When the E3 festivities came to a close, we spent the last day on the floor at the Los Angeles Convention Centre attending our final hands-on sessions and meetings with PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox, before spending the rest of the day as true gaming fans rushing across the various booths and stands to take in the full experience of the E3 Expo.

Our morning with PlayStation was fairly short as we spent about fifteen minutes with one of the developers from Santa Monica Studio as he walked us through the upcoming God of War game. It was absolutely refreshing to hear from the developer as he was incredibly passionate about the game and didn’t feel irritated or unenthused at having to repeat the same sentences over and over to different members of the media.

God of War (2017)

This new iteration of God of War looks to be a game changer, with gameplay that includes a very compelling storyline and superb graphics. The game sees a more mature and controlled Kratos, who must overcome his raging temper to guide and teach his young son the ways of becoming a warrior. In this way, the game appears to be similar in narrative to The Last of Us, which of course, means a whole lot of new fun for God of War fans. Though the narrative will undoubtedly be the highlight of the game, the thrilling new combat mechanics and the ability to play as Kratos and also control his son, albeit through limited movements, will be interesting.

After a thrilling experience with PlayStation, our next hands-on was with Nintendo, who stole the show with their surprising announcements, including Metroid Prime 4, which fans have been waiting more than a decade for. Though our hands-on didn’t include Metroid, we did have a great time playing Super Mario Odyssey and Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle.

Super Mario Odyssey

Super Mario Odyssey is exactly as we imagined. Fun, colourful and with old school 2D Super Mario aspects, the game was a blast to play through, especially with the introduction of Mario’s new abilities, including the ability to possess people and items, as well as throw his little red cap, ‘Cappy’, around to essentially knock out enemies and claim gold coins. The new, upgraded, 3D art style makes the game far more visually attractive, which made the experience of gameplay all the more enjoyable. Of course, seeing Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario himself, walking around the Nintendo stand made the experience all the more memorable.

Mario + Rabbids was pleasantly surprising. At first, I didn’t think that it’d be a game that I would enjoy, mostly because I’d never been a fan of the Rabbids animated shorts. A small part of me had always thought them as silly and utterly childish and something that no adult would pay much attention to. How wrong I was. After a short time of hands-on, playing the game on the Nintendo Switch console, I was converted. Mario + Rabbids is a super adorable, strategy based game, with elements of X-Com 2. It is a game that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike and gets progressively more challenging throughout each level, which was definitely welcome.

Ashen

With Nintendo out of the way, even though we wished we had more time there, our next appointment was with ID @ Xbox, which was a nice change of pace. Instead of a hands-on, we watched the developers of Ashen, consisting of a team of three from Aurora 44, who surprisingly are a New Zealand based game development company, play through their game whilst explaining to us the background of Ashen and the style of gameplay. The game definitely has a unique art-style and has a Dark Souls III feel to it in terms of difficulty. The highlight of the game is its cooperative aspects, which will bode well for those who enjoy co-op games. Unfortunately, our time was cut short, but from what we saw, Ashen is certainly an indie title worth picking up.

Upon conclusion of our appointments, we spent the day roaming the expo hall and attempting to get some hands-on time with titles we missed out on, such as Sonic Forces. Though we had to wait in line for more than half an hour, we had a lot of fun with Sonic Forces and certainly can’t wait to pick it up for more game time.

Sonic Forces

The rest of our time on the E3 floor was essentially just taking in the environment of the convention. Thankfully the last day wasn’t as crowded, so we were able to breathe more easily and move around without stepping on any toes.

E3 certainly is on a whole other level compared to the local conventions we have both here in New Zealand and Australia. With the convention being open to the public this year, there were many complaints that the organisers hadn’t taken the amount of people into consideration and changed the layout of the convention or even the location. Hopefully next year will bode differently and will allow both members of the industry, media and the public to fully enjoy the fantastic awesomeness that comes with the biggest video games convention worldwide.

The post E3 Day Three Experience appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

In the last XCOM, the enemy was unknown. Now, they’re known only too well. In the last game, XCOM was fighting a war against the invading aliens. A war that you lost. XCOM 2 picks up the pieces twenty years after those events. A small resistance has managed, against all odds, to avoid annihilation for twenty years, and in the game’s opening act, you, the Commander, are rescued to lead the resistance in its quest to overthrow alien domination. It’s a nice touch, if a bit ego-inflating.

