Best Original Game/New IP
Best PS3 Exclusive
The Last of Us
While zombie and post apocalyptic
games seem to be incredibly played out right now, Naughty Dog has decided to approach them with a compelling and
fresh angle. It isn’t about the zombie
like creatures and it isn’t about the world that they have created, but how that
world impacts you and forces you to choose how you are going to approach each
situation in order to keep you and the young girl you are protecting alive. I love it when a game makes you think about
the moral ramifications of your actions as opposed to how much fun it would be
to take everyone out and The Last of Us
seems to do this in spades. It also has
an incredibly dynamic AI system where
the enemies as well as Ellie react
accordingly to the situations you present them.
Best Xbox 360 Exclusive
Best FPS
Best Multiplayer
Halo 4
I love the Halo
franchise and so I obviously want to jump back into the boots of the Master Chief and kick alien butt. However, I was concerned that 343 Industries wouldn’t be able to live
up to Bungie’s legacy with the
franchise and that with the yearly iterations the next game just wouldn’t feel
as special as before. Luckily the
gameplay footage shown at Microsoft’s
press conference completely eliminated those concerns. The new enemies look awesome and should go a
long way to making the game feel new again, not to mention the story that they
are setting up with Crotona has me
deeply interested. Plus Spartan Ops looks to add a ton of co-op
content with its own story for 10 weeks after launch.
Best Wii U Exclusive
Nintendo Land
A lot of people were underwhelmed by
Nintendo Land at Nintendo’s press
conference and I do think that they spent too much time on it, but they did say
that like Wii Sports this would be a
game that upon playing makes you understand the new console. I hardly think it is wise to take companies
at their word but the Luigi game
looked fun if you have some friends around and they have 15 more mini games
based off franchises like Zelda, Metroid and Donkey Kong, some of which are single player only, that can show
off how the Gamepad can be used
effectively across different genres, which is exactly what I need to know in
order to be sold on the Wii U.
Best Handheld Game
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance
I loved Kingdom Hearts 1&2 and it pains me to see that this game has
‘Kingdom Hearts 3’ in the title and yet isn’t the game I have been waiting for
since 2006. I never cared about the
handheld versions but this one actually looks like a lot of fun, it has the
real-time battle system like 1&2,
solid graphics and a completely new story, as opposed to simply rehashing the
first game with some added levels as they have done more than once in the past.
Best Surprise
Splinter Cell: Black List
Some might argue that with a series
as huge as Splinter Cell the news of
a new game isn’t that surprising, but I was shocked to see it. Not only did Splinter Cell: Conviction create a good end point for the series
with the dismantling of Third Echelon,
but how far along this game appears is really surprising. This year people complained about a lack of
surprises do to everything being teased beforehand, like how GameInformer revealed Gears of War: Judgment during the week
leading up to E3. Somehow Ubisoft managed to keep the game
under wraps until they had a lot to show off, which is surprising given that Conviction was leaked in 2006, had a
trailer in 2007 and came out in 2010.
I’m glad that from what was shown we won’t have to wait so long to get
our hands on this one. All of this
contributes to it being a big surprise, but not necessarily the best one. That comes from the fact that I enjoyed Conviction and I’m eager to play the
follow up.
Best Downloadable Game
Best RPG
The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim: Dawnguard
There are some cool downloadable games
on the way but the expansion to arguably the best game of last year has me more
excited than any of them. As for the
other RPGs somehow this genre seems
to be really lacking compared to last year and unfortunately this is the only
one that I really want to get. The new
storyline involving a cult of vampires trying to block out the sun that you can
either choose to help or destroy is really interesting. There are also a lot of cool additions like
crossbows, mounted combat and skilltrees for Vampires and Werewolves. Plus there is a shout that lets you rip the souls out of humans and turns them into
your undead minions. Nuff said.
Best Open World Game
FarCry 3
The FarCry games are known for their open landscapes that you can
explore and use to tackle missions from different positions. FarCry
3 will be no different and the game is looking really good. I love that the main theme in the game is
insanity and I’m interested to see how that unfolds throughout the game. It also has a separate co-op campaign and I’m
interested in seeing if you will still have the open world when in it or if
you’ll have to go section by section as you complete missions.
Best Racing Game
Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Even though I think the title for this game is stupid since there
is already a game this generation with the exact same one, I did love the
original NFS: Most Wanted and Criterion is sure to do something
special with it. I mean they are the
guys who made Burnout after all, so
they know their racers and they decided that that a game from less than seven
years ago needed to be rebooted so they must have seen some potential there.
