E3 2014 Postmortem

E3 2014 has come and gone. A lot of exciting announcements were made by console juggernauts - Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo - and big publishers like EA and Ubisoft. A lot of exciting games were revealed as well. People craving information on an upcoming game that they’ve been looking forward to may have gotten some information to kindle even more excitement. Everyone has their opinion as to who put on the best show at E3. The victor in my eyes was easy to choose because Nintendo absolutely killed it this year.

We got a vague 2015 release window for what should be an amazing JRPG, Xenoblade Chronicles X, as well a ridiculous amount of gameplay footage. The 30-second teaser for a new open-world (Skyrim-esque) Legend of Zelda for the Wii U has me shaking at the knees. There’s also a new Star Fox and a totally brand-new IP, Splatoon, that looks very, very fun and has the potential to ruin many friendships, like the also announced Mario Party 10. The user-content-generating Mario Maker could add nearly infinite replay-ability to the classic platformer. In addition to Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire which will likely sell like hotcakes, Code Name S.T.E.A.M. is another game to keep an eye out for. Made by Intelligent Systems (the team behind Advance Wars) with some serious involvement from Hitoshi Yamagami (Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, Pokemon), this new game has an all-star cast working on it.

Reviewing the list of announcements, I discovered even more exciting stuff that I missed during Nintendo’s magical barrage of wonderful news. It’s looking like Nintendo is finally firing on all cylinders (except Metroid!) to make the Wii U a strong contender in the latest console war, while also bolstering the already-strong 3DS library.