Mediaholics Podcast: E3 2018

Late to the party? Maybe, but better late than never (unlike PrE3 this year)

Mediaholics Podcast Episode 12: Post E3

One whole week of E3 news, and now two people come to talk about it before going to recover from a week of livestreams.

E3 Day 1 Summary: EA and Bethesda

EA came up first and presented us games we somewhat expected. First was Battlefield 1, a confusing title since the Xbox One. It’s a military based shooter game with singleplayer on online gameplay. Next was Titanfall, a sci-fi shooter with singleplayer and online- hey wait a minute… I’m not familiar with these franchises though they could look promising to a fan. Titanfall promises more mechs if you’re interested.

Their bigger announcement was Mass Effect: Adromeda which takes place after the events of the trilogy. Not so much is known except that you are on an alien planet trying to survive. It looks like a pretty imaginative survival game.

They also talked about sports sports and more sports. Yeah I’m not so much of a follower of Madden, FIFA, and stuff like that. They showed pretty much all continuations so there wasn’t anything new.

Bethesda was next showing some new games as well as continuations. Prey is a reboot of a sci-fi shooter of the same name though not too much is known about the game itself outside of the trailer. Dishonored 2 got a lot of attention at the conference. The time mechanics and the concepts seem interesting. You’re an assassin with powers and have the ability to stop time.

A few Elder Scrolls games were announced. Elder Scrolls: Legends is an online card game that is more or less a ripoff of Heathstone. Elder Scrolls Skyrim got an HD edition to be on the PS4. I would say more about these games but that’s basically all there needs to be said about them. I’m pretty sure when they were talking about how “huge” an Elder Scrolls Online update was, they had paid people to cheer for them, though that’s only a guess. They pretty much lied about their MMO saying that “over 7 million people” played it when the number is only in the thousands.

Quake: Champions was a pretty big announcement, though they won’t be saying a whole lot about it until Quakecon. It still builds a lot of hype though.

First Impressions: Need for Speed: Welcome back old friend

I know I harp on EA often, and not without good reason mind you. However, there was a time I loved their games... well, two in particular. Burnout 3: Takedown, which I still maintain to be one of the best party games I've ever played (yeah, you herd me Mario Party). And the Need for Speed series, especially Need for Speed Underground 2. One of the best gaming memories I have from when I was a child was when me and my father would boot up Underground 2 on the PS2, spend the afternoon building a car up from scratch and once we were done, sending them to the "City loop" track (I can't remember the name), and racing them to see who was the better driver... let's just say there's a reason why Burnout 3 was a fairer challenge, though I did get better. However, I haven't really followed the Need for Speed series as close as my father has, and even then he doesn't play it that much now. I loved watching him play Most Wanted and Undercover, but that was about it. I was going to do the same with this one... and then I saw E3...

One thing you should know about Need for Speed, no one cares about the plot. The plot's there to give you missions and races. Which is pretty much all you're doing in this game: Going from point A to point B, doing races, outrunning cops, and getting better cars to do the same thing. Its a mix of arcade racing and realistic racing games. Now I don't know how that will hold in this day and age, however it'll still have its audience.

One of the things I enjoyed about Underground 2 was the overworld. I completed races to unlock more areas to drive to more so then anything else, and I'm glad to see that back here. Basically this Need for Speed is a fusion of three others. The car customization from Underground 1 and 2, the pursuit from Most Wanted (and maybe Undercover, I don't know if you can drive Police cars as well) and the overworld of Carbon, one I have no experience playing, but I have seen in action and it looks like it was well designed... at least according to memory. Those alone have sold me on this, if the entire world is unlocked at the start, then I'm sold...

Unless this ends up suffering from some of the problems I have with the industry at the moment, and with it being EA, I wouldn't be surprised if it did. I hope not, but I know there's a chance of it happening. I'll see you all soon for another game: Shantae 1/2 genie hero.

Yes, today is literally an experiment, I hope you like the flood of content, but don't expect this to be often, I'm not that crazy.

Four people talking about E3 2015

EDIT: Version 2.0 of the video because for some reason I didn't catch the bad audio sync.
So what did we think of E3 2015?
Special thanks to CJ, Jeremy and Marissa for joining me on this.

Side note: Really excited for the new Need for Speed as I loved messing around in Need for Speed Underground 2 as a kid. My inner child is excited for Transformers Devastation, even though its not the Unicron Trillogy. And the other inner child in me wants a Yu-gi-oh game for the Holo Lense (or Magic the Gathering if it has a yu-gi-oh theme to it).

