Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality has always been a boom and trough sensation picking up the imaginations of the majority only to drop them again when they become less interested in the state of the technology being shown. It’s a shame because current technology could allow a whole new level of immersion for movies, TV and video game alike.

It’s strange because 3D in films these days has almost become and necessity as well as for sporting events and even for some of the AAA game releases too. Sony were the biggest supporter in the Video Games industry (at least until Nintendo’s 3DS got released) but a few years on the interest in this is really starting to decline.

The problem is that while 3D movies have become the standard many day to day TV viewers have continued to watch the 2D counterparts. This has obviously led to only a small volume of 3D stations which has left this side of the market somewhat emaciated.

Perhaps it is because the 3D scene arrived too early when current video games tech for example, as well as standard home televisions were unable to represent the concept to its best potential. True 3D can only be represented using twice the amount of pixels and twice the geometry to be of any success. The actual implications of this on our consoles hardware means that all but the best examples fall well below the quality that is actually being expected.

What we are all really thinking is that 3D is a ‘neat’ bonus feature but is still not something we expect as the majority still can’t use it properly. Developers can’t be expected to build a 3D experience from the ground up if only a minority can play it. Essentially a 3D game actually plays exactly as it would normally, just with a sense of added depth. Yes the impact can be impressive, it can increase levels of immersion to a certain extent but fundamentally, the game is almost exactly the same.

In Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 3 the stereo immersion feels much more than just a tack on with the incredible vistas heightening the sense of wonder. In fact it feels so good that the ‘effect’ makes you really feel as if you are pushing the limits of what the Playstation 3 can actually do.

Meanwhile we are also being treated to the Nintendo 3DS. Obviously being a completely 3D system you would hope that we would be seeing more games uniquely tailored to this strength but many have fallen well short. The window of depth is there and is visually appealing but the actually effect on gameplay is minimal at best. The one true exception though is Super Mario 3D which being a platformer is definitely taking advantage of the technology by removing the ambiguity of distances when displayed on a 2D screen.

All in all 3D is being taken with a pinch of salt – we either love the result or hate it and in most cases, unfortunately, it is the latter. It’s true that 3D is a good addition to a game but it is still something far from expected in each new release. There are many people that knock the 3D aspect of gaming because they feel that it diminishes an experience while others constantly bring up depth fatigue after it plagued the 3DS since its launch. I wouldn’t be surprised if this trend bent its knee in favour of some new idea but the emphasis from developers for the future is that 3D is a direct to go in if the costs aren’t too great. Don’t expect any big 3D only releases but as people become more use to 3D at home expect more of the same being offered – at least for the short term.

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Your Video Game Blog - E3 2012 Awards

Following on from my E3 article the other day I thought I’d do a brief run for those lazy readers on what exactly were the best bits. This will go through parts like Best Publisher and Best Announcement to the standard Game of the Show award. I’ll try and throw in some less conventional options too. So without further delay please see below Your Video Game Blogs E3 Awards.

Game of the Show: Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs was Ubisoft’s crowning announcement and as I’ve said before probably saved the whole show on multiple counts: actually being a surprise, not being a sequel while having some exciting ideas and looking so good we thought it couldn't possibly be running on current consoles. Because of how lovely the game looks many are expecting this to breach the gap between the current generation and the next generation when it is released – a lot like King Kong did at the beginning of the current lifecycle (even if it was pants).

The action adventure genre was the most overcrowded area this year with the likes of The Last of Us, Tomb Raider and Assassins Creed III all on display. It was a nice change of pace to have a complete surprise entry stealing the show. In fact the ability to hack anything in your immediate surroundings sounds like a good theme to me especially in this era of corporate suspicion and electronic data usage.

Beyond and Far Cry 3 were the only real competition for Watch Dog in this category but neither of these were quite as interesting. Far Cry looks quite unhinged and imaginative but didn’t do anything revolutionary while Beyond looked lovely but didn’t give us any idea what it is going to play like.

Best Graphics: Star Wars: 1313

So in all honesty this of course far from an original title and didn’t really show anything we hadn’t seen before … however didn’t it look ridiculously gorgeous. I mean look at Coruscant’s surface; it looks tremendous and is definitely adding a new level of details to anything we are used to. In fact we have also been told that everything on display was in game too making this something to truly be excited about. I fully expect this one to be another cross-generation release especially seeing how good it looks.

