E3 After Thoughts

Having seen everything on offer, here are my E3 after thoughts on the games that interested me.  I think overall, I got about half of the things on my wish list as well as a few more nice surprises. Not bad at all!

Bethesda: a mixed bag warm up

• Doom 4!  Loved all of the Doom games especially Doom 3 and it’s expansion so looking forward to more of this.
  

  The classic Doom Revenant. Now with more death.

• I will play Fallout 4 but I’m not gushing for it like a lot of people are. Fallout 3 was decent enough but New Vegas was fairly boring to me.
• I don’t care at all about Dishonored 2. I didn’t think much of the original.  It was decent enough but again, nothing special.  It took me about 4 hours to finish running through shooting and stabbing everyone I could see.

Microsoft: lots of unexpected and varied news

• I like the new XBox One controller, that will finally be compatible with Windows and has lots of customisations.  Sadly unless it comes down in price a lot, it will be too much money at $150, probably over £100 by the time it gets here.
• The Gears 1 remake looks nice.  It has the extra missing chapters that Gears 1 had on PC that XBox never got and is coming to PC.  (it’s picked up some colour in the remaster).  Gears 4 also looks good with a darker more sinister air to it.  Gears is always fun for co-op and I’ll be getting these for sure.
• The Rare compilation of classic games is a very awesome idea but I don’t think I’ll get it myself as I would likely never be able to finish the half of them.
• Halo 5 will be the game that finally sells me an XBox One.  Buck vs The Chief! Oh no!
  

  Buck from ODST. Then and now.

• Ashen looks to be an interesting little indie title.
• Backwards compatibility with XBox 360 is great! Maybe I can finally retire my 360.  I Just hope they expand it out and keep going with it.  It requires users to re-download an emulated version of the game to hard disc rather than just using the disc.
• Phantom Pain.  Oh my god.  Oh my god.  This will be one of my biggest games of the year.
• Recore might be good.  Solid developers behind it like the Metroid Prime team.
• Rise Of The Tomb Raider is coming along nicely. If I have an XBox One at the time I might as well get it on that.  If not, I’ll wait for a PC version.
• I tried Dark Souls a while back. Didn’t like it so not too fussed about Dark Souls 3.

EA: more from all your favourite franchises

• Need For Speed shows promise.  Despite going back to the underground street racing scene.
• Mass Effect Andromeda is very exciting. A whole new galaxy! Had to be really after the ending of Mass Effect 3….  But this whole new galaxy seems to have a lot of common elements from out one.
• Unravel is a platform game that has a lot of charm but I predict much sadness.  and EA needs more stuff like this.
  

  Unravel has a small studio indie vibe to it.

• Fucking Mirror’s Edge 2! Now called Catalyst.  Finally with a release date. It will be open world but probably not really I’d suspect.  I’m guessing it will be like a modern Far Cry where it’s open world between missions but the missions will be channelled into smaller linear areas.

Ubisoft: all online, all the time

• I still haven’t played The Crew and now I kind of don’t want to.
• More DLC for Trials Fusion! Yay?
• The Division and Rainbow Six Seige look good but I just don’t care about multi-player.  I wish they’d stayed single player or at least included a good single player campaign.
• Ghost Recon Wildlands does look great though. I thought it was Far Cry 5 at first.  It should also good for co-op.
  

  Ghost Recon goes open world. Just like every other game recently.

• I’m going to play Assassin’s Creed Syndicate either way. I just hope its more like Assassin’s Creed Rogue and less like Assassin’s Creed Unity.

Sony: 3 Enormous pieces of earth-shattering news

• Oh my fucking god.  Final Fantasy VII remake.  It’s finally happening.
• The Last Guardian has come back to us. I knew it would. I never lost hope.  But it’s moved to PS4 now, so one more reason to get it.
  

  I never stopped believing The Last Guardian would come back to us.

• Shockingly, I have never played either Shenmue game but I know the love people have for it so I might try it now…
• Uncharted 4 looks great as expected and will most likely be the game that sells me a PS4.
• Firwatch looks like a playable Pixar film. Should be cool.
• Horizon Zero Dawn is the next big thing from makers of Killzone which I have been a long time fan of. There are hints of Enslaved Odyssey To The West in it.
• Tacoma is another indie title from the makers of Gone Home. But will it be a game?

Nintendo: kind of phoned it in

• A new Mario RPG game with Paper Mario mixed in? Could be fun, but not quite the Mario game we wanted.
• The 3 player co-operative Zelda, Tri-Force Heroes, looks like the earlier co-op Zelda, 4 swords, only with 3 players not 4.
• Yet another Animal Crossing game?  I haven’t played this series since the Gamecube original.
• Starfox Zero just looks amazing.  Glad I don’t have too long to wait for it.
  

  Hard to say no to a new Starfox game.

