Sony - E3

Sony

Here's a summation of all the games Sony showcased and lots of pictures. If you want to read ALL the conferences on Day One head over here.

The Last Guardian - Sony came out swinging for the fences and much like Kratos, descended to developmental hell to yank The Last Guardian from its clutches. Something about pomegranates.

That's right. From the makers of Shadows of Colossus supposedly come the game that didn't just fall through the cracks but slip into another dimension. It's supposed to come out in 2016, but...we'll wait and see.

Still, it was so nice to see a game that wasn't a FPS, wasn't gritty urban landscape, and didn't use Frostbite, the griffin chihuahua's whining not withstanding.

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Horizon: Zero Dawn - Speaking of something different, this game is pseudo native american people (okay) fight techno dinosaurs (all right) in a distant post apocalyptic future (what the hell?).

Apparently, humanity once again did something so bad most of them got banished. Instead of going Fallout massive desert, greenery returned to the cities. But this is still post apocalyptic and humans are at the bottom of the food chain.

The top? Dinosaurs made out of the various bits of technology left lying around. There were some flashlight raptors and a T-rex like monster make out of cars.

It's stone age hunting with transformers. Not sure why once again only white people survived the apocalypse and promptly cos-played as cave men but after a very similar landscape this was a refreshing change.

Also, you can play as a woman! I feel like that should be noted in extra large letters that shift colors. Normally, games and their marketing machines do all they can to downplay the female option. Unless it's Lara Croft or Bayonette, all you see is the male form doing the shooting, the scrounging, the exploring, and maybe they'll mention "Oh and you can be female" in passing. 

But something's been different this year. Dishonored only used Emily - which was also part of the punch, and it may have taken until the last conference of the day but we finally got to see Evie Frye in action. Oh god, have the SJWs won? Do game companies have to finally admit that women exist? It's the end times! Everyone grab your sharpened stick and stab a BestBuyasaurus! AH!

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Hitman - Ah, now we're back to the familiar. Agent 47 is back and ready to shoot a lot more people by twisting his gun to the side so it looks cool. We were promised exotic locations because I think this is really a Bond film.

If you pre-order through Playstation you can Beta test it. So, after you commit to buying the game then you can test it to see if you like it. That makes...what? But I'll take beta test exclusives over timed ones. Timed ones are just a really good way to piss people off who didn't own your system and are now so mad at you they never will.

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Street Fighter 5 -  There's a street fighter game coming. I'd say more about it, but they didn't. Street fighter!

Another exclusive beta coming July 23rd.

Street fighter, but with a V this time!

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No Man's Sky - Playstation jumped all feet in with a couple sandbox games. The first combines the excitement of space battles with the tedium of research documentation.

Giant, intergalactic battles!

Tiny fish on undiscovered planets that don't count as alien life for some reason.

Our presenter wowed the audience by zooming out of his map and condescendingly explaining that every point of light is a star and orbiting around that star is a bunch of planets. SCIENCE! There are a gazillion unexplored worlds that you can drop down on, shoot some rocks, have a few angry robots attack you, walk backwards into a lake, and drop off research notes on. I'm also pretty sure nugs were on that planet he wandered into, so maybe it was also post apocalyptic Thedas.

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Dreams - From Little Big Planet comes a toy for those creative builders that can both wow and make people feel incredibly inadequate. Our presenter yammered on about dreams and sharing them but that's not important. Here's what makes Dreams cool.

On screen, he drew legs and a form, added a head and a face to this old man.

I love beard face. Beard face is the best.

Okay, kinda fun. But then he touched the old man's nose and the eyes opened and his body followed, in puppet animation moves.

Our old man played a piano in a dream scape world, while a crow watched on. Two polar bears tumbled down the snow, a teddy bear fought against zombie - all things someone created in Dreams. And because sharing is caring, the worlds are intermingled across the network. Anyone can drop in and alter or add to your dream.

