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Tuesday, June 20, 2017

E3 2017 Best and Worst Conferences

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - The PC Gaming Show wasn't a conference, hence, it can't be ranked in a tier list of conferences!

It's not only annual KoopaTV tradition to exhaustively (and exhaustingly) cover the Electronics Entertainment Expo, but to also reflect on what we spend a lot of time covering in a “winners and losers” kind of article. That also means that every year we reject the logic that “mature” pacifists have that E3 isn't “about” winners and losers, and that this is a bad mentality to have.

With that said, here are the best and worst, from best-to-worst:
  1. Nintendo
  2. Microsoft
  3. Ubisoft
  4. Bethesda
  5. Electronic Arts
  6. Sony
As for why, here are the post-E3 thoughts, worst-to-best:

Sony

First of all, Sony was a disaster. Let's get that out of the way. There's no excuse for having what is apparently your bombshell announcement at the start of the conference while having totally screwed up sound. What the hell? And then your bombshell ending is Spider-Man? That's not a bombshell. If you want a bombshell ending with an already-announced game, scroll down for the Nintendo write-up.

Sony figured that talking is overrated, and after their obligatory (?) waterfall at the start, it was a constant barrage of game trailers with no explained hype behind them. For people watching who don't bow to Sony's every word, it was hard for us to care why Days Gone got so much fanfare from the sycophant audience. It's just a bunch of zombies. The most I cared about was seeing Mega Man X and Zero in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, and that's really pathetic.

And I don't even think Monster of the Deep: Final Fantasy XV is a bad thing.

Electronic Arts

What's keeping EA from yet another last place? Well, Sony's bad, but we also got to hand it to EA for being able to recognise that the world adores Alex Hunter in FIFA. (...With one exception, which will be covered in a future KoopaTV article coming soon.)

In terms of stuff we saw that was interesting, there was A Way Out by Hazelight. Pretty telling that the most cool, innovative concept from EA's conference is just from a game they're merely publishing as an indie promotion.

Other than that, the 30 minutes of Star Wars Battlefront II gameplay at the end was a bad idea. (It was more like half of that.)

Bethesda

First of all, we loved Bethesdaland as a presentation concept.

Bethesdaland Bethesda land Vault Boy ferris wheel theme park amusement E3 2017
Bethesdaland was also a physical, real thing theme park they had going on for some reason.

It made the whole conference much more enjoyable to watch, especially given that it was at the terrible time of 12 AM. (Which does count against it.)

I've seen a lot of complaining about the Creation Club that Bethesda introduced, but as someone looking from afar, what do I care? Also, I don't understand what the complaining is even about or what the basis is. Modders that work with Bethesda and go through some sort of process can charge money, while other modders still have free content with less exposure. Sounds fine.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim having Link amiibo compatibility to turn it into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is pretty...creepy. The Evil Within 2 and Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus are also creepy, but in much more appreciable ways.

Ubisoft

How did an Aisha-less Ubisoft do? Well, not too bad. The problem Ubisoft had was that they had their biggest announcements as the first and the last things shown (Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle and Beyond Good and Evil 2) with the middle being pretty mediocre. We were actually really excitable during those announcements, at least!

Skull & Bones isn't anything that looks good, especially compared to Sea of Thieves (see write-up, below). The Just Dance on-stage performance also wasn't anywhere near as nice as last year's. There's a lot of room for improvement here.

Apparently some white nationalists are upset about Far Cry 5, but that's no reason for US to be upset.

Fary Cry 5 America Montana flag cult gun
It might be the only time these people actually WANT diversity in games.


Microsoft

Microsoft made the only hardware announcement of E3 2017, which is bound to be of some importance: Introducing the officially-named Xbox One X! Featuring 4k graphics and improved processing power, along with backwards compatibility. But what about the games? Well, there are plenty of those.

Microsoft showcased Dragon Ball FighterZ, which turns out to be one of the most anticipated games of all E3 2017. Sea of Thieves, while getting a lot less hype this year than E3 2016, still was shown to be impressive. Microsoft brought in a cavalry including Super Lucky's Tale, Cuphead, and Crackdown 3.

We can't say we cared for Anthem at all.

Nintendo

Ah, Nintendo. Of course Nintendo won.

Super Mario Odyssey was, by far, the most exciting thing at E3 2017. Nothing is even close. We said that no one wanted to watch Super Mario Odyssey for over two and a half hours straight a few months ago, and that's probably true, but we would've loved to have seen much more Super Mario Odyssey footage throughout Nintendo Treehouse Live than four segments. Fortunately, its lyrical theme song from the trailer played throughout E3, constantly keeping Super Mario Odyssey with us.

Who knew that it was Cappy that captured Japan's Prime Minister Shinzō Abe in the Rio 2016 Closing Ceremonies, and that this is now the primary game mechanic allowing for amazing exploration and adventure for Super Mario Odyssey? THAT'S new information. (It's not new information that Cappy existed to begin with and can control people — again, see the hyperlink in this paragraph, because we told you THAT back in August.)

Honestly, there was a lot of re-occurring crap that we hated seeing during Nintendo Treehouse Live (such as Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Fire Emblem Warriors, and ARMS), but we were willing to tolerate it for games like Yoshi (working title) and Bowser's Minions (real title: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser's Minions). It was cool that Nintendo had THREE tournaments, but only one of those was actually ran well (the Splatoon 2 one).

Breaking it down, there's not THAT much Nintendo had to show to win this year, since as a whole, E3 2017 was pretty... weak.

Super Mario Odyssey wedding suit dapper Bowser hat waving bye farewell turned around backside
You could say our hats are off to you.




The Devolver Digital “conference” also wasn't ranked because it wasn't a real conference, but if it was, it'd either be dead last or above Sony. Do YOU have differing opinions on E3 2017 and how the companies should be ranked? As always, KoopaTV's comments sections are completely open to you. It's freedom like you never knew!


Here is the tier list for E3 2016's conferences.
If you want Dragon Ball FighterZ on the Nintendo Switch, so do we.
Get your E3 2018 tier list here!

4 comments :

  1. It was a disappointing E3 overall. Next year's can only be better, or at least I hope it will.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I guess so, but I liked the experience of watching it more this year than last year. (Probably because we didn't have to watch Breath of the Wild for an entire day.)

      The part that's definitely worse is that I have this HORRIBLE BACK PAIN from last week that I still have now. Any ideas on what to do?

      Delete
    2. Besides taking pain relief, performing yoga is stated to be great for back pain. Also, avoid hunching over for too long and maybe place a pillow or something behind you for support.
      http://time.com/4825261/back-pain-yoga-physical-therapy/

      Delete
    3. Yeah I was kind of "at the edge of my seat" the whole E3, which is a long time.

      Would like to clarify it's specifically my UPPER BACK THAT'S IN PAIN.
      Pillow sounds like a good idea.

      Delete

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