Jumping in Headfirst

"If I told you I killed a nigga at 16, would you believe me? Or see me to be, the innocent Kendrick you seen in the street With a basketball and some Now-and-Laters to eat, If I mentioned all of my skeletons, would you jump in the seat? Would you say my intelligence now is great relief? And its safe to say our next generation maybe could sleep With dreams of being a lawyer or doctor,  Instead of a boy with a chopper, that hold the cul-de-sac hostage?" That verse from Kendrick Lamar's "mAAd city" shows off the inescapable duality of the black youth--the one that allows us to be viewed through one set of eyes as the "good" or "safe" kind of black through our personalities or manner of speech, while an entirely different pair could see us as merely gangsters or thugs just for our clothing choices, even though more often than not we all have similar backgrounds, and any of us could be forced at any time to do less than savory things ...

If Sony hadn't taken it, these guys would've gotten the best in show.  Easy. Rating: A- Sometime last year, I did this enormous post on NeoGAF talking about all the games we could see during that E3.   I did a ton of research for that, and during that time I realized how easy it would be for Square to do their own conference if they wanted to. Well, lo and behold here we are a year later and Square has popped up with the strongest conference from a non-console developer.   (They topped Nintendo too, but I’ll get to that in a second.)    Square’s probably the most well-rounded developer making video games right now.   No other developer could’ve offered you as many big budget titles from so many different genres and settings.    Barely two weeks ago, I was calling Square the equivalent of a significant other that’s a jerk—they ignore you for weeks, refuse to do anything around the house, but then just when you’re...

I definitely wanted this one to be better.

Uh-oh.  The "big dog" has arrived... Rating : HOLY F- (A++) If you paid attention to the internet scuttlebutt the night before, you knew there was a possibility of what happened.    I said: “Sony can only disappoint, or break the internet” roughly two hours before their conference started.   Fortunately, Sony decided to go for the latter. We should’ve known they weren’t fucking around when they started on time for once.   They wasted absolutely ZERO time and kicked things off by re-introducing The Last Guardian.    Though I didn’t care about it when they revealed it in 2009 (and care even less now), it was a beautiful reveal and a great way to start things off. But they weren’t done.   Horizon, the game I’ve been talking about for ages , was next and it looked jaw-droppingly beautiful.   Boasting a unique setting, hauntingly beautiful music, and a bad-ass female protagonist hunting down ROBOT DINOSAURS, Guerilla Games m...

LANA!!!!!

The second conference of Day 1.  This isn't quite as....light as it should be.

Back with the official "Day One" of E3's conference.  Let's go.

I already did a brief "rating" thing during my livestream earlier in the week, but I think these conferences deserve a bit more of an in-depth look.  These are kinda long so I'll be releasing them in chunks rather than in one mega-article.

This one kinda got away from me.

....No words.  Should've sent a poet.  Should've sent...Megatron.

After a two week ride of pure insanity, what could Day 13 be? 

We've only got a few days left before the pre-show conferences begin.  What unbelievable predictions have I got in my hat today?

After yesterday, I'm basically in the realm of "get real dude", so let's see what else I can come up with!

You'd think the tenth day of this would be far more exciting than what I'm about to present to you.  Unfortunately, that's not quite the case.

We're about a week out from E3, the biggest annual game-related conference where all the big publishers get together and decide to show off their major titles for the next year and a half or so.  You can tell because developers have been seemingly unable to shut up for the past week, as announcements and reveals for smaller (and some larger) games just keep pouring out. 

This is that part where we get into the highly unlikely thing I was telling you about on day 1.

Another title that I'm reasonably certain exists, but it's still fairly sketchy.

Another curveball as we get to Day 7.  

Here's where we get into some of the more difficult titles.   Now in this case I'm actually fairly sure this will happen but...I don't even have a name for this one so it looks sketchy.

An unexpected challenger appears for day four!

We're trucking along with day 3 of this E3 Hopes and Expectations list, so I decided to throw you a curveball.

I'm back again with day two of my E3 Hopes and Expectations, as this time we talk about the return of a classic J-RPG franchise to its rightful place on consoles.