Video Game Tuesday: Breath of the Wild Impressions

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m taking a look at what Nintendo brought to this year’s E3! It’s my Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Impressions!

What did we know so already?: Not much we know that it will feature the first fully open world in the Zelda franchise, which from what we’ve seen is pretty damn impressive. I’ll admit I really want to be playing it right now as I’m writing this, but as I don’t own a Wii U and it’s not out I’ll have to deal with it. It will feature open ended game play, although there is probably an intended path for players to play the game, it’s completely up to the player where they go. We also knew that Epona wouldn’t run into trees anymore.

What did we learn this year?: That Link will be able to climb anywhere he wants, that the world works almost like it would in real life, a boulder pushed down a hill into enemies will crush them, setting fire to a grassland will cause a huge fire, and if it rains it will go out. There will be storms where lightning can hit the ground and you’ll want to stop using any metal weapons, although you could throw it at an enemy to attract the lightning. There will be a completely new equipment portion of the game, with gear for different environments and weather. You’ll want warmer clothes if you go climbing up a mountain, and even warmer if you want to go to the peak of said mountain.

We know that he gets a new item called the Sheikah stone which acts sort of like a tablet computer for link. I assume this will hold various hints, or knowledge we learn through the game. We also know he get’s a new item that lets him levitate objects like planks and the like from afar. Link can also use his shield as a surfboard on hills and attack while shield surfing. I’m probably forgetting a few things, but those were the big things that hit me from the presentation and what we learned afterwards.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! See you all next week!

 

Video Game Tuesday: E3 2016

Hey all for this week’s Video Game Tuesday I’m going to go over about each of the various conferences and my thoughts on them. It’s all about E3 2016!

Day -1:

EA: Nothing really surprising came out of the EA conference on Day -1, except that FIFA 17 would have a story mode. Other than that we heard more about Battlefield and their other yearly franchises. Frankly EA was as always a disappointment. I’m honestly surprised that we didn’t get much info on Mass Effect Andromeda, but than this is EA we are talking about. Titanfall 2 was also shown, although frankly we’ve known that it would be coming to PS4 for a few years now, so it wasn’t too surprising.

Bethesda: More about Dishonored 2 was learned, We also heard about the Skyrim Remasters for the current gen with mod support planned. That is pretty cool, but frankly I would’ve loved to hear about Elder Scrolls 6 being in development rather than hearing that it wasn’t going to happen for at least a couple years.  We heard about ESO getting more love, but frankly I could care less about a game that tries too hard to be an MMO Skyrim and fails miserably.

Day 0:

Microsoft: Lots of surprises here, with not only did we get to learn about the upgraded Xbox One S, we also learned we can now make custom Xbox One Controllers, which is nice enough for those of us with more money to spend. Dead Rising 4 was announced, A sequel to State of Decay, A card game spin off of The Witcher series for Gwent, hilarious card for Roach by the way, ReCore and a game from the developers of Limbo. Than to end it all we learned about Xbox Scorpio, which Microsoft said will be the most powerful console ever. Unfortunately we later learned that the main reason it has so much hardware behind it is to deliver on Microsoft’s VR machine. Wether or not it will flop remains to be seen, but the fact that it won’t have any significant impact on gameplay compared to the One S is worrying.

Ubisoft: Opening up with Just Dance, a series I never got into, Ubisoft than showed off more stuff about future games including future developments for The Division, their attempt at capturing Destiny’s players. We also got further looks into Watch Dogs 2, which sounds awesome, hopefully they can refine the concept from the first game and make it much better than what we got the first time around. We also got a look at an open world sports game, called Steep.

Sony: Sony started with gameplay from the upcoming God of War 4, another series I’ve never gotten into. Resident Evil 7 was announced, and it will be Sony VR compatible for those horror junkies, two things I’m definitely never going to enjoy together. We also learned about a new Quantic Dream game called Detroit: Become Human, which looks to be interesting, though I have no hopes of it actually being more than a glorified choose your own adventure made into a game. We saw tons of gameplay footages from upcoming games, including Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Horizon Zero Dawn (That game with Robot Dinos) and Final Fantasy XV. FFXV is also getting VR compatibility, which might be pretty interesting although reports from E3 say it was disappointing. Than we got a real surprise in the fact that Kojima is working on a new game with Norman Reedus called Death Stranding. The trailer was pretty creepy, and pretty vague. Honestly don’t know what to think about it. Probably the biggest news however was that The Last Guardian finally has a release date of this year on October 25th.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. I’ve left out some stuff, but feel free to comment on it below!

Video Game Tuesday: E3 2016 Predictions

It’s nearly that time of year again and I’m going to make some guesses for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! It’s my E3 2016 Predictions!