Once again Beyond had another chance for stealing an award but lets face it character design and expressions aren’t everything and I’m still undecided on how much better than Heavy Rain it actually looked. The Unfinished Swan has an interesting concept and follows in the current arthouse design trend but didn't make anyone go 'wow'.

Best Technology: John Carmack’s Magic Hat

This is quite an impressive achievement considering this was literally a publicity stunt for Doom 3: BFG Edition and will not be sold commercially. It’s an attempt to revive the retro idea of Virtual Reality (troopers) headsets and almost captured our imaginations enough to start the trend all over again.

The improvised VR headset combines stereoscopic 3D goggles with a motion sensor for head-movement tracking. The whole concept has become a bit of an in joke within the industry but this fine creation was still the most impressive piece of kit on show mainly because we never expected to see anything like it. It shows us a time when video gaming was rated by the use of new technology and not clever marketing – all in all it shows brilliant talent and big ideas which is something the whole industry has been lacking in recent memory.

You had to look at the two main engines on offer to find any competition in this award sector and golly were they both lovely to look at. Unread Engine 4 showed off a wonderfully lit atmosphere with millions of tiny particles and even some glorious lens flare. In fact it’s mainly been redesigned for ease of use to developers and to therefore make it even more popular than it's predecessor. Luminous from Square Enix however produced a wonderful Final Fantasy themed demo which looked like one of its gorgeous CG sequences from their previous titles. Granted it wasn’t as interactive as Epic’s showing but it made us see what to expect in the future – I mean look at the beard on the guy at the beginning.

Best Publisher: Ubisoft

Given that it’s main game Watch Dog ran the show and also that many of those it previewed had a chance at being game of the show means this award again falls to the awesome publisher from France. It’s hardly surprising either given the lacklustre show and their catalogue of quality franchises. I mean who isn’t excited about Far Cry 3, ZombiU and Assassins Creed 3?

Sometimes the French publisher can seem like its just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks due to the large amount of different games it tends to display each year, but, next to the almost non existent approach of its rivals there wasn’t really a lot stopping them from taking top spot.

Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of competition for the best publisher crown this year; Sony tried ever so hard to wow us without producing their next generation console, Microsoft pretty much wrote off this year, 343i didn’t show much more to an already well announced Halo 4 and everyone else trundled along without much purpose.

Best Game Announcement: Watch Dogs

This isn’t very surprising considering the amount I’ve already spoken about this newly announced title. Well done to both this and Ubisoft for saving the show.

Best Trailer: Beyond

Yes I know I said this didn’t really give away any of the gameplay elements but it certainly looked lovely and the trailer did the announcement some justice. Let’s see if the final game lives up to what the Playstation users out there are hoping for.

Biggest Trend: Sequels

Nothing announces the end of a console lifecycle like a bunch of sequels and that’s exactly what we got this year. Without having new hardware on show the biggest developers would have been under strict guidance not to give away their next gen games so we got forth, fifth and sixth outings of all our old favourite.

Best Celebrity Assistance: Snoop Dogg

He came on board for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 saying  "The Dogg is a fan of the Frog, yes indeed - I love Frogger like I love my motherf***ing weed," – CLASSIC

Worst Celebrity Assistance: Usher

His 3 minute performance probably cost Microsoft a pound from every copy sold of the next instalment in the Dance Central series. Also his dancing wasn’t in time with the footage at all and neither were his rather horrendous vocals.

Most over the top Interviews: Peter Molyneux

Bless Peter, his constant ramblings are a bit like Marmite – you either love them or hate them. I personally find his enthusiasm contagious and his ability to always talk about things he shouldn't to be quite enjoyable too. I’m just waiting for him to announce the next generation plans for Sony or Microsoft before they get around to it. Don't change, Peter.

Most Interesting Technology: SmartGlass

This will allow you to do all sorts of interesting things with different peripherals and has a great looking future, however…..

Worst Technology: SmartGlass

It doesn’t do a whole lot at the moment that isn’t already available.

