E3 ’11 Impressions Part 1

The Electronic Entertainment Expo began yesterday morning and with full force. Several announcements were revealed by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo that  wowed the audience, as well as announcements made by 3rd party publishers like Insomniac and Ubisoft. So here are the things that I’m most looking forward to thanks to E3.

First off is the Tomb Raider reboot. This game looks really amazing based on the video shown. Now I personally never got into the Tomb Raider series, yet this looks like a game where I could have hours and hours of fun with. Tomb Raider is now more of a survival game rather than run and gun, and the active time events adds to the tension that the player is going to have while playing this game. Graphically the game looks great, so playing this game on anything other than an HD monitor would probably feel like a waste.

Speaking of reboots, another that I’m excited for was the reboot of the SSX series. SSX On Tour was shown and EA announced that there’s going to be three modes of game play. Race to see who’s the fastest, Trick to see who can get the most points, and Survive, where the video that was shown was the characters trying to outrun an avalanche! Another major thing to mention is that EA used satellite imagery to get realistic mountain levels based on actual locations all around the world.

Gears of War looked pretty good with it’s live demo. Marcus and company running through the levels and kicking ass like normal, but the one thing that was a little weird but yet still kind of awesome was the boss that they showed, a kraken! Yes there was actually a giant squid-like monster that Marcus and the others had to fight. At that point it wouldn’t have been much of a shock to see Jack Sparrow appear to dive head first into it’s mouth with a lancer rifle, but nevertheless it still looked pretty awesome.

Overstrike is going to be my dark horse pick this E3. The trailer here really says it all, but think of the game Brute Force for the original Xbox system mixed with Timesplitters. Interesting cast of characters, crazy weapons and the multiplayer support are probably what going to make this game. Let’s hope that this game will featured 4 player split screen co-op as opposed to only online like some games only have nowadays. Insomniac is working on the game and it’s supposed to be out by 2012.

Mass Effect 3 was probably the biggest thing that I have to look forward to now. We saw two game play demos yesterday, one where Shepard was on a mission with Mordin and Wrex with Liara and Garrris in the main party. A new weapon featuring a blade on Shepard’s omni-tool appeared in the demo which allows him to make quick kills as long as he’s up close to his opponent and also makes for dispatching enemies stealthily. The game was also announced that it’ll have kinect support, which is incredibly superfluous to the game. Instead of actually picking chat options with the controler, you can actually say what you want Sheppard’s response to say and the game will continue. Although, another thing you can do is shout commands to your squad mates without pausing the action to scroll through attacks. Now you can target a specific enemy and say “Liara, Pull!” and she’ll use that ability to whoever you target. Again, awesome, but completely unneeded.

Also, I dunno if anyone knew this beforehand, but EA’s CEO looks so much like the Illusive Man it’s almost criminal! Apperendly he’s supposed to have more of a resemblance to his voice actor, Martin Sheen but I don’t quite see is as much as I do here. Did EA do this on purpose?! Am I really the last person to find out about this?!