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Today was a bittersweet day, after slogging along through all the weariness we reached the end of our journey. Basically this is how we felt. It was an amazing journey and we closed out the show with a viewing of Batman: Arkham Origins and appointments with Activision | Blizzard and Sega. Patrick caught some game time with the elusive Ducktales, WOOHOO indeed. Finally we were able to get our mitts on some playtime for both the PS4 and Xbox One. Per the usual format this post I’ll be in normal font and Patrick will be in fancy Italics.

Batman: Arkham Origins, while a prequel, is very much a spiritual successor to the franchise. Grappling, gliding and fighting remain unchanged but Detective Mode has received a significant upgrade. Bruce has a got access to a fancy Batcomputer, sadly Anti Shark Repellent BatSpray was not mentioned at all. Black Mask has put out a cool 50 million dollar bounty on Batman and DC’s premier assassins have come to collect. Appearances by other DC characters such as Anarky, Deadshot, Deathstroke, The Joker and Bane. Kevin Conroy nor Mark Hamill return, but the new voice actors seems to do a fair job of an imitation with a bit of their own spin.

I am super excited that Anarky is included as a villain here. It looks like this will be like Arkham City where there are multiple side quests to do relating to particular villains. This looks pretty awesome. I am going to pre-order when I pick up the Last of Us today.

 

We managed to get access to previews for both Skylanders Swap Force and Call of Duty Ghosts from the fine people at Activision | Blizzard. Going into the presentation I knew next to nothing about Skylanders but the presentation was by far the most entertaining and humorous out of any we had witnessed this year. Based on that alone I now have an interest in that games series.

The presenter, Nev, was really amazing and Skylanders looked great. I have pretty much ignored it up until now but it looked pretty fun. I could have been taken in by the hilarious presentation and comfy chairs. I might look into this now though.

 

Call of Duty Ghosts is set in post cataclysm America where some enemy severely pwn3d us to the point that we got teabagged afterward. The attention to detail of the environment and design is amazing to witness. Flat surfaces do not exist in this game and the scopes, the scopes are perfectly round. You are part of an elite squad that decides to take the fight back to these dickwheels (unnamed enemy thus far) and have an attack dog along for the ride. Not any ordinary attack dog mind you, he is more like the Robocop of attack dogs. Not a cyborg but he is outfitted with a fancy vest that allows for surveillance and to issue commands (rip out the enemies throat) from a distance.

One word: SHARKS!!!

At Sega I spent most of my time in a Company of Heroes II session, this game is always hard for me to pass up since I am sucker for RTS (Real Time Strategy). I found the experience highly enjoyable and the level of detail on each until is amazing. For sure worth a purchase when it comes out on Steam.

Finally, the most important thing. Hands on time with the new consoles everyone has their jimmies rustled about.

Here is my brief take on the two experiences, we are going to put in a more detailed write up later on. Off the bat, Microsoft had a superior hands on experience with the new console. Sony had a more open experience but no hands on with exclusive launch titles. Both boxes seem very close in specs and abilities as far as what they can do, Ryse, while the trailer didn’t excite me much, was freaking awesome to play. I regret not having a clone to get in line for Project Spark. On the PS4 side I played Warframe (currently available for PC) the experience was enjoyed and replicated the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer experience which I thoroughly enjoy. The whole time I could not but help regret getting in line for Octodad: Deadliest Catch (also on PC) which looked  like pretty much the most insanely fun thing ever.

 

At this point, it really is too early to declare a “winner” on the new console race. Sony needs to step up their game with some hands on experience of console specific titles that wow and Xbox needs to rethink exactly what they are offering in their system.

I think Charles is spot on regarding the consoles. I didn’t think much of Ryse before I got my hands on it but now that I have I am really excited to play the full game. The controller felt good in the hand and while I fumbled a little as the size is a little strange, I was more comfortable with that controller than the PS4.

 

On the PS4 side of things I played Blacklight and a pinball game that replicated the Star Trek the Next Generation machine. Blacklight was an FPS and we were playing multi-player. The game ran super smoothly but graphically, while sharp, it was somewhat bland and didn’t have the depth of field or detail we are seeing with other next gen stuff. I think it is sort of weird that Sony is choosing to highlight this title as hands on when it looks more current gen next to other titles. The controller, as I said yesterday, feels good but I still don’t like the closeness of the sticks for FPS games and even with the new curved trigger buttons I found myself hitting the wrong ones. The pinball game was gorgeous and the physics seemed to be pretty great. The force feedback was right on and it felt like playing real pinball.

We saw the theater experience for Killzone and while I found it more interesting than the reveal trailer, I am still not really sold here. It looked very pretty and had some interesting weapons and a cool drone but next to Battlefield 4, Call of Duty Ghosts and Titanfall, I am not seeing a day one purchase.

We will of course have more in depth coverage of these titles in the week and we will update this post with a day 3 podcast so keep your eyes peeled.