In other words, give it five minutes after launch to have a forest of animated dicks swaying in the breeze.

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Firewatch - Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) voices a lone park ranger whose only friend is a voice inside his walkie-talkie. He wanders around the park doing parky things, when stuff starts to go bad.

A couple girls go missing, someone cuts the com lines, and there's another person poking around in his tower. Smokey's gone feral and only our plucky Park Ranger can stop him. Okay, I made that last part up. But just watch, it'll turn out to have been Smokey on the walkie talkie the whole time.

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Destiny: The Taken King - You were expecting a Sony conference without any mention of Destiny? Ha. In true DLC fashion, the trailer was only for people who played Destiny. You killed his son with his own sword, now his dad's coming for you. You got his attention now go get his head.

 Yeah, yeah, revenge is nice and all, but what's the new loot like?

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Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - I wasn't going to talk about AC again because they still didn't show any gameplay *cough*bugs*cough* but then Evie Frye wandered in and I couldn't not.

 Much like Commander Shepard, the female Frye looks far more interesting than the male one. She isn't being all cockney accent trying to start her own Gangs of London (in fact, she's not allowed to talk at all. Instead her annoying brother narrates the entire time).

This does raise a few, shall we say, indelicate questions about how the story will be presented. The animus is supposedly based upon genetic memory (I know, don't think about the science). And if you can play as either twin then...yeah, just don't think about it.

You've mostly lost me AC, but maybe maybe with Evie I'll come back. 

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World of Final Fantasy -  Sony's trying to out cute Nintendo with adorable weebles from Final Fantasy (weebles wobble but they don't fall down). You can either shrink down and ride on monsters, or get bigger and have the monsters ride on you.

I'm pretty sure you'll just run around squeeing to death from all the cute.

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Final Fantasy 7 Remake - This was the real Final Fantasy news you were hoping for and yes, it's true.  They're remastering Final Fantasy 7 for the PS4. 

Go forth and squee!

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Shenmue 3 - The theme for this conference seemed to be "reviving from the dead." After pulling the Last Guardian out of mothballs, and remastering Final Fantasy 7, Sony heard about a kickstarter campaign and then broke the internet.

 If you want to contribute to Shenmue, here's the link to the kickstarter.

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Batman: Arkham Knight - For no good reason, they played a trailer for the coming Batman game. And by coming I mean in a week. 

Despite the Joker being dead and cremated they still can't not show him. Look, the Joker's our only real villain. 

 Even when you think it's the Scarecrow, even when Scarecrow thinks he's the mastermind, it'll really be the Joker. You can bet on it. That guy's like the roadrunner. He never goes down.

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Playstation Morpheus & Vue - Sorry guys, but when it came to the VR stuff Microsoft trounced you. I know, you gave it your all. The set up was really fancy in your conference hall. But seeing game footage played across six screens is nothing to a 3D Minecraft game.

Still, your Vue (despite the incredibly stupid name) looks promising. Finally someone is trying to get tv ala carte. It probably won't work thanks to the Timewarner Pinkertons breaking into your house to smash your controllers, but it's a nice idea.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Ah! There's the first person shooter. I was starting to get worried with all these RPGs and dreamy sandboxes. How can we not have a black ops fps? You were laying it on a little thick acting like this was the most unique game of all time though. I think we all picked up on the sarcasm.

Because showing game footage of a campaign isn't enough, they also had to show the multi-player experience which was different, apparently. 

Once again Playstation gets some early beta access and free maps. They're chasing after Activision to get more exclusives because that's the new game. Sigh. Can Sony and Microsoft just angry bang already to get over this tension?

"I'm a leaf on the wind."

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Infinity -  Surprising no one, Star Wars is joining the Infinity game. You can play The Twilight of the Republic if you like the prequels (you sad sad person), or Rise Against the Empire.

Creepy Solo available where all creepy, soulless toys are sold.

