Cool Things We Learned At E3 2012

Mario’s new machine will kick your ass: Nintendo Wii U

Nintendo delivered the first proper glimpse of the future of videogames at E3. The Japanese company may have ‘shot its load’ on the internet 48 hours early, via a 30-minute YouTube address from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata (which, unfortunately, looked like a hostage video) but that’s exactly the kind of unexpected behaviour that makes people sit up and pay attention to the Mario-makers.

The Wii U looks like the original Wii (small, white, a bit Fisher Price), but is as much of a revelation as the original Wii – the console that achieved your lifelong goal of infiltrating girls’ bedrooms and boozers all over the country. The Wii U features a gamepad with a built-in screen and camera; you can ‘send’ your game to the pad if your girlfriend insists on turning saas-bahu serials on. But really, the fun happens when using the pad screen and TV screen together. Simply glancing at the touchscreen-enabled, gyroscopic pad allows you to reload a weapon; look at a map and the pad looks back at you, and takes a snap of your face.

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Demonstrating the Wii U’s capabilities, Nintendo showed off an unexpected horror-fest that would turn Mario’s dungarees from red to brown in seconds. ZombiU is a first-person shooter that takes a picture of your face and turns you into a live, groaning zombie. Genuinely terrifying and way better than those fun-for-two-minutes iPhone apps that make your face go a bit fat.

The Wii U is the first Nintendo console to offer HD gaming, and while it might be six years behind Sony and Microsoft on that front, HD isn’t the only thing that has Nintendo’s rivals worried. The next-gen gamepad with screen and camera is joined by an Xbox-style gamepad aimed at urging Xbox 360 owners to switch sides when it comes to the launch of Wii U (which is this November, by the way – no price details as yet). The first shot in the next-next-gen wars has been fired; at next year’s E3, it’ll be the vicious smackdown between the new Xbox and PlayStation...

The Japanese are coming after Facebook: GREE social gaming

Launching this year, GREE is a Japanese, mobile-only social network that allows you to play games for free, buy add-ons/power-ups etc, and chat to strangers – but instead of cack like Farmville, GREE has grown-up games. In Japan, GREE has more users (and makes more money) than Facebook: one-in-four Japanese people are signed up, with one game – Driland – bringing in over $20m a month.

The five hottest games out soon

The public are tired of sequels, shooters and big-name sports licenses – so what were videogame companies showing off at E3...? You guessed it. Still, some of them did look pretty sweet. Here are the games you’ll be throwing a joypad at in frustration later this year...

1. The Last Of Us

Best for: Wannabe heroes. From the makers of PS3 epic Uncharted comes this 28 Days Later-like adventure. In a post-apocalyptic cityscape, you and a 14-year-old girl are a tag-team of desperadoes, dodging and dispatching bloodthirsty bandits. “Well done on, like, the killing and stuff,” says your wisecracking accomplice Ellie. Nice.

2. Nintendo Land

Best for: Your girlfriend. This collects every major Nintendo character and wedges them into one bananas game. Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong etc all go up against each other in a theme park setting. Truly mad, and Nintendo Land uses the Wii U’s capabilities in loads of cool, mind-bending ways. Could just be the game of the year...

3. F1 2013

Best for: Speed freaks. The latest F1 outing has you undergoing intense training sessions before you’re allowed to race on real F1 tracks alongside Hamilton, Alonso etc. Game makers Codemasters have even included the new circuit of the Americas track in Texas, nabbing the blueprints before the tarmac had even dried. Sneaky.

4. Transformers: Fall Of Cybertron

Best for: Re-living your childhood. The first really good attempt at a franchise that should’ve been a videogame series in the first place. Control your fave Autobots and Decepticons, and watch Optimus Prime call forth a screen-filling, mega-sized Autobot to help him smash buildings. Plus: Dinobots. Remember them? They’re back and they’re breathing fire.

5. Call Of Duty: Black Ops II

Best for: SAS dropouts. The world’s biggest videogame has relocated to LA and split into two timelines: one set during the ’70s and ’80s, and one set in 2025. It’s up to you to lead Strike Force missions and save the world – because Jack Bauer wouldn’t last 24 minutes against the kind of bad-ass military hardware that’s on display here.

Call Of Duty boss breaks cover: Mark Lamia, the Spielberg of videogames

He’s the man in charge of Call Of Duty, the biggest videogame series in the world. How big? Well, the last one made £490 million within just five days of going on sale, making it the most successful entertainment product, of any kind, ever. With Call Of Duty: Black Ops II – and its past/future plotlines – one of the most buzzed-over games at E3, FHM dragged Mark Lamia away from the fanboys for a chinwag.

Realistic or ridiculous: where does Call Of Duty: Black Ops II sit?

In a way, the game is hyper-realistic. You want to have enough authentic elements, so players believe that the situations are plausible, and so they get drawn into the story, but I’m not trying to give people history lessons!

How do the new Strike Force missions work?

How you perform during the Strike Force levels in the ’70s and ’80s will affect the cold war that’s occurring in 2025. Some of the choices you make in the game will be obvious, others will set off a ripple that you’ll later see affect things in the future.

There seems to be a bigger movie influence this time around.

We’ve taken inspiration from movies: action scenes set in LA, obviously, but also in the way we construct our villains. Our writers Dave Anthony and David S. Goyer [the writer behind the Christopher Nolan Batman movies] also talk about The Sopranos a lot, and the way that show can make you empathise with a bad guy.

Call Of Duty is huge, and you’re a big star at E3. Do you get stalkers?

Ha! Yeah, I guess I do. I represent my team though there’s no ‘rock star’ here – the rock star is the team. I represent the 250 people who make CoD and work their asses off.

How do you rate yourself as a gamer?

Well, I’m a hardcore gamer, but I don’t actually consider myself to be a very good gamer. I pride myself on being a middle-of-the-road gamer!

What’s your earliest gaming memory?

Playing Pong and using a light-gun on the Magnavox Odyssey. It was my first experience of a shooter. In fact, it was the first shooting game!

What’s your all-time favourite game?

Civilisation 2 was a favourite; Doom 2 was a favourite shooter. In the arcades, it was Star Castle. I’m sad that the arcade experience has gone, but I like the way that people are ‘spectating’ more – watching people play games online, like they did in the arcades. That’s something we’re watching very closely for the next Call Of Duty…

Call Of Duty: Black Ops II is released in November.

From the August 2012 issue of FHM India.