We Happy Few (Xbox One) Game Preview

We Happy Few had a very attention-grabbing trailer at E3 that appropriately sets the stage for this first-person procedurally generated game.  The game starts off the same as that trailer, where the player character decides not to take his Joy, a happy-making medicine.  After that he escapes the authorities, and wakes up in an underground safehouse.

That's it for the story, so far, as the game is still in alpha.  A screen of text at the start of the game warns about this, so it wasn't a surprise.  It also notes a few other things, like that certain things might not work, or that the game might crash.  Fun!

I have had some of the stuff not work.  I didn't have a main quest the first time I played, which made the opening minutes much more aimless.  I just pretty much walked around and grabbed items.  I wasn't sure what else to do.

Luckily, I came upon some sidequests after about 20 minutes.  These, too are randomly placed in the world.  One tasked me with repairing the valve on a water pump.  Once I did it, the nearby people attacked me.  I'm really not sure why.

This was my introduction into the game's combat.  You attack with the Right Trigger, and each attack takes stamina.  The Left Trigger allows you to block, and you can even parry with correct timing.  Thankfully the enemies attacked one at a time so I could figure out what I was doing, and it is strangely satisfying to stab them with a long stick.  I was victorious, but not unscathed.

A few times I had to eat some food because my hunger was low, and at one point I had to sleep.  Finding a bed was a lot harder than I would have thought.  I couldn't get back into my safehouse (another bug), so I looked around until I found another bed.  The person who owned it wasn't too happy with me, and this started another fight.  Being critically wounded from some trapped treasure chests, I was quickly put down.

That was the end of my first foray into the game.  Since I had accidentally left the "permadeath" box checked when starting up (I didn't see it was an option until I had already hit "ok"), I had to start again.  This time, I had a main quest, and was allowed back into the safehouse.  I also turned off permadeath.

Items you find around the world can be weapons, food, or ingredients for crafting.  The menus aren't the most intuitive, but I was able to craft a few things and figure out where various things were, like my inventory and the quest log.  Your inventory is made of connected boxes, like the first Diablo game.  It is expandable, but I'm not sure yet how.  You can also somehow gain another weapon slot.

What there is of We Happy Few is promising.  The unique and stylized world stands out from the crowd, and the random nature of the world and quests should give a lot of replay value.  My only real complaint is how little they tell you at the start, and how aimless the game can be.  Other than that, I am looking forward to trying out the game when it is finished.


The Good:
Lots of replayability in a unique world.

The Bad:
The game is very much still in alpha.

The SaHD:
You can sneak around, but it seemed like everybody could easily see me.

(Early access code for We Happy Few was provided by the publisher)

E3 2013: Nintendo Direct Impressions

Ah, Nintendo Direct.  I'm a fan of these, since to me, it shows that the current E3 is not really the future of the game industry getting out its message and previews of new games.  That aside, Nintendo opted to have another Nintendo Direct in lieu of a huge stage conference.  They had some really good trailers in it, too!

First off, we got some new info on the next set of Pokemon games, Pokemon X and Y.  They now have a release date, October 12, which is always good news.  In an effort to balance out Dragon type Pokemon, they are adding another type- Fairy.  Yeah, I know...  Well, dragons did need to get knocked down a peg, since they made ice types harder to get, and the ones from Pokemon Black and White were just terrible and ugly.  They showed the first 4 fairy types, one of which is...wait for it...a new Eevee evolution.  Who didn't see that one coming?  The rest are: Jigglypuff (might be useful now? ...No, I doubt it), Gardevoir (awesome Pokemon, even if I can't spell it's name correctly) and Marrill.  I'm not sure how a water balloon is a fairy, but whatever.  There's also a mode that allows you to play with your Pokemon like Nintendogs.  I don't think this is necessary (or wanted by the older fan base), so hopefully I can ignore it entirely.

