Showing posts with label summary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label summary. Show all posts

Tuesday 14 June 2016

E3 Day 2 Summary: Microsoft, Ubisoft, and Sony


Microsoft introduced new games as well as old ones. Scalebound is a new title but personally it rubs me the wrong way. Some of the monsters looked like they were copyright safe rip offs from monsters in Monster Hunter. Not only that but the voice over is pretty annoying. It seems like they want to make the character a cool dude that kills things like Dante. Though if the game is multiplayer, wyvern riding while trying to kill big bosses sounds pretty fun.


A new Rare game called Sea of Thieves was announced. It is a multiplayer centered game on having a pirate crew and maintaining your ship while you sail the seas. The game gave me Minecraft vibes in a good way. I just wonder what would happen if you didn’t have enough people to make a crew online.


Sequels like Halo Wars 2, State of Decay 2, and Forza Horizon 3 were also announced. Though I do not know that much about their predecessors.


Microsoft has a new program where if you download a game to your Xbox One, you can get it on Windows 10. So that’s pretty cool if you have both.


To end the conference, they saved the biggest announcement for last. Announcing Project Scorpio, a new console that they claim to be the strongest console in the market. It is said to handle 4k gaming resolution, and it’s VR ready. It’s basically a stronger Xbox One as it’s compatible with all of it’s games. It is said to launch next fall, and they’re taking this opportunity to make more games for it’s launch.



Ubisoft opens with an expected but somewhat interesting opening. Of course it’s another Just Dance, but it’s releasing on eight platforms including the Nintendo NX which is going to release in March. This is the first official mention of the NX at E3 and it’s not even Nintendo.


Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon caught my eye during the presentation. Not because I’m interested in the game but because of one thing that bothered me. They were showing how the mic was beneficial to use in the game, though they players sounded more like voice actors so it was difficult trying to figure out if it was in use of a mic or it’s coming from the game. The game itself looks pretty fun, you are cops busting a drug distribution. That’s pretty much the jist.


The new South Park game The Fractured But Whole was announced. It follows the style of Stick of Truth but with a superhero aesthetic. The group of friends broke up because of Cartman’s ideas about their game and they are in some sort of “Civil War”. Not just the story was changed, but the combat system is too. It’s more of a technical system in which you move characters to certain areas similar to a tactics game.


A couple of other new titles also got announced. Trials of the Blood Dragon is a sidescrolling platformer that is supposed to be based on a product from the 90’s. A game called For Honor which is a combat game based on leaders of war. A new experimental game called Grow Up which looks to be a platformer with fun little gimmicks. And a couple of VR games like Star Trek Bridge Crew where you command the enterprise with your crew who are other players. Also Eagle Flight which is a game where you battle your friends at capture the flag as you fly around as eagles.


The bigger announcements at Ubisoft’s presentation was Watch Dogs 2 where your a hacker in San Francisco where you can exploit a lot of things. You can use drones to gather intel from hard to reach places. Sneak into a high security company with just a press of a button. The story of the game is based around rigging an election.


The Assasin’s Creed movie was also announced. The movie is going to be it’s own story and not based on the games.


Sony’s presentation opens with a new God of War game where Kratos is helping is son hunt. There was no subtitle, all we know now is that it’s called “God of War”, fans unofficially call it God of War 4.


A few new games were announced. Horizon caught my eye. It’s a new game where you are in a robot infested plains where you hunt and kill corrupted robots for their materials. Days Gone is a zombie game where basically a huge conga line of zombies gang up on you to kill you. The trailer shows the player in a barn that is crawling with hordes of zombies. Detroit: Gone Human is a detective game where you are an android, and you have to make important decisions. Each little decision you make will effect the story immensely. Farpoint is a sci-fi game where you are on an unknown planet. Star Wars: Battle Front was also with this line of games but this isn’t EA’s press conference.


Resident Evil VII was a surprising announcement. It is taken through a first person view and it actually looks like a horror game rather than the action shooting games that the recent Resident Evils looked like.

A Starwars Lego was also announced. It’s basically what you expect it to be. A Spiderman game is announced for the PS4 but not much is known about it. The Last Guardian returns with a few new cutscenes and a release date for October 26th 2016


A small announcement was made that the Crash Bandicoot games are getting a remastered version. These games are built from the ground up. They are going to remaster the first Crash Bandicoot, Crash Bandicoot 2, and Crash Bandicoot: Warped. With this announcement is Skylanders: Imaginators where you can design your own Skylander. A playable Crash is going to be a part of this game.