Once again, Playstation gets Rise Against the Empire and Boba Fett a month early. (Can we talk about Boba Fett here? Why is he so popular? He did nothing. All he managed was hiding in garbage, glommed onto Vader, and then got his ass swallowed by a sand vagina. I will never understand why he's so popular.)

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Star Wars: Battlefront -  You thought we wouldn't see more Star Wars? You silly person. My notes for this are "Luke Skywater Fly ariund shoot oeioke" I may have been suffering from a serious burnout at that point.

Again, you can be good, evil, neutral, chaotic, a gonk droid. And the entire time the force ghost of Admiral Ackbar orders you around.

The empire is amassing behind you. That's a trap! And when you're done could you swing by starbucks and get me a frap? Thanks.

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 Uncharted 4: A Thief's End - Here we are at the end of a very long day. You can tell everyone just wants to crawl back into their hotel room as the preview screen holds blank. For a brief moment I think the final game is actually called Only on Playstation, the Only on Playstation game.

But then a temple appears and we watch Nathan Drake wander around for a bit, then he gets trapped in the corner watching a couple guys grind corn. I was expecting someone to press the PS4 button and reboot the whole system. Bugs happen, but bugs in your pre-recorded promo has to be a very ominous sign, or a sign we all need to find a bed and pass out.

Eventually, after flipping the screen on and off a few times, our trailer boots up.

And Drake drives around nondescript somewhere South America pissing off every person who sees him. Pretty sure he does enough collateral damage, another three small wars broke out just to cover for it. Great going, Nate.



And that's the end of E3 Day 0. We saw some RPGs, some female characters, Angela Basset (for some reason), and a post apocalyptic dinosaur made out of old computers.

Sweet Dreams

EA - E3

EA

Here's a summation of all the games EA showcased and lots of pictures. If you want to read ALL the conferences on Day One head over here.

Mass Effect - Let's get down to business. ME 4 Andromeda!

I don't care that it used Johnny Cash and Ghost Riders In The Sky (FYI, I like that song and Johnny Cash so :P). I don't care that it was all action which, surprise surprise, a teaser trailer would be. I don't care that our unknown not protagonist armor looks kinda stupid.

It's freaking Mass Effect! It's Asari, and Turians, and Krogan, and that N7.

And that's all we know, and that's all I'll need....for now.

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Need for Speed - Haven't seen enough cars driving around in circles? Well don't worry, we've got a ton more to go. A ton. This is the first of numerous mentions of Frostbite, the engine EA's forcing all their games to use. It's a nice engine but it's starting to make all the games look so similar. When I first watched the footage for Star Wars Battlefront it reminded me of ME3 and DA. The people, the landscapes, it's all getting a factory look which cannot bode well.

Anyway, to the cars. 

They go around, but not in circles. These are street cars, where you drive around on the roads endangering pedestrians and annoying the cops with your sweet street gang moves, Thuderbirds style.

It's open world (as everything is anymore) with changing light from dusk to dawn. There are five overlapping stories that follow five brothers (of course, girls can't drive. Their boobs get in the way). It's Pride and Prejudice but the Bennet's have boys instead of girls and rather than marry them off, they steal cars and drive up fines. They'd have been better off having girls.

Need for Speed drops November 3rd.

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Star Wars: The Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire - Colon colon colon. Bioware's releasing a new expansion to get people back into SW:TOR. They promised to bring back the bioware story telling that people love.

Based upon the trailer you're either the white kid in black or the white kid in white who train to one day kill or not kill their father. In a twist, the good one is the kid in black. It causes less stains and he cares about his launderer.

They're promising new companions, more story, and lots of choices. Since it's Bioware, they're probably not blowing smoke about it.

This free expansion drops October 27th.

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Unravel -  This is adorable. There's not another word beyond adorable. The presenter was so ecstatic to be at E3 his fingers shook as he pulled out his little yarn doll to show off.

