What Am I Playing Now - Part VI

Damn, it's been a while.

As far as gaming is concerned, this summer has been particularly light for me. I moved in early July, been stuck in boxes for basically 6 weeks and - more importantly - my wife gave birth to our first child (it's a girl!) two weeks ago. So I was missing both time and money in the last 3 months to truly enjoy every shiny new game on the market. Thankfully I didn't really miss that much.

I bought a Wii U (the Legend of Zelda limited edition) so I played a bit of Wind Waker, which put a massive smile on my face for the 5 hours or so I've put into it. Even my wife enjoys watching me play it. It truly is a joyful, colorful and still - 11 years later - very beautiful game. You can't help but be happy playing it.

Also on that same Wii U I found the Call of Duty : Black Ops II game for a whopping 4.99$. I'm not known to be a massive CoD fan, but a few days earlier I played a bit of Zombies mode (in the first Black Ops) with my brother at his place and rather enjoyed it. The way I see it, I bought the CoD Zombies mode for five bucks, and that doesn't sound half-bad, even if the Wii U GamePad is quite massive to handle for a twitchy FPS like this. I might do the Single-Player campaign at one point. More on that if it ever happens.

At the hospital for basically a week with the wife and baby, I had time to try a few handheld games. I got to the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time 3D and through the first two worlds in Super Mario 3D Land on my 3DS XL. Zelda is awesome because it's freaking Zelda, and Mario is great so far but I'm still getting used to the control scheme. It feels a bit unnatural how they did it. Anyway, the level design is - so far - simple but still very enjoyable.

Still at the hospital, I started Dragon's Crown on the PS Vita. Fun game so far, since I'm a sucker for loot-driven games. The story so far is uninteresting and most ladies involved happen to have exceedingly massive breasts (which at this point are a turn-off more than anything else), but the satisfying gameplay makes up for it. I'm not even two hours in though, so we'll see how this goes.

Back home, I played a lot of Fez (Free on PS+) on the PS4, but I still don't feel like I get that game, however fun it is so far. It's kind of funny because before starting it, a guy from a podcast I listen to weekly talked about how that game made him feel not smart with all its secrets and weird stuff going on. I understand how he feels I think. The game says I'm more than 70% in, but I don't feel closer to the end than 6 hours ago.

With the PAX sale going on this past week on the PS Store, I got Transistor and Trials Fusion for 13.49$ each, but I still haven't installed them on the console. They're definitely next on the PS4 list along with Plants vs Zombies : Garden Warfare, which I got for 18$ (!!) brand new yesterday. I can't wait to give all those a try, but it will be hard since Destiny is right around the corner...

And on the PS3 I'm veeeeery slowly going through MGS3 HD, enjoying it somehow even if I'm really terrible at stealth games. I'm almost 7 hours in but I'm pretty sure it took me 15+ realtime hours to get there. After that I'll go through Crysis 3 (free last month on PS+) then it's all Borderlands 2 DLCs and The Pre-Sequel.

Reading all I've just written, I realize this summer wasn't THAT light. But when something as important as the birth of your first child is involved, everything else seems insignificant!

What I took away from E3

The title makes it seem like I actually went to Los Angeles and participated in the festivities. Sadly, nothing of the sort happened and I had to enjoy the experience via various video, livestreams and articles around the web to construct any sort of review/opinion on the matter.

First off, let's talk about the "new" hardware we've seen, the PS4. Let's just skip over the looks of the actual console, because while it does look good, a fine piece of design I'd say (I also liked the fact that they brought the mind behind the design on-stage. Nice touch), it hardly matters when you'll be putting a disc in and playing it. Anyway, the announcements that garnered the most applause from the audience were the "No Restriction on Used Games or on lending games whatsoever", the "No online verification needed to play", the "PS+ on all three PS3, PS4 and PSVita" and - the best part - the 399$ price tag. In that regard, Sony clearly knocked Microsoft out. Although rumors are circulating around the Internet about the fact that Sony's policy towards used games might not be as open as the conference led us to believe. But nothing has been confirmed yet, we'll see! Anyway, I was also excited at the number of indie developers Sony were getting along with, including Supergiant Games, of Bastion fame. The first-party exclusives (The Order : 1886 looks like an awesome steampunk game) in development also had me pretty pumped for the first year of this new console. Some multiplats were also showcased and looked quite appealing to me. Destiny looks and feels like a gigantic project undertaken by Bungie (read a good piece on it in EDGE lately) with amazing potential, while Ubi's Watch Dogs showed some spectacular depth in gameplay, a wildly interesting story setting (so far) and jaw-dropping graphics.

Overall, I was so happy during the conference I immediately pre-ordered the PS4 from two different places when it became available later that night.

I won't lie, I have a slight bias towards Sony's consoles. But to my defense, I went out of my way to try and defend Microsoft's position when talking to people. I'm not a big Microsoft fan, I work on a MacBook, my 360 is barely ever used at home and various stuff like that would make you think I hate Bill Gates' company. Which is not true. I try and be as objective as possible when arguing about consoles. I try not to fall in stupid, pointless arguments about the "better" choice and I will try to distantiate myself as much as possible from my subjective feelings when talking consoles.

Anyway, I haven't watched Microsoft's conference. I heard many negative things about it, except for the games which looked pretty impressive when I watched a few trailers. And when it's all said and done, for a gamer like me, Games should be and usually are the central focus of every discussion. If you have good games, your console will fare better. So that's why I went on and watched a few trailers, to get soaked in and better evaluate the console for the games it offers and not for some controversial marketing choices. Ryse : Son of Rome looks like promising take on a somewhat forgotten historical era (a least in video games) with visceral combat and tactical warfare, although I'm not sure how I feel about all the button prompts/QTEs... Games like The Witcher 3 and MGS V are no-brainer AAA titles. The only other one I saw was Titanfall, and I really liked what I saw there as well. It looks like a somewhat futuristic Battlefield with mechs and other neat concepts. So while everyone is shitting on the XBone for various reasons, they still had some very decent software to show for. And you can't go wrong with good games.

I haven't watched Nintendo's either, but I still took in a few trailers to see whether or not this console was worth it before the next Zelda game gets released. The trailer for Super Mario 3D World looked absolutely epic, everything you'd expect from a Mario game, like they've been doing at Nintendo for over two decades... just pure gold. Pretty much the same goes for Mario Kart 8, although I wish they had come up with a better name for it... I'm one of those who feels like "numbered" series are shooting themselves in the foot. Why? Not only you are saying to the audience you have no imagination, but you also make it seem like there was A LOT of games before it, which makes it seem like nothing more than a rehash of old ideas. Which is why, even if I'm far from being a Call of Duty fan, I appreciate their idea of not calling their games by the number since the first one. I know you'll find numbers like in MW3 or BOII, but at least we're not simply at CoD9 or something, which would make it even worse.

Anyway, back to Mario Kart 8, it seems to me like Nintendo could make 89 Mario Kart games and somehow still come up with new tracks, new concepts, new ideas. They're just THAT good. I'm not buying a Wii U for that game only, but holy crap it looks fun... The last thing I saw from Nintendo this week was The Legend of Zelda : Wind Waker HD. If I remember correctly, Wind Waker is in the top 10 of my favorite games of All-Time, amongst the legends of GoldenEye, Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil 4, Super Metroid and Bioshock. It tells you how much I loved this game. I think it's a great opportunity for the many who shunned the GameCube version for idiotic reasons like "It looks childish".

So I haven't been able to get through ALL the games yet, but I've seen enough to be excited about the next generation in gaming. Bring on the PS4!