Things that will be discussed for sure: Sports games (ugh), Call of Duty (let it die already!), Destiny (let’s see how Bungie shoots themselves in the feet this year), and Zelda Wii U. Now for my actual guesses!

Nintendo: I think I remember reading something on Kotaku a month or two back about how Zelda will be the only thing discussed during E3, but I bet we’ll get some word about the NX, if only to learn when we can learn about it in an upcoming Nintendo Direct.

Sony: They’ll be talking about some first party exclusives, and there’s good chances of the PS4.5 being announced formally.

Microsoft: Like Sony, there is a good chance that they’ll be talking about the Xbox One hardware updates they have planned. There’s also a very good chance at them announcing Halo 6. Oh and they’ll bring the yearly sports games onto their conference stage like always.

Ubisoft: Watch Dogs 2 will be announced most likely, hopefully it’ll take the concept of the first game and make it a masterpiece like they did with Assassin’s Creed and Assassin’s Creed II. There will most likely also announce Far Cry 5, but who knows. Thankfully Assasin’s Creed has been confirmed to be taking a break this year, hopefully they can reinvigorate the series, but no high hopes from me on that.

Bungie: They’ll announce the September Destiny expansion and barf up some lines about they’re going to knock our socks off with a real story in Destiny 2. I’ll believe it when I finish playing the review copy.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday! What are some of your guesses about what will be talked about or announced this year? Leave a comment below!

Video Game Tuesday: Crowdfunding

This week on Video Game Tuesday I’m covering a topic I’ve heard discussed pretty often in the last few months. It’s all about Crowdfunding!

What is Crowdfunding?: It’s a process where people, usually via a website like Kickstarter, donate money to a cause. Sometimes it’s wildly successful like it was with Pillars of Eternity. Other times it’s just plain odd, like that one time with the potato salad.

Why do people get upset at this?: Well because most of the time it turns out to be a flop, or doesn’t deliver what was promised. There’s one guy out there who is very vocal in the gaming community who had a successfully funded crowdfunding project that’s never been made.

What do I think about it all?: If it’s successful and produces what is promised I’ve got no problem with it. I’ve got problems when assholes like the guy I mentioned above receive that money and than do nothing. Some people call it E-Begging, I personally don’t agree with that all the time. It’s really on a case by case basis for me, as some like Koji Igarashi’s Bloodstained project and Keiji Inafune’s Mighty No. 9 are about rebooting series where the original publisher has decided to either run into the ground or just flat out ignores.  I think that those projects are good.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.

 

Video Game Tuesday: My E3 Reactions

This week on Video Game Tuesday I’m covering what I thought about this years E3. It’s all about My E3 Reactions!

Conferences: Well Sony and Microsoft did the best this year in terms of conferences, Microsoft did great with the HoloLens and pushing that tech. I’m looking forward to seeing that technology become amazing. Sony did great with dropping all sorts of bombshells. That being said there were problem areas in those two conferences, the EA interlude in the Microsoft one and Sony had some people on stage that were just boring to listen to. Nintendo on the other hand did it’s own thing, which I can only think of shooting itself in the foot. Ubisoft, EA and Square Enix were the publishers who had conferences this year other than the Big 3 and they had medicore conferences, with Square being the best of the three. EA’s was easily the worst.

Big Announcements:

Fallout 4 console editions will have Mods: I’m excited for that, although the PS4 may not get them which makes me sad.

The Last Guardian is alive: It should be coming out in 2016, but I won’t believe it until I have the game in my hands.

Shenmue III is on Kickstarter: Holy crap, I’ve always had a soft spot for the series since my cousin introduced me to it years ago.  It got funded within hours, making it the fastest funded and most expensive video game on Kickstarter! I’m hoping they also re-release the older games for the PS4.

Final Fantasy VII is being remade completely: I never saw this coming as it’s the console gamer equivalent of Half-Life 3. Hopefully the remake is good, but I personally would’ve preferred it if they had chosen IX or VI instead of VII.

Xbox One is getting a new controller: Sort of, it’s a $150 version that includes neat features that are completely unnecessary and it probably won’t sell very well.

Xbox One is getting backwards compatibility: The only thing I can see that the Xbox One has over the PlayStation 4 at this point, having backwards compatibility. I wish the PS4 would have this coming too, but it sounds like it’s not going to happen. Oh well.

Xbox One is getting Early Access: This will probably become a nightmare, if the Steam Early Access is anything to go by.

What Didn’t Get Announced:

Final Fantasy XV: No release date was announced, although this may be announced later in the year at another conference. I’m hoping so at least.

Zelda Wii U: No release date or window. Nintendo has been slowly losing my trust over the last 7 years, but I keep hoping they’ll bring their heads out of the ground soon.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!