Your kitty is made out of yarn, and as you travel the yarn unravels. It's supposed to represent love or something, all I saw was a much less trippy Little Big Planet. It's physics based puzzle solving including scary rodents, making a kite out of a leaf, evil birds, dragging a lantern through the snow, and water skiing behind a fish. 

As I said, so damn adorable I want to squish its little red cheeks.

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Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 - That's right, we're talking about it again, but this time we get some real info. In trying to be cute, EA had some poor intern stuff themselves into a zombie costume and preen around on stage:

 No one wanted to even clap the guy off the stage.

To the Plants vs Zombie game. For the first time in the franchise the plants are on the attack. Doctor Zomboss created Zomberbia and lords over it. 

On top of the zombie co-op modes they also added solo play against AI, and most impressive, local co-op. No one does that anymore. There's Lego games and....

You can also transfer all the characters you unlocked in GW one to two at launch.

Coming in Spring 2016.

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EA Sports - Oh boy. Strap in. Here we go. There's a new game where you slap a puck around:

And a game where you hit a ball around:

And a game where you throw a ball around:

And a game where you kick a ball around:

And, okay, look. Some of these games are a good hundred+ years old. How much can really change? Fifa dared to add women, which caused a bigger shit storm than their embezzlement scandal because this earth is a shitty shitty place.

Their biggest new thing was the face capture. Using The Hoop Gawd (who must be someone anointed in the waters of Nothing But Net), they scanned his face with a phone ap and uploaded it to NBA Live 16.

There's something a little bit funny about this need to make characters look like you, be able to change their clothes to match your style, design their homes and cars. I call it the Simification of games. It makes sense, people love options. I only find it funny because Sims was always considered playing house and for girls and here it is in that super manly sports game.

In the words of Nelson Muntz - Ha ha!

To sum up, all those sports games will have a new entry in 2016. Play it if you'd like, or don't. I'm not your mother.

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Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes - Breaking up their Sports coverage, EA brought out a couple mobile games. The first was one of three Star Wars games they talked about. All they said is that you can play with characters from the prequels (woo?) classic trilogies (a duh) and the clone wars (the only ones your kids know about. Sorry)

Minions Paradise - Trying to get people hyped for the coming Minions movie, you can play basically a freeware game with Phil the minion whose secret mission is to destroy everything he touches. You wind up on a deserted island, build some things, don't go full pirate and pillage the seven seas. Sadly.

The little minions bounce and weave around so much, I'm thinking someone needs to cut their sugar intake before they get diabetes.

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Mirror's Edge: Catalyst - Explore Faith's origin story by rebelling against the big bad government. 

It was at this point that the twitch cast fell off a cliff. If you missed it too, here's the official trailer:

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Star Wars: Battlefront - And here we end. Want to be Luke Skywalker? Want to fly an X-wing? Want to run around on Hoth freezing your naughty bits off? Here you go.

This is Vader's "Do I have to do everything myself" face.

There are 40 multiplayer battles across the galaxy far far away. You can be good, evil, Luke post motorcycle accident. It's wide open.

Ubisoft - E3

Ubisoft - E3

Here's a summation of all the games Ubisoft showcased and lots of pictures. If you want to read ALL the conferences on Day One head over here.
 

South Park: The Fractured But Whole - Ubisoft opened their show with a trailer for the next South Park game and had Aisha Taylor MC. She invited Matt Stone and Trey Parker up to mostly rag on their stupid mikes and get off stage as fast as possible.

 Aisha mentions the rather virulent criticism Ubisoft deserved for a certain Assassiny game, but gave the cover of "We hear you though we're still releasing another AC game this year and didn't show any game play. It'll be fine. Look, more celebrities!"

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For Honor - Maybe my memory's kinda hazy, but I don't remember when the Crusader's waged and epic battle against Vikings. And then some Samurai got really fucking lost and wandered in. But in For Honor you can experience this long lost footnote in history. Experience the danger of melee combat on battlefield feel the strike of a winning blow and the crash of a shield as an enraged historian bursts through your wall and body slams you.

