Video Game Tuesday: E3 2019 Predictions

Hey all I’m back with my guesses for this year’s upcoming Electronics Entertainment Expo! It’s my E3 2019 Predictions!

No Next Gen Consoles: I fully don’t expect to hear anything about the next generation of consoles at this year’s E3, especially given that Sony is not even attending at all. We may hear about these later this year at stuff like Tokyo Game Show, or other events, but not at E3.

Slimmer Versions of Current Gen Consoles: This is a fairly safe bet, but it’s not a 100% certainty, though with the rumors of a portable mode only Switch abounding recently I won’t be too surprised to hear about at least that.

Price Cuts to Current Gen Consoles: This is also a fairly safe bet, though with Sony forgoing attendance who knows what will be announced in regards to the Sony side of the console market.

EA SPORTS: I mean come on, given the crap we get yearly from EA I’m going to be more surprised to hear they closed down the EA Sports studios rather than them announcing this years crop of crappy sports games.

Bethesda, BioWare and Ubisoft Kowtowing for forgiveness: I hope to see them fess up to their complete failures over the last year from the poorly done Assassin’s Creed Oddysey DLC, Fallout 76 being completely terrible and the Collector’s Edition Bags being utter garbage and finally BioWare’s utter screw up of Anthem, which is even more of a disappointment than Destiny ever has been.

More Smash Bros DLC Announced: This is a really safe bet, especially since we don’t have a clue on who is coming next to Smash Bros. Personally I’m rooting for Velvet Crowe from the Tales of series, Jenna from Golden Sun (because Smash Bros, and life in general, could always use more kick ass girls) and finally someone from the Fate series, preferably not a Saber class Servant but if it does happen it’d probably be Artoria, just to add to the utter craziness. Will they happen? Who knows, but those would be my preferred entries into the game!

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

Video Game Tuesday: E3 2018 Reactions

This week for Retro Game Friday I’m back with my thoughts on this year’s Christmas in June for gamers. It’s my E3 2018 Reactions!

EA: Well I was expecting pretty much everything that was shown, except for hearing about Jedi: Fallen Order, a game that truly slipped my mind in my predictions post. We knew that it was in development previously, but I had forgotten about it. It’s being developed by Respawn Entertainment, of Titanfall fame, and will release in Late 2019.

Microsoft: We had quite a few surprises, including the news that 4 independent studios have been bought by Microsoft, including Ninja Theory of Heavenly Sword fame, and DmC reboot infamy. My favorite thing was learning about Tales of Vesperia coming to the current set of consoles remastered and featuring everything from the JP only PlayStation 3 version. Considering that it’s one of my top 5 Tales of games, I’m really stoked for this.

Bethesda: We knew about Fallout 76 prior to E3, and rumors were confirmed that it was going to be an Online Multiplayer game. How that works out I’m not too sure, given the turn based nature of previous Fallout games that I’ve played (I haven’t touched 4). Not shocking anyone we learned that Elder Scrolls VI is in development, probably for the next generation of consoles. Maybe they’ll fix the nature of console mods so they don’t screw over mod creators by the time it releases and PlayStation owners won’t be screwed more than the Xbox players already are because they insulted mod makers. I have little hope of that, given the unruly nature of mods.

Square Enix: A really disappointing show, while in the Microsoft conference we learned about Kingdom Hearts III’s release date, we didn’t get much more info from the Square Enix press event. That being said it’ll feature both Frozen and Pirates of the Carribean, so that will be interesting to say the least. No other news of note really came from their event except that Monster Hunter World and Final Fantasy XIV would be getting a collaboration event.

Ubisoft: In probably the most shocking news. and yet not at the same time, from this year’s E3 is the fact that Ubisoft is releasing Just Dance for the Wii. Yes you read that right, for the Wii, not the WiiU or the Switch, the Wii. In less shocking news we saw a bunch of the next Assassin’s Creed game which takes us to Greece as a child of Leonidas of Sparta. Frankly I’m not too excited for that, Unity really ruined the series for me, and despite only hearing good things about Origins, I’ve no desire to get back into that series quite yet. In more disappointing news, Beyond Good & Evil 2 still hasn’t really started development, I mean come on really Ubisoft? Just make the freaking game already.

Sony: In one of the oddest Press Conferences ever, with showgoers being shuffled to multiple locations instead of it being just in a single spot, Sony showed off a bunch of new things including the Spiderman game that I’m personally hoping is amazing. Whether it is once remains to be seen on Launch this September. We also got some more looks at Destiny’s latest “Expansion” Forsaken, which Bungie says will fix all our big issues. I have my doubts, but that’s a post for another day.

Nintendo: In what might just be the biggest news of E3, Nintendo formally announced Super Smash Bros Ultimate, which will feature EVERY character, from EVERY entry in the entire series. Newcomers confirmed thus far are Splatoon’s Squid Kids, and Ridley from Metroid. I was hoping to hear about someone like Isaac from Golden Sun, but Ridley will do for now.

There are lots more stuff that I haven’t covered, but this post is large enough already. I may, or may not, make a Part 2 of this in the near future.

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

 

Video Game Tuesday: Newcomers I Want In The Next Smash Bros

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m looking at who I want to see in the newly announced continuation of Nintendo’s best fighting game. It’s all about Newcomers I Want In The Next Smash Bros!