A few other games were shown: a new Mario or two, Pikmin 3 and some of the two "new" Legend of Zelda games.  I don't really like the Mario games, including the new Mario Kart (shocking, I know, considering how much I loved the first Mario Kart), and I still haven't gotten around to trying Pikmin (I have one of the remakes on Wii).  As sad as it is, I don't like the Wind Waker art style and I'm not really a fan of the 3D Zelda games, so I'm not really excited about that.  The re-imagining/ sequel to A Link to the Past does look really cool, as that is my favorite Legend of Zelda game.  A day or so after their Nintendo Direct, they talked more about it.  It seems Link now has an ability to make himself a 2 dimensional cave drawing looking thing and travel along walls.  I have no clue why in an actual 3D game, the hero has a power to make himself 2D.  Almost seems counter-productive.

Before I get to the final awesomeness of what all they covered, I want to talk about the new game being made by the team that made Xenoblade.  It looks similar, but you can also summon a "doll", or giant mech suit that you can pilot in battles or even while moving around the map.  As a robot fan, and fan of the team's other works, Xenoblade and Xenogears (currently my third favorite game of all time), I want to play this game.  If I don't have the Wii U by the time that game comes out, I will probably get it.  The game is right now just called "X" (which looks a lot like the Xenogears/ Xenoblade "X" in the titles), so hopefully it gets a real name soon.  Maybe Xenodoll?  Oh, and at least one of the mechs you run around in can transform.  I can't wait to roll out, even though the game appears to have multiplayer.  As long as I can play the whole game solo, I will be a happy camper!

Now to the star of the show...Smash Bros!  Being developed by a team at Namco Bandai (whom I affectionately refer to as "Bamco"), there were some trailers released that showed three of the new fighters.  First up (in reverse order of excitement) is the nameless Villager from Animal Crossing.  Yeah, I don't care either.  Next up, the generic Wii Fit trainer girl.  She'll likely be a joke character, like Game & Watch, so I don't mind her, even if there were much better choices for a character (the princess from Archaic Sealed Heat?  Anyone?)  However, all other character reveals shall pale in comparison to the character I was pulling for last game.  The one, the only, super fighting robot...Megaman!  Yes, the Blue Bomber, in a 3D-ified version of his 8-bit self has finally come to the world of Smash Bros!  He's a perfect addition.  They showed several of his moves, but I'm still hoping he has a similar mechanic to Kirby, but he copies the move of the last opponent he killed.  The only sad part is Nintendo (or Bamco) is picking up Capcom's slack.

Since some of Nintendo's games from the show floor were also playable at Best Buy stores, but curiously not in the area near the Nintendo of America headquarters, I'm sure some of these will be at PAX Prime so I can get some first hand impressions.  Check back in September!

E3 2013: Sony Conference Impressions

As we did with the Xbox One, let's start with the things that make people think that Sony "won" E3 (I wasn't aware it was a contest): it doesn't need to connect to the internet and Sony won't require DRM.  These both are pretty much what the PS3 already does, so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise.  While Sony won't require the DRM, they did say that the publisher has the final say on if that is imposed or not.  Much like the online passes that people hated, I can see this making people mad later on down the line.  I'm not saying that third party companies will have a one use key code like the Xbox One, but you can't rule it out.  Also, since the next gen will undoubtedly push digital sales even more, there's a chance that the Xbox One's ability to transfer the ownership of a digital sale might give it an advantage.  Of course, third parties might just have the same transfer system for both systems and it will be a moot point in the end.  Time will tell on those fronts.

The price, however, is a lot more attractive than the Xbox One.  It will be $400, a whole hundred less than its competitor.  This price doesn't include the camera though.  Again, I doubt I will be buying one at launch, as I learned my lesson doing that with the Wii and 3DS.  It comes with a 500GB hard drive, but no word yet if it is upgradeable.  Given how happy I am with upgrading the PS3 HD, I'm hoping it is.  Ideally, I think a 1 terabyte would be the best for me, given the push to digital releases will fill up 500 even faster than last gen.  As for the look of the console itself...well, I'm not a fan.  It looks too asymmetrical to me.  It's a parallelogram and just does't look right to me, since it will take up a bit more space looking like that.  Granted it doesn't need to look good to preform, but it couldn't hurt it to look better.