So that’s it really the E3 awards from Your Video Game Blog 2012 are now over. Are you happy with the results? If there is anything you’d change please let us know in the comments section below.

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E3 2012 Rundown

So a couple of weeks ago the yearly E3 conference in San Diego happen which was unfortunately being dubbed the convention that ‘nobody wanted to happen’. Rumours around the show floor claimed Microsoft had been planning to announce its next-generation Xbox until a couple of months ago but decided to pull out and Sony gratefully followed. Unfortunately this left almost everyone slightly less interested in the event as people had been expecting some big news on the future of gaming.

Microsoft kicked off the event in what appeared to be a bit of a lacklustre conference which is no doubt quite understandable as they would have been preparing to use most of their time talking about the new Xbox.  There were however a few big named games on show though, including Halo 4, Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Gears Of War: Judgment. Unfortunately though these were all sequels or prequels to readily established series so disappointingly there were no major surprises.

Microsoft’s biggest stakes this year listed off their new hardware functions in the form of Xbox SmartGlass – their new cloud content sharing technology. They also unveiled Xbox Music, which didn’t appear to do anything revolutionary whatsoever.

Electronic Arts’ then took to the stage, they opened with confirmation of Dead Space 3 which features drop-in, drop-out co-op that still holds the dark and claustrophobic feel of the last two outings. They then went through the new offering from the Need For Speed franchise in the form of Most Wanted which seems to feel more like Burnout every time I see it.

Ubisoft then offered an hour of awkward scantily clan women and fluorescent colours – typical French – but their actual offerings probably saved the first day of the show if not the whole conference itself. Their stunning Watch Dogs demo promised something truly unique with an open world environment focusing on the big brother effect. They also gave us more details on their FPS ZombiU.

Sony then followed with their yearly conference that once again showed off overlong gameplay demos and much like Microsoft a disappointing lack of anything we really wanted to see. In fact the strangest absence apart from their new console was the low amount of Vita news. Their one redeeming point was that the games they did show had some great graphics and some of the best scenes we got to see.

Sony continued by introducing their new favourite partner in the form of Quantic Dream and their new Beyond demo starring Ellen Page (that girl from Juno). Disappointingly this did not show off any of the gameplay we expected but showed off a beautiful game none the less. This drifted quickly into a gameplay demo of The Last Of Us which makes this seem even more like a Uncharted style action adventure – while it looks lovely I’m still not seeing any originality from it.

Sony the pushed their clever Wonderbook concept on us which showed JK Rowling’s Book of Spells which is obviously heavily linked to her world of Harry Potter.

All in all Monday went OK but nothing really grabbed my attention for too long expect for Ubisoft’s fantastic looking Watch Dogs which I’m sure we will hear a lot about over the next 12 months.

Tuesday kicked off with Nintendo’s conference which had become even more anticipated following the lacklustre pieces from Microsoft and Sony. The demoed a lovely looking version of Pikmin 3 as well as the interesting Lego City both being Wii U exclusives.

Nintendo had already revealed their Wii U Pro controller ahead of their main conference as well as their remarkably well designed Miiverse social application. They then used the majority of the remaining time focusing on the Wii U and it’s new pad which featured heavily in their new Nintendo Land virtual world.

Tuesday was not quite as long as Monday for the conferences but following Nintendo we got some footage of the glorious looking Star Wars 1313 game that is widely speculated to be a next generation game.

Wednesday and Thursday held smaller conferences but many websites posted articles in favour of  footage and previews for a lot more of the big future releases instead. We got several articles on the Wii U version of Arkham City, some gameplay from Gears Of War: Judgment and also some fantastic looking hardware from John Carmack (check it out – VR headsets).

The interesting thing taken out from this event was the distinct lack of new IP’s which indicates again that all the major console developers are focusing on the next generation. While last year saw the release of the Vita and the 3DS neither were on show in any great capacity. The 3DS did have it’s own smaller conference that showed of the new Luigi’s Mansion and Paper Mario.

All in all this was one of the less exciting E3 spectacles but hopefully that only means that next year will blow us all away. Unfortunately I also hope this trend of lacklustre events doesn’t continue for much longer as I plan my weekend at the Eurogamer Expo in September.

