As the ocean of press releases slowly sinks into the earth, four PC video game journalists stand alone in the aftermath of the Electronic Entertainment Expo. Join Charles Battersby, Ari Runanin Telle, Jonathan Gann and Fergus Halliday as these battle-scarred correspondents recount the brutal battle of hype that nearly destroyed LA this week.
Earlier
this year Telltale Games announced the staggering number of games that
they would be bringing out to gamers this year including Puzzle Agent 2, Jurassic Park and The Walking Dead.
At this year’s E3 they showed off and gave details about all three of
these games and from the way that Telltale described it, the three of
them could not be more different.
Remember Mirror’s Edge? In case you don’t, the long and short of it is that Mirror’s Edge
was a first person parkour game that EA said would get a trilogy, but
then critics said “Meh” and so EA killed the sequel. Then they said
there would be a sequel. And then they killed the project again. EA was
being pretty cagey and indecisive, and is now continuing to do so,
saying that a Frostbite 2-powered Mirror’s Edge 2 is a possibility.
Lots
of game announcements at E3 are drowned out by the bigger announcements
by companies like Microsoft and Sony, but I’m determined to make sure
that Payday: The Heist gets the attention it deserves. Payday: The Heist
is an upcoming multiplayer-focused shooter by developers Overkill
Software. The name might not sound familiar but the studio is actually
comprised of ex-GRIN employees (who developed the recent Bionic Commando games as well as the PC ports of the last two Ghost Recon games).
The Call of Duty series has seen better times. Technically, it’s still the best selling and most popular first person shooter franchise out there, but with the departure of a large chunk of the original Infinity Ward team, and reports of every Activision studio pooling their efforts to get Modern Warfare 3 out of the gate, it’s easy to assume the franchise is losing steam. This wouldn’t be a problem, except there’s a competitor, and a pretty huge one, at that. Battlefield 3. This game has floored anyone who’s watched the gameplay with it’s amazing graphics, which look like they belong on a different generation of hardware. At the same time, the gameplay itself is taking a far different approach than Modern Warfare 3, with far slower pacing, less battles, and more realism. It’s somewhat obvious which game won over the audience at E3, but which one is truly better, from what we’ve seen so far?
The original XCOM: UFO Defense (or Enemy Unknown) is one of the most highly regarded PC games of all time, and some people still go back and play it’s turn based strategy to this day, 17 years after it was first released. That being said, there was a bit of hesitation at last year’s E3 about a new first person XCOM experience, developed by 2K Marin, creators of Bioshock 2. XCOM: UFO Defense was and still is a game of strategy, and many fans felt that XCOM couldn’t translate that strategy into a first person shooter. Well, from what I’ve seen and heard about the new XCOM at this year’s E3, I can safely say that it will feel a lot more like the old XCOM than you might think, with more deepness and complexity than was shown last year.
Had enough video games for one week? Of course not! Now that you know what big games are on the way, you’ll need something to fill the endless weeks ahead before you can play Bioshock Infinite and The Old Republic Online. Here are some games on sale to help you kill time until the Fall release avalanche, including something that will be of interest if you just can’t wait for Battlefield 3.
