The Mog Blog

E3 2012 started with me getting up at 6 A.M. in the morning. Anyone who knows me will know that I’m not a morning person. However, the Nintendo Press Conference was today, and I seriously wanted to get in the E3 groove as fast as I can.

Me and Andrew Copeland, or “Fusionx” from GamerEscape.com made our way to the Nintendo Press Conference after going through the Los Angeles traffic. If you haven’t had the chance to check out the conference, Nintendo posted it up on their YouTube page. You can also view it down below.

To really sum up my impressions about it:

- Pikmin 3 looks good.
- Mass Effect 3 is running on 60 FPS?
- Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition doesn’t seem to add much that would make me want to buy it again.
- Reggie is always a character!
- NintendoLand is a glorified mini-game collection, but seems to illustrate a lot of potential that could come out of the Wii U GamePad.

For the most part, everything is there for the developers to dive into. What they didn’t show was that there were more games on the show floor that was not shown during the conference. I will be back at Nintendo throughout the week to play some of these games.

I started off the day by going to ATLUS to play some Persona 4 Arena. Unfortunately for me, there were already some good players that have already picked up on some of the system mechanics. Instant Air Dashing and jabbing into make shift combo strings only got me so far. After speaking with someone about the game and sorting some things out, I will give this game another try tomorrow.

I had an appointment with Sony Online Entertainment and got to check out PlanetSide 2, a F2P MMOFPS that continues the mayhem as a re-imagining of the first PlanetSide game. They showed up some of the structuring of classes and some tidbits on the warring factions. They illustrated just how different these factions are in terms of how they look and even how they play.

Next up was getting some hands-on time with Dead or Alive 5. Unfortunately, I didn’t take an awesome picture. Maybe later! But I wanted to get my hands on using Akira, a guest character from Virtua Fighter. It was very interesting to see how well Akira translated to the DoA engine. A good number of moves that I do remember from Virtua Fighter 5 are still intact. This also includes his library of guard breaking attacks. I’ll definitely be picking him up once the game pops out.

Koei Tecmo did show off a few announcements such as Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires and Fist of the North Star: Ken’s Rage 2. Sadly, they were not playable.

Square Enix showed off a bunch of games ranging from violent and brutal (Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, Hitman Absolution) but also the more kid-friendly games such as Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance, Final Fantasy: Theatrhythm, and Quantum Conundrum. Which, by the way, if you haven’t heard of Quantum Conundrum, it is from the creator of Portal… you know, that game with the Companion Cube and the GlaDOS.

Sleeping Dogs felt a lot like Max Payne with some John Woo elements seen in Stranglehold and a bunch of angry Chinese gangs. It even feels a bit like Yakuza in a way. I’m certainly more excited about this game than I have been before. I did skip out on the True Crime games, but this does have me pretty hooked.

I also got to check out Bethesda before the show floor closes. They showed off more details about the MMORPG based on The Elder Scrolls series. The Elder Scrolls Online might sound a bit disappointing to some people. Some call it another World of Warcraft clone, and I don’t blame them. However, there are a few things that does make it very unique. Combat is reactive and seems to be less ability based. The best way to describe is like TERA, where you can attack and block hits. You can also charge attacks to deal more damage. There are things that encourage teamwork such as being able to enhance another character’s spell. I saw a mage-like character conjure some flame circle. A fighter character came up, started spinning and enhanced the damage.

We were also shown Dishonored, a first-person stealth game where it gives you plenty of possibilities to sneak around and do your objectives. Of course, with any stealth game, the ability to do whatever the heck you want by sneaking around or mercilessly killing everything is definitely an attribute to Dishonored. What makes Dishonored unique is that it allows you to level up a character that has different unique abilities, most of which I can’t say I’ve ever really seen in a stealth game before. You can teleport, possess people or fishies, throw a windblast, slow down time, and a bunch of other fancy stuff. What really gets me is just how brutally violent you can be. Slashing enemies tend to end up with you lobbing their heads off.

With the first day ending on a good note, tomorrow will start me off with some accessory makers. Will there be a mystical power glove somewhere? I can only hope so.