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WATCH: FTN Interviews: Turbine: Developers of Infinite Crisis at E3 plus E3 Day Two Wrap-Up

June 20th, 2014 by Crowbar Comments

 

Day 2 of E3 was tiring, mainly because my appointments were across the center from one another. There was a lot of running and it was rather tough. However, the games I got to play were very much worth it. I got some hands on time with Dying Light and watched a guy rock baddies on Lichdom. I then had a presentation for Battlecry and Evil Within from Bethesda studios followed by an awesome presentation from CD Project RED about the Witcher 3. You can view the interview with them below. Afterwards I had some other FTN reps talk with Square Enix and Turbine while I attended a few presentations at Activision’s booth.

Dying Light was a rather interesting game. I remember seeing something for it last year at E3 but I was too busy to check it out on my own time. Since then I have seen a couple trailers but the exact details of the game I am totally lost on. While the demo was very scripted, I still enjoyed the environment. The parkour elements were difficult to control and remember in the beginning, but I got the hang of it after some practice.

The game also has a cool weapon modding system similar to Dead Island’s. The game certainly looks great, but the demo was rather restricting so I was not able to actually dig deep into the game. Right after the Dying Light demo I got to take a look at Techland’s other game, Hellraid. I remember when I first saw information on this game. It is a first person hack and slash, and it look positively awesome. The game has a wide variety of weapons that have different stats, swing speeds, magical elements and your proficiency with them is all dictated in your skill tree. The game is very skill based when it comes to the combat, moves like parrying are done in real time and are not mapped to a single button.

Lichdom is a game I have seen on Steam Early Access and this game interested me very much. When I listened to one of the developers talk about what he wanted to get out of this game I totally understood his views. Lichdom was made so players can play as an all powerful mage that are not restricted to the typical mage tropes in popular RPGs. There is no mana, and you can be both a powerful nuker and hard to kill. While the idea seems rather unbalanced, the game is heavily skill driven with how the sigil system works as well as the skill tree . You can charge skills so they have different effects and even combine them by casting one after another to create massive firestorms or even black holes. The game certainly looks interesting especially for being in Early Access/Beta/Alpha stage.

Bethesda was showcasing three games this year, Evil Within, Battlecry, and Elder Scrolls Online. I took a look at Evil Within as well as Battlecry getting hands-on with both of them. Evil Within did not terrify me, but I am very satisfied with what I played. Ammunition is scarce as is the traps you can make. The survival element is driven home in this game and it gives me hope that the horror genre can actually make a comeback. Battlecry is Bethesda’s PvP arena combat game. Yeah, we are seeing more and more PvP centric games lately and some are good, some are bad.

My hands-on time with Battlecry consisted me of going 15/1 in both of the games I played. The game does stand out in terms of visuals and gameplay. The developers plan on giving the game consistent updates to add additional character classes and maps. The version I played had three character classes to play as and each one was very different. The Tech Archer, Duelist, and Berserker has specific playstyles. The duelist is akin to an assassin with fast attacks and high mobility while the Tech Archer benefits from finding high ground and attacking from long range. Then the last class is the tank that does more damage over time as opposed to damage per second like the other classes.

Witcher 3 was certainly all the rage at E3 this year making a lot of appearances and people just could not get enough of it. I personally found the second Witcher game to be dull and too complex for it’s own good. However, the new game certainly looks to be a great way to kill hours of your life in. A constantly evolving game where the NPC’s have their own lives and experiences that you the player can directly involve yourself in and of course there is no shortage of monster hunting. After all, that is what The Witcher is most known for. You can watch the interview I had with the folks from CD Projekt RED HERE.

Square Enix’s appearance at E3 was rather dull as they practically had the same lineup as last year. A Kingdom Hearts game that wasn’t KH3, a Final Fantasy game that wasn’t FFXV, a Tomb Raider game, and Murdered Soul Suspect. After Square Enix one of our camera men for the event went to the Warner Bros booth to have an interview with Turbine, Inc. The developer behind Infinite Crisis, the DC Comics MOBA. You can watch that interview HERE.

I had an appointment with Activision at the end of the day and I must say, I wish I didn’t. Despite being scheduled for these appointments, times ran over consistently and I didn’t even get to see the new Skylanders presentation in it’s entirety. The Destiny hands-on time was fun, but pretty dull as well considering they dropped me into a mission that had 5 minutes left in completing it. Then I had a presentation for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and it was so boring I fell asleep. At least I got to meet the voice of Kaos from Skylanders.

Day Two of E3 started strong, but it ended with a flop. It is times like this where I wonder why Activision even showed up this year.

Crowbar is an angry young man, but he knows his games. We all have our passions and his come alive when his digital self is hammering baddies, solving puzzles or flying. He also has a penchant for dressing like giant penguins, but we promised him we wouldn't mention it.