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Watch Conan O'Brien make E3 2014 into an even bigger spectacle than it already was
As if the game industry's annual trade show weren't enough of a spectacle on its own, massively tall comedian/talk show host Conan O'Brien took to E3 2014's lavish booths and talked with swaths of attendees for a hilarious recap video. He makes the rounds: luging at Sony's Project Morpheus, high-speed driving in Forza, and making childhood fantasies a reality with Nintendo's gang of ladies (not quite "booth babes," but not quite not either). Sadly, we can't get away with asking crowds of people to applaud our rock-solid run through Hyrule Warriors, but Conan does it and makes it funny. Head below for the full video, but be prepared to set aside about 10 minutes. He's thorough!
These are the biggest third-party games at E3 2014
Sure, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft all have their own internally developed games, but there's so much more to E3 than what The Big Three show off for their respective platforms. Even better, almost every game from the likes of Activision and Electronic Arts will appear on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One so there's almost no need to choose which platform to buy if you want to play a specific title, either. Let's get down to business, shall we?
'No Man's Sky': the game that 'won' E3 2014
Ever heard of Joe Danger? That's okay, you're not alone -- most folks haven't heard of the motocross-based platformer, despite it receiving glowing praise from critics and earning healthy sales from gamers. That said, if you followed last week's annual game industry trade show, E3, you've likely heard of No Man's Sky. The same small team of scrappy Brits that created the cartoony Danger series, Hello Games, is applying its years of game industry experience to a much more ambitious project in No Man's Sky. This is how Hello Games lead Sean Murray described the game at Sony's E3 2014 press conference: "We've created a procedural universe. It's infinite, and it's one that everyone can share. We're gonna start every player on a different planet so no two people will have the same experience. This universe we've created...it's so vast, it's so boundless, it's actually infinite, and we don't even know what's out there." So, how in the world did a team of four game developers transition from indie hit makers to triple-A rogues? We asked Hello Games just that, late last week in an evening demo session for No Man's Sky.
These are the biggest Nintendo games at E3 2014
Nintendo's in a weird place. The company's got a game console that no one's buying, the Wii U, and it's the only place to play some of gaming's biggest franchises: Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong. The list goes on. Nintendo's also got a tremendously popular handheld game console, the 3DS, but Wii U software was the focus of E3 2014. Rather than a press conference like in the past, Nintendo chose to unveil its E3 news in a digital venue: a Nintendo Direct video stream. Much of Tuesday morning's announcements were available to play at E3, impressions of which we've shared below. And yes, we played a lot of Smash Bros.
Weekends with Engadget: E3 2014, getting sweaty with Sony's Project Morpheus and more!
This week, we stormed the floors of E3 2014, interviewed Shuhei Yoshida and Phil Spencer, took Sony's Project Morpheus for a test-run and watched Amazon launch its Prime Music streaming service. Read on for Engadget's news highlights from the last seven days. Oh, and be sure to subscribe to our Flipboard magazine!
Xbox One July update brings help for Achievements and 'Likes' on recordings
Microsoft gave viewers a peek at the continuing evolution of the Xbox One just ahead of its E3 press conference, but everyone should get to try out the new Snap mode for Achievements next month. That's because the feature is a part of the July update about to start testing, along with a few other tweaks. In case you missed the E3 preview, there's a video demo of the multitasking-ready new Achievements mode after the break, showing how it lets players track their progress while staying in the game, and even search for help on how to reach their goals.
These are the biggest Xbox One games at E3 2014
Sure, you could spend the rest of your days playing Titanfall online, but what if you'd like to give your Xbox One something a little different to play? Microsoft's message for this E3 was clear: games, games and more games. We took to the company's booth this week to find out what you'd be playing this fall, and whether you like shooters, driving games or indies, you should be all set for first-party titles. How does Redmond stack up to Sony's plan for the PlayStation? We'll let you be the judge.
Can Electronic Arts make a 'Battlefield' game that works?
I stopped playing Battlefield this year. Why did I stop playing the massively popular first-person shooter? Because it never works when it launches. For those who haven't experienced the promise and defeat of a Battlefield launch, it goes as such: A multiplayer beta precedes the launch, often by a slim few months, which is chalked up to server testing. Players enjoy the beta, which is sometimes buggy, but often stable enough. And hey, it's a beta. The game launches; millions of players splash into online servers; and it becomes unplayable for days, weeks and often months at a time. Battlefield games come out every year. This was not always the case, but in the past four years, we've seen three Battlefield games. Zero of those three worked at launch (I actually wrote about this back when Battlefield 3 came out, at our sister site Joystiq). Battlefield 4 launched last October; it just started operating consistently. At E3 2014, EA announced this year's entry in the series: Battlefield Hardline. It's with this tremendous amount of baggage that I approached our interview with Battlefield studio head Karl Magnus Troedsson.
