This year’s E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is underway, and it brings lots of news and announcements about games that are coming in the near (and sometimes not-so-near) future. I’m not going to list off all of the announcements, but I am going to discuss a few of the games that most interest me.
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
The new Zelda game for Wii U (also coming to NX) now has a title…and a new trailer.
Even though I’m generally not a fan of the cel-shaded look in Zelda games, I have to admit it really looks great in Breath of the Wild. The world is huge, detailed, and…alive. Link can climb cliffs, trees, and buildings, and it looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun just to explore.
Link can interact with the environment in a variety of ways. He can push boulders down a hill onto enemies below, cut trees down to make a bridge, set things on fire, cook food, and so on. That should be fun to play around with and try all sorts of things.
From watching some of the Nintendo Treehouse coverage, it seemed that weapons break rather easily, and that sounds like it could be annoying. But I’m sure that will be remedied a bit further into the game, when you can obtain higher quality weapons and shields.
The game looks amazing though, and I can’t wait to play it in 2017. At this point, I’m not sure if I’ll be getting the Wii U or NX version of the game…mainly because I still don’t know what NX really is just yet. But either way, I plan on buying Breath of the Wild on day one.
Stardew Valley
It was announced that the PC farming simulation is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U. As a long-time Harvest Moon fan that hasn’t played a farming game since the GameCube days, I’ve been dying for some Wii U farming fun.
Stardew Valley looks like an old-school (2D) Harvest Moon game, but with more depth, customization, and options. It has marriage and mining like the Harvest Moon games, but it also has some RPG elements to give the game more variety. And the developer seems quite excited about utilizing the gamepad screen in the Wii U version. It’s due out this winter, and I can’t wait!
No-Shows
First of all, I am aware that Nintendo wasn’t going to be doing a “full” E3 this year. They originally said Zelda Wii U would be their sole focus, and then they added a second day of their Nintendo Treehouse stream to show other upcoming games. So I was not expecting any huge new announcements.
But with that said, I was still hoping they would at least talk about already-announced things like the Animal Crossing app that’s due this fall. Or Disney Magical World 2, which has an American release date of October 14th. I was also hoping for some Virtual Console announcements. But they will likely have a Nintendo Direct video at some point this summer to discuss these things and more.
And as far as I can tell, Natsume made no mention of Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories, which they’ve said is coming to Wii U (and PC) this year. They already seem to be shifting their focus to a new 3DS Harvest Moon game, subtitled Skytree Village. That makes you wonder if Seeds of Memories is still coming, and if so, when? Natsume isn’t saying a word.
I’m not into Pokémon, but that Pokémon Go app does look like a cool concept. It lets you capture Pokémon in real life! There’s also a wearable accessory coming that will light up to let you know when a Pokémon is available nearby. You can then push a button to try to catch it without pulling out your smartphone.