Playstation VR has a release date for October 13th 2016. Batman Arkham VR though they don’t show much outside of the title. Final Fantasy XV VR, don’t know much about gameplay.


Bigger announcements included Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare where you pilot a fleet of spaceships and take over an enemy station. Along with this is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare remastered.

Kojima returns as a part of Sony to announce his new game Death Stranding though not much is known outside of the title.

Monday 13 June 2016

E3 Day 1 Summary: EA and Bethesda




EA came up first and presented us games we somewhat expected. First was Battlefield 1, a confusing title since the Xbox One. It’s a military based shooter game with singleplayer on online gameplay. Next was Titanfall, a sci-fi shooter with singleplayer and online- hey wait a minute… I’m not familiar with these franchises though they could look promising to a fan. Titanfall promises more mechs if you’re interested.


Their bigger announcement was Mass Effect: Adromeda which takes place after the events of the trilogy. Not so much is known except that you are on an alien planet trying to survive. It looks like a pretty imaginative survival game.


They also talked about sports sports and more sports. Yeah I’m not so much of a follower of Madden, FIFA, and stuff like that. They showed pretty much all continuations so there wasn’t anything new.

Bethesda was next showing some new games as well as continuations. Prey is a reboot of a sci-fi shooter of the same name though not too much is known about the game itself outside of the trailer. Dishonored 2 got a lot of attention at the conference. The time mechanics and the concepts seem interesting. You’re an assassin with powers and have the ability to stop time.


A few Elder Scrolls games were announced. Elder Scrolls: Legends is an online card game that is more or less a ripoff of Heathstone. Elder Scrolls Skyrim got an HD edition to be on the PS4. I would say more about these games but that’s basically all there needs to be said about them. I’m pretty sure when they were talking about how “huge” an Elder Scrolls Online update was, they had paid people to cheer for them, though that’s only a guess. They pretty much lied about their MMO saying that “over 7 million people” played it when the number is only in the thousands.

Quake: Champions was a pretty big announcement, though they won’t be saying a whole lot about it until Quakecon. It still builds a lot of hype though.

Thursday 31 December 2015

The 2015 summary and what's to come in 2016

As I write this on the last Monday of 2015, a nice breeze and a warm sun entering my room, I have to say, there's not a lot to talk about with this in terms of this year, unlike last year, there wasn't a lot that wasn't addressed earlier on. But at the same time, still a lot of exciting things to say. So gather round, as we cast of 2015, and talk about what's in store for 2016.

In terms of content, it was pretty solid. The Digimon Marathon had to be cut short, and the review of Batman Arkham Origins is still far away as I still don't have a copy, but I do believe enough has come out to supliment that, for the time being. We got all the episodes of Digimon up to the start of Digimon Fusion Season 2, a series I've honestly stopped following due to time. The review of almost the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe took up all of May, that was fun to work on until Twitter trolls started to latch their claws into what little free time I had post Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The funny thing is that they're still trying that pathetic "gag", I'm not even angry any more, I find the idea of them still trying is hilarious seven months after. The rest of the year was more smaller things like the week of opening impressions more because of burn out, and preparation for what's coming up. Not only has this site broken 200 posts with the release of the Undertale review, but recently the site has broken 25,000, with the Pokemon Zeta and Onicron (Omnicron is still a cooler name) and Digimon Adventure 02 breaking over 1,000 views on their own. Considering the site isn't even two years old, and yes to many those may not seem great, but to me that's amazing, and it's what keeps driving me to write more content, especially when this time last year we just broke 4,000. So to all who have been following this site in some form, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. That's probably going to become a reoccurring line as more milestones break, but it'll continue to be true.

If there's something specific you want to know about what has come out, ask me in either my Ask.fm, Twitter, Facebook, Retrospring (Which is something I really need to remember to check because I don't get email notifications on it) or any other way to get in contact with me, all the sites linked to this are on the side in the same place. I know this year wasn't very interesting in terms of back story, but there wasn't anything like last year that I didn't address in other posts. Before going into the planned reviews and impressions next year, a few changes are coming to the site itself and how it's managed.

