Top 10 CV Predictions for E3 2014

With not long left to go, we Vultures write about what we’re most excited about for E3 2014.

 

Callum

 

Mass Effect 4

It seems like for the past few years any time the Mass Effect franchise is brought up all anyone does is play ‘don’t mention the ending’. The dust storm that it kicked up by having the audacity to have a vaguely disappointing ending (which was later rectified) can sometimes distract from the fact that it’s the finest thing Bioware have ever produced. There have been rumors of a new entry since just after 3 came out but there’s still almost no information on what kind of game it will be, when and where it will be set and who it will feature, only speculation. If I know Bioware, they’re keeping quiet because they have something pretty spectacular up their sleeves.

 

Star Wars Battlefront

I can’t even think about that announcement teaser from earlier this year, I get too excited, like a squirrel on MDMA, it’s messy. For those who don’t remember, the original Star Wars Battlefront games were released in the early 00s , utilizing the gameplay blueprints laid down by the Battlefield series and applying them to Star Wars. They were both brilliant, I still play the first one from time to time and it holds up like almost no other shooter. We’ve all been begging for another one for 10 years but the franchise has been set in a messy state of affairs for a long time and it’s just now getting back on track. All we’ve got to go on is the first announcement trailer but I expect that somewhere in the confines of the EA Death Star, the name is written on the conference setlist.

 

Far Cry 4

For me, Far Cry 3 was one of 2013’s strongest releases, it perfected the gameplay style seeded by the previous Far Cry games, finally gave us a story that was legitimately engaging and played with the whole concept of video-game violence (and morals). Its only real shortcoming was that it didn’t do more with the idea, the more interesting character vanishes halfway through and the dual-choice ending doesn’t live up to the game’s otherwise lofty ambitions. It could have been darker, braver and that much more memorable. By the look of the posters, the thin plot details about a fictional Himalayan nation with a despotic king and the presence of rideable elephants, the fourth game is going to capitalize on what made 3 so good and turn everything up to 11. It’s due out in November so a lengthy gameplay demo is a likely thing, hopefully it will be just as mind blowing as the ‘definition of insanity’ reveal for 3 was a few years ago.

 

Alien Isolation

I’ve been watching this game like a hawk more or less since it was announced. The Alien franchise has been brutalized by the gaming industry for years with crappy shooter after crappy shooter and now finally somebody’s actually gotten it right. A survival horror that has you confined to a derelict spaceship with no weapons and one nine-foot tall xenomorph that’s fully AI controlled (and therefore totally unpredictable) hunting you down? Sign me the fuck up. It’s due in October and there’s already a lot of information out there hype-wise but I’ll take anything else I can get until then.

 

No New Hardware Reveals

 

While I’ll admit that new gear unveilings can be exciting (the 3DS reveal was particularly so), I always find them to be the most tiresome aspect of E3 and they tend to emanate from the most polarizing of its features: the console company conferences. They can either be phenomenal or utterly shameful with little middle ground and a heavy focus on new hardware features is usually a pretty heavy nail in the awful coffin. It’s only gotten worse with time, since the most recent generation of consoles, Sony, Microsoft and to a lesser extent Nintendo seem to have forgotten that games are actually meant to be the focal point, waggling weird new controllers in front of us and bragging about some insipid new TV feature that nobody will ever use (I’d put money the world cup being mentioned explicitly by Sony, Microsoft or both this year), with the presenter making awkward floundering attempts to appeal to the masses by knowing what Game of Thrones is. Since the new generation is in its infancy, this year’s focus will probably be more geared towards getting as much hype for new games as possible and being the kind of heretic who just wants to sit back and enjoy a decent title, that excites me a great deal.

 

Stacey

Mirror’s Edge Sequel

If you put a gun to my head and made me choose my top three favourite games, apart from being a horrible person, the answer you would probably hear is: Gunstar Heroes, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Mirror’s Edge. So as you can imagine, I am pretty desperate for all the new information and intelligence regarding the much anticipated sequel to the game.

Now I’m not oblivious, the first game had faults pouring out of it. The dodgy combat system, the length (far too short) and in some corners of the internet they cry that it was far too difficult to figure out what to do. However, regardless of whether you like the game or not, you should probably be eagerly anticipating any news because it has been a bit of a saga. A few years ago a sequel was never going to happen and now we’re eagerly anticipating a release in 2016.

Information has been awash with rumours, including; the game will be open world, there will be a core online, multiplayer element, it will just be called Mirrors Edge and Faith will not be armed with a gun. DICE have apparently said the game will play as a racer and is further distant from a combat game than the original. Looking at the trailer, there does appear to be some minor improvements to the combat system and a very small improvement in the graphics. There is no sign at this point of the open world element or a shifted focus on to a racer game however it is very early days. All I can do now is wait and pray to the Gameboy in the sky that EA are feeling kind to us for this year’s E3.

 

Jimmy

 

Fallout 4

Skyrim was fantastic and all but during  my spate of dragon-slaying and laughing at Khajiit, I couldn’t help but think that I would have preferred a new jaunt around the Capital Wasteland.

There haven’t been many games in this generation or the last that have completely captured my attention quite like Fallout 3 did (and to a lesser extent, the eternally buggy New Vegas) and with the new hardware at the disposal of the geniuses at Bethesda, you shouldn’t be surprised to see Los Santos dwarfed in scale.

The Elder Scrolls Online has only further taken the spotlight away from Bethesda’s other IP but with even something as simple as a teaser trailer showing during the expo, Fallout fans everywhere may start to crawl out of their vaults again.

 

One last throw of the Dice for PES

There was a time when having Pierluigi Collina on the cover of your game meant that people would buy your game over FIFA but since the halcyon days of Pro Evo 3, the series has been suffering with less and less units shifted with each passing edition.

After the embarrassment of the most recent release being available for free on Playstation Plus and the character models being ridiculed (see above) across the web, it might be time to put the only competitor to FIFA out to pasture and for Konami to just admit that they don’t have the kind of backing they need to compete.

If PES is to reinvent the wheel, you’d expect it to be at E3 2014.

 

Phantom Pain in playable demo form

When Ground Zeroes was released, you could almost hear the Metal Gear Solid community let out a sigh of relief.

Gone was the frustratingly but somehow still charming control system and many of the other changes left Ground Zeroes feeling like an altogether different beast. The only criticism you could have was that it was frustratingly short but isn’t that just so Kojima?

With the full-length, The Phantom Pain, reportedly being “200 times larger” than its predecessor, there’s a lot of expectation for it at this year’s E3 and no more so than from myself.

 

Morpehus and Oculus

Just writing that makes it sound like I’m going to jump into a rendition of Ebony & Ivory.

VR is here and there could be no bigger way to show off how the two compare and contrast than at the largest gaming exhibition in the world. As a Sony original, expect to see a major push for Morpheus from the Japanese giants with one or two other interesting announcements up their sleeve still to come.

Anything we missed out? Be sure to leave a comment below.