I watched most of E3’s press conferences yesterday, and I was not overly impressed. Square-Enix should have just skipped it, their 30 minute presentation pretty much only announced a new Dragon’s Quest game, and Ubisoft hit cut and paste from last year. Which left Sony, and while Sony’s show was at least interesting, and it had this awesome trailer:
The rest of it was stuff we expected or that we had seen before, but with Sony’s amazing production values that at least made the show worth watching.
I am not sure what happened yesterday, last years pressers were so good, but this year, barring Microsoft and Bethesda on Sunday, the shows could have just been boiled down to a couple of new trailers. It would have saved us all a bunch of time that is for sure. Oh well, at least there are a ton of good games on the horizon, and I can’t wait to play them.
2018 E3’s Pre-shows started this weekend, and for the most part they were pretty good, with the exception of EA who pretty much just said they were sorry for being greedy jerks, Battlefield would also have Battle Royal, and Respawn was making a Star Wars game with Jedi in it. This left the weekend to Microsoft and Bethesda. They did not disappoint.
Microsoft kicked off the show with Halo: Infinity:
Then ended with Cyberpunk 2077!
What was between those two massive trailers was non-stop game announcements. Most of them were not exclusive, but the message was clearly, “We have plenty of games to play!” Other big things were that yes they are indeed working on a new Xbox despite rumors, as well as a streaming service, and that they bought four studios (Ninja Theory!!) and are creating a new one. Also Forza Horizons 4 looks amazing!
After all of that hotness it was up to Bethesda, and while they had less games to show, they were all pretty amazing.
New standalone expansions for Prey and Wolfenstein, Doom 2 Eternal (AKA Hell on Earth), more Rage 2 with excellent digs at Walmart Canada, more info about the biggest Fallout ever 76 (AKA Fallout: The Division), and they ended it with a one two punch of STARFEILD!
And THE ELDER SCROLLS 6!!!
Of course they said Starfield is a next generation experience, and that The Elder Scrolls 6 doesn’t come out until after that, so who knows when they are coming out, but with Microsoft hinting about the Xbox Two being around the corner, we could see Starfield late next year and TES:6 in 2020. However, it may be a safe bet to add an extra year to each of those games, so 2020 and then 2021 respectively.
I will be watching what goes down today, but Sunday was a good day for games, and I am expecting the usual fireworks from Sony, so today should be just as good if not better.
Yesterday PUBG Corp did something very dumb, they sued Epic Games for copyright infringement. While I get why they are angry, PUBG pays Epic to license their engine, and then Epic turns around uses that money to create a Battle Royal variant for their game Fortnite. Which at first played very similar to PUBG. It must be hard watching a bunch of players leave to a similar game made by the people you pay to help you with your game, but this is just a bad look.
PUBG should have responded to Fortnite: Battle Royal by doubling down on making their game better. To be fair it has gotten better on both Xbox and PC, but it is still poorly optimized, and it doesn’t have the best aesthetic. Not to mention its loot system is pretty lame. Though despite all that I like PUBG more. The moment to moment tension in PUBG is better than the arcade-y thrill of Fortnite.
Which is another problem for PUBG’s lawsuit, while Fortnite started out very similar to PUBG, they are vastly different games now. I am not sure how copyright works in Korea, but they would have a hard time making people think they are the same game here in the states. Especially since the game industry is full of clones of one another, and a lot of them are far more egregious than Fortnite.
Look, it was bad form for Epic to literally say, “we like PUBG so much we are going to make our own Battle Royal game”, but suing people for bad form is not good business practice, and it makes all the gamers out there dislike PUBG for its epic case of sour grapes. If PUBG wants to get its gamers back it needs to buckle down and make its game better, not sue Epic for bogus copyright infringement. That will do the opposite.
Well this was unexpected. We were expecting a Battle Royal mode, which since they increased Battlefield V’s player count to 64, I am sure it is coming, but what we got was a new co-op mode with randomly generated objectives. You and three other friends will do your best take on different scenarios from early parts of World War II. As the game gets older, it will get later on in the war. Also, there are no crates in Battlefield V. You of course can buy cosmetics for your soldier, but you don’t need to. They are hoping, that much like Fortnite, you will really need that scorpion bomber jacket, so you won’t mind throwing down your hard earned cash, or grinding your way to get it.
If fan reaction is anything to go by, people are really excited to head back to WWII with Battlefield. All I know is that they had better remake Wake Island! You can’t have a Battlefield in WWII without it. So if Battlefield’s tried and true gameplay with a little bit of Left 4 Dead excites you, Battlefield V launches this October. I know I will probably be getting it, and yes, I will probably have a lady avatar!
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (aka CoD: BlOps 4) was announced yesterday, and for the first time in a long time Call of Duty is changing things up. Instead of the usual frantic multiplayer we have been playing for a really (really) long time, it is now 5×5 and adopting roles and unlockable soldiers, so if you were thinking Rainbow 6: Siege by way of Black Ops, you would be right. Meanwhile instead of a five hour over the top campaign to give the game a focus and a theme, they have instead added a mode called Blackout. You and dozens of players are dropped in to one map, and the last person/crew surviving wins, AKA PUBG/Fortnite. The only thing that looks the same is the Zombies mode.
It is clear the well ran dry with the creative team over at Treyarch, so they just looked around and copied what was popular, and what is insane is that it might be working. I mean this is the first CoD: BlOps I have been interested in, in years. Battle Royal with helicopters and verticality? That sounds amazing. A faster more streamlined Siege? Yes please! And co-op zombie killing has always been fun. I mean it is pretty much just their horde mode anyway.
While it is a shame Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is ditching a lot of what long time fans have come to expect, at least they are copying all the right games. If they can deliver everything in one well balanced and polished title, it will be hard to say no to. Being able to switch from Siege to PUBG, and then take on a zombie horde all on the fly with the same group of friends sounds like a lot of fun. So I will be following CoD: BlOps 4 with great interest. It may be the one that finally brings me back in to the fold, but only because it stole from all the right people.
