Video Game Tuesday: E3 2017 Reactions

 

Hey all I’m back with my thoughts on this years Electronic Entertainment Expo! It’s my E3 2017 Reactions!

Nintendo: Holy crap they announced a new Metroid Prime and a remake of Metroid II! Not only that, but they announced a couple of DLCs for Zelda: Breath of the Wild and gave us a release date for Super Mario Odyssey. Honestly I’m just happy at the fact that new Metroid games are coming out, but everyone should take this with a grain of salt. The last Metroid game to be released was Other M and we all know how terrible of a game that was.

Sony: Nothing really major, but they are definitely doubling down on the PlayStation VR. They also told us that God of War’s next game is set to release in Early 2018. Not only that, but they showed off what might become the best Spider-Man game ever released. I’m actually excited to play that, and we’ve had official confirmation that we won’t be chasing balloons!

Microsoft: They formally announced Project Scorpio’s details, and gave it’s final name, Xbox One X. Frankly they should have just kept Xbox Scorpio, it’s not as ridiculous a name. You’d think they’d have learnt from Nintendo’s mistake with the WiiU.  Crackdown 3 is finally getting released though, so there’s that to look forward to.

Ubisoft: Showed off the now officially confirmed Assassin’s Creed: Origins that takes place in Egypt. I got burned badly by Unity so I’ll probably skip Origins unless I get a review copy. They also showed more of Far Cry 5, and announced Skulls and Bones, which takes AC4: Black Flag’s ship combat system and makes it a standalone game. As I actually enjoyed the ship battles in Black Flag, I might be interested in playing, but I also enjoyed going over and taking down the enemy crew after ramming them.

EA: More sports games of course, Star Wars Battlefront II (DICE) and a new IP from the people behind Mass Effect, Anthem that is pretty much Destiny. If you’ve read my past columns on Destiny you might be able to guess at how thrilled I am by the prospect of another “Destiny”. /run EndSarcasm.exe

Bethesda: Skyrim for the Switch, boring. Wolfenstein II is a real game and is releasing on October 27th though, so maybe Bethesda didn’t just go for obvious cash grabs for the year.

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

Video Game Tuesday: Thoughts on the Switch

Hey all for this week’s Video Game Tuesday I’m going to cover my thoughts on Nintendo’s upcoming console/portable system. It’s all about my Thoughts on the Switch!

Price and Release Date: It releases on March 3rd, and is priced at $300. This sounds okay, although you’ll get more pure gaming and multimedia functionality out of a PS4 Slim for the same price.

Controls: The Pro Controllers sound pretty good, although it will be fairly pricey to get extras.  The Joy Con controllers though are a bit worrisome. The halves themselves can be used individually and from the way it looks they are pretty small when that happens. I know a lot of friends who have large hands, unlike a certain orange lunatic, and they won’t be super pleased to using the Joy Con in that mode. In addition they are keeping motion controls in each controller type. That piece of news was less than welcome for me, frankly I was sick of Motion controls a day after playing Wii Sports for the first time.

Games: So we got confirmation that Breath of the Wild is going to be a launch title, which is great. That being said it only running for 3 hours on the go is a bit of a bummer. New titles that were announced include, 1 2 Switch (think Wii Sports but party games), Arms which is a crazy motion controlled fighting game, Super Mario Odyssey (A new Mario game that takes place in our world) and Splatoon 2. There were others, but those were the highlights from Nintendo.

Third Party: We’ll be getting various third party games, including Skyrim (although it’ll launch in Fall 2017 for some reason) and a Bomberman game. Bandai Namco has said they’ll be bringing Tales games to the system, but frankly I’ll believe that when I see it.

Online: Probably one of the biggest shockers was that Nintendo is finally going to be charging for Online play, which is unsurprising albeit very late to the game. There will be a free game each month people will be able to try out. Unfortunately when that month is over, so is the try out period. Frankly that was a really stupid move on Nintendo’s part, but if it includes major first party titles and AAA games relatively soon after their retail launch it would be better.

Overall: Frankly I’m on the fence still, there were lots of interesting things, but I don’t know if they can interest me to pay $300 for a system that won’t run games as well as my PS4 will.

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