The last few days, GAMbIT was lucky enough to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo, apparently because they have incredibly low standards when it comes to journalists. The good thing about E3 is that there were really no bad games; sure, there were games that weren’t meant for me, either because I’m not a fan of peripherals (i.e. Skylanders) or because I’m a full-grown man and not an animated schoolgirl (i.e. Harvest Moon 3D: The Lost Valley). The bad news was the same shit we’ve been hearing about video games for the past few years. It doesn’t bear repeating here, but I will say that for the most part, the single-player game is dying. Hell, even Assassin’s Creed is going mulitplayer.
E3 entails a lot of waiting in lines, and for the most part, those lines were worth it. J. Luis covered some of this already in his stellar daily recaps, but I thought I’d throw in my two cents about E3 and talk about some games that I really liked. Basically, if I write about E3 I can write off the numerous hot dogs I ate as a business expense.
Alien Isolation
Far and away my favorite game of the show. Alien Isolation is the heir apparent to Doom 3, which I still consider to be one of the scariest games ever made (not counting the slightly bastardized BFG Edition). It’s not easy to recreate the lo-fi sci-fi vibe of Ridley Scott’s classic 1979 film, but Alien Isolation does so with aplomb. Watching the demo, and then playing the game, was an unbelievably tense experience. Playing as Amanda Ripley (daughter of Ellen), you can’t kill the alien, you can only hope to hide and escape. Your tools – like a motion tracker and a flamethrower – are just that: tools. Forget about using weapons. It’s rare for a game to be this damn scary, and I will definitely be picking up Alien Isolation when it drops on October 7. Keep an eye out for this one. And keep a clean pair of underwear.
Super Smash Bros. Wii U
Super Smash Bros. isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. Nintendo hit upon a winning formula when the original SSB was released in the late ’90s, and the company has justifiably been releasing variations on the same game ever since. The only difference is the cast of characters. I got to play as the Wii Fit Trainer and the Villager from Animal Crossing. The Villager, surprisingly, acquitted himself nicely, and he could be one of those unexpectedly powerful characters, like Mr. Game and Watch, who really kick ass if you know how to use them. The Trainer sucks. Don’t waste your time. SSB is always going to be one of the most fun games to play with a few friends, but once again I found myself disappointed by the inclusion of a ludcrously overpowered character, in this case Little Mac from Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! We saw a few matches of SSB, and not once did Little Mac lose. I guess it’s easy to win if you can punch opponents fifty times in three seconds. But hey, good news if you’re not great at games and you’re tired of playing as Link, Marth, or Samus, because Little Mac is about to become your new favorite character.
Mortal Kombat X
So here’s the other end of the spectrum as far as fighting games are concerned. Jorge and I waited an hour in line to see this demo, and holy shit was it worth it. MKX might have been the best game of the show, if only because nothing else I saw utilized next-gen graphics engine the way that this game did.
MKX moves the timeline forward several years, allowing for some new characters (for instance, Cassie Cage, daughter of Johnny Cage and Sonia Blade). Franchise mainstays such as Scorpion and Sub-Zero are there, of course, and so are different versions of old favorites, like Kotal Kahn, an ancient Aztec version of Shao Kahn. The entire roster hasn’t been released yet, but WB Games clearly isn’t screwing around with this one.
The violence is more impressively brutal than ever before, and the X-Ray function is back in all its hard-to-watch glory. Environments are interactive as well; in the Snow Forest level, Sub-Zero launched himself off of tree branches, and pulled off some of those same branches to whack Scorpion in the kisser. And of course, Mortal Kombat‘s fatalities remain the most innovatively gruesome parts of any video game on the market. Mortal Kombat X is a beautiful, creative, and challenging game that was easily one of the best of E3, if not the best overall.
The Evil Within
This was the last game we saw, so I thought it would be fitting to close out my article by talking about The Evil Within. The game is a joint venture between Bethesda Softworks and Shinji Mikami, the creator of Resident Evil. The only difference is, Resident Evil sucks and The Evil Within is quite good.
It’s a survival horror game, akin to Alien Isolation. There are some creatures you can’t kill, and your only hope is to slow them down, run, and hide. The game relies on a lot of different kinds of horror: jump scares, psychological horror, blood and guts, atmospheric tension, you name it. I only played a twenty-minute demo and was transfixed by The Evil Within‘s methodical pace and striking visuals. The game is scary as hell, and while something this challenging and counter-intuitive might not connect with a huge audience, those who play will have a great time shitting their pants.
And there you have it, my brief thoughts on E3. I’m proud of myself for including two jokes about pants shitting. This is why I get the big bucks.
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