What games are you most excited about? Were their any games missing that you’d have loved to know more about? – if so place a comment below and I’ll see what I can dig up.

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Dawnguard DLC - E3 Update

As some of you may know I am a massive fan of RPG’s and my current particular favourite is The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. I’ve now logged well over 100 hours of game-time with my main character and am steadily creeping up on that target with my new Argonian Thief.

The content on offer straight from the box is incredible and the Radiant Story engine means that no two players will have exactly the same experience. Since I spend most of my evenings raiding dungeons, scouting the world for Alchemy Ingredients and talking to my new wife the thought of new content in this wonderfully varied world makes my heart flutter with excitement.

Recently, and as I’ve explained before, Bethesda have been drip feeding snippets of information relating to their first large content released called Dawnguard. For those of you that don’t know the Dawnguard are a guild of Vampire Hunters attempting to rid Tamriel of the blood thirsty plague.

The interesting concepts here are exactly what gameplay dynamics this will bring to the table and even more importantly whether we will get new areas to explore. Bethesda have announced that the pick up points will be available early but that the real meat of the new content won’t start until you are level 10.

In Dawnguard, you can become a member of the Dawnguard Vampire Hunters or alternatively you can become a Vampire Lord. A Vampire Lord is in itself far removed from the traditional Vampires we have all come to love. You shape-shift to become a Vampire Lord, a bit like becoming a Werewolf, and you can transfer back and forth whenever you see fit.

The Vampire Lord has two arms and two bat-like wings that sprout from its creepily mangled back. If nothing else it is a fantastically eerie look. To put this in perspective the Vampire Lord is primarily a caster of sorts, similar to how the Werewolf transformation primarily uses melee. The Vampire Lord can hover and walk which is tweaked by clicking in the left analogue stick.  When hovering, the Vampire Lord uses magical attacks but while walking it swipes with its clawed hands. Another nice touch is that holding down the left bumper has the Vampire Lord flap its wings and fly-sprint, oddly this effect can be sustained for a rather long time. The Vampire Lord can also walk across water by virtue of its hovering abilities which looks awesome.

Another addition to the Vampire gameplay is a new abilities tree which runs in parallel with the improvements in your new perks. This has skills like Power of the Grave which grants bonuses to your health, magicka and stamina bars as well as offencive skills like Vampire Grip (which actually sees you drag enemies towards you as suck their life – a’la Darth Vader’s force grip). There’s also the Summon Gargoyle skill which is pretty self explanatory.

The new Vampire Lord also has a lot of non-offencive skills like Mist Form which renders you invulnerable while you recharge your health, magicka and stamina bars. There’s also Supernatural Reflex’s which slows the world down and the standard Detect All Creatures which does exactly what it says on the tin.

A Vampire Lord's inherent abilities are Bats, Vampire Sight and Raise Dead. Bats is a teleport ability that has you disappear and reappear meters away in a swarm of bats. Vampire Sight allows you to see things normal eyes couldn't, and Raise Dead does what it says it does.

Using the Vampire abilities levels up the perks tree which in turn allows you to increase you power. There are however also so obvious drawbacks like being weaker during the daytime.

The opposite of becoming a Vampire Lord is to join the Dawnguard faction and hunt the vampires instead. Although a lot less is know about their abilities we do know that you will gain access to the new crossbow weapons, which has a perk tree all of its own – no doubt similar to Archery. Dawnguard can also have armoured trolls fight for them, plus there's a "whole new base for you to call your own".

The main quest of the expansion lasts around 10 to 20 hours, dependant on whether you tackle everything directly or take your time. Thankfully you'll also be able to use your Vampire Lord or Dawnguard characters in the original Skyrim world too but once you’ve made a choice of which path to follow you will be stuck.

There were a lot of other interesting pieces of information on show within the Dawnguard trailer but none of these have been expanded on since it’s release. These included an awesome new horse style mount that sported blue flaming hair and makes Shadowmere a little redundant as well as dragons diving in an out of the water. The expansion arrives sometime this summer and will cost 1600 Microsoft Points.

So are you excited about this new expansion pack? If so what faction are you going to play through first and why? Please let me know in the comments section below.

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BBC'a UNSC Error

I know I should have mentioned this a few weeks back but if you haven’t heard this already be sure to take note of the brilliance of the BBC.