Isaac (Golden Sun): I’ve been wanting Isaac in the series since before Melee came out, but the fact he’s only appeared as an Assist Trophy is nearly criminal. He has so many different moves with his Psy powers and is perfect for a game like Smash Bros since he can mix it up with some melee abilities. Summoning could easily be his Final Smash if they decide to keep that as a thing in this version of the game.

Son Goku (Dragonball): If even Funimation is asking for Goku to be added to the next Smash Bros, you know it probably ought to happen. I mean with characters like Mega Man, Ryu or even Cloud getting into the game, having everyone’s favorite Saiyan in the next installment would be perfect. I can just imagine him slamming a massive Spirit Bomb into the stage for a Final Smash.

Velvet Crowe (Tales of Berseria): I know that Bandai Namco helped out with the last installments of the game, so letting them pick a character from their RPG series would be awesome as a thank you. Velvet being the first solo Female lead would make an excellent addition to the roster with her various Therion skills and Martial abilities. Any of her Mystic Artes could easily become her Final Smash, or even just making it a powered up version where she uses her Therion abilities for like 20 seconds for increased damage would be cool as well. And let’s be honest, we could use more female characters in the next Smash game.

Banjo and Kazooie (Banjo-Kazooie): I loved the Banjo-Kazooie games and frankly they’d make an awesome addition to the Smash roster. I have no clue what they’d use as a Final Smash, other than some sort of Mumbo transformation.

Real curveballs I never really expect to happen:

Someone from the TYPE-MOON franchises: Any of the multitude of characters of the Nasuverse might be fun to play in a Smash Game. It’d probably end up being Artoria, because of course it would. But I can always hope for Tamamo no Mae, Ryougi Shiki, or Arcueid right? Noble Phantasm’s would be perfect fits for awesome Final Smash abilities.

Nightmare (Soulcalibur): I don’t really want to see Nightmare in a Smash Bros game, but if it was anyone from the Soul series it’d probably be him. Please choose one of the above though Nintendo if you are actually reading this and seriously considering these character suggestions.

Crazy Taxi (Crazy Taxi): I don’t mean the cab drivers, I mean the freaking car itself. Yeah I absolutely expect this to never happen, but if they were to pull it off somehow, it’d be interesting to say the least.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. Are there any characters you’d like to see added to the Smash Series? Leave your answers below in the comments!

Video Game Tuesday: The First Rule of Game Design

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering the first thing I ever learned about Game Design. It’s the fundamental First Rule of Game Design!

What is The First Rule of Game Design: KISS, or Keep It Simple Stupid. Complexity is great, but it prevents some people from playing. A simple to use or play game is always going to appeal to more people than a highly complex game.

Give me an example: Well take Steel Battalion for the Original Xbox. It had a huge ass controller required to play, and it was complex as hell. Then you have something like Halo Combat Evolved, which was stupid easy to play. Which one sold more? Halo obviously.

But that’s a pretty easy thing to do: Sure, it’s fairly simple to decide not to include a huge ass controller that must be used to play the game. But compare a game like Soul Calibur II to Super Smash Bros Melee. Both were of the same generation and Smash Bros was always more popular, despite the fact that Soul Calibur was a lot better looking. Soul Calibur was also stupidly difficult to play. Take the character Ivy for example, she has some of the most complex combos to pull off in any game, ever. She has a combo that will instantly kill the other person, but it requires you to input 32 commands, and some of them are frame inputs. For those unfamiliar with the term it means that you have the space of a single frame of action to input the command correctly. Frames go by quite fast, I don’t remember the exact FPS of the game, but let’s assume the game ran at 30fps, or 30 frames per second. You had a 30th of a second to input a command. That’s freaking insane. Oh and actually getting that move to connect? Nearly impossible unless you could buffer other actions to cover the fact that you are building up that combo input, or else it’s going to be obvious and will miss. So add even more complexity to perfect countless other moves in order to get this single move to work properly. Now look at Smash Bros. It’s incredibly easy to play and while it was difficult to master every tiny nuance of the game, it still wasn’t nearly as hard to do as even getting a single frame input to work in Soul Calibur. Simplicity is key, especially in control methods.

There is a particular reason I hate playing Battlefield games on consoles and that’s because you don’t have the hardware to drive the vehicles with a simple controller. Why the developers decide to make it so difficult is beyond me, but if they made it simpler I bet they’d outsell Call of Duty easily. Star Wars Battlefront II, or any Halo game, have the perfect vehicular control schemes. They are incredibly easy to use, but difficult to master.  Driving a Warthog in Halo while giving your gunner the most cover and stability is incredibly difficult, but it’s still a thousand times easier than successfully taking off in a fighter jet in Battlefield.

Are these enough examples for you to get the point? I hope so, so when you complain about how simple a game is and how it could be more complex really think about what that actually means. It’s really hard to make something simple, but if done right it’s worth doing over any complex scheme any day.

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

Retro Game Friday: Super Smash Bros.

This week I’m covering the original casual fighting game. It’s Super Smash Bros.

Plot Synopsis: Wait you were expecting a fighting game to have a plot?

Plot: See above.

Gameplay: The gameplay was good, although some characters were ridiculously overpowered, like Fox or Samus or Ness. Having only 12 characters was the only downside to this game, but at the time it was a lot of characters.

Music: It took music from the various series represented in the game, as well as some original music. Nothing amazing though.

Art: It shows it’s age now, but back in the day it looked pretty freaking good.

Overall: If you’ve never played it you should give it a whirl, just don’t pay more than a few dollars for it.

For those who like: Nintendo games, Fighters, Casual fighting games.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above, or fighting games with a shallow learning curve.