Dcubed

Actually from what I've seen on there, most people seem to be really happy with the new format. Much moreso than last year (or 2012 and 2011 for that matter!) Very few people moaning about the lack of a live conference really

At first I was really sceptical about the new E3 format. It thought it was crazy to take this route after it backfired on them so badly last year... but now... Fuck the live press conference! I don't miss it at all! This new format is brilliant! I've been glued to each broadcast! The thought of new announcements hitting at any time over the next 2 days is so exciting! Seems to be a hit all round too, I've yet to see anyone who has not enjoyed the new form of coverage and each broadcast has been getting over 100k views on a consistent basis (IIRC the Smash Invitational hit 400k live views when that was on ). This year has been a real winner for them

The hell!? A Square Enix game that looks interesting? And isn't for mobiles!? What alternate dimension did I fall into!?

Well I do have full faith in Nintendo's ability to deliver. Despite not actually featuring any gameplay, the trailer itself does actually showcase Nintendo's gameplay-first design sensibilities, with how clear and readable everything in the scene is; note that despite how detailed everything is and how massive the scale is, everything important to the scene is immediately visible, clear and easy to "read" - that's exactly how Nintendo design the visuals of their games. Everything visual is designed to serve the gameplay and this trailer likewise does exactly the same thing. Look at Zelda Wii U and compare it to something similar in scope like The Witcher 3... Notice how "noisy" the onscreen visuals are? With a realistic style, nothing really stands out from the environment. Things like grappling hook points or objects of interest are lost in a sea of realistic lighting/textures etc. Not so with the Zelda U trailer! (For a good example, watch the start of the video and take notice of how you can notice the giant enemy immediately the moment when it emerges from under the hill - hell! even those tiny birds stand out fantastically from the environment amongst everything else! )

Surprised that they unveiled it this way, while showing no gameplay whatsoever. Very un-Nintendo like to announce something this way, showcasing the world and visual design before anything else... ... but man! It looks like a Ghibli film! I love how the celshading looks! And the lighting is so unique (note how most objects aren't necessarily lighted realistically, but rather they use a lot of rim lighting and lighted shading), it's unlike any other game I've ever seen! Everything moves, lights and shades like a hand animated 2D production The way that everything pops and stands out as clearly visible is also a typical Nintendo trademark (notice how everything that is important to the scene is so easy to see - nothing gets lost in the noise of all that detail). Everything is immediately clear and readable, true to Nintendo's typical way of making games (the visual style serves the gameplay - clarity of play and player readability comes before anything else ). To be able to achieve that in a game of this kind of scale and detail is just amazing! Truely masterful! That being said, I am worried about the direction this game is taking... The idea of them moving towards a WRPG style open world and moving away from the smaller scale hand-crafted world of Zelda leaves me very worried. The idea of Not-Link's gender being selectable and their appearance customisable (pure conjecture, but if they're taking inspiration from the likes of Skyrim...) is also concerning... I'm excited to see them take such a brave new direction, but I'm also worried that it might lose everything that makes Zelda so special in the process... ... and to show nothing of how it plays either? Very scary... Of course it's a cutscene. Those camera angles aren't remotely playable! Again, very strange to see Nintendo unveil a game without showing any actual gameplay... it's not what they normally do...

This looks like total garbage! THIS is what Itagaki has been working on all this time!? Wow! Conceptually it's interesting, but the execution... oh man... I was excited to see it be picked up as an exclusive (as I predicted before when THQ went bust), but now... It should've went down with them...

Ahh, finally the 3rd party character we all expected to see from the get-go when we all heard that Namco were involved :p Still... What the hell!? Why not announce it at the Invitational!? Just imagine the crowd's reaction! Anyway, I love how they've combined the in-game Pacman and the artwork Pacman together into one character moveset, it's brilliant! My only real gripe is the fact that his final smash seems to be using the high-res Battle Royale version of his sprite and not the original 8bit one (or even the Championship Edition version). Bit lame... ... this is brilliant though

Well pretty much everyone did it at some point. I meant he didn't deserve to win in that final match itself...

No, it was pretty bad. The percentage didn't even need to be high at all. It definately came across as a developer oversight moreso than an intentional tactic... Also yeah I know that the smart thing to do would indeed be to time waste and hope for sudden death, but that's just such a cheap and lame way to assure a chance of victory, especially in a tournament like this it just rubs me the wrong way Also I know it's unrelated but I did think it was kinda weird how some stages were far more polished (visually speaking) than others. The Mega Man and Battlefield stages looked so much more complete than any of the others (especially Skyloft, which had like no detail in the clouds at all). I know it's an unfinished E3 demo, but it was pretty funny to see :p Especially when I'm sure we've seen it looking more detailed before in other builds (I suppose they're probably not as stable and obviously in a tourney like this, they can't risk anything going wrong - though I did notice some weird pauses and stutters at the end of each match - ahh, unfinished E3 build software )

Great show, but the whole Melee fan wankery was so disgusting... These guys clearly have no clue how to play 4 player... No clue how to do anything out of Fox only, No items, Final Destination... They sucked so bad in 4 player... Even Zelda Williams did better! That Mega Man player who purposely avoided picking up items was the worst! The Worst! He blatently threw the match so that Fox would win! And the audience that voted for Fox over everyone else in the previous round... So transparent... Fuck them! He was the worst player BY FAR! Kirby also got totally robbed in that last round. The ZSS player totally did not deserve to win (Time wasting wanker!) BTW: How much do you want to bet that Sakurai is going to fix the Punchout stage so that Kirby's suplex throw doesn't bounce off the lights?

