The original five minute video of his review is here:
Background
Currently this week, E3, one of the biggest electronic conferences annually, is taking place in Los Angeles. Yesterday held the press conferences for XBox, EA, Sony, Ubisoft, and more.TotalBiscuit's review is on the XBox press conference, which I happened to watch live. I know everything that happened, so when he gave his comment, I figured I'd give mine and compare/contrast with him.
Use the timestamp headers to identify where I'm commenting on in the video.
0:05 - "We brought games this time, really!"
Yeah, really. The first press conference where the new XBox One was revealed was just full of, "You can watch movies! You can watch TV!" and on and on. People don't care about TV on their XBox. I don't want TV in my XBox. I want games.
Granted, all things considered, they really did bring games this time. Almost the entire 90 minutes was dedicated to games, with very little on the Kinect or TV at all.
0:11 - Metal Gear Solid
The conference opened with this game trailer. I cannot remember the name of the gentleman who directed this video, but he is kind of the Stephen Spielberg of game trailers. And I gotta admit, this one looked pretty cool. If you have to, go look it up online and watch it for yourself. The character dynamics look really developed, and the bad guy is really [expletive].
And I've never even played any of the MGS games before.
Do I agree with Biscuit? I agree with his honest review, which is different from this pseudo-humorous, overly critical one. It looks interesting enough.
0:22 - "Exclusive... no, not exclusive."
Alright, this was really stupid. The community manager up and posts that the game will be available only for the XBox One on Twitter. Later, he corrects himself and says that it won't. And yet the original, incorrect tweet is not deleted. That is to say, "We know we made a mistake, but the people who come late and see this tweet don't have to know that. They can think they're getting something special." I have a problem with that.
0:40 - XBox 360
...what was even the point of this? Why are they remaking the XBox 360 and charging more for it, when everyone already has theirs – it's been 7 years since the 360 came out – and anyone looking for a new one would just buy the One? Makes no sense from a consumer standpoint.
0:50 - World of Tanks
So we're bringing hugely successful PC titles to console because the PC platform has so many more players. Alright, I can buy that.
But we're also going to completely misrepresent the game. I ain't buying it no more.
This also raises the question: who will be the first company to get their hands on League of Legends or Smite? Therein lies guaranteed money.
1:05 - Dark Souls 2
"I like Dark Souls. It's great fun to play," SAID NO ONE EVER!!!! And contrasting that fun Indie title from before (the Magic Token game, which we know almost nothing about) with one of the most gnarly (as far as creatures go) games around is pretty bad. Moreover, the tech used to run Dark Souls is old as dirt. Have they done anything to upgrade it? Not by the looks of it, no.
1:27 - Ryse: Son of Rome
First of all, I feel like this Ryse guy was named just for the trailer. "The gods knew that a hero would rise." ...or, erm, ryse. Yeah. Fail.
Megan and I actually watched this one together, since she's into the whole Ancient Greek and Roman thing. I guess I am too to some extent. Cheezy, she called it. Way overdone. "They didn't fight like that," she said in paraphrase. "You don't just go in yelling, 'Whoo! Destroy the tower!' and fight some guys and then 'Destroy the tower!' and in come the catapults and the tower goes down and you storm the city."
Of my own opinion, I have problems with the gameplay. In open combat games, like that, I need to be able to play the game how I want to play, not PRESS THE BUTTONS THAT THEY TELL ME TOO, OVER AND OVER AGAIN.
"I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the-- NO NO NO!!!"
1:54 - Killer Instinct
This used to be a good game. A lot of people liked it. But the company who produced it, Rare, is stepping down in lieu of Double Helix, a rather awful game developing company. Biscuit stresses this in the video. Other than that, who doesn't like a planar brawler.
The presentation of this game was face palm worthy, too. Scripted to absolute death. One community representative and one developer come to the stage and play, and the dev destroys the rep. Owns her. And then he goes on about how, "Oh, I can publish this awesome replay to my friends!" – scripted. Then they play again, and just as they start, the rep says, "Here's how I like to share with my friends!" and enables Twitch. Twitch is a live streaming website where people can watch you play stuff live. Scripted. Even the Twitch chat was obviously fake. I hate stuff like that.
2:04 - Sunset Overdrive
We don't know much about this game yet, but in full honesty, it doesn't actually look bad. It's bright, it's fun, it's got huge potential – very much a Team Fortress 2-like. No gameplay, but I'm following this one.
2:19 - "We brought a car."
Yeah, I didn't get this either. It was reallyy stupid.
2:25 - Don't even remember the name of this racing game.
So the core mechanic of this game that makes it special is that the computer watches you as you drive. It learns how you drive and applies it to the computer-driven cars to make them lifelike. Is that creepy? Maybe.
The computer can also go out onto the internet if you let it while you're away and race other people around the world to see how they drive and apply the knowledge to your game. Is that creepy? I guess.