  • A name change will be happening shortly after this post goes live, including a change to the web address. With Marissa now writing for the site, I personally don't feel comfortable keeping the name as it feels like I'm writing her content, which some people may think if they don't notice the "keybug55's reviews:" or the fact that she tags her posts with "keybug55" and "marissa", which I'll be going through my posts and adding "blaster" and "liam" to mine when I get some free time, and you'll see why. The new name is Mediaholics.
  • More of a focus will be put on my Patreon. I do want to start doing this with more of a focus but that requires the site having a budget. Sadly the world doesn't work for free. Now while I'm not going to be barring core content behind a unbroken paywall. What I will be doing is giving Patreon supporters access to my video content a week early when applicable (this doesn't really work for E3 and similar topics, but will be used for Let's Plays and other videos), will get to decide what gets to be covered every now and then, akin to the strawpolls for the Comic arc reviews, but not as limiting and will get to see my notes and other behind the scenes documentation. I'm also going to be doing other Patreon supporters exclusive content when I have the resources to do it.
  • The site is going to become a more general content site, with videos from mine and maybe keybug's channels (depending on how things go), including lets plays along with the reviews site and the projects site to be merged.
  • More video content is on the way. For the time being I will be putting Earthbound on more of a hiatus just due to time, but Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of the Sky will be returning very soon.
  • First Impressions are going to become videos when possible. E3 conference summaries will probably stay as text, but Pre and Post E3 will return as videos, and impressions of trailers will be videos as well.
  • No more comic arc polls for a while, as most of them didn't get a lot of votes, which defeats the purpose of a poll. However this does mean that arcs like Civil War and the Phoenix Saga will be covered in 2016.

Wednesday 31 December 2014

2014: The year that was

All things considered, as an opening year, for me I count both Blaster's Projects and Blaster's Reviews a success. At time of writing, Blaster's Projects is approaching 1300 pageviews and Blaster's Reviews just broke 4000 so thank you to all who do read my content. This post isn't going to be much, its just me providing a bit of back story to some of the content that was published in the last 10 months, as we leave 2014 behind us.

Tuesday 10 June 2014

Sony at E3 2014. Impressions on the conference (or what i could see when the stream didn't glitch...


Sony Press Conference 2014

Pre show

1.       Killzone DLC: Never cared about Killzone, don’t care now

Actual Show (there were errors on Polaris’s stream so I’ll do a update with whatever I missed)

1.       Destiny: looks a lot like the original Halo trilogy, it looks great and something that I would pick up. The Beta is available July 17th

2.       The Order: Amnesia with Werewolf Zombies?

3.       Entwined: Tempest with Origami... I think. Its pretty at least

4.       Infamous First Light: Its Imfamous

5.       Little Big Planet 3: The new characters look interesting and they look like they could add a lot to the LBP formula. The game itself looks great

6.       Bloodborn:  1800’s Zombies

7.       Farcry 4: The world looks nice, in terms of gameplay: It looks like it plays like any other FPS

8.       Dead Island 2: Getting really sick of Zombies...

9.       Diablo III: Ultimate Evil edition: all the DLC for PS4

10.   Battlefield Hardline: Cops and Robbers. Nuff said

11.   Magika 2: It looks interesting, but I can’t talk much about it from the conference

12.   Grim Fandango remastered: Interesting, but there wasn’t anything to show

13.   Devolver: The games look interesting, and worth playing

14.   Let it Die: Suda51... What drug have you been taking now?

15.   ABZU: Journey, but this time under water

16.   No Man’s Sky: Interesting, but I’m not sold on the art style

17.   Direct Uploads to YouTube and Twitch: it will be helpful for Lets players and Streamers

18.   Making Free to play games best on PS4: JUST AS LONG AS THEY ARE ACTUALLY FREE TO PLAY!!!

19.   PS Now on selected Sony TV’s: Eh...

20.   Playstation TV: Stream lagged so all that I know is that its similar to a Playstation console

21.   Mortal Kombat X: Gore much?

22.   Powers: new graphic novel story/ TV show on the PS4. It looks interesting... from the concept art

23.   Ratchet and Clank the movie: it looks funny but there wasn’t a lot shown off

24.   Last of us Remastered: its Last of us, IN EVEN BETTER HD GRAPHICS!!! WITH THE DLC INCLUDED...

25.    Metal Gear Solid 5 The Phantom Pain: It looks great, even if the trailer was just a CG trailer and no game play

26.   Grand Theft Auto 5 for PS4: its GTA 5...

27.   Batman Arkham Knight: Gotham looks amazing but JESUS CHRIST SCARECROW!!!

28.   Uncharted 4 A thief’s end: Is this the end of Uncharted, because the trailer gave off that impression

Because of other commitments, next will be Nintendo. The Conference itself was ok, but a bit mediocre in comparison to last year's

E3 2014 Impressions. Microsoft and the X-Bone...