Best Trailer
All of the CG trailers for the Cybertron
games are incredible; in fact they always make me think of how I would love to
see a Transformers movie that looked
like them. The latest is no different,
the tone, action and music are incredible and when I saw Metroplex my jaw dropped.
Best Fighting Game
Dead or Alive 5
DOA
is my favourite fighting game series and the latest looks amazing. The combat is as fast and fluid as ever and
the environments seem to offer more interaction and cooler set-pieces than
before.
Best Use of Motion Control
Fable: The Journey
This was the only motion controlled
game at the show that seemed like it at least had some potential to be a fun
gaming experience for the core audience.
Even though I don’t expect this game to be as good as the core Fable titles I hope it can offer a fun
and different sort of experience that doesn’t feel like a cheap gimmick as most
games that offer motion control do.
Best 3rd Person Shooter
Resident Evil 6
Resident
Evil 6 is looking incredible and the action seems better than ever. You can now move and shoot, which to be
honest I’m not entirely sure how I feel about, and perform a bunch of new
action oriented moves. The game will be
completely cooperative like RE5, but luckily
it seems to have a larger focus on horror.
I’m interested in seeing how the multiple storylines tie together and
what happens now that the outbreak has gone global.
Best MMO
Dust 514
There were a bunch of MMOs this year and none of them looked
bad but they also didn’t offer anything to break the mold, with the exception
of Defiance tying a TV show to the
game but that doesn’t really do much for the game itself. Dust
514 however blows my mind with its influence on EVE Online, an entirely different game on a different platform, and
vice versa. The idea that many of my
actions will benefit players that I don’t know in a game I’ve never played and
that they might reward me with credits or new supplies in my game through their
game is just so intriguing that I’ll have to play it. Also it won’t cost me anything to do so since
the game is free.
Best Action Adventure
Assassin’s Creed 3
Assassin’s
Creed 3 had an amazing showing at this year’s E3. I was really disappointed
when I first heard about their plans for this game because I was hoping that AC3 would be the series finally and
revolve entirely around Desmond. However, after hearing that the team has been
working on this game for the past 2 ½ years and seeing how much they have
accomplished in that time I am pumped to play this game. The combat, which includes somewhere between
4000 & 5000 new animations, looks fantastic and is faster and more fluid
than ever, not to mention more deadly.
They have also included the ability to take cover behind objects and
crouch-walk which are elements that should be in any stealth action game at
this point. Then after blowing me away
with how the game looks and plays they introduced naval combat, which looks
incredible. I can’t think of a single
game that’s primary focus is ship combat that looks anywhere near as
interesting and engaging as what I saw of this relatively small aspect of AC3.
Biggest Disappointment
The rush to ‘Second Screen’
We all knew going into E3 about the Wii U’s second screen located on the Gamepad, but once the event started we found that they weren’t the
only company testing it out. Microsoft introduced SmartGlass for the 360 and to me it seems rather inconsequential. I don’t need all the little bonus info like
the ones that appear whenever you meet a new character or discover a new, significant
building in Assassin’s Creed to be
sent to my tablet so I can read it their or when I’m on the go. The Vita
was also displayed in the same manner that the Game Boy Advance was once shown with the GameCube in that you can play a game like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale with the Vita instead of a PS3 controller.
It not only disappointed me that Microsoft and, to a much smaller extent,
Sony were reacting to Nintendo once again as they did when we
got Kinect and the Move, but it really disappointed me when
everyone was talking about SmartGlass
and the Gamepad and saying that Sony needed something to combat them and
that games are moving to a second screen interface. Games are fine as they are and I don’t see
why we are encouraging this ADD
culture we have where it is so hard to get people to focus on one thing for an
extended period of time. Having a second
screen only detracts from what is on the main one. I don’t want info about the making of a show
while watching it for the first time because I want to be brought into that
world not taken out of it and I don’t want developers coming up with asinine
ways to implement this tech that is completely unnecessary and ends up costing
them time that should have been focused on the core gaming experience. Why would anyone want to control Madden through a bunch of dots on a tablet
after paying $60 for the real version, which is being displayed on your TV at
the same time?
Game of Show
Halo 4
There
were a lot of games that impressed me at this year’s E3 but very few managed to utterly excite me and stick with me
throughout the show anywhere close to the extent that Halo 4 did. Everything from
the incredible live-action trailer followed by the spectacular campaign footage
showing off amazing new enemies, cool new guns, great new graphics and a new
world to explore combined with the possibility of Master Chief teaming up with other Spartans due to there being Spartan
IVs on the Infinity, which
contains survivors, the story opportunities opened up by exploring the
deterioration of Cortana, Spartan Ops and the always killer versus
multiplayer left me more excited for this game than anything else shown at E3.
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