Let's move on to the games.  As with most presentations, we got a lot of cinematics and not much gameplay.  Mad Max, The Order: 1886 and Infamous: Second Son look nice, but I'd like to see gameplay before deciding.  The Order has a nice setting, and I'm digging the steam-punk looking weapons, but I'd like to see if it's third or first person and if there's any multiplayer before getting too interested.  My friend remarked that he will buy Second Son since it is set in Seattle, which we live very close to.  Later there was a video showing the gameplay of Second Son, and it looked pretty fun.  I wish they would have shown some of that during their conference.  Another extremely pretty game they showed was Dark Sorcerer.  It had a funny trailer, but again, I want to see what kind of game it is before caring too much.

They did show some in-game footage from Final Fantasy Versus 13, now renamed Final Fantasy 15.  Yes, I'm too lazy to use roman numerals.  Anyway, it looked too action oriented.  Yeah, I might end up checking it out, but I'm not holding out too much hope.  After Final Fantasy 10, the series really fell again for me.  I kind of enjoyed 13-2 so far, but the rest were not that fun to me (even though I completed 13).  Also their second MMORPG, Final Fantasy 14, is coming to consoles at some point.  Yay?  I might try it if it were a free to play game, but I don't think it is.  The races of that game and FF 11 were not appealing at all to me, quickly turning me off.

Playstation Plus will continue being a great value by adding PS4 to its family.  There will still be the current benefits (yay free games!), but now will be required to play games online, similar to Xbox Live.  I'm fine with this, since Plus was a great purchase for me, even just for the free games.  I don't play online games very often, but I understand that it will be a deterrent to some.  Let's hope their network improves since it will no longer be free.

Just like the Xbox One, I'm hoping some of these will be playable at PAX Prime.  At the very least, I'd like to use the controller to see how it feels compared to the PS3 one.

E3 2013: Microsoft Conference Impressions

E3 is happening this week, and sadly I won't be there.  I didn't really expect to be, but I figured I would give my impressions of what I saw from the streams and whatnot.  If you've read my reviews or heard any of the XGR podcasts, you may know that my opinions are a bit different from the 'norm'.  Don't get offended if I don't agree with other people or if I'm not excited about the 16th Call of Duty game.  Anyway, first up: Microsoft.

Let's just start with everybody's favorite hot button issue with the Xbox One: the always on and the DRM stuff (I know this more from the reveal, but it's important so I'll just talk about it here).  Honestly, the always on isn't that big of a thing for me personally.  I'm OCD about having dates on my achievements (I realize this isn't actual OCD), so I only play my 360 when it's connected to the internet.  The only reason my PS3 isn't always connected is because it bumps me offline a lot.  It's not my ISP that does it, just the system.  I don't really play the PS3 online, so maybe that might be why.  Regardless, I try to keep it connected anyway, so that's not a deal killer to me.  I have had times when my internet is crapping out and I can't connect for an hour or a day or so, and completely understand why some people have issues with that.  I do think a lot of people are overreacting, though.

The DRM (digital rights management) sounds just like PC games' DRM (like Steam).  I'm not really happy with it, but again, I feel most people are overreacting.  I've honestly seen people comment that they don't like having to be online to play and not being able to resell, so they will just play PC games...*shakes head*.  Anyway, since the game disc just installs on the system, I understand why they have the check-in every 24 hours.  Is it the best solution?  Not to me.  I try to buy new games anyway, since I want to support the industry of my main hobby, but it doesn't seem like the best move on Microsoft's part.  I feel that they check-in is to combat people modding their systems, since those people won't connect to Xbox Live so they don't get the system/ account banned.  The silver lining is that you can designate people as "family" and they can also play the games you paid for.  I'll need this as my children get older and begin to play more games.  That was my biggest concern with the DRM.

The price for the Xbox One is $500.  High?  Yes.  Fair?  Yes.  For a new system that includes the Kinect, five hundred seems like it's an appropriate price.  I believe the 360 was a similar price at launch, so it's not unexpected.  It's still too expensive for my budget and I won't likely get one unless there is a sale or a price drop.  If there's a game that I really want, I'll get that cheap even if I don't have the system, as I've done with other games.

Microsoft is also doing away with Microsoft Points, or MSP for short.  I know people have wanted that for awhile, but I didn't.  The conversion isn't too hard (points # is 20% less than the dollar value), and you could find good deals on the point cards.  It's much harder to find deals on the PSN and Wii/3DS cards, which use  real currency.  Everyone knew they would change it one day, but I don't think it's a good thing.