EA E3 2015

Just the summary here, I've got to get to Ubisoft

• Mass Effect Andromeda: Not much to say, but I do want to start playing the series
• Star Wars The Old Republic expansion: It looks like an interesting expansion, may give The Old republic a look
• Unravel: It looks charming in a Little Big Planet/ Chibi Robo kind of way. I'd need to see more gameplay before making a decision to play it, but you could tell the presenter was very nervous there
• Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2: I find it interesting that you can now play as the Zombies, nice change of pace. And the inclusion of Singleplayer is great to hear. Execution though is going to be another story
• Minions Paradise: Charming little mobile game
• Mirror's Edge Catalyst: It looks interesting to play. The only Mirror's Edge experience I've had is with the Occulus Rift so I've got nothing really to talk about here.

E3 2014 Impressions: SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS SPORTS

EA E3 2014 Press conference

For note, I am skipping any information on the EA sports games

1.       Starwars Battlefront: Well... it was a nice snippet of footage from a documentary...

2.       Dragon Age: Inquisition: Ok, you’ve made a pretty world EA... Now what? The gameplay that was shown struck me as Multi person, third person perspective Skyrim. I haven’t played a Dragon Age so I don’t know if it’s normally like that or not. As I said in the Microsoft impression, it looks interesting

3.       The Sims 4: Because I have never played any form of The Sims, most of the improvements that were said meant nothing to me. The Sims AI has improved and you can now play with their emotions, that all that I retained

4.       EA UFC: The only sports game here because it is a new one (to my knowledge). Its UFC the game

5.       New Criterion IP: Its really early in development according to the trailer, but it looks fun and I’ll pick it up when I can as it has a Need for Speed Underground 2/ Burnout 3 feel about it (both of those are great PS2 games, pick them up when you can)

6.       Dawngate: I’m not a MOBA gamer, but if you like MOBA games like Dota 2, you’ll like this... maybe

7.       Mirror’s Edge: See Starwars Battlefront

8.       Battlefield Hardline: I stand by what I said before

This press conference was dull. Battlefield took up so much of the conference and EA Sports took up even more. I never look forward to EA’s conference every year and its reasons like this conference that’s the reason why. There were more games, but they were EA Sports. The finale of the press conferences is Ubisoft and I’m not liking the sound of it...

Also, just hit 400 page views, thankyou all for keeping up with these reviews and impressions.

E3, the best time of the year for gamers. My wish list/ predictions of the upcoming news

Well folks, its that time of the year again. The time of the year that, to gamers, is better than Christmas even though you get less from it. That time of course is the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3for short). With all the theories circulating around the internet at the moment. I thought I might join in on the fun and post a list of games I want to see this year (in some form). This list is in no order, its just what pops into my mind as a write this definitely not filler while I work on the Transformers marathon opinion piece on the matter. With that out of the way...

1.      Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire: in the form of a actual game play trailer. The big thing for me for this game is that I want to see how Brendan and May look in 3D. The only other announcement that I want is a Emerald Story mode of the game, seeing as the first Pokémon game I owned was Emerald Version.

2.      A new Metroid game: I was only introduced to the series recently and, even though I haven’t played the 3D games yet, the series is a really nice adventure game. I would prefer it to be for the 3DS as I don’t have a WiiU at the moment (soon...), wether its 2D or 3D doesn’t matter to me. It would be a new Metroid game, something that hasn’t existed since Other M.

3.      A release day for Bayonetta 2: Bayonetta is another game that’s gotten my attention recently. I haven’t played the original (because I haven’t found a copy of it), but Bayonetta 2 does look, from a gameplay perspective, taking out the way she gets her powers... I don’t care if there’s a trailer for it, the main thing for me is a release day.

4.      Sonic Boom: There hasn’t been a lot of concrete news concerning Sonic Boom since it was officially announced earlier this year. A new trailer showcasing Sonic, Tails, Amy and Knuckles and maybe some other characters would be nice, and maybe a new teaser for the show itself SEGA?

5.      Kingdom Hearts III: This is another, “I just want more info please” game. Square Enix is holding back a lot of information on the game at the moment, and seeing as the last trailer was from the D23 expo, new news would be greatly appreciated.

6.      “Poken Fighters”: Only shown off once as a teaser in a timeline of the Pokémon games last year, Poken Fighters, while hasn’t grabbed my attention like the other games on this list, is still interesting because this would be the first of its kind (officially) in terms of Pokémon Spin-offs, possibly being a Tekken inspired Pokémon themed fighting game.

7.      New Smash bros 4 news: but seeing as there’s going to be a 90 minute press conference on it, I’m guessing it’s a given.

Those are the games on my wish list of E3 News, its alot of Nintendo games, but that’s because I don’t have as much interest with the other companies. I still watch all of them (and give you all my impressions of them) and see what comes out, I might be pleasantly surprised.  Keep checking here when E3 is on to see all the new news (as soon as I find out) and all throughout June for the Transformers Marathon. Up first for it, Transformers Generation 1: First strike