E3 2017

[The Shoemaker]

Ubisoft was really solid, Mario and Rabbids really surprised me. No news on rayman legends deluxe, i guess it's switch exclusive?

Sony was pretty solid as usual. I didn't see Xbox conference live, but in really impressed with how Sony and Ubisoft kept up the pace and showed games after games, very few interruptions.

Monster Hunter is dope, the rest of the games look high quality.

[Kong Wen]

Nintendo's conference was short and light on content, which is to be expected for a presentation that's not on a main stage for a console that just came out. We got confirmation that Metroid Prime 4 is in development, but no real announcement about it. We got an off-hand remark confirming development of a core Pokémon title for Switch. Together, those announcements took up about 15-17 seconds of their stage time.

For the rest of the show, we saw a combination of stuff we already knew about (Dynasty Warriors with none of the good characters, more XCOM, more Skyrim, tons of time on Zelda DLC), amoeba reveals, a lot of promising Mario Odyssey gameplay, and two new showings: a 2D-ish Yoshi game that looks like it would be right at home on mobile, and a new 4-player Kirby game, both coming in 2018. Oh, and Rocket League coming this holiday season with cross-network play. That's pretty big.

Edit: After the damn show, they revealed their own official Metroid 2 remake for 3DS, Metroid: Samus Returns. They've added a lot of new features, and it looks quite good. Too bad it's not on the Switch, but hey, 2D Metroid!

[Jordan]

Nintendo:

1.) I can't stand it when a company name drops something without showing anything. Was there ever any doubt that a Pokemon game would be on Switch? That was patently obvious to anybody. Simply saying it felt like a way to pad out an E3 that was mostly devoid of worthwhile content.

Similar case with Metroid Prime 4. Showing a logo does not impress me at all.

2.) On the other hand, they did show footage of the Metroid 2 remake on 3DS and it looked fantastic. I think I might buy that one. They also showed footage of a Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga remake with some added content. I was a big fan of that game so it was exciting for me. My interest in the remake depends solely on how much new content can be expected from it.

3.) The new Mario game looks fucking amazing. Easily exceeded whatever expectations I had.

4.) Unfortunately, Mario was the highlight of the presentation. everything else was really blah. To run through some problems:

-who the fuck cares about yoshi and kirby anymore? It's even more galling when it doesn't seem like Nintendo will ever innovate either franchise.

-"we are only adding characters from Akaneia and recent FE games to FE Warriors because we don't want to have too many sword users"

"oh by the way, here are a bunch of new characters who use swords (the entire roster of the game so far)."

-where to begin with Xenoblade 2. The art looks atrocious, nothing about the story or characters looks interesting, the world and environment seem really rehashy from previous games in the series, the voice acting is among the worst I've heard in videogames in a long time and nothing about it looks innovative or exciting. What little they showed of the battle system makes it seem like they just lifted the battle system from the first game.

-people still care about skyrim?

-there was way too much in this E3 on games we already knew about. This is a problem with the way Nintendo presents things. They really need to stop it with these Pokemon Directs and separate directs in general, save their firepower for E3 and hit it out of the park then. It's hard to really get excited for Arms, Mario, squidtoons, Pokken Tournament DX, blah blah blah since we already know it's coming.

Overall, C- for Nintendo. It would have been a fail if not for the Treehouse redeeming it later. The surprise 3DS Metroid, Superstar Saga remake and potential promise for more news elevates their score a bit.

I didn't watch the other E3s so I can't compare them to Nintendo. I've heard across the web, though, that this E3 really fucking sucked across the board.

For me the best news from this E3 on a personal level was Monster Hunter World coming to PC. Assuming I can run it, I am totally getting in on that shit.

[SkyPikachu]

Nintendo
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Is this on the switch as it looked like 3ds graphics?
Kirby - I haven't played many Kirby games so I think I'll check it out.
Pokemon Switch - YAAAAAAAY
Metroid Prime 4 - I better go play 1-3
Yoshi - THIS LOOKS SO FUN!!!!
Zelda Amibo's - I haven't finished Zelda yet but thanks Nintendo for spoiling important parts of the game. But the people at treehouse didn't want to spoil the story of a 14 year old game Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga...
Super Mario Odyssey - The hat abilities look so amazing and a release date is amazing too 27th of October isn't far away.

Treehouse
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions - A remake doesn't really interest me that much especially on the 3ds.
Metroid: Samus Returns - 2D METROID YAY!! It's not on Switch but still it's something.

Will Edit in stuff as I watch treehouse

[The Shoemaker]

Was there ever any doubt that a Pokemon game would be on Switch?


-who the fuck cares about yoshi and kirby anymore? It's even more galling when it doesn't seem like Nintendo will ever innovate either franchise.[/quote]
There definitely was doubt, especially after the last direct where they said the new Pokemon games were only coming to 3DS. And with Nintendo constantly saying the 3ds is sticking around and Switch is a home console, there were huge doubts of Pokemon coming.

I love Kirby and Yoshi, especially since the last Yoshi game was the best since Island. Kirby is also a multi-million seller with each game actually, so it definitely pays to have it

Zelda Amibo's - I haven't finished Zelda yet but thanks Nintendo for spoiling important parts of the game.

Sorry what was spoiled? Didn't see anything that was spoilerific.

[SkyPikachu]

Sorry what was spoiled? Didn't see anything that was spoilerific.

Names of champions, that the champions play a part in the game, the champion character models.

[The Shoemaker]

Sorry what was spoiled? Didn't see anything that was spoilerific.

Names of champions, that the champions play a part in the game, the champion character models.

All of that info beyond names was revealed in trailers before the game came out :p also gives absolutely zero context as to what their roles are.

[Kong Wen]

I fully understand not wanting to know anything about the game. Most of the champions stuff is stated right in the beginning of the game though. Fairly innocuous.

[The Shoemaker]

To continue on with the rest of my e3 thoughts

Monster Hunter Worlds was the best new game announcement of the show I'd say. Really interesting stuff there.

I expected to be impressed by Mario Odyssey, but it impressed me even more than I thought it would.

Happy to see Zelda DLC pack 1 is coming so soon. I can finally grab the rest of those Korok seeds!

I'm really liking the look of Metroid: Samus Returns even though I wanted to be done with 3DS already :p I might even give Superstar Saga a go, I really enjoyed it as a kid.

Spider-Man looks solid, hard to say if it's going to be mission based or open world (has it been stated?)

God of War from a story perspective looks quite intriguing as well.

Overall, coming into this e3 I didn't think there would be many surprises I would be able to get really excited about. Ubisoft, Sony and Nintendo proved me wrong. We'll see which games I end up playing, as you can really only fit in so much. There are still games that came out this year already that I would love to dig my teeth into, never mind upcoming games.

[VictorViper]

It might just be the dearth of indies on display compared to recent years past, but I was surprised at how many AAA titles really caught my attention in a big way. I'm not really explicitly hyped about anything I've seen so far, but considering how utterly disinterested I typically am in big, immersive titles, that's saying a lot.

Hell, even David Cage's new one excited me in a few parts. WTF.

Thrilled about Monster Hunter, of course!