Hylian Warriors looks a lot more involved than your typical Dynasty Warriors game I like how they've implemented Zelda gameplay elements like the areas and shortcuts that you can only get to when you have the Hookshot, or the enemies that you can beat by using it or the bombs OH MY DAZE!!! DAT MOON!!!!

STARFOX HAS GONE INTO FULL DEVELOPMENT!!! A PROPER INTERNALLY DEVELOPED STARFOX GAME!!! (NO OUTSOURCED RUBBISH!!) The first one in over 18 years!!! AT FUCKING LAST!!!

Is it? Tower Defence games are defined by the player's ability to place objects as they so wish. This game doesn't allow you to do that at all... Also Captain Toad is more of an Action Adventure game without the ability to jump...

Oh cool! Project Guard is based off an un-released N64 prototype game!

Wow! Project Guard looks bloody stressful! (And tons of fun!) I don't see how they can stretch it out into a full standalone game though. It looks like the kind of game that would be included in a Nintendo Land style compilation... Project Giant Robot I can imagine being fleshed out into a fuller game, but Guard... I can't see it yet... Edit: Oh wow! These enemies and mechanics are really clever! Enemies that explode and take out nearby cameras... Smoke coming off enemies that block your view... Quite a bit of depth here

OMG LOOOOOOLL!!! I love the sad music for when your Giant Robot falls over and explodes The game as a whole looks like QWOP with motion controls and robots

Mario must be spinning in his grave right now... Cause Dirty is better than Clean...

It'll be one of those games they show later on during the Treehouse Live videos for sure. There's still that 90 min event for one single still unannounced 3DS game after all...

DEVIL'S THIRD!!! I TOTALLY CALLED THAT SHIT!!! It's Bayonetta 2 all over again! (oh man, can't wait to see GAF's reaction...) Also... @RedShell... Told you that you should've waited to play Bayonetta...

Phantom Dust 2 was a big one (ok it was rumoured beforehand, but it wasn't actually leaked and was still very much a big deal!) Likewise, same thing for Crackdown 3. Rumoured, but still very surprising that it is actually happening. Inside was also an unexpected little bombshell, as was Ori and the Blind Forest. And Scalebound was completely unlike what I expected the fabled "Project Nagano" Platinum exclusive to be like! Looks like quite a departure from Kamiya's previous projects, erring closer to the likes of Monster Hunter. Overall, much more than what Sony showed - which (speaking purely about exclusives) wasn't really very surprising at all outside of LBP3's surprisingly swift release.

I never said that it would be super short and feature nothing (the fact that they're having 3 separate 8 hour long streams going over these games in greater detail over the next 3 days alone is enough to tell you that!), but rather that compared to the 2-2.5 hour long conferences that MS and Sony just had, the Nintendo Digital Event is going to feel very short in comparison and (in that respect) underwhelming... I think it's fair to say that. Even if it were an hour long, it would still feel short compared to the marathon long events that their rivals just had...

Overall I have to say that I thought that MS had the better conference this year. Sony might have the better hardware, but MS have a better lineup of games and dropped bigger and more unexpected bombs than Sony did by far! They also have a decent number of exclusives this year, while Sony has Driveclub, LBP3 and.... oh wait... :p

Wow! This year's lineup is BARREN! There are literally only 2 single 1st party games from now till the end of 2014 (Driveclub and LBP3 - though I was surprised to see the latter hitting this year) and almost every single major 3rd party game is slated for next year, with the only notable retail titles coming this year being either annual titles (sports games, yearly COD/Asscreed/Battlefield etc), 1080p remasters and Destiny (which of course is not exclusive, despite having some exclusive content). And almost all of these exclusive upcoming retail games for PS4 are those Uncharted style movie-in-disguise games that do not appeal to me whatsoever... The cancellation of Stig/Sony Santa Monica's new IP has really hit their lineup HARD this year! Say what you will about the hardware, but the Xbone has the better lineup of games right now and in the near future...

That's a really clever use of the fact that the 3DS version gives you your own private screen It's just a shame that... this means that... WE'RE GONNA GET THIS BLOODY THING AGAIN!!!

Scalebound... Goddammit Microsoft... They know that Platinum games have me by the balls...