aspro said:

What the hell? Are they bringing back the CDi game?

EDIT: Okay I give up. I looked for any new Zelda game on the web and found nothing. What is that horrible gif from though?

OOT 3DS remake.

Luigi's Mansion 2 was the only surprise for me at the show. I never thought Nintendo would make another one.

E3 2011 has come and gone, here are my scores and picks for games of the show. Overall it was a pretty average E3. Almost no surprises, no real big new game announcements and everything seemed to be a sequel. Its time for a new gen to come along and spice things up. Lets start with the conferences.

Microsoft:  Starts off fine as it does every year with stage demos but if you have seen one CoD stage demo you have seen them all. It looked epic but its all on rails.It was great to see Tomb Raider though the section they showed wasn't what I wanted to see. They showed so many 3rd party games, its like MS forgot what an exclusive was. Then the conference went into Kinect hell and it was worse than I could image. They were supposed to prove how Kinect could play the games we like, all they did was show it can't. It was a parade of on rail mini game heavy crap. Then you get a Halo 4 teaser which fell flat cause we all knew it was coming. Terrible conference, and yet they will sell the most consoles this year much like how Nintendo did years ago.  Grade: F+

EA: A very good conference that focused on games and showed some major titles like Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3, and The Old Republic. The Need for Speed demo was terrible though, QTE in a racing game, what is going on? Oh and that Sims trailer, that was the single worst thing I saw this entire conference. It got cheesy with the football players coming on stage and all that. The new Insomniac game had just a CG trailer, booo. Still the games shown were mostly great.  Grade: C-

Ubisoft: Much better than last years, mostly due to the lack of laser tag. They replaced Joel McCale with a random coked up employee, at least he had energy. They had good stuff to show like the stunning Rayman and Assassin's Creed. Ghost Recon had a demo that could put you to sleep though. No BG&E 2, Ubisoft hates us. They had maybe the biggest unexpected new game reveal of the show, Far Cry 3, with a nice gameplay video. The new Brother's in Arms was clearly an Inglorious Bastards ripoff. Decent show with not many down moments. Grade: C+

Sony: The conference started with the much needed sincere apology which was handled great by Jack Tretton. After some numbers they went right to the games showing off Uncharted 3 which is as amazing as any game shown at the conference. They had exclusive after excluisve being shown, Microsoft may need to take notes. They introduced new products like the PS 3DTV. They revealed Sly 4, the God of War PSP collection, and got exclusive content for a bunch of games. Then they showed of the Vita with some great demos, especially LittleBigPlanet which makes excellent use of the systems functions. The price was perfect at $250. It all went smoothly. Problem is the conference got boring at times and it did not have a big memorable moment like GoW4 or something like that. Grade: B

Nintendo: The one with all the attention and they fell flat. It started off awesome with a perfect tribute to Zelda which showed some new SS footage but they really didn't get into SS. They talked a lot of 3DS and showed 5 titles for it, only one a surprise. Mario was incredible and Luigi's Mansion 2 was a nice surprise. But where was all the third party support promised to us last E3?  Then came the big moment, the unveliing of a new console and... its exactly what we have seen for months now. Worse still, Nintendo barely explains what its used for, instead of showing any real games they show a montage of weird uses for it like putting it on the floor while you golf with a wiimote. It was so confusing people though the controller was the system. But hey we got a cool Zelda HD video out of it, amazing! No real info, nothing on online, no real games shown, terrible unveiling.   Grade: C-

Time for the game awards.

Best Trailer: Star Wars The Old Republic

I think this wins every year. If these trailers are as good as the game it will be special. This wasn't so much a trailer, it was the intro movie to the game and its better than the prequel movies. Perfect pacing, amazing action and excellent use of music. I want Bioware to make a CG Star Wars movie.

Best Graphics:  Battlefield 3

So pretty, the lighting is out of this world

Best Stylized Graphics: Rayman Origins

It is a stunning game to look at. Like a beatiful cartoon you control

Most Original: Nothing

I see no cute interesting ideas this year, its a sea of sequels.

Best game shown that you probably ignored: Prey 2

Seriously check out the GS stage demo of this, its incredible! Its like you are Boba Fett and you chase people Mirror's Edge style while inside Blade Runner the movie.

Biggest Surprise Announcement: Luigi's Mansion 2

No one expected this game before Pikmin 3.

Best on rails game: There is no winner for this category, they all lose

Biggest disappointment: Resident Evil Revelations

Why does it look like a slow boring ass game? And wtf is up with the sci fi gun item scanner thing? And why are all enemies Silent Hill rejects?

