LinkHole: E3 Edition
June 24, 2015 by Mary P. Traverse
OH WOW MUCH GAME SO UPCOMING
E3 is all wrapped up, and the announcements came non-stop. Here's some stuff we're stoked for and some stuff we want to know more about:
This is a biggie for us, we're all devoted fans of the series. Rob already talked a bit about it when the trailer was released, and additional info on gameplay has only piqued our interest. Plus! Not only is the game due for release this holiday season, there's now an iOS game called Fallout: Shelter to tide us over until November. (Fear not, Shelter is coming to Android, just not for a few months, sadly.) (That warm sensation you're feeling is Rob's white-hot rage radiating through the aether.)
Rob [via Facebook]: "Bethesda just dropped a bunch of new intel on Fallout 4…and I'm both wildly excited and a wee bit anxious. Will this be the game that finally teaches me to love crafting? Saying your game is like Minecraft doesn't make me reach for my wallet. But I'm not kidding anyone–I'll be lost to the world on November 10."
Mary: I'm a relative new-comer to Fallout compared to these two, but I'm all in and super-excited for this edition. I'm already playing Fallout: Shelter on my phone, and while it's basically SimCity: Apocalypse, if you have any love for this universe, you'll probably want to grab it. I'm not gonna lie, I'm even considering getting that sweet collector's edition so I can get my own Pip-Boy. I never buy collector's editions, but the cosplay possibilities might be more than I can resist.
Mary: It's hard not to see this trailer through the lens of last year's Unity debacle… but let's just be glad that Ubisoft is listening and has given us an excellent playable female character. Evie Frye is exactly the female assassin I want to play and Victorian London is an enticing location, especially the steampunky version shown in the main trailer and the gameplay walkthrough. Of course, I love this series more in theory than practice, but I'll probably pick it up.
This lovely bit of insanity is hand-drawn, hand-inked, and brilliantly captures the animation style of the 1930s. Coming to Steam in 2016, Cuphead also features original jazz recordings and according to their website, "is a classic run and gun action game heavily focused on boss battles."
Mary: I'm definitely checking this out as soon as I can.
Reminiscent of the quiet melancholy and beauty of games like Limbo or Journey, Unravel is the tale of Yarny, a character made of yarn that slowly unravels as you progress through the gameplay. So far no release date has been announced, but it appears that the game will be available for both PC and console. Learn more at Unravel's website.
Dimensions is Lego's answer to Skylanders.
Mary: First of all, can we talk about how adorable that trailer with Joel McHale is? I love the Lego games and am particularly excited by the IPs included here (SO MANY IPS!! Portal!! Back to the Future!! Lord of the Rings!! OMG!!). I'm not sure I can afford to get caught up in collecting all the minifigs, but the temptation might be too great.
Xbox One will be backwards-compatible with Xbox 360 games.
Sort of. Let's call it "backwards compatible."
Paul [via Facebook]: "They're starting with a list of 100 by the holidays (there's a couple dozen now), and they're going to add more based on gamer feedback. Presumably it will be most big games eventually–but also presumably, I'll never get to play Earth Defense Force 2017 on the One."
Rob: This may be too little, too late for me, especially given Steam's announcement of real live Steam Machines coming out soon. I haven't done my homework yet, though.
Also note: Until this fall, you have to be in the invitation-only Xbox Preview program to play the 360 games. Here's a list of the current titles (including BattleBlock Theater!).
The Kinect is dead. Or is it?
Yeah, so it looks like we won't have the Kinect to kick around any more…for a while.
Rob: Note that Microsoft was quick to cover its butt and let us know that some forthcoming games will use Kinect, but it rings kind of hollow to me. While the tech has just never been quite ready, it was still a rare and wonderful example of Microsoft taking a risk in the console market. I wish they'd been able to deliver on its promise, but I feel confident that future generations of controllers will have some Kinect genes in their DNA.
Mary: This looks very cool, and I'm a sucker for open-world RPG. Not sure how I feel about the faceless avatars, but I'd at least like to try it out.
Rob: This looks beautiful. I love the facelessness, mostly because it feels like a stab at uniqueness in a market filled with Uncanny Valley residents. But I have a bad feeling I'll be more interested in watching Ashen than in playing it.
Paul: This is maybe my favorite shooter ever (as discussed in our very first episode of Nerdhole!), and certainly my favorite game so far on the Xbone. PvZGW2 looks just as lovingly and conscientiously done as the original, with many improvements (detailed by Kotaku here) that address my main complaints about the game. First and foremost, they've added split-screen, side-by-side-on-the-couch multiplayer. I also love that every game mode is getting an offline AI mode—and, not surprisingly but thankfully, all your characters and upgrades will transfer.
Breakout character Michonne gets her own Telltale game!
Rob: Well, this sounds like fun. I wasn't the biggest fan of the first Telltale TWD game, but I've come to believe that may have been controller-related frustration, as I've had great good fun with subsequent Telltale games. We don't know yet whether Danai Gurira will voice the character, but we can hope.
It's not out for well over a year, but Bioware had to shake things up a little with this announcement.
Rob: Wow, the trailer is fucking gorgeous. I was a very late Mass Effect adopter, but I've played each of the three titles many times through and will no doubt dive into this as soon as it comes out.
This long-awaited exploration game (on its second E3 now) finally gets a preview.
Paul: I've been waiting for this forever, and my expectations are admittedly probably too high. I've been imagining my ideal crew of repurposed Mass Effect characters, privateering around a sandbox galaxy and occasionally landing the Mako for open-ended planetary exploration and swashbuckling. It's still hard to tell what the game's actually "about," but … my expectations are (probably appropriately) muted. I hope the prosaic-looking pieces that we see here come together into something more. Watch the video and see what you think.
Categories: LinkHole, Spoilers, Video Games, Tags: E3
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