That’s all of the story you need to know, though the setup allows for interesting new combat mechanics and tactical capabilities.

The series continues its tradition of turn-based combat where you control a small team of specialists. Combat remains tight, and each tactical decision that you make retains its ability to define strategic decisions hours down the line. You will be kicking yourself for that small thing that you did that now, in a completely different combat scenario that you couldn’t have foreseen has destroyed what you were building up to.

Instead of a multinational force defending Earth against invaders, the tables have turned in XCOM 2. Instead of aggressively hunting down the enemy the focus is now on guerrilla warfare, taking the fight to the enemy in limited engagements with specific objectives. The new Concealment mechanic plays into this situation, allowing you to sneak up on the enemy and strategically place your team around the battlefield before commencing your attack. It really adds to the feeling of being in control of the underdog and in feeling sneaky setting up the perfect ambush. It also lets you scope the field before going all in and risking your precious troops.

The enemy types are of the generic nature and will be familiar to anyone who has played previous games in the series. However, identifying and triaging the different enemies in any given situation is critical. For example, I found it was always worth targeting the sectoids, who can cause teammates to get confused and run away, or, worse, attack their fellow soldiers.

Overwatch makes a return and is critical in scoring extra damage against enemies. Essentially it works as hiding in cover and waiting for an enemy to walk into the team mates line of site for a free fire turn at the expense of accuracy. I found it absolutely necessary in damaging enemies while keeping my team safe.

XCOM 2 also features procedurally generated maps. In place of playing through the same mission was already a new experience due to the effects of terrain, the random number generator and the various team member skills and specialities, but these additions vastly increase the repeatability of the game.

XCOM 2 retains one of the key characteristics of the series – permadeath for your fireteam. You become quite attached to your team, picking favourites to use time and again, just like in Pokemon. Your attachment can become even more complete due to the huge number of ways to customise each team member, with armour, colours, skills, weapons and more. Unlike in most games in this genre, it is perfectly sensible to take in two fighters in the same class, as their loadouts can make them behave entirely differently.

Further, each death is normally a strategic nightmare. While quicksave and quickload are available, the game is best enjoyed not continually re-evaluating each move and repudiating it immediately if it goes wrong. Instead, the game is best enjoyed when you carefully consider the consequences of your actions before you move.

In this sense, XCOM 2 plays much more like a game of chess, with each part playing its role, capable of immense power but at the same time vulnerable to your miscalculations, the RNG of a percentage shot going awry, or simply your impatience.

While this could lead to boring games of attrition or defensive play, XCOM 2 gives you a number of timed objectives to try and achieve. These range from getting to VIPs, destroying specific objectives, hacking terminals and more.

There is already great mod support for the game. Steam Workshop integration is built right into the game on launch, and it will be exciting and hilarious to see what the community. The UI is excellent and I was never confused about what each button did or what I needed to do next. Knowing what you can and can’t do is easy to understand – which is so critical in planning and (hopefully successfully) implementing that plan.

At the moment XCOM 2 is only available on the PC. While I’m sure that a future console or even mobile version will make an appearance in the future, at the moment the only way to experience this game is on a PC. Strangely, the PC supports the Steam Controller but not any others, so if you normally play hooked up to a large TV then you will have to find another solution, which is somewhat disappointing.

Unfortunately, at review time XCOM 2 is experiencing widespread bugs and framerate issues. This is a shame particularly as the game has only come out on PC. The frame rate issues aren’t particularly troublesome given the type of game it is, but nevertheless it is disheartening to see.

This second go at the new XCOM absolutely nails everything about what this sort of game is. Tight, tactical gameplay that will keep you engaged for dozens of hours. With the built in mod capabilities this is one of those games that is likely to become a platform in the future. While it is disappointing to see another major unpolished PC game there is hope that Firaxis will continue to support and refine it with patches to come.

If you’ve ever wanted to get into tactical turn based shooters there is now no peer to XCOM 2. While not perfect it is certainly hard to beat. Percentage to recommend? 100%.