Ridley Scott's 'Halo' project is a prequel to the next major 'Halo' game
In a way, director Ridley Scott's Halo-themed project, dubbed Nightfall, brings Microsoft's tentpole shooter franchise full circle. Master Chief's galaxy-spanning exploits owe a giant debt to the filmmaker's iconic tale of deep-space horror, Alien, and now Scott is helping establish where the franchise goes on the Xbox One. As 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross said during my meeting at E3 this week, working with him "kind of upped the bar" on the series, especially compared to 343's last attempt at live-action, the Halo 4 lead-in Forward Unto Dawn. "Hopefully we get better each time," she said. Nightfall tells the origin story for Agent Locke, a character Ross said plays a "pivotal role" in Halo 5: Guardians. As far as story, that's as much as we know so far. Ross isn't sure how many episodes Nightfall will span, but said that there will be five of them leading into Halo 5's beta timeframe.
How I got stabbed in the chest at E3 2014 (an Oculus Rift tale)
There I was, impaled by an alien. I was carefully walking around a space station, with nothing more than my (admittedly dim) wits and a motion tracker, watching a large, terrifying alien stamp about. My only direction was to survive. "You had one job!" I failed at it. The tech demos are over: Oculus Rift's second development kit at E3 2014 isn't running any dalliances aimed at proving the tech. It's running real-ass games. Alien: Isolation was the third game I played, and it was by far the most terrifying. You're not a space marine, and you're not named Ellen Ripley. You're just some unwitting sheep running from assured death at the hands/tentacles/teeth of an H.R. Giger-designed alien. Delightful.
'Halo: The Master Chief Collection' has what you expect and a whole lot more
We told you that Halo: The Master Chief Collection (MCC) existed before anyone else, but thanks to the package being officially official, we now have a veritable truckload of details about it. When the game releases November 11th, just over 10 years after Halo 2's launch, it'll pack remastered audio and visuals, four whole games on one disc, a staggering number of multiplayer maps and even a few surprises.
The man who made the game in 'Her' is about to release a game you can play
He's fresh to game development, but David O'Reilly has already created a game you likely know very well: the game in Spike Jonze's excellent film, "Her." While that "game" was, ya know, in a film and not a real game, he's just about to release his first actual game in Mountain. O'Reilly describes it as a "mountain simulator" -- he explained to a crowd at Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art this morning that it enables you to "live out all your dark twisted fantasies" of, uh, being a mountain. Okay, so what in the world is happening here? In actuality, it's a game about interacting with a relatively static mountain. Weather changes, music changes, and you can input melodies (via touch on iOS, keyboard on PC/OS X) which alter the state of the world. Sometimes you push forward time, sometimes you change the weather, sometimes you zoom out into outerspace -- where your mountain lives, apparently! O'Reilly says it'll be out in the next few weeks, and it'll cost "about a dollar."
With the PlayStation TV, Sony's going after families with young kids
The PlayStation TV is a curious oddity. The $100 device, a rebranded Vita TV that's slated to launch in North America and Europe later this fall, is Sony's direct answer to the Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV streaming boxes currently flooding the market. It's also the only box of the bunch capable of offering a video game experience that goes beyond just casual gaming. In fact, the PlayStation TV's library of titles spans several platforms: the PS Vita, PSP, PS One, PS3 (via PS Now's cloud streaming) and PS4 over Remote Play. It'll also offer consumers the ability to stream video content. But with the PS4 occupying the top spot in the PlayStation totem pole, we have to wonder: Just who is the PlayStation TV for?
Getting sweaty with the future of Sony's virtual reality
The private room, elevated above the crazed throngs of E3 attendees, was dark and oppressively stuffy. Inside, Conan O'Brien lay on a beanbag in front of Sony's newest virtual reality demo for its Project Morpheus headset: Street Luge. And he was surrounded by two Nintendo booth babes -- an awkward collision of rival gaming worlds that wasn't lost on Sony PR. Conan was finishing up a shoot for a spoof segment on Morpheus and I had to wait for the celebrity fanfare to stop.
