I woke up today with a splitting headache. Took some paracetamol. I think yesterdays fanfare burned me out a bit. I can't stop talking about how far distances are here in LA. You look up a place on Google Maps, it looks so near....then when you're actually in the place where you want to go, holy crap---you have to walk what feels like a football field just to get to a restaurant.
And that's the other thing that bothered me about E3. You know how in Manila it seems like every McDonalds is within reach, and you'll always have access to inexpensive food? Not the case with E3. All the food in the convention center is expensive, and all the food outside of the area is the same deal. If you have to plan to go to E3, be ready to spend some money.
That's the thing. You're spending for the equivalent of walking all that way for a cheap deal and tiring yourself out. Do you really want to get tired when you have to walk the entirety of the LA Convention Center for a whole day? It's no joke. Or maybe I'm just 34 and this is just getting harder for me to do on a daily basis.
Wish I was 22 again haha.
Now I went to the Nintendo booth first.
Mario 3D Land (again)
- I played this game this time and I didn't just watch someone else.
- This Mario seemed more challenging than the last one I completed which is New SMB2 on 3DS. I died a couple of times on some surprising areas which looked easy.
- Mario looks like a CG render now. Maybe Nintendo never needed all that power after all.
- Case in point - no jaggies, no antialiasing, nice shadows for the art style (they didn't need complex shadowing in the first place). Maybe one more level of shadow effects would have made everything even more CG like.
- It's a very bright and colorful game and a welcome change from all the blood and gore of everything else. Yeah, I'm getting sick of seeing gore in games. It's just a tired thing now. Imagine if every show on TV had guts spilling out for no reason. It's really tiring. I'm not against blood just because of any moral reasons; it's really that devs seem to rely on it a lot to say that their game is 'real' and reaches out for the young market (which loves that blood!)
- The art is really pleasant to look at.
- No special gimmick on the pad, which is unfortunate. I don't know if they will put something later on or if pad gimmicks for this game will only be for specific levels. We'll have to wait and see.
Sonic Lost World
- It's a dizzying game, which is good
- More emphasis on 3D movement over just running through the whole level
- Level designs were very creative, so Sonic isn't stuck with just loops and corkscrews.
- THis game had a pad gimmick; you can toss Sonic like an angry bird through certain unpassable obstacles using the Wii U Gamepad.
Bayonetta 2
- Well I wasnt able to play this again, the lines were too long! But I did get a picture with their Bayonetta cosplay model.
Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate
- Picked this up and played as Jacky.
- Then some fellow walks up and proceeds to beat me up horribly in two games :( I guess there are no casual fighting game players at E3!
- I said "Good Game!" and my opponent didn't talk to me. Was he salty?
Killzone - Shadow Fall
- Boring, boring boring boring! I sat through a playthrough of the game. They didnt have a playable demo that I could try. It was more of a 'sit there and ogle at our beautiful game'. Maybe this is the case because they're still fixing a lot of bugs
- I was just so bored with this game. I stared at the game's gorgeous rocks; i guess they looked real. But that had no bearing at all on the play.
- It had all the requisite military stuff you get in the yearly COD games. Maybe it's fun for some. I just feel like I deserve a hundred medals of valor already from the US government for saving their ass in hundreds of sorties over hundreds of video games. *sigh*
- I guess the graphics were OK. No jaggies, lens flare up the wazoo. A good showcase for PS4 if you aren't tired of military games yet.
Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn
- A prettier version of the previous game.
- Looks like an epic grindfest. Prepare to click and click and click....
Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2
- Watched some other guys play this. Line was long
- Graphics look prettier than the first game.
- I had 60$ ready to go in my pocket. Alas, they would not take my money.
Metal Gear Solid 5
- No demo for attendees under my classification. Maybe it is only available for the children of oil magnates at this time.
- They had a trailer which tons of people sit through every time it plays. Konami had a gigantic screen like Square enix but theirs was positioned higher in their booth, which made it look smaller than Square's.
- Keifer Sutherland! Well, his voice anyway.
- Their trailer is well cut, makes it look like a blockbuster movie.
Dead Rising 3
- Very very long line.
- After Killzone Shadow Fall I kinda didnt' feel like sitting through another controlled demo.
Now at this point I realized that most of the sit-through demos end up giving freebies/E3 swag. Ok, maybe I SHOULD have went in there. But the trouble with E3 is you end up indecisive, there's just TOO MANY GAMES at the event.
Don't worry, I did score some swag. I jsut doubt I can get absolutely everything.
I'm trying to remember, but yesterday there was a game I played that had some swag but you could only get it if you do something in the game. Hmm, can't remember. I guess the game was forgettable?