 

 No one fucks with historians.

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Expansion Packs: The Crew & Trials Fusion

You're supposed to want to play these because racing and a cat riding on a flaming unicorn? Ubisoft took the approach of "Yeah, we could explain it, but look at how awesome this is! Do you really want us to waste time telling you why you should buy thins game when you could be giving us the money already? I didn't think so."

 

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The Division - Having watched actual gameplay for the Division I'm left wondering do people playing at home ever shut the hell up? I wanted the virus to wipe out every single character so the game was just watching a tin can rolling down the street.

 A weaponized virus was released by secret agent pandas (okay, I made that last bit up). Of course, rather than people bonding together, coming up with evacuation and rescue plans, society crumbles. The obligatory scavengers are all wearing bright orange jumpsuits because nothing screams inconspicuous/city camo like bright orange.

Tom Clancy's: The Division drops in December.

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Anno 2205: You can build a city on the moon...eventually. For now just build yourself a Sim City on Earth. Maybe one day you can get to the moon. One day.

 

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Just Dance 2016 - Out of ideas, Ubisoft yanked out Jason Derulo and had him sing and vaguely sway while pawing at his crotch. There was a noticeable lack of dancing to sell a dancing game and barely any dancing gameplay.

On the plus side, at least no one lit off fireworks. It looked like it could have been a fire hazard.

So there's a dancing game that may or may not have dancing in it. But, hey, we got a live singer. It's ten times better than EA dredging up Pele. Suck it, EA!

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Rainbow Six | Siege - Another Tom Clancy game which gave Ubisoft the excuse to have Angela Basset come out looking very confused what this video game thing is all about. But hey, their check cleared so whatever. Now that Aisha could fawn over Derulo, she could get (rightly) starstruck over Basset. This felt less like a video game conference and more like watching the red carpet live at some award show. What are you wearing? My old AC/DC t-shirt with stairs by Cheetoh.

Anyway, Rainbow Siege is sadly not an elite team made of rainbow bright and her friends sent to take down Gargamel. But you can shoot through walls which is fun. Insurance companies probably despise whenever Rainbow Siege pops up though.

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Trackmania - More cars going in circles. It felt like watching sonic. I kept expecting the car to pick up gold rings. What was cool was the track builder which randomized locations, track layouts, and signs. Because live demos are the cool thing no one has the heart to tell you looks stupid, they had one of the developers plop down and have his car smash right into a sign.

You can't cheat physics, indeed.

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Assassin's Creed: Syndicate - Meet our new assassin Jacob Frye - the love child of Wolverine and Jack the Ripper. 

As he traveled the mean streets of Industrial Revolution London I kept expecting him and his gang to break out into "It's a Hard Knock Life." Also, did no one tell the game makers that the Industrial Revolution wasn't like the French Revolution. It wasn't a war. I got the impression they seemed to think so. 

Our assassin as well as the top hat has gotten himself a grappling hook. He already hangs out on top of gargoyle. We all know where this is going, the final assassin in the franchise will be Bruce Wayne. Despite the promise that women are not longer too hard to animate, we didn't see Evie here (we did later and she looks 10X awesomer than Wolvie the Ripper). We also saw no game play, unless...

Oh god, what if we did see gameplay and that was just one cut scene into another? Not AC 3! Not again!

They offered up letting some people play there, but I'm still expecting lots of skinless assassin's running around Victorian London (at least the British accents make sense there).

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 Ghost Recon: Wildlands - Is a game about a quartet of college bound gentlemen who decide to spend their last summer together backpacking through all of south america.

Saw a pig, saw a plant, saw a lady praying.

Nah, I'm just shitting you. It's another black ops shooter. The difference is you can shoot people either directly, in stealth mode, or ambush them. That's different, right?