Oculus VR explains why mobile virtual reality won't poison the well
With all the talk of high-fidelity virtual reality coming from Oculus VR -- the virtual reality headset company that's now part of Facebook -- it's easy to believe that the only type of VR is PC-based. But that isn't the case! Beyond what we learned recently about Samsung and Oculus working on a VR peripheral that uses your phone, Oculus has been open about working on a mobile software development kit for some time now. Heck, we even spoke with Oculus CTO John Carmack about it last year. "I think you'll see the mobile SDK launch publicly before the consumer Rift comes out," Oculus VP of Product Nate Mitchell told us this week at E3 2014. Beyond Samsung, a handful of developers are "experimenting with some high-end Android devices ... building experiences and seeing what's possible." But here's the issue: Great VR requires serious horsepower. While the current range of flagship Android mobile devices are pretty powerful, they don't hold a candle to even low-end gaming PCs. In so many words, isn't Oculus worried that a subpar, Android-based VR experience could poison the well for the full Oculus Rift coming down the line? If your first experience with VR is a bad one, you may never try it again. "That's a completely fair statement," Mitchell said.
These are the biggest PlayStation games at E3 2014
The launch window is over. The PlayStation 4 is, for now, leading the sales charts and the best way for Sony to keep driving that momentum this generation is with -- what else? -- compelling games. This year's showing at Sony's E3 booth is no different than the last: You've got your smattering of indies, AAA titles and downloadable content. So what should you expect to add to your growing collection in 2014? We took a tour of Sony's booth to find out.
PlayStation at E3 2014: an interview with Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida
Sony Computer Entertainment's Shuhei Yoshida wants his company's new game-streaming service, PlayStation Now, to be the Netflix of gaming. When it launches later this summer, it won't be. In fact, it's launching in open beta. "We have to walk before we run," Yoshida told us in an interview this week at E3, the game industry's big annual show in Los Angeles. He sees the service as a long-term plan, part of Sony's ongoing initiative to bring PlayStation games to many devices. And that plan is just kicking off.
Making your own Mario level is incredibly fun, but difficult to master
Today, I wrote my very own level of Super Mario Bros. at E3. Featuring a pyramid of goombas, several randomly placed pipes, a dozen mystery blocks in a row and countless coins scattered throughout, my creation was a jumbled mess; coming up with a cool world for Mario to navigate is a lot easier said than done. But it was mine. In the first half of next year, Wii U owners will have the same opportunity thanks to a game called Mario Maker. It's Nintendo's first attempt at producing a level creator similar to LittleBigPlanet or Project Spark, and it tugged at my heartstrings. For a brief moment, I shared the same experience as a small group of video game designers: Armed with a Wii U GamePad and its included stylus, I placed enemies, pipes, platforms and other Mario obstacles anywhere I wanted. In my demo, I was allowed to choose between the original game's 8-bit style and the high-def style from the franchise's recent titles. And just to make sure my Mario genesis was actually playable, I was able to play through it in real time.
Here are Nintendo's new 'Super Smash Bros.' Amiibo toys for Wii U
Toy-based gaming is not only alive and well, but it's also expanding to more franchises. This time it's Nintendo's turn: Following in the footsteps of games like Skylanders and Disney Infinity, Nintendo announced the Amiibo, which are plastic figurines that you scan into your Wii U by holding them on the GamePad. As soon as the toy is scanned, its corresponding character -- Mario is a primary example -- appears in the game with its own unique score, experience points and skills. The point of doing this is so you can either partner with or fight against these virtual characters. Additionally, the more the Amiibo fights, the better it will become. The toys, which were shown off for the first time at E3, will initially be available for (and compatible with) Super Smash Bros. this holiday season, but more games will be compatible later on, such as Mario Kart 8 and Mario Party 10.
Here's what made 'Grim Fandango' a legendary adventure game
When Double Fine said that it was reviving Grim Fandango for PlayStation systems, you may have been left scratching your head. Why remake a nearly 16-year-old adventure game that many of today's players would have never seen? Well, some of the original developers are more than happy to explain through a new mini documentary. They argue that the title was full of creative and technological breakthroughs. The setting was a unique fusion of Mexican folklore with film noir, and it was one of the first adventure games to embrace the possibilities of 3D. Rather than rely on an obvious point-and-click interface, it included then-novel concepts like using head tracking to point out interesting objects.