Now that all of that is out of the way, let's go to what matters the most on a games console: the games.  Minecraft will be ported over.  One of my fellow Xpound members remarked that it didn't look different from the 360 version, and we tried to explain that is what the game always looks like and it shouldn't look different.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to that since the massive memory upgrade will benefit Minecraft.  I doubt it, but it would be nice if they didn't charge owners of the 360 edition to get the Xbox One edition.  Either way, I'm sure I have to get that game for my son alone.

Unlike the reveal event, they actually showed some games.  Most of them were just CG trailers that contained little to no gameplay (this is a theme from every company every year at E3 it seems).  Halo and Forza were shown, but I have little interest in those franchises.  They showed some of the next Battlefield, which will make a few of my friends very happy.  A trailer for World of Tanks for the 360 was shown...again, not that interesting to me.  The trailer for Titanfall had me somewhat interested, since riding around in mecha is definitely something I like.  It will probably be just another competitive FPS game that I won't play, but I'll at least look into it closer to launch.  Quantum Break at least showed something this time, unlike the lackluster trailer at the reveal.  I still don't know much about the game, and wish that they would show how it plays instead of "look how pretty it is", but we'll have to wait and see.  Sunset Overdrive looked interesting (Dead Rising meets Borderlands?), but again, I wanted to see actual gameplay.

Now on to a few games that I have some interest in.  Crimson Dragon looked kind of fun.  I played a little bit of Panzer Dragoon Orta, which this is the spiritual successor to I believe.  That game was ok, so I will probably at least try Crimson Dragon.  Capcom's Dead Rising 3 is exclusive to the Xbox One.  That surprised me.  Again, they switch protagonists (I still prefer Frank West, no matter how many times they try to ditch him), but the rest of the game looks fun.  Honestly, the demo of State of Decay seems more like what I want the Dead Rising games to play like, so maybe I'll stick with that once it goes on sale.

Killer Instinct?!  Wow, that I did not see coming.  So much nostalgia thinking about watching my friend play that game, with his team of all TJ Combos.  Good times.  Well, this game looks nice and has flashy effects, but almost looks to fast.  The Jago redesign isn't the best, but I really like Glacius' look and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the cast.  It is also coming out as a free to play game, where only Jago is unlocked.  You will have to buy any other characters you want to use.  You can apparently fight any of the other characters, so there will still be some fun to be had in the free version.  It's a pretty interesting idea for a fighting game, so we will see how that (and the new Tekken game) do in sales.

Another game at the conference was Ryse: Son of Rome.  Besides the obvious inspiration from God of War, I looks like and is presented like Gears of War.  So, I guess it's double "GoW".  It actually looked pretty interesting, so I look forward to trying it at some point.  The quick timer events look shorter than the God of War ones, which is a plus.  There were also ones where the hero would kill two targets in the same QTE.  That looked pretty cool and gives it at least something different from Kratos' adventures.  While it looks interesting, I don't think it will be a system seller.

Project Spark was a game that showed actual gameplay.  It looks like a third person action adventure version of Little Big Planet, and it looked fun.  You could design a world as quickly and easily as you design a track in Modnation Racers, but could set enemy and pet/helper AI like the LBP games.  It was one of the few things showed that I was really interested in trying out as soon as I can.  Too bad I don't have a tablet (or smart phone) that can likely integrate with it.

In an effort to compete with Playstation Plus, Microsoft will give out 1 or 2 free games to download for XBox Live Gold members.  In theory it's pretty cool, since free games are always nice.  The first game is Fable III, which isn't that good of a game.  The other two games mentioned are Halo 3 and Assassin's Creed 2.  Not bad, but they are pretty old.  I also own all three so there's no need for me to download them.  They are only giving away games for the next 5-6 months, so it's a pretty short time frame.  Available immediately, they also announced a new Xbox 360 design that looks similar to the Xbox One.  I guess it looks fine, but I already have a 360 and the only other design I want is the Star Wars R2D2 bundle.

I'm hoping that the system and some of the games shown will be playable at PAX Prime so I get a chance to check them out first hand.  If they are, you know where I'll post my updated impressions!