Another year’s worth of games draws to a close which means it’s time for more trailers and reveals courtesy of Spike TV and GameTrailers.
This year’s highlight for me were The Last of Us and Metal Gear Rising. The former for being a new property by one of my favorite developers of the generation and the latter for being so nonsensical.
Other than those two, there wasn’t much else to fawn over.
E3 2011 is over.
For me it was a nice E3 filled with pleasant titles and a steady year or so of gaming. Nintendo’s Wii U won’t be out until sometime in 2012 and with what they’ve shown, it’s a bit tough to get excited for it at the moment. Meanwhile, the PlayStation Vita seems to be in its own little world. Much of it was exciting from the mindset of a $250 handheld, but I didn’t see anything that would compel me to pre-order one as of yet.
This E3 was about games and there were plenty of promising titles — many of which I pre-ordered via FutureShop’s awesome promotion:
* – Not shown at E3, but part of the promotion
The 2010 Spike VGA show was on last night. I didn’t catch much of it. I caught some chick making TWSS said jokes and Neil Patrick Harris playing with a rooster.
Like many, all I care about are the game trailers teasers and announcements. Thankfully, GameTrailers.com was quick to update their site with the trailers as they were released.
Most of them were CG or lame, so I filtered and picked the noteworthy ones for this post.
These are my top 8:
Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception
[gametrailers 708329]
Did you know you could have watched the first hour of BioShock 2 and Mass Effect 2 before you were even allowed to buy game? That’s like watching the first 20 minutes of a full length movie. I know why they do it. They want to feed on the hype of the weak and lure them over to their websites. But it’s a trend that I’m not too pleased with.
GiantBomb’s Quick Looks operate in a similar fashion, but they tend to focus on less story centric games. It’s okay to watch the first twenty minutes of Sega All-Star Racing to see how it works out, but why spoil the first hour of a story heavy game like Mass Effect 2?
Even if it’s not story heavy, certain games thrive on creating spectacles and to have it ruined by 480p streaming video when you could have experienced it first hand on your 52″ 1080p HDTV is a travesty in my opinion.
But as difficult as it is to stay unspoiled pre-release, it is twice as difficult post-release. With websites, podcasts, forums, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, I’m finding it very difficult to stay pure. Just searching for possible technical issues on a game before buying can incredibly risky in forums. Even NeoGAF with its spoiler tags and dedicated spoiler zones can sometime slip up.
And that’s why I didn’t even bother with visiting the God of War III official thread on GAF. I don’t even bother visiting the Heavy Rain one either since I have yet to play it. I’m also skipping entire podcast episodes since they’re covering Final Fantasy XIII for the week.
I didn’t care much about these spoilers a few years ago, but since games have become a bit more interesting narratively, I’ve come to care about it more and more. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t be caring since developers and publishers are allowing sites like GameTrailers to post the opening acts to their games for all to see before release. If they don’t care, why should I?
That’s something to think about.
I guess the Spike VGAs aired last night while I was watching Star Trek (excellent movie). Oh well. Not a big loss if the show was anything like the previous efforts. The only thing I really care about are the new teasers, trailers and footage which are all now available online. No need to sit through awkwardness to watch these.
I’ve posted the noteworthy ones for your viewing pleasure.
Batman: Arkham Asylum 2
[gametrailers 59829]
It’s a slow Monday. Not much to read or watch online so I decided to spoil Heavy Rain for myself.
GameTrailers put up a wonderfully intense walkthrough for this upcoming PlayStation 3 exclusive.
[gametrailers 54811]
RTCW’s MP & Wolf: ET stand as multiplayer hallmarks in my books, but that single player is still worth looking at, I guess.
[gametrailers 54308]
I have my doubts that the upcoming Wolfenstein game will ever live up to RTCW. Sorry, Raven Software.