The whole process is so enjoyable: finding the game trailers I love, selecting the perfect song for the mood I want to impart, extracting the most thrilling video clips, creating a beat track to align the clips, arranging everything…it feels awesome to feel a clip slide right into place with the music. A couple nights of that and some polish and viola, a little time capsule of my mood, interest and excitement bundled into one hype reel.
Tag: e3
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E3 2017 Wish List
It’s gamer Christmas again! With the Microsoft press conference about to kick off (5pm EST; larger schedule here), I wanted to jot down some personal hopes and dreams for possible announcements during the week:
- A PS4 port of PixelJunk Monsters. It’s really just unfair at this point.
- Nintendo, give us a truly stellar 2.5D Metroid game. Zero Mission is about as close as we’ve gotten to a Super Metroid-caliber
release, but even it was a little heavy-handed with the direction and a
touch too linear for my taste. I’d also take a Metroid Prime Triolgy
Switch port, or a new entry in the series. - If we can’t have Metroid (not holding my breath), at least let’s get an MS announcement for Shadow Complex 2.
- I enjoyed Resident Evil 7 more than 5 and 6, but I’d really like to see some news on a traditional RE game. The RE2 remake is in the pipeline somewhere, but really anything in the vein of the GameCube REmake would be fantastic.
- We’re getting some premium new hardware from Microsoft, so I expect we’ll see a matching price drop for the PS4 models (and maybe the PSVR?). I would love to see Scorpio land around $400, but it’s really unlikely for the kind of powerful machine they’re producing. If they settle on $500, hopefully the pack-ins will make up for the higher sticker price.
- With HD remakes popping up all over the gaming landscape, I wouldn’t mind seeing another game redone in the Ratchet and Clank series. The PS4 variant of the original is one of the best games on the system, and I’d love to see similar efforts for the other good games in the series.
- I would die to play Mario Galaxy or Mario Sunshine on the Switch. Port those suckers. Or really, you know, anything more about the Switch. Maybe a true Pokémon game? F-Zero? Even old SNES-era Final Fantasy ports would be okay (since there are already iOS variants).
- It feels like it’s flown under the radar a bit, but a Below release date for Xbox One would be excellent. Cannot wait to check that out!
- A new Alan Wake game, or at least a UHD re-release of the original with DLC. I would take any excuse to replay that game, and what better way than on Scorpio in 4K?
- A true Banjo-Kazooie sequel? Yooka-Laylee had the hype train behind it but ultimately left a pretty sour taste in my mouth, mostly because it wasn’t as good as the original inspiration (even today). A long shot, but hey, Microsoft probably still owns the IP!
- What ever happened to that ReSpawn Star Wars title?
- Obduction port for consoles? I’m grasping here.
- I hope we don’t hear anything about Death Stranding. In an age where Fallout 4 was announced months before release, enough with the news on games that haven’t even been designed yet.
It’s pretty overcast and rainy here in Florida–perfect weather for an afternoon of E3 press conference watching! It’s hard to explain how excited this time makes me; there’s so much possibility in the air, and the bombast and spectacle of it all is really energizing.
I’ll try to blog some post-E3 thoughts as well.
I hope everyone see’s something checked off on their own wish list, and have a great E3!
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Pulse and E3
Back in college I made a few E3 game trailer mashup videos. It wasn’t very technically challenging, just good practice and a bit of fun picking my favorite moments and preserving them to some music. I dropped it after 2006 because the work was getting to be too much for the fun it was offering.
It felt like it was going to be fun to do one this year, with this generation of consoles hitting their stride and some updated consoles on the horizon.
Then the Pulse nightclub shooting happened, literally hours before the video game festivities were going to begin.
When I first heard about the shooting, it was a little shake of my head and a sigh before going back to whatever else was going on that morning. It didn’t even phase me. America, at it again. As the details, horror, and magnitude of the situation filtered in, it started to rip at me. It transformed the weeks to come, living in and working in Orlando. Even the digital highway signs read “#OrlandoUnited” around town. It was simultaneously a sense of dread and a strange affirmation.
E3 wasn’t the same after. How do you demo a dance club gunfight after something like that? Almost every presser started with a moment of silence or acknowledgement that the industry stood with the victims and LGBT fans. Almost every presenter wore a rainbow ribbon on their lapels to show their support. It felt a bit like insurance from backlash at the violence they would focus on in their games, but it felt mostly genuine. E3 was fantastic this year.
I have tried for the last few months to find a way to mash these two events together into some meaningful, touching video. E3 means so much to me; the shooting left me feeling numb. Was there some crossover here? Something to say about glorifying gun violence, or escapism, or the way games model anger and comfort? I picked a song, sliced it in Premiere, collected clips from YouTube of news coverage, game trailers, anti-gay propaganda, and threw it all together, repeatedly, hoping I could get it to stick.
It never did. I spent too many nights at work trying to make it work (including tonight), trying to say something. I’m admitting defeat tonight. All the clips and the project files are in the trash now. But it hurts so much to walk away from something like this where I needed to say something. So here I am, saying a few things.
Radicoon Register 