On last Thursdays One O’Clock News, presenter Sophie Raworth was discussing the real-life United Nations and the ongoing conflict in Syria. All well and good I hear you say - well not really…

The logo being shown on screen was for the UNSC – Halo’s fictitious United Nations Space Command.

Facebook User Luke Mair nabbed an image of the error which you can see below while watching the programme on BBC’s iPlayer Application. Unfortunately the BBC’s standard day limit means you can no longer see this error on their site but a quick search on YouTube will bring this to you in all it’s glory.

The BBC has responded to the error; admitting their mistake and apologising to viewers.

A BBC spokesperson gave comments to UK gaming website Eurogamer: "BBC News makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all images broadcast, however very occasionally mistakes do happen. Unfortunately an incorrect logo was used during a segment on last week's News at One bulletin and we apologise to viewers for the mistake.

"The image was not broadcast in our later bulletins."

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Mass Effect 3 - Rebellion DLC

The next piece of Mass Effect 3 DLC became available recently, titled Rebellion.

The pack included a batch of new multiplayer content and was made available from 29^th May on PC and Xbox 360 while Playstation 3 players needed to wait until the 30^th.

The main addition are the inclusion of two new maps – Firebase Jade and Firebase Goddess. Jade takes place on a station within a jungle reservoir surrounded by waterfalls and Goddess is set in the middle of a Thessian metropolis.

The DLC as always also brings with it a number of new playable characters as listed below – finally Vorcha will be a useable race too:

• Vorcha Soldier

• Vorcha Sentinel

• Male Quarian Engineer

• Male Quarian Infiltrator

• Ex-Cerberus Vanguard

• Ex-Cerberus Adept

The final addition to the free pack is the inclusion of a few new weapons namely the Cerberus Harrier Assault Rifle, Reegar Carbine Shotgun and Krysae Sniper Rifle.

Remember Mass fans the extended ending should be hitting us over the next couple of months and will hopefully flesh out the end of the intergalactic adventure.

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Skyrim - Update 1.6

Those of you who read my tweets yesterday will no doubt have noticed that my most requested feature for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim has been confirmed for the recent gameplay update. Mounted combat is the headline addition in Skyrim update 1.6, due out on PC and consoles this week.

As detailed on the Bethesda Blog, the patch allows both ranged and melee combat on horseback but from what I’ve seen there is no mention of magic..

Update 1.6 also brings with it a number of other standard bug fixes and stability tweaks.

Here's the full list of changes as per Bethblog:

New features:

• Mounted Combat

Bug fixes:

• General stability and memory optimisations

• General AI pathfinding optimizations and bug fixes

• Optimisations and crash fixes for data leaks

• Fixed rare crash with lighting

• Fixed crashes related to loading and saving games

• Fixed crash with summoned creatures/NPCs

• Fixed rare issue where saves would be corrupted

• Improved logic for when ranged kill cams are played

• Fixed issue with ranged kill cams while killing a dragon

• Fixed rare issue with certain ranged kill cams not playing properly

• Fixed issue with nirnroot lighting not properly cleaning up

• Fixed issue where bow damage was being calculated incorrectly

• Fixed rare problem with werewolf kill moves would not finish animating properly

• In "The Break of Dawn" fixed rare issue where Meridia's Beacon would disappear from player's inventory

 •Fixed occasional issue where followers would disappear after player pays off a bounty after committing a crime

• Fixed issue where certain creatures and NPCs would fail to respawn properly

•Fixed rare issue with dialogue subtitles not displaying properly

•Fixed issue with water appearing blurry when loading a saved game after creating a save underwater

•Fixed issue where map cursor would occasionally disappear after closing a message box with Kinect enabled  (Xbox 360)

•Fixed rare issue with shouts only performing the first level and not other unlocked levels with Kinect enabled  (Xbox 360)

•Fixed issue where the shout buttons would stop working properly if users mashed LB and RB during cooldown with Kinect enabled  (Xbox 360)

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E3 Games on Show

With mere days now to go until the Electronic Entertainment Expo opens its doors I thought that now would be the best time for me to give you my views on what you should expect to see. It’s time to get incredibly excited about the show, exceptionally optimistic about what might be announced and irrationally happy with all the rumours about to head our way.

