E3 2011: Looking Forward To The Future

E3 has come and gone, and there are some things that were announced that make me want them RIGHT NOW. However these things are in the far flung future. Games and hardware of the future are coming, and some notable ones I think worth keeping an eye on are listed below.


Tomb Raider


This game is still a ways off. Coming in fall 2012 what was demoed at the Microsoft press conference showed a reboot of the character. A vulnerable Lara Croft, one inexperienced in her travels. It was clear that the character was not over sexualized, and it appeared that she was learning as she went along in the demo. All in all, a great new look and feel. Fear of the unknown and survival are the name of the game.


Battlefield 3


Only having shown the multiplayer at this years E3, EA seems to be positioning this game as the ‘other’ first person shooter this fall to compete with a certain ‘Call of Duty.’ Graphically speaking this game looks astounding. Unfortunately, I am going to have to play the game first, as the Battlefield games have always made me scratch my head. This one has a strong single player focus, but at its heart the Battlefield games have always been about multiplayer. Can it compete with Modern Warfare 3 this year? Only time will tell.


ICO/Shadow of The Colossus HD Collection


I loved, LOVED this games on my PS2. And now they are getting remade in HD on PS3. One Blu-ray, higher-frame, and trophies. I cannot wait for this game. I am going to preorder it as soon as it becomes available. If you don’t know what I am talking about, YouTube is your friend. Seek out these games and just watch. There is a sense of fidelity and emotion when you play those games. Swelling soundtracks, mysterious sounds, and abstract stories make those games a wonder to play.


Catherine


Atlus was showing off this game, and it is scheduled to come out this July. A weird hybrid puzzle/dating sim game. It appears that it it will be telling the story of man plagued by nightmares, and having to decide between two women. Possibly two endings, or multiple endings. The game was lauded for its incredible difficulty when it was released in Japan, and the developers released a patch to fix the difficulty. From I gather this is actually an offshoot story from the Persona universe. Keeping my eye on this one, as it looks like a really good experience.


King of Fighters XIII


Another title announced by Atlus, this SNK fighter looks incredible. The previous iteration, King of Fighters XII, was a broken, unbalanced mess. This has more characters (Mai Shiranui returns!), complete move sets, and what appears to be a competent fighting system. This is the one fighter I am excited for, and I hope that it can compete with the likes of Street Fighter X Tekken, Super Street Fighter IV, and Mortal Kombat.


PlayStation Vita


Sony came out guns blazing with the announcement of the their new portable system. At a selling price of $249.99, its kind of hard not to be excited about this new fangled piece of tech. With enough horsepower underneath to have a similar experience of a PS3 game, two analog sticks, an Organic LED touch screen, Sixaxis motion, and a back touch pad, this system got me pumped for what was to come in mobile gaming. Several of the demos demonstrated how a person could play a game on PS3, save your progress, and then continue that same exact game on your Vita and vice versa. I can only hope that Sony gets their act together with this system, or its doomed from the start.


Wii U


This was the big mystery of E3 this year. What was this new system Nintendo wanted to show us? Could it do HD? Is the controller as crazy as the rumors speculate? Turns out both of those questions were answered with a resounding “yes.” The new system is capable of outputting in HD, up to 1080p, is backwards compatible with Wii accessories and games, and has a tablet like controller with a 6 inch touchscreen. The new controller also sporting two analog sticks, and a full feature set of buttons. The question I have to ask, will it be enough? Will people be intimidated by the new controller? Can Nintendo rope in the publisher’s needed for the system to succeed and compete with the other current consoles that Microsoft and Sony are offering?


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It has been exciting to see what is coming in the near future and I hope that games continue growing and expanding into new areas. It looks to be a rough year with all these games coming out around the same time. The competition has ramped up and gotten tougher. Many of the above titles are a little niche, but they are great games, and I plan on getting them all. Time to start saving…

A fitting first post

Welcome to the first blog post in this blog, which will serve as an introductory post about what I intend this blog to cover and be about, and who I am as a person. It will be a short little blurb (I hope).

So to cover what this blog is all going to be about, videogames. Maybe I will throw some news up here from time to time as well. I want to do some specialized posts to, maybe looking back on history of video games or a review of an older game. I also intend to put up my own reviews, and when I attend a covention, I will attempt to put a blog about what I have been doing there.

And now a little about myself. Where should I start? I guess it would be best to start by saying that I started playing games when I was very young. It must have been in 1988 or so when I started playing video games. I was handed an NES controller over at a cousin's house, and I was immediately captured by what I was presented with on screen. Super Mario Bros. was the first game I ever played. I played just about every major NES game, (To name a few, I played Zelda I & II, Metroid, Tetris) with a few here and there that not many people may have played. Some of those titles included a shmup called Jackal, an overhead RPG called Crystalis (Probably my favorite NES game of all time.)

Sadly I had to part ways with my cousin, and when it was time to get home, I longed to play those videogames that I played when I was over there, and sure enough it was a matter of time before my parents had enough me and my brother's nagging. The funny thing is, the way I had gotten my Nintendo was a little...strange, to say the least. It was, I think a Sunday morning, and I didn't want to eat the bacon that my mother had made for me for breakfast. My dad told me that if I finished my bacon, I would have a Nintendo later that day. My mom took me and brother out shopping and sure enough, when we came back, there sitting on the dining room table in a "Babbage's" (Yeah, remember that store?) bag with a brand spanking new NES in the box waiting to be hooked up to our TV in the living room.

After a few years, in 1991, the Super Nintendo came out, and it was time to upgrade. I remember reading a Nintendo Power with all the pictures and screenshots of what the system looked like, and what the games looked like. I was blown away. Unfortunately the NES we had went by the wayside and we traded in the system. We got the SNES and the rest is history with Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy II, and Final Fantasy III. There were plenty more that I played, but none are coming to mind at the moment.

The whole Genesis and SNES console war thing passed me by. I was a Nintendo fan through thick and thin. I even had every single variation of the Gameboy. I completely skipped what Sega had to offer when it came to their stuff. (Except for the Dreamcast, but that is a different story.) Sometime down the line, I think it was sometime in 1997, me and my brother ended up with a PlayStation (One of those originial grey systems). Final Fantasy VII was quite an amazing game at the time, and for many it still is. Most of the games I played on that system were RPGs, as I had begun to mature and appreciated deeper storylines. Final Fantasy VIII, Star Ocean The Second Story, Thousand Arms, and Grandia were all games I really loved on that system.

For Christmas 2001 one, we managed to get a Playstation 2, and that system was pretty much the first DVD player we also had. There were some many games that I played that naming just one is a bit hard, though I guess that one that sticks out in my mind was Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. The depth of that game was quite awesome, and the amount of content in that game was enough to keep you playing for at least 80+ hours.

Eventually I graduated from highschool and got my own job and I was able to afford my own systems, and I ended up with and Xbox, which was the first system from Microsoft. It was quite the amazing system, having its own hard drive to save games to. Halo was a game that brought many people together and was also the game that gave Microsoft a foothold in the videogame market. There is much else to say here except that I bought Fable, Halo 2, and Panzer Dragoon Orta (probably several other games that I am not mentioning too...)

But anyway the rest is history when it comes to the later generation systems, namely the Xbox 360 and PS3, both of which I currently own, and I am currently updating my personal game library with new games almost every week and month. At the moment I also own several classic systems that I never got around to playing when I was younger. I own a Turbo Grafx-16, Sega Saturn, & Dreamcast. I am looking to get my hands on a PC-FX, a Virtual Boy, and a ZX Spectrum next.

Until next time...