I should have kept up a tally of every post apocalyptic game and black-ops FPS I saw. Though if I turned it into a drinking game, I'd have to replace my liver. Next year, Ubisoft. You, me, and Viola Davis dancing with Macklemore!

Microsoft - E3

Microsoft - Xbox One - E3

Here's a summation of all the games Microsoft showcased and lots of pictures. If you want to read ALL the conferences on Day One head over here.

Halo 5: Guardians - Microsoft came out swinging and in major need of a thesaurus as they used epic three times to describe Halo: that franchise they nearly killed through litigation. But it's back with Halo 5. Master Chief is on the run, and Nathan Fillion's been sent by Admiral Anderson to hunt him down and stop him from harassing female spartans and doxxing Cortana.

There's also a Halo Warzone multiplayer pvp option as well.

Halo 5 is scheduled for an October 27th 2015 release, exclusive to the Xbox (if you just got in from Mars).

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Recore - Microsoft wanted to talk about the importance of having new games and not just continuing franchises, then played a teaser that told nothing about the game.

My best guess, you're a robot dog that can explode into fairy gazing balls, and your companion girl has to insert your memory core into bigger and badder robots every time you level up. By the end you wind up as the dog from Ghostbusters and she becomes Gozar.

2015 is the year of the dog in video games. It makes some sense, you want to give instant pathos give a character a pet. Cats will take over for 2016 and by 2020 games will be nothing but gerbils locked in a war with pygmy goats.

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Backward Compatibility - In doing everything they can to get you to go out and buy an Xbox One, this Christmas (everything is coming this Holiday season) these games will be backwards compatible off the 360. They showed it off by firing up Mass Effect one and talked about how it's great because now you can take screen shots and lord it over your friends trapped back in 2009. That was their biggest selling point for compatibility, the ability to use Xbox Live to share.

Xbox Elite Wireless Controller - We also got a peak at a super fancy controller coming with hair trigger locks, a trigger min/max, swappable components to break easier. It'll even julienne fries!

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Fallout 4 -  Bethsda wandered back to talk some more about Fallout 4 and their pipboy with computer technology from the '70s, and the laser musket from the 1770s.

But the real surprise was that mods done on the PC are no transferable across Xbox live to the Xbox One. No idea if Playstation is at all involved in that. Probably not. Expect hundreds of Lone Wanderer's dressed like Santa and fishing for irradiated tuna in Fallout 4 on the Xbox.

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EA -  EA wandered out to talk about Madden NFL 16. "I know you're all excited to play it," causing one or two people to clap in the audience. Yep, they're real excited. He was mostly there to talk about EA access which is another one of those great EA screw yous they're known for. If you pay for that then you can rent games like Titanfall or Dragon Age: Inquisition. An entire 12 titles. Wooo! I'm beginning to see why there was one clap guy. He was probably the EA presenter's cousin.

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Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 - Coming next spring. Welcome to zomberbia where plants and zombies fight. What more need be said? 

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Forza Motorsport 6 - Somehow a ford commercial slipped into the middle of the presentation. Yeah yeah, Henry Ford - right bloody asshole, and now you're lowering a car from the ceiling. 

 Okay. Guys, maybe you wanted the convention hall down the road and...No, this is a video game. Are you sure? I'm still pretty certain you want me to buy a car. I will say, the way the camera oggled chrome and curves of cut scene cars I started to feel bad for the vehicles.

If you like driving around in circles, there are 26 new circles with this game that drops on September 15th.

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Dark Souls 3 - In keeping with the "teasers don't tell you jack shit or even what game this is until the very end" we have a bunch of scenes cut from Game of Thrones mixed with a bit of Lord of the Rings, and a bit of the desert. (not dessert, a pie scene would have really livened it up)

And this guy. No one told him "Don't put the chain mail on when it's still red hot." Undead wraiths never listen.

Early 2016.

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Tom Clancy’s: The Division - Ubisoft dropped out to talk early about this game that will have an exclusive beta trial on Xbox. Amazingly, their trailer actually explained what the hell was happening. It doesn't make it anything new, but I could follow along.

