lot of Ubisoft games, but Rayman used the gamepad really, really well. It went from a doubtful purchase to a must-buy for me. I also played P-100, which was pretty fun if a bit short to get a good feel for it, Pikmin 3, which felt perfect but again was a bit too short to appreciate its depth, NSMBU, which felt like the Wii game but was absolutely gorgeous in person, and Trine 2, which was also very pretty and surprisingly relied heavily on touch screen controls. It actually felt more like an iPad game except with the benefit of a real d-pad. You could switch between 3 characters at will (a wizard, a thief, and a warrior). The wizard was the most fun, as you could draw lines to make logs and boxes and you could guide certain objects in the environment with your finger. Hopefully it could signify a lot of iOS/Android ports that would benefit greatly from a combination of touch screen and d-pad/analog stick controls.
 
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