As I said before, I love me some Ninja Gaiden. So I was really looking forward to seeing some real gameplay at this year’s E3. My wish came true and that’s exactly what I got. While not perfect, I was certainly pleasantly surprised by what I saw for the most part. I’m just going to break this down simply, the good and the bad from an avid Ninja Gaiden player.
E3 is here and we’re in for a bombardment of video game related news. Some of these unveils are actually pretty predictable; there’ll always be a new Call of Duty, every blockbuster film is getting a video game adaptation, and new hardware is endlessly hinted about for months in advance. So here are some of our predictions about what’s in store at this year’s E3:
Bethesda Softworks’ absolutely huge RPG, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will hit on 11/11/11 for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Set two hundred years after Oblivion, the land of Skyrim has been thrown into civil war after the assassination of its king and is at breaking point. In view of total destruction, the last of the living Dovahkiin must find and take-on the God, Alduin in his form of a massive dragon through what is potentially over three hundred hours of gameplay.
This clears
up a lot of the questions I’ve had about this game. What 343 have done is
essentially made the Reach engine run over the top of the old game. This means
that the gameplay is identical to that of the original Halo, so the pistol is
finally back after 10 years. I was pretty much sold when I saw the assault
rifle packs 60 rounds again, co-op play over Xbox live is also confirmed. There
isn’t anything concrete regarding the multiplayer apart from what was mentioned
about the gameplay. However, it certainly looks a lot more like Reach than it
does the original Halo.
Following Yar’s Revenge and Haunted House comes another Atari 2600 reboot. The original Star Raiders can be attributed to inspiring the genre in the first person viewpoint and Atari have charged Incinerator Studios with paying tribute to the 1979 classic and creating an all-new space combat simulator worthy of the name and the ever-increasing list of good games on XBLA and PSN.
I’ve
never
been able to get into the Mass Effect series, but I can imagine that the
Kinect voice control option is still good news. The implementation of
the
voice control seems like a logical step in order to make the game more
immersive, as playing through dialogue tree sections (something which I
think is
extremely outdated) by actually talking is better (and more “real”) than
just pressing a button.
Using it to command your squad is also a great feature, as manual
controls
rarely do it seamlessly.
I always feel bad for the people that have to demo Kinect
games, I mean you must feel like a bit of an idiot up there. Skip to the two
minute mark if you don’t want to sit through the trailer again and you’ll see
the full thing being operated with Kinect. The result is well, different to say
the least; while it doesn’t look bad what’s being shown just doesn’t seem like
a real Fable game. It’s hard to imagine how exploration will be handled with
this type of game, a core element of any RPG.