A weaponized virus was released by secret agent pandas (okay, I made that last bit up). Of course, rather than people bonding together, coming up with evacuation and rescue plans, society crumbles. The obligatory scavengers are all wearing bright orange jumpsuits because nothing screams inconspicuous/city camo like bright orange. 

Apparently this team your on is so elite you don't even know how many of them there are. Sounds like an easy way for people to infiltrate and take you down, but what do I know?

Tom Clancy's: The Division drops in December.

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Rainbow Six | Siege:  - coming in October 13th. The biggest selling point was destructible environments. That was pretty much all the presenter had to share. It looks like you get to tactically take people out by shooting them through walls, doors, stuffed animals, air craft carriers, space stations. All that great destructible environments.

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 Indie Game-a-plooza! - Microsoft shared its indie game division by throwing a bunch of 10 second trailers at us and smiling like: The Molasses Flood, Phantasmal, The Solus Project, Sword Coast Legend, Outward, Goat simulator (whatever number they're at now), Game 4, Below, Ark, Recruits. And then it focused on four specific ones.

Tacoma - Is in that horror genre game of drop your character off somewhere and have them piece together what the hell happened. In this case it's set on the moon. For being indie the graphics looked really pretty and who doesn't want to run around on the moon? I call first ride on the tilt-a-whirl!

Ashen - You have to discover who amongst you is friend or foe, which is going to be really difficult as no one has any faces. Maybe they have Rorschach like features and the phrase "friend" will appear on a good guy's face?

The game play shown looked more like an average adventure/explore game -- solving puzzles, collapsing bridges, getting stab in the gut with a skeleton one -- ending with the surprise visit of this guy.

I AM GROOT!

Beyond Eyes - A game about a little girl who first leaves her home to explore and the twist is she's blind. It uses a watercolor like palette to visualize the world through other senses. At one point a scary barking dog flashes various body parts as the little girl tries to back away from it.

Cuphead - The creators wanted an old 8 bit game with a 1930's aesthetic and they nailed it. It's like the demented love child of Mario Brothers and Betty Boop. If that's your thing, it's coming in 2016.

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Ion -  This guy. When you're standing on a stage saying the words “We are the architects of this new universe, but you will governs its destiny" you need someone to pull you back and say "Uh, you know it's just a video game right?" He uses all the spin in a salesman's bag to convince the world that Ion isn't just your run of the mill space MMO but a game that's a universe. And yet, all we see are some pretty space station pictures and then a human in a plastic bag. With no gameplay shown it's hard to see how this is a whole universe in a game.

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Rise of the Tomb Raider -  Lara's back and you have a hundred more fresh ways to cause her gruesome and graphic death! The gameplay looks much the same as the reboot with the preview being the first ten minutes as she tries to climb a mountain and fails spectacularly. This younger Lara Croft tends to fail upwards.

They said that this Tomb Raider would be an Xbox exclusive (because cutting themselves off at the hamstrings early is a great plan), but are also claiming it's timed and maybe they'll offer it on PS4. I have no idea. But you guys struggled with the last one, I don't see how cutting off your console numbers will help. You do you, I guess.

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Sea of Thieves -  An exclusive game from Rare, you can pirate ships and pirate gold, and pirate skeletons, and pirate sharks! Pirates! 

Are pirates still a thing? I thought Johnny Depp simultaneously revived and killed that genre.

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Fable Legends - A free to play game (we all know what that means). The trailer was missing Kate Upton squeezed into a breast plate, but was very pretty nonetheless. Told from the point of view of the bad guys who are sick and tired of your hero character trouncing in and ruining all the good things they've got going.

Fable Legends is coming this Holiday.

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Microsoft HoloLens - Okay, let's get to what everyone's talking about. Minecraft rolled out to show off the HoloLens an untethered holographic computer, so you can get killed by evil Lincoln in real time. While one woman played a Minecraft game on a tablet, a man slotted on the hololens and stared at a wall. Pretty interesting, we could see what he saw through a special camera.