Best use of a boat: Assassin's Creed Revelation (why is everyone revealing stuff?)

Buring up that entire fleet was amazing.  That was one hell of a gameplay demo.

Genre award time!

Best Platformer: Super Mario 3DS

I want this to be Sonic Generations so badly but it's MARIO. And not just any Mario, its the closest we have come to replicating the 2D Mario's into 3D Mario. It's like Galaxy mixed with SMB3, its crazy. Oh and seeing it on the 3DS is full 3D is incredible!

Runner Up: Sonic Generations

Best Racing Game: Forza 4

Beautiful game, looked better than GT5.

Runner Up: I refuse to put Need for Speed here.

Best Puzzle Game: Papo and Yo

About the only puzzle game I can think of.

Best First Person Shooter: Bioshock Infinite

They didn't show much of it but its still the most interesting FPS coming out by a mile.

Runner Up: Prey 2

Best Third Person Shooter: Uncharted 3

Easy one, nothing can compare. It will be a GOTY contender.

Runner Up: Gears 3

Best RPG: Skyrim

Holy crap this looks amazing! Giants and mammoths roaming the land. Dragon's randomly killing things and attacking you. Improved combat and hopefully level design. Plus everything you expect from an Elder Scrolls game, meaning 300 hours of content. I need this now.

Runner Up: Mass Effect 3, Dark Souls... wait how are those two categorized as RPGs?

Best Fighting Game: Street Fighter X Tekken

By default cause there was no other fighting game shown.

Best Sports Game: NBA 2K12

Only cause 2K11 was so great

Runner Up: Madden 12

Best Action/Adventure Game: Zelda Skyward Sword

Pretty easy choice even though the genre is stacked with great games. But none of them can compete with Zelda.

Runner Ups: Batman Arkham City, Assassin's Creed Revelation, Tomb Raider

Platform Specific

Best Exclusive Wii Game: Zelda Skyward Sword

Runner up: Kirby

Best Exclusive  PS3 Game: Uncharted 3

Runner up: Sly 4

Best Exclusive 360 Game: Gears of War 3

Runner up: Halo 4

Best Excluisve PC Game: Star Wars The Old Republic

Runner up: ???

Best Vita Game: LittleBigPlanet

Runner Up: Uncharted

Best 3DS Game: Super Mario 3DS

Runner Up: Kid Icarus

Best Multiplatform Game: Skyrim

Runner Up: Mass Effect 3

GAME OF THE SHOW!

Shocking pick I know I didn't choose it last year though, they didn't really impress me much. This year had so much more info and we are finally getting to see the real game. The skyworld will be like a Wind Wakeroverworld but without the crappy boat,  hallelujah! Hearing how the overworld won't be predictable anymore is such a relief, now they will feel like dungeons and dungeons will feel like dungeons within dungeons. I am worried about the shadow world and how it seems to play like Phantom Hourglass, there is no need for that in Zelda, hopefully it doesn't interfere with the flow of the game.

The motion controls will make sure this game plays unlike anything out there. The combat has gotten a major upgrade just on the controls alone. No more button mashing, every fight takes precision. Every single item makes use of the controls in new ways. Puzzles will integrate them in ways we never thought of. The one dungeon they showed had so many great uses of the wiimote and that is just start of the game. Plus there was a boss fight that was not a pattern based fight!!! An actual skill based boss battle in a Zelda game and when he hurt you it took a good chunk of damage. Could this game actually have a decent difficulty level.

It's looking to be another masterpiece and not one that follows the OoT template to a fault, this is totally new, totally fresh. That is why I chose this cause in the end its the game that most impressed me and the one I want to play right now. As I always say no game is like Zelda. Skyrim impressed me a ton but in the end it will never have the level design, the puzzle integration nor the focused gameplay of a Zelda game. Games like Uncharted 3 will have incredible action and setpieces but it won't have the exploration and puzzle aspects of a Zelda. Only Zelda is like Zelda, for me it's still the perfect combination of gaming elements in one game and this game shows those elements in a way I have never experienced. It's going to be incredible... unless those PH parts suck.

Runner Ups: Skyrim, Uncharted 3

aspro said:

They have not made anything (game-wise -- they may have done some support work), they were created by MS specifically to handle the Halo franchise after Bungie left.  Some notable Bungie people remained behind (albeit not many) to found teh studio.

That's scary more than anything else.

Nice post Vader, what the hell happened to Ubisofts laser tag game? Did it ever release?