Most of the big announcements will involve multiplatform games that tend to be the best of the bunch from each years releases. It’s the big Call of Duty offerings, the horror of Resident Evil and the colourful arcade games that really perform year to year but also those with the biggest possible market tend to get the biggest announcements.

So without further delay let’s run through what games you can no doubt expect to hear about over the next week or so. I haven’t bothered listing their perspective formats as I’m feeling lazy but I’m sure if you care about them you know whether you can play them or not.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

We all know that it doesn’t really matter how much content a Call of Duty game provided it will still sell millions of copies worldwide and be received with open arms to all the publications that Activision have given some money to. As I’m sure you are aware I am no fan of the series itself, at least I wasn’t, but then Black Ops II came along and the trailer has actually got me excited to see how this really pans out. It might even be my first Call of Duty purchase since Call of Duty 4.

I think it might be the sheer volume of new idea that developer Treyarch are bringing to the table or their inclusion of horses but I’m genuinely excited to give this one a go. DICE took quite a proportion of players with the release of Battlefield 3 last year and I expect Treyarch to pull out all the stops to claw those players back. It’ll be an interesting year for war games to be sure and one can expect all the bells and whistles of the previous games with as much content stored on their disks as possible.

Assassin's Creed III

Assassin's Creed III brings us out of the Renaissance and into the American Revolution and it’s certainly looking rather lovely. Ubisoft have kept the details of the game fairly minimal but the teasers have given us fan boys more than enough to get our blood pumping. I love that each numbered outing provided new protagonists, characters, locations and abilities and number three won’t change that. Te frontier is a new character in itself and the thought of swinging through trees, hunting animals and climbing cliffs should be as entertaining as ever. The new location also looks to provide a more rounded game with more feature, actions and choices.

I haven’t found a fan of the series that isn’t excited about this third instalment and have even heard people saying that this outing could finally be the version to get them to pick up a copy and hop into the Animus for the first time. It’ll certainly be interesting to see how Ubisoft manage to grab the new players over the next few months and whether they can provide the details of the back-story without hours of cut scenes. The Assassins Creed story is as rich as any other and you could argue that there are many more twists and turns to come.

Halo 4

After months and months of drip feeding us information it’s about time 343 Industries revealed a bit more from their big Halo release. I would firmly place month that we might hear more about the campaign, maybe some new covenant variations and perhaps some more details on the new threat that the Master Chief has to deal with. I would be surprised though if the hugely speculated new race/enemies are revealed as this is probably the biggest talking point amongst fans.

In addition expect a lot of information on the multiplayer, dubbed Infinity with perhaps some information on 343’s version forge as well. The Spartan Ops coop stories that were announced a few weeks ago will no doubt show its face at some point but apart from telling us how great it will be I wouldn’t expect too much more of the story coming our way. Microsoft won’t pull any punches and has expressed their desire to push exclusives as much as possible in 2012. This is damn sure going to be the year of Halo, and getting 343’s efforts in front of everyone on the grandest stage of them all will be priority one.

Resident Evil 6

The announcement of Resident Evil 6 at the beginning of this year sucked the oxygen out of all the horror fans on the planet and showed what looked to be the most polished horror graphics we’ve ever seen. Capcom have been waiting for the right moment to drop Resident Evil 6 and now was definitely that moment. With horror games becoming more and more popular again – thank you Dead Space – it was only a matter of time before everyone’s favourite series got a respray.

For days following the initial trailer it was almost impossible to hear anyone talk about something else. I would expect a playable demo at E3 for all the writers to go furious with and the fact that all three main men will be returning shows the scope of what Capcom are hoping to do. The trailer looks fantastic and the information leaked so far has kept me wide eyed and bushy tailed about this one.

Lost Planet 3

Lost Planet 3 was a happy surprise when it was unveiled at Capcom’s Captivate event earlier this year. It’s not because it’s another sequel but more about the changes being made to the series. If the teaser is anything to go by than the franchise has come on leaps and bounds since the second instalment. It didn’t sell the number Capcom were hoping for and so they have taken to retooling the plot and characters to make the whole experience more engrossing.