Middle of the day - my wife tells me that Microsoft is not going to support the entirety of Asia until 2014.
Huge bummer.
Huge HUGE bummer.
That ruined my day. Seriously. I mean, I really liked the games I tried at their booth yesterday. And now they don't want to sell it to me. Argh.
That's it Microsoft, I officially hate you guys. What you're pulling with the Xbox is completely wrong.
I guess no more Forza for me, as beautiful and awesome as it is. :( No more Killer Instinct either. Man, this E3 is spiralling downwards....
Later in the day I had to fulfill a certain business related objective....so I ended up walking again some seventy billion miles in LA....if it isn't the taxis that wil kill you in this place, it's the very Earth itself that will swallow you whole.
Now, there was about an hour or so left before the time I decided I should get back to the hotel. I wanted to go back. I was bloody tired.
But hell, I said. I want to do one more thing. Get one more piece of 'swag'.
Went to Nintendo booth. The 3DS booth was giving away Nintendo rarities.
Girl at booth says, Line is very long, come back tomorrow.
Argh.
Ok Im going home now.
No, I am not going back until i get something.
Oh, look, the Gran Turismo 6 booth.
Yeah, I hate Gran Turismo with a passion. But apparently by default they're my new racing overlords, since Microsoft would rather take their business elsewhere.
The line isn't very long either. Hmm.
I line up at the Gran Turismo booth.
Hmm, they're giving away hats! I ask the guy about it at the booth. He tells me, 'to get a hat, you have to beat a certain track, with a certain car, under 1'08"00 '. That'd be the Silverstone short circuit, with a Nissan Z.
Oh no, not this business again, I thought. Yesterday I had entered a game booth thinking I'd get an item and not getting anything anyway, because of the stipulation that you had to 'do' something in the game to go home with an item.
But I was already in the middle of the line by this point. So I thought, might as well.
When I finally got my turn to play GT6, I mess up and end up restarting the GT6 menu. All the other racers in my block had already started to go for the lap time. So basically, I was losing time to get a good lap time since my PS3 has to start over from the first GT6 menu screen.
Because of this, I wasn't able to pick Manual transmission anymore. Going through the menu would take too much time. Dammit I wanted that hat.
Eventually after about a minute I was starting my run. My car skids out on turn 1....another unfortunate incident! This is not a very good day for me.
Eventually I post my first lap time.
1'07"333
Thanks for the hat, Sony.
And that's the other thing that bothered me about E3. You know how in Manila it seems like every McDonalds is within reach, and you'll always have access to inexpensive food? Not the case with E3. All the food in the convention center is expensive, and all the food outside of the area is the same deal. If you have to plan to go to E3, be ready to spend some money.
That's the thing. You're spending for the equivalent of walking all that way for a cheap deal and tiring yourself out. Do you really want to get tired when you have to walk the entirety of the LA Convention Center for a whole day? It's no joke. Or maybe I'm just 34 and this is just getting harder for me to do on a daily basis.
Wish I was 22 again haha.
Now I went to the Nintendo booth first.
Mario 3D Land (again)
- I played this game this time and I didn't just watch someone else.
- This Mario seemed more challenging than the last one I completed which is New SMB2 on 3DS. I died a couple of times on some surprising areas which looked easy.
- Mario looks like a CG render now. Maybe Nintendo never needed all that power after all.
- Case in point - no jaggies, no antialiasing, nice shadows for the art style (they didn't need complex shadowing in the first place). Maybe one more level of shadow effects would have made everything even more CG like.
- It's a very bright and colorful game and a welcome change from all the blood and gore of everything else. Yeah, I'm getting sick of seeing gore in games. It's just a tired thing now. Imagine if every show on TV had guts spilling out for no reason. It's really tiring. I'm not against blood just because of any moral reasons; it's really that devs seem to rely on it a lot to say that their game is 'real' and reaches out for the young market (which loves that blood!)
- The art is really pleasant to look at.
- No special gimmick on the pad, which is unfortunate. I don't know if they will put something later on or if pad gimmicks for this game will only be for specific levels. We'll have to wait and see.
Sonic Lost World
- It's a dizzying game, which is good
- More emphasis on 3D movement over just running through the whole level
- Level designs were very creative, so Sonic isn't stuck with just loops and corkscrews.
- THis game had a pad gimmick; you can toss Sonic like an angry bird through certain unpassable obstacles using the Wii U Gamepad.
Bayonetta 2
- Well I wasnt able to play this again, the lines were too long! But I did get a picture with their Bayonetta cosplay model.
Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate
- Picked this up and played as Jacky.
- Then some fellow walks up and proceeds to beat me up horribly in two games :( I guess there are no casual fighting game players at E3!
- I said "Good Game!" and my opponent didn't talk to me. Was he salty?
Killzone - Shadow Fall
- Boring, boring boring boring! I sat through a playthrough of the game. They didnt have a playable demo that I could try. It was more of a 'sit there and ogle at our beautiful game'. Maybe this is the case because they're still fixing a lot of bugs
- I was just so bored with this game. I stared at the game's gorgeous rocks; i guess they looked real. But that had no bearing at all on the play.
- It had all the requisite military stuff you get in the yearly COD games. Maybe it's fun for some. I just feel like I deserve a hundred medals of valor already from the US government for saving their ass in hundreds of sorties over hundreds of video games. *sigh*
- I guess the graphics were OK. No jaggies, lens flare up the wazoo. A good showcase for PS4 if you aren't tired of military games yet.
Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn
- A prettier version of the previous game.
- Looks like an epic grindfest. Prepare to click and click and click....
Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2
- Watched some other guys play this. Line was long
- Graphics look prettier than the first game.
- I had 60$ ready to go in my pocket. Alas, they would not take my money.
Metal Gear Solid 5
- No demo for attendees under my classification. Maybe it is only available for the children of oil magnates at this time.
- They had a trailer which tons of people sit through every time it plays. Konami had a gigantic screen like Square enix but theirs was positioned higher in their booth, which made it look smaller than Square's.
- Keifer Sutherland! Well, his voice anyway.
- Their trailer is well cut, makes it look like a blockbuster movie.
Dead Rising 3
- Very very long line.
- After Killzone Shadow Fall I kinda didnt' feel like sitting through another controlled demo.
Now at this point I realized that most of the sit-through demos end up giving freebies/E3 swag. Ok, maybe I SHOULD have went in there. But the trouble with E3 is you end up indecisive, there's just TOO MANY GAMES at the event.
Don't worry, I did score some swag. I jsut doubt I can get absolutely everything.
I'm trying to remember, but yesterday there was a game I played that had some swag but you could only get it if you do something in the game. Hmm, can't remember. I guess the game was forgettable?
Middle of the day - my wife tells me that Microsoft is not going to support the entirety of Asia until 2014.
Huge bummer.
Huge HUGE bummer.
That ruined my day. Seriously. I mean, I really liked the games I tried at their booth yesterday. And now they don't want to sell it to me. Argh.
That's it Microsoft, I officially hate you guys. What you're pulling with the Xbox is completely wrong.
I guess no more Forza for me, as beautiful and awesome as it is. :( No more Killer Instinct either. Man, this E3 is spiralling downwards....
Later in the day I had to fulfill a certain business related objective....so I ended up walking again some seventy billion miles in LA....if it isn't the taxis that wil kill you in this place, it's the very Earth itself that will swallow you whole.
Now, there was about an hour or so left before the time I decided I should get back to the hotel. I wanted to go back. I was bloody tired.
But hell, I said. I want to do one more thing. Get one more piece of 'swag'.
Went to Nintendo booth. The 3DS booth was giving away Nintendo rarities.
Girl at booth says, Line is very long, come back tomorrow.
Argh.
Ok Im going home now.
No, I am not going back until i get something.
Oh, look, the Gran Turismo 6 booth.
Yeah, I hate Gran Turismo with a passion. But apparently by default they're my new racing overlords, since Microsoft would rather take their business elsewhere.
The line isn't very long either. Hmm.
I line up at the Gran Turismo booth.
Hmm, they're giving away hats! I ask the guy about it at the booth. He tells me, 'to get a hat, you have to beat a certain track, with a certain car, under 1'08"00 '. That'd be the Silverstone short circuit, with a Nissan Z.
Oh no, not this business again, I thought. Yesterday I had entered a game booth thinking I'd get an item and not getting anything anyway, because of the stipulation that you had to 'do' something in the game to go home with an item.
But I was already in the middle of the line by this point. So I thought, might as well.
When I finally got my turn to play GT6, I mess up and end up restarting the GT6 menu. All the other racers in my block had already started to go for the lap time. So basically, I was losing time to get a good lap time since my PS3 has to start over from the first GT6 menu screen.
Because of this, I wasn't able to pick Manual transmission anymore. Going through the menu would take too much time. Dammit I wanted that hat.
Eventually after about a minute I was starting my run. My car skids out on turn 1....another unfortunate incident! This is not a very good day for me.
Eventually I post my first lap time.
1'07"333
Thanks for the hat, Sony.