
It’s fair to say that Nintendo’s offering this E3 didn’t exactly blow the world away.
Sony cleverly stole the show with three “ah but” games – Shenmue III (“ah but it’s crowd-funded”), the Final Fantasy VII remake (“ah but it isn’t exclusive”) and The Last Guardian (“ah but we’ve known about this for years”) – while Microsoft went down the “well, we’ve got loads of stuff actually coming out this year” route.
Nintendo, however, had what felt like one of its trademark ‘stop-gap E3s’, where it presented a bunch of seemingly less impressive games to tide fans over until next year’s big reveals of Zelda Wii U and the new NX console.
That said, some ‘gamers’ went a little overboard in terms of criticising Nintendo’s E3 wares. From some saying it was a disgrace to others outright petitioning to cancel the development of one announced game, I’m struggling to think of a time I’ve felt so ashamed to be associated with other so-called gamers.
I’ve been gaming long enough to remember when people were up in arms about Nintendo turning Metroid into a first-person shooter, or turning Zelda cel-shaded. Fast forward more than a decade and, surprise surprise, Metroid Prime and Zelda: The Wind Waker are heralded by Nintendo fans – many of whom whined at the time – as classics.
To be clear, my point is not that Metroid Prime Federation Force will be considered a classic a decade from now. All I’m saying is you should never judge a game until you actually get the chance to play it. Which is why I headed over to Nintendo’s top-secret post-E3 event in London yesterday to go hands-on with ten of the Wii U and 3DS games shown off in LA a couple of weeks ago.
Here are my full, honest impressions of everything I played, in the order I played them. Continue reading “Hands-on with Nintendo’s E3 2015 games”