Make no mistake, we’re still talking about giant mechs and icy tundra’s but the emphasis this time around is on the characters and the plot instead of the run and gun action. At E3 we can expect some information on the multiplayer as well as some in game footage.

Fable: The Journey

Peter Molyneux’s final project with Lionhead Studio is their strangest yet with the typical action adventure found in the Fable universe but this time being played out on Kinect. The Journey didn’t get the applause it was hoping to following it’s initial announcement as many people were worried that it would be a simple action game set on a pretty background.

Lionhead came back with some interest concepts of joining together magic and Peter stated several times that it’s not completely on the rails. In fact the premise looks quite interesting and there have even been rumours of multiplayer content and controller based play too as an alternative to using the Kinect functions.

The Last of Us

Developer Naughty Dog has already said that it has new stuff in the works for E3 2012, and with PlayStation's affinity for massive screens and awesome demos, the press conference sure seems like Joel and Ellie's next big outing. Of course the creators of Uncharted are all for big action setups and epic backdrops and I am sure we will find out more at the conference itself.

Again the rumour mill has been spinning ever since the initial announcement hit the web and we will no doubt get confirmation of some of these as the press conference goes on. Basically it’s time to strap yourselves in and await some sort of epic trailer that will allow us to know a little more on the characters and their story.

So those are just a few of the game definitely due to appear at E3 this year but of course there is plenty to be excited about as the biggest developers and the biggest franchises are all readying their arsenal of gaming goodness. It’s fair to say that something will be announced for the first time at E3 too (as it is a bit of a tradition) so I guess there will be plenty more to speak about when the expo ends in a few weeks time.

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E3 Expectations

So E3 is right around the corner and many websites, publications and media outlets are speculating on what will be seen and what could be announced. This year is the same as any other and will set the pace for the rest of 2012 and what us as consumers will be able to pick up at our local video game shops.

It’s a difficult time for all the home console producers; especially the big N. Of course Nintendo has a lot riding on this year’s E3 as it’ll be the place where it fully unveils its next generation hardware,  Wii U. It’s also their opportunity to convince hardcore and casual gamers alike that its features will be the future of gaming. I for one expect mountains of information on what the new hardware can do and at least some sort of idea of what software we’ll be seeing once it’s launched.

Nintendo also still have some ground to make up on their fairly dismal 3DS launch so we can expect some more of the handheld staples to come back into the fold. Luigi’s Mansion 2, Paper Mario 3DS and Animal Crossing are all big licenses for their little console and some of the main reasons why people will be picking it up this year. We can also expect the recently announced New Super Mario Bros 2 as well as some English details on the Pokemon Black & White 2 games. If all goes to plan we might even get some completely fresh announcements for other pieces of software like a new Advance Wars, Fire Emblem or Golden Sun.

The most interesting thing about this year’s expo is the fact that it is more home console based than ever. A few years ago we regularly had interesting PC announcements and add-ons at the expo but this seems to have been sidelined in favour of their console counterparts. Its true again that Blizzard and Valve (dammit no Half Life) won’t be attending this year and neither will a lot of the already announced big PC based games like Guild Wars 2 and Firefall.

Ok some PC games are expected to be on show, especially EA’s offerings, namely the new SimCity and the recently announced new patch for Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA are trying hard to stop subscriber loss and E3 looks like as good a time as any to announce their plans to combat this. It’s also hard to imagine that the EA conference won’t mention details on their Battlefield and Crysis franchises as these have been massive sellers in the last few years.

MMO’s are also making quite a bit comeback this year in the form of Neverwinter, Raiderz and the hugely anticipated Planetside 2. It’s strange to think that this genre is almost completely PC based still and none of the console makers have really figured out how best to get these integrated on their home platforms. It would also be a huge disappointment if the eagerly anticipated The Elder Scrolls: Online didn’t raise it’s head.

Most games on display at E3 these days will be promoted on consoles as I have explained above but many of these do in fact have a PC based counterpart. No only that but the majority of any new games on offer sent to be available on multiple consoles too. Looking into the future you can see games like Resident Evil 6, Assassins Creed 3 and Far Cry hitting everything they can. The more consoles they can process their games for the bigger their possible market.

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