Editorial: A look back at E3 2012

Image from Forbes.

News, news, news, news and more news. That's what's exciting about the Electronic Entertainment Expo for video game enthusiasts is it not? Being given a glimpse into the future of this ever-growing industry is always exciting as it is tantalizing. This year was no different. Despite not being a participate to the event in physical form, I do always look forward to learning more about what each major company is really up to behind their closed doors, trying their darndest to keep their top-secret projects and plans under heavily-guarded wraps.

Now that the dust has settled and each major hitter in the industry has provided a brief glimpse at both their short-term and long-term plans, I can't help but feel just a tad bit underwhelmed by this year's E3. Granted, a majority of the games looked better than ever, but nothing felt too surprising or absolutely awe-inspiring.

The big three conferences of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all felt very by-the-numbers. Microsoft started off with a bang that is Halo 4, which I must say is looking mighty impressive. Having grown up on Halo, I'm eagerly anticipating what 343 Industries has done with this long-running series. But after such a great start, Microsoft fell upon their usual laurels of third-party game demonstrations and media connectivity. Don't get me wrong, third-party support is great, but it doesn't really help distinguish the advantages of Microsoft's when compared to the PS3. Oh, and there's SmartGlass. Yeah...it looked cool and sounded interesting, but is it really necessary for significantly improving our game experiences? Hopefully Microsoft can prove me wrong, but I'm skeptical at this point, especially considering the lackluster utilization of Kinect at this point.

Halo 4 is shaping up well.

Sony's conference was pretty predictable as well, but to an ever-so slightly lesser extent. Beyond: Two Souls, David Cage's new game (*cough* Heavy Rain creator *cough*), looks interesting, but seems to fall into the same cinematic mold as Quantic Dream's past games. God of War: Ascension sure looks like a God of War game. It looks fantastic from a graphical perspective, but the gameplay looks to be playing it save, which is disappointing considering what Santa Monica Studios could have done to explore Kratos' more human side. And of course, there was The Last of Us, which looks great and provided for a very tense and brutal demo for the audience. But games like the new peripheral-ridden Wonder Book may sound interesting in theory, but it's onstage demo went on for way, way too long and was, quite frankly, boring to watch. And almost nothing was said about the PlaySation Vita besides a new Assassin's Creed game and a logo for a portable Call of Duty game. Weird.

And then there was Nintendo. Yeah, the announcement of Pikmin 3 is great and all, but this conference probably left the worst sour taste in my mouth out of all of them. A new Mario game? Great! Oh, it's a sequel that doesn't appear to veer very far from the established formula of New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii. Oh, and they're releasing a New Super Mario Bros. for the 3DS as well? That's...cool I guess, if not particularly imaginative or original. And then they bring a game released last year onstage in the form of Batman: Arkham City for the Wii U. Why not Assassin's Creed 3 or something that hasn't been released at least? The conference was a series of baffling corporate decisions made by Nintendo. And they failed to convince people why they should purchase their next console. I'm sure a majority of the crowd was increasingly growing more and more dumbfounded as the conference went on and on, much like how I felt while watching it from 2,000 miles away.

These three men failed me.

Heck, Ubisoft probably had the best showing out of everyone, flaunting one great game after another with Far Cry 3, Assassin's Creed 3, Splinter Cell: Retribution, Rayman Legends, the weirdly name ZombiU, and so on and so forth. Oh, and I haven't forgotten about Watch Dogs, which looks really good and sounds very interesting in theory with the whole electronic warfare concept with phones and what-not. Let's hope this unique idea grows into a fully-functional and well-developed product. Oh, while not associated with Ubisoft, I have to give a shout-out to games like Unfinished Swan, Sound Shapes, Papo Y Yo, and Dishonored, as each of these titles seem to be taking a risk for the good of originality, which was quite a feat in this sequel-filled show.

It very much feels like everyone is in that awkward stage in-between console generations. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are showing off games from their staple franchises with twos, threes, heck even fours in their titles, or are merely creating prequels for said franchises. It seems like few developers are willing to risk establishing new IPs on current-gen consoles with their eventual demise seemingly coming closer and closer to fruition. Again, games like Watch Dogs are just screaming for new technology, pushing the boundaries for what to expect from a video game on a visual level. Star Wars 1313 was also obviously running on hardware that the Xbox 360 and PS3 could only dream of. The tech demos of the Unreal Engine 4 and Square Enix's Luminous engine, as well as the new demonstrations of the CryENGINE 3, all have me greatly excited for what's to come on the near horizon of video games.

Not everything at the show was a sequel.

But these future technologies have yet to be revealed. The games of now are showing just how far this industry has come from the simple Sega Genesis days. And while the conferences and announcements themselves were rather lackluster, at least the actual games on display looked great. So yeah, the show wasn't very spectacular, but I haven't felt better about being a part of this fascinating industry than I do now. And you know what, it can only get better from here.