Hands-on with Nintendo’s E3 2015 games

This was on the wall outside the event. Nice work
This was on the wall outside the event. Nice work

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”