Tuesday, June 13, 2017

E3 2017: Nintendo Spotlight Impressions

Nintendo starts off with a montage of people playing Switch games.  Looks like Rocket League is on switch!  I see Pokken Tournament.  Now, FIFA.  Now it's Splatoon 2.  Not much really shown, though.  So, I'm hoping there will be more.

Reggie Fils-Aime is here now, talking about "fun".  He's gone full on philosophical.

A trailer starts to play.  Monolithsoft, so this will be Xenoblade 2.  It shows two characters, one of them named Pyra, fighting together, heading towards some place called Elisium.  The other character's name is Rex.  Looks to be a huge world, More characters shown, dragons involved. Holiday 2017.  Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.

The next trailer talks about needing heroes, and it's a new Kirby!  YES!  Man, I love Kirby games, and it looks like this will be a traditional Kirby now.  No more yarn or rainbow drawing gimmicks.  Wow, it's just called Kirby.  2018

Shinya Takahashi appears now.  He talks about how relieved he felt after seeing how well Switch is received.  He shares an announcement with Tsunekzau Ishihara from The Pokemon Company, so I'm guessing it's Pokemon related.  Pokken Tournament DX is coming, which we already knew.  Sounds like it has all the extra content from the Wii U game.  Gamefreak is making a new Pokemon game for the Switch.

Shinya returns to talk about how most games shown today will be available this year.

A new video plays, showing a teaser of... METROID PRIME 4!  FINALLY!  And the  music... I'm getting chills.  AND NOTHING ELSE IS SHOWN... Damn...

The next video shows what looks to be possible a new Paper Mario?  Or maybe it's a Paper Yoshi?  Although Yoshi is not made out of paper, but the environment is.  I already want it.  God, I love Nintendo's creative artistry!  So imaginative.  But oh the juxtaposition... it's just called Yoshi.  2018.  So, is this going to be a new trend now, to just throw a generic title name up?

Next trailer is shown from Team Ninja.  Looks like Fire Emblem?  Yep, it is.  Cutscenes look great.  So what kind of game will it be?  Sounds like a Dynasty Warriors type game.  Fire Emblem Warriors.  Fall 2017.

Ejia Aonuma appears to talk about Zelda DLC.  Actually, he's talking about Zelda items showing up in Skyrim for Switch.  Now, he talks about Zelda DLC.  I think I might get the DLC, because I actually miss playing Breath of the Wild.  The Trial of the Sword trial is being shown.  If I remember right, this is a long continuous battle against waves of enemies to unlock the true power of the Master Sword.  Something called Heroes Path Mode, new armor including that fucking Tingle suit... More Koroks I guess?  Master Mode.  The DLC Pack 1 will be called the Master Trials.  DLC Pack 2 will be called The Champion's Ballad.  Released June 30th and Holiday 2017 respectively.  Season Pass is 20 bucks.

Ejia comes out to talk about how the Champions will be released as Amiibos.  Great....

Reggie again. He talks about a new competition, a World Invitational for Splatoon 2.  Pokken invitational begins tomorrow.  Also, there's an Arms Open Invitational.  Sounds like Nintendo wants to be serious with eSports.

Another video plays.  This is Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle.  Yves Guillemot says, of course, that it's exclusive to Switch.  We already saw the gameplay from Ubisoft.  It looks great regardless.

The next video shows Rocket League.  I actually really wanted to play this game but never got around to it.  Now, Switch will be the platform that I play it on.  Also, there will be cross-platform play, so that's great.  And of course, there will be exclusive Nintendo items like Mario and Luigi hats.  It's coming out this holiday.

The next video shows a dinosaur.  This is most likely Monster Hunter XX.  No, it's actually Mario Odyssey, because that damn Mario hat popped up on top of the dinosaur's head!  Wow, talk about being trolled.  Wow, this game looks so damn good!  It's like a combination of every 3D Mario ever made.  It see a lot of Sunshine and Galaxy influences.  Of course, there's the living hat, which I'm sure will be a great character in its own right.  And there's airships!  Looks like, he can also ride a bullet buil.  Seems to be a lot of variety in power ups.  Teh human world is just really weird though.  10/27 is the release date!  Nice! Sooner than we thought!

Ok, so I do this every year.  I expect so many things from Nintendo, but always walk away disappointed.  I knew I wasn't going to get much with the Spotlight not even lasting 30 minutes, but I did get a couple of very pleasant surprises in terms of Kirby and Yoshi. I knew last year that a new Metroid Prime was coming when Reggie was asked about it and confirmed through no comment, so it was nice to see it officially confirmed today.  I hate that nothing at all was shown for it, though.  Must be a very, very long ways off.

Missing, however, was footage from Monster Hunter XX.  I really thought the last video was going to be just that, with the dinosaur, but it turned out to be Odyssey, which really looked damned good.  Still, I think it was a bit of a misstep not to show off MHXX considering they showed Monster Hunter in Sony's conference.  And speaking of missing, where's a new F-Zero? A new Wave Race? A new Pilotwings, a new Star Fox, Punch-Out, Pilotwings, etc.  Lots of franchises going to waste here.  Step it up Nintendo!

Overall rating: B-

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