• Mario Maker is probably great for the creative type but that I am not so it may not be of much use to me.
• I so badly want Yoshi’s Wooly World with an amiibo.  I don’t know why.  I don’t know why I want amiibos so bad.

Square Enix

Adam is back (from the dead somehow) with religious symbolisim abound.

Deus Ex Mankind Divided has a lot to follow up from Human Revolution.  But so far, it looks like it’s well set to do so.

Miscellaneous

• Call of Duty Black Ops 3 has a co-op campaign.  Finally.  Love me some co-op shooting action.
• A new Hitman?  Cool I guess although the last one wasn’t great
• Transformers: Devastation.  Oh yes.  Everything Transformers is gold.  Everything.  And Platinum games is making it who also make solid gold.  A winning combination.
  

  Hard to go wrong with Transformers. G1 Transformers, that is. Michael Bay got it pretty wrong….

PC

Gears Of War Ultimate Edition will come to PC the same day as XBox One

It’s very good to see things like the Gears remake, No Man’s Sky and Killer Instinct coming to pc.  Most things are launched on the same day now instead of months or years later.  PC is finally getting the attention it deserves.  Probably in part due to PS4 and XBox One being the same architecture as PCs now.

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Kane & Lynch 2 Dog Days Review

Probably not the nicest area of Shanghai

I played Kane & Lynch 2 Dog Days originally not long after it came out in co-operative split-screen mode and decided to replay it again recently.  Co-operatively again, only this time online on PC so without split-screen so this could be considered a re-review if there is such a thing.

Good luck shooting guys.

This game got truly slated in most reviews.  Every reviewer said that they didn’t like it and that it was bad and ugly and nauseating to play and many other derogatory comments.  But I found this to be very unfair as this is a game that is very very easy to misunderstand.  The problem was that most people just didn’t seem to get what the developers were going for with it.  Their design idea being the aesthetics of the game was to make it “authentic and genuine” like a documentary.  To this end, the game is intentionally designed to be disgusting and does it extremely well.  Everyone in it is an ugly asshole.  The majority of the game is set in the slums of Shanghai so the streets are littered with dirt and rubbish.  The “background music” is rarely more than a buzzing white noise.  Every light is abrasive and neon and causes strobing and lens flare obscuring your vision.  The whole thing is shot in a “found footage” motif with your point of view being from a camera man who is following the unlucky pair of Kane and Lynch.  He does a good job keeping up with you most of the time but it’s this point of view that causes your view to wobble around constantly especially while running and to be obscured constantly by blood splatter, dirt and even more lens flare leaving you unable to see most of what is going on for a lot of the time which just adds to all of the chaos and confusion.

Can’t see anything? Get used to it.

Despite being primarily a cover-based shooter, the shooting is loose and has no feedback. You can’t easily tell if you are hitting your target or not until they fall down dead, which is probably what real shooting is like without all the electronic aids. Aiming is rarely any more accurate than running and shooting from the hip.  You regularly get knocked down flat on your arse when you get winged with minor damage causing you to scrabble to get to your feet again in an undignified mess.

You’ll get knocked down. A lot.

The 2 main characters are completely unlike-able terrible people who start off in a dicey situation doing an illegal deal and keep getting into progressively more and more awful situations only making them worse every time they try to solve them.  But at least they’re honest about being bastards.  They don’t spend the game-play murdering everyone they lay eyes on and then play the role of reluctant hero in cut-scenes like some protagonists do.  They’re just bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling 100% of the time.  They also usually rarely have any clue what they’re currently doing or are going to do next and just fumble through areas screaming incoherently at each other (and sometimes themselves) further adding to the feeling that you never ever for one single second have any kind of semblance of control on the situation and that everything is just on a continuing downward spiral towards even worse things.  It’s a hell of a wild ride trying to escape the city as all kinds of shit hits the fan.

Some of the nastier injuries will be pixellated out

It’s a video game nasty.  It’s a straight to DVD film release.  I just wish they would make one final entry in this series.  Without spoiling anything, I can only say once you see the ending, you will know why.

Hey, remember DVDs?

Kane & Lynch 2 Dog Days Review Summary

In every single conceivable and quantifiable way, it is absolutely terrible.  But somehow, it all comes together.  It all works.  It’s a beautifully honest, brutal, unashamed disgusting chaotic, haphazard nausea-inducing mess and I love it.  And if you give it a try, you just might find that you love it too.  Or not.  Not everyone will get it.  Those of you who get motion sickness easily may want to turn on the “steadycam” option which steadies the camera in the hands of the film-maker a bit more.  I probably haven’t explained it very well just how good this is.  But trust me on this one.  It’s a work of genius and it makes me sad that it never got the recognition that it deserved.  That’s why I will keep spreading the good word.

Final Score: 5/5

Kane and Lynch are not nice men.

 

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