Yes, the conference was yesterday. And yes, I did watch it. The reason of only posting today however, was to analyse what I saw in more detail. Take Pikmin 3 for example, the first game to be shown. We haven’t seen one of these since the Gamecube era which is nearing eight years ago now.
Strategy gameplay, they involve searching out weird objects (in the second one) or parts of a spacecraft (first one) with the Pikmin you have at your command. As well as finding these items, you also have to find pellets in which the Pikmin take back to their onion spacecraft to spawn new Pikmin. That is another aim, to amass an army of Pikmin to help you.
This third game improves everything about the game, including an always on map with the GamePad, which is the WiiU’s main controller with the screen. We also have four men which we can command, and we can also throw them the same way as the Pikmin. The GamePad also allows for better control of the Pikmin, and with the fully zoomable and controllable map, will make the strategy side of things even better. The story hasn’t been revealed, but it has been said that Olimar, the main protagonist from the original two games, is not one of our commanders, which leads to some kind of search and rescue mission.
Then the WiiU’s main hub was revealed. Miiverse is like the gaming equivalent of Facebook. It shows you who’s playing what and what they have been saying about the game. It also allows for messages of all kinds to be sent and looks like an interesting concept. I won’t say much more on it, other than the fact it allows you send screenshots and messages with your Mii’s expression attached. These messages can be typed or hand drawn.
The game that was revealed to show Miiverse in action with a game was New Super Mario Bros. U. After showing gameplay – which looked like the Wii version but with a lot of new items and Yoshis available to ride – we was shown a main level map screen, with comments from people on it about certain levels or bragging at their success on a level. The concept of Miiverse looks to be drawing communication in games together in one.
Then we move onto Batman Arkham City, which has the WiiU subtitle of Armoured Edition. All I can say of this is that the features exclusive to the WiiU are good, and that the game itself looks to have a deep story.
A sort of surprise followed, in the form of Scribblenauts Unlimited on both WiiU and 3DS. Creation side is improved as you can now create your own items and unleash them in the gameplay. It also has multiplayer for the first time, and the story of Maxwell’s book (which brings the items to life) is said to be unveiled in the game, meaning we could have a proper storyline in the game.
A montage then followed, showing other games expected on the WiiU. To mention a few – Ninja Gaiden 3, Tekken, Mass Effect 3, and Aliens: Colonial Marines.
WiiU Fit was then announced, and was said to have new activities, which were shown in the rather corny trailer. These games were a trampoline game, some sort of bobsled controlling game, and a fire control game. It was then the WiiU Fit pedometer was shown, which tracks steps and uploads it to your game save. Then we found out that we could use just the GamePad to play the game, if someone else wanted to watch the TV. A good feature set, but the trailer could have been better.
But then was shown an even cornier trailer. This game SiNG [Working Title] has one person with the GamePad singing lyrics to a song that appear on its screen, along with instructions that they have to shout out and get others to follow. This is horrendous, in my opinion, and will probably only get used occasionally at parties with a lot of people, which doesn’t even warrant a proper game.
After this bad atrocity, we at least got some good and bad news. The good being some info on the 3DS games. The bad, all the rest wouldn’t be unveiled or shown until tonight at around 02:00, hence why I am posting this today, so parts 1 and 2 can follow one day after each other. Those 3DS games shown were New Super Mario Bros. 2, which is all about coin collecting by the look of things. Paper Mario 3DS with the new subtitle of Sticker Star. This looks good, with stickers taking central precedence, as these help you get on with the story and are also your attacking moves – so make sure to collect as many as you can.
The third was Luigi’s Mansion 2, with the new subtitle of Dark Moon. We get multiple mansions to explore, but a new snippet of info revealed says that each will have their own mission-based challenges and new types of ghosts require different ways to capture them. A montage of games that will be shown followed these three announcements. I won’t say which ones. That will be tomorrow, when more info is revealed for them.
Then the massive announcement. LEGO City Stories! WiiU and 3DS! Although, it is now known as LEGO City Undercover, and with good reason. We will be playing as cop Chase McCain, who is after a criminal mastermind called Rex Fury. On the way we’ll collect new disguises to help us. We’ll have access to over one hundred vehicles including helicopters. Our WiiU GamePad (or 3DS bottom screen for the 3DS version) will be our constant real time map and communicator.
And best of all, free-roaming. Also included, as shown off in the trailer, will be numerous Nintendo references. In the trailer, it showed McCain building a Mario Pipe, then going down it. This made the audience laugh, and I was amused as well. It does look like this could be the best LEGO game yet, with full voice acting and ambient sounds in cutscenes and all the comedy we expect from a LEGO game. More on the 3DS version will hopefully be shown off tonight.
Ubisoft games are plenty, and it seems that they are the only company fully supporting WiiU. First off was Just Dance 4, which I seriously don’t consider a game. Although that’s just me and my free-roam spirit. This looks okay with a special WiiU mode that has the main person [GamePad] controlling what the dancers [Wiimotes] do. This again looks like something reserved for parties.
Then was ZombiU. This looked interesting, with a survival horror type gameplay. The GamePad is used well for a number of things, like a sniper-scope, a hidden item tracker, or a door pass. It can also be used as a viewpoint. Then more games from Ubisoft were revealed in a montage trailer, including Rabbids Land and Rayman Legends, the Avengers game, and Assassins Creed 3.
Last on the agenda is Nintendo Land, a theme park based game that does for the WiiU what Wii Sports did for the Wii. Showing the tech off. With twelve different attractions in a main hub world, possibly with sub games within them or harder difficulty ratings, from what was shown gameplay-wise, it does seem to be doing its job. There are multiplayer games and sigleplayer games, all making use of every useable controller of the WiiU. More on this, it was stated, would be revealed at the Developer’s Conference.
And so, that is that for part 1. While a full video stream might not be available for the second part of Nintendo’s Conference, I will be tracking down all that was unveiled to give my views upon them.
UPDATE – Not much was revealed, only that which we knew, and very little new information regarding those games.
The list:
-Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion
-Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon
-Paper Mario: Sticker Star
-Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance – Confirmed demo on the eShop, as well as LEGO Batman 2 and The Amazing Spiderman demos.
-New Super Mario Bros 2 – Features co-op.
And that is in ONE hour! Disappointing.
Images Taken From:
Nintendo All-Access Presentation @ E3 2012 | Nintendo of America