What caused everyone to sit up and pay attention is when he transferred over to the table.

His Minecraft world expanded in three dimensions. He could zoom in on characters, peer through windows, and even raise the whole thing up to peer underground. The HoloLens responded to his voice. For the end he threw lightning at some pigs because if you're going to go out, go out on undead bacon.

Now to wait and see how great this amazing piece of technology actually works in the real world. At least make sure to leave the damn safety settings on so you don't have creepers attacking you at night in your bed.

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Gears of War - They're remastering the first game for the Xbox One (which shouldn't matter anymore if they're backwards compatibility-ing everything) and including a multiplayer.

It ended with a trailer for the coming Gears of War 4. Two soldiers wandering around at night looking for a thing, but not The Thing, because dogs are our friends now. Embrace the dogs of 2015!

Gears of War coming Holiday 2016.

iZombie: Blaine's World

Here we stand at the brink. Thirteen episodes, the rise of a zombie empire, a cracking of a man's psyche, adorable zombie rats, and -- at the middle of the storm -- is the battle of the undead: Liv vs Blaine. Only one can rise the victor.

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Let's get to it!

Still searching for those astronaut brains, Lenny's digging through Major's shit. While Blaine, showing his Lex Luthor skills, figured out that Major's interest in them is his connection to the kids he knew from his job somehow they all miss the Grand Theft Auto arsenal in Major's car.

Not that any of that will help Major (for now), as he finally achieved his season long goal of getting himself fridged. Blaine's preserving Major to torture him for information, but Major's smart enough to know that if he gives away his only card he's dead. After Major refused to divulge his brain storage, Blaine sighs and says: "I love the moxie but I'm the Mick Jagger here. Time is on my side." (Which sadly didn't lead to a duet of them singing "I'm so hot for you, I'm so cold!")

To fill in from the cliffhanger of the last episode, the crew stands around Teresa's bludgeoned body. Our only remaining suspect left a bit of blood on the bed, which somehow means that there's another killer out there and not that Cameron (who Liv already saw threatening Shaggy last episode) is behind it all. Your conclusion jumping makes no sense sometimes, Liv.

Thankfully, aside from some barely noticeable increase in snark there's almost no brain bleed this episode. There's only one zombie vision of a dark hand grabbing another dark thing and doing something with it. I'm glad Liv promptly explains whatever the hell she just saw because most of the zombie vision I'm nodding along "Okay, that was a bunch of what the hell was that?" Apparently, in this quick vision of a hand grabbing onto something green and red colored Teresa got her hands on the flashdrive that had the infamous Max Rager memo. We're back to hunting our Richard Branson like CEO - Von (I have no idea if that's his first or last name. He could be the Madonna of CEOs).

In a twist, we find Von sitting on a couch calmly interviewing his new head scientist who thought he hit the jackpot after leaving his job with Hydra before getting fired upon. They're watching a video of Sebastian sitting in a Max Rager interrogation room (always a great sign when your place of employment has one of those. Benefits include dental, vision, and a golf cart battery + nipple clamps.) While Von tells his new nerd about how Sebastian survived the boat accident and getting run over by a car, Sebastian goes full rage and bashes in the previous lead scientist's skull.

I'm guessing no one thought to run in and stop him because they wanted to get into the snuff film business. Max Rager knows about not only the rage issues (what with it being in their name) but also the zombie side effects as well. Von claims he wants the zombie bits removed while all the good stuff is kept in but I'm wondering if that's true. Sure, you don't want it in the product you ship commercially but the ability to sell undying stooges to all those super villains sounds like a great money maker.

"Tired of your hired hands succumbing to a few arrows in the gut or an eye blast to the face? Give them Super Max and you'll never have to deal with the time and money waste of thug high turnover again."


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