And the lines between single and multiplayer become blurred since the whole thing is shared online. If you're playing a race, who knows? Maybe when you pressed single player and started a level, it added the old race of someone from Sweden to the game to race against you. Creepy.
2:56 - "Here's a bald British guy."
hahahahahahahahaha well said, Total.
3:04 - Minecraft XBox One Edition
"Oh look," Microsoft said. "A new console. Let's put Minecraft on it! Because Minecraft equals free money!" Pretty much sums up the thing. And the console versions will ALWAYS be inferior to the PC version. Just... get over it.
3:12 - Quantum Break
What... IS THIS? It looks... cool-ish. Inception-esque. But we saw a three minute cinematic, not a game. How do you play it? How does it work? What do you do? Remember developers, we want to see gameplay. GAMEPLAY! Is that ever so hard?!
3:18 - Project Spark
Alright... this guy was creepy. Talking about giving the gift of game development to the people as if it were some campaign promise or... an infant or something.
Now the game itself. It looks absolutely amazing. Take a blank playing field. Give it structure (add mountains, rivers, villages), set the time of day (to the hour, which changes the shadows), give it weather and environment (sunny? snowy? desert? woodlands?). Then build characters, give them brains, construct upgrades, choose a bad guy, and then play the game you just built. And everyone can build their own games and play other peoples' games. Imagine all the awesome map makers from Minecraft doing this crazy stuff with AI, except that you don't have to be awesome to do it. You just have to have $500.
Seriously though, of all the games at the XBox con, this one looks the most promising. We are definitely keeping eyes on for this game.
3:39 - The Tablet
Remember how I said earlier how they didn't stress TV or the Kinect at all at this conference. Well, they did stress this tablet thing, which has been around for the XBox 360 in obsolete corners collecting dust for a long time now. And suddenly multiple games devs are using this tablet to play their games, Project Spark included. And the question is why? That's like Bill Gates coming out and saying, "Dudes, you gotta use this old computer! No one uses it or talks about it, but it works and it'll help you." Why?!
3:54 - Killer Instinct Again
Oh yeah, I forgot. They bring KI back again. And this is where they do the cheesy demonstration thing.
And I thought the exact same thing when I heard it live. The emcee guys says, "Just let it happen, it'll be over soon." Like, what? Like that's something you say in morbid, inappropriate situations. Like when you're about to beat your child or something. Need I say more?
4:07 - Microsoft Points >> $$$
For some odd reason, XBox has long used its currency in Microsoft points. You pay real money and get Microsoft points. They're like tokens at an arcade. The problem? You buy them in round numbers.
"This game upgrade costs 18 MP! Well, I have 16. Let's go to the store and buy two more, right?" No, you buy 20, or 50, or 100 points at a time. I don't want 20 points, I want 2.
So they're finally switching to just using real money. Good (for once).
4:20 - Crimson Dragon
When this game showed live, it had no sound.
You do not.
Do not.
Ever.
Bring a product that someone else is probably paying you to advertise.
And show the entire world of 1.7 million people watching.
This product.
And not.
Include.
The sound.
Ever.
This was a *shake my head* moment and laugh as I imagine Microsoft trying to straighten things out with the producers of this game.
And the thing is, the game production company (whose name escapes me) is actually a good company! Maybe we'd know more about if this game is gonna be as good as we could expect. If we had the sound.
No, Microsoft. Bad. Bad.
4:30 - Dead Rising 3
The first Dead Rising game was dark and gloomy, but had a fun character who had some great one-liners and could combine weapons to make amazing stuff.
The second Dead Rising game was dark and gloomy, but had the same humor. You could ride around on a wheelchair with miniguns hanging off of each side. Functional miniguns.
This Dead Rising looks like poop. Dark and gloomy, but with no humor and no ingenuity. You know what we call that? Zombie clique. Something no one gives two neurons about. Poop.
Would I play it? No.
Also, I love Total's interpretation. "For those of you with three arms..." Seriously, the zombies get to be great in number on screen, so the guy demonstrating it pulls out his phone and calls an airstrike on the zombies. Pretty cool, right? Just do it from your phone! It's realistic.
Um, I have two hands on my controller. And I'm certainly not holding my phone in my mouth to do this. Do I look like a dog? How do you expect me to do this? Look away from the screen where all the stuff that can kill me are? No, can't do that either.
Thanks for nothing.
So yeah. I'm currently watching through the EA conference, but I'm not even sure if I'll finish it.
I might write one more of these about the new Pokemon games (because what the heck) and the new Super Smash Bros game (because what the heck) and the new Elder Scrolls game (because WHAT THE HECK), but that's for later.
Thanks for reading if you did. If you wanna see a more honest, good review of what happened, here's TotalBiscuit's real review of the game, which came out hours after the joke one did.
I've seen one or two of his reviews, and he's one of the best I've heard.
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