Microsoft E3 2014 brief summary of what they showed off in 90 minutes

1.       Stage=mediocre (basic seats closer to the main stage but that could just be because of the venue). The light wrists on all the attendants was a good idea and worked well with some of the game presentations

2.       Intro speech by Phil Spencer = It was a good speech and a good crowd pleaser

3.       Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare= Don’t care, its the same style of trailer from all the other E3 COD news, stand stock gameplay. Took up to much of the conference considering what it was showing off

4.       Dan Greenawalt (Forza Hrizon 2 and Forza 5)= New Free DLC with the iconic racing track. Forza Horizon 2= Nice world, but seen the concept before with the Need for Speed franchise (PS2). Interested to see the definition of Open world freedom

5.       Evolve= Team fortress 2 meets Left 4 dead meets Alien. Looks nice but would have to see other reviews before considering getting it as its a X-Box exclusive for now.

6.       Vincent Pontbiand (Assassins Creed Unity): Assassins Creed in French revolution.  Nothing else new

7.       Dragon Age Inquisition: It looks interesting, pretty and if I had a X-Box One (or if I planned to get one, I would pick it up as it looks interesting).

8.        Sunset Overdrive: Same with Dragon Age Inquisition. Looks good and fun to play, would pick it up if I was going to get the console. It was also a funny trailer showing that there is still some humour left in the games on X-Box One.

9.       Cheesy comical DLC trailer for Dead Rising 3 is cheesy. The DLC looks good and if you like Dead Rising 3, I’d pick it up if I were you.

10.   Fantasia Music Evolved: (What is this madness, a game for the 360 here?). The Concept sound like it could be clunky

11.   Dance Central Spotlight: Already giving alarm bells for me as its digital only (though that could just be my experiences with bad Australian internet). Both Dance Central and Fantasia didn’t have a any form of gameplay or a trailer so I’m a bit concerned.

12.   David Eckelberry (Fable Legends): Expect a full impression for this one latter

13.   Project Spark: User Generated content: the game, though it does look pretty and since its coming to PC, I might check it out. Plus it has Conker in it...

14.   Ori and the Blind Forest: (Try not to cry, cry a lot...) beautiful orchestral piece in the background, gorgeous graphics and it looks to be a platformer (from the small amount of time there was gameplay shown). But its a X-Box One exclusive...

15.   Bonnie Ross (Halo) Halo 5 Trailer was vague like last year, Halo: Master chief collection= All past Halo games (main games) on X-Box One. Will include Halo Nightfall and Halo 5 Guardians beta

16.   Inside: I have no idea what to say on this

17.   ID@XBOX: Indie games on X-Box via self publishing

18.   Indiegames; You’ll have to look at this one for yourself as there are too many for me to list

19.   Rise of the Tomb Raider: Just a CG Trailer

20.   Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: More Witcher for you witcher fans. I can’t compare it to the last game as I haven’t played it

21.   Phantom Dust: Pure CG, I have no idea of how the game will play

22.   Tom Clancy’s The Division:  Tom Clancy meets post apocalyptic future

23.   Scalebound: Monster Hunter with Skin morph?

24.   Crackdown: Futuristic weaponry with a Saint’s Row style graphics. It looks interesting

25.   The developer videos that separated some of the games were good. I wished there was more of them as I needed a break just so that I could type these brief summaries.

They promised a lot of games, they delivered a lot of games. The conference was good but it needed to be paced better. I don’t think Crackdown should have been the finale for the conference considering what they showed off prior to it and what they showed off of it to begin with. It was good, if your a Microsoft fan then you should be excited for what’s to come. Up next Sony (because I’m trying to play catch up and its starting in 20 minutes)