The near future and nods to the past at E3 2015
If you had to pick one thing that E3 was all about this year, virtual reality would be the showstopper. But even as critics and gamers looked toward the near future of VR gaming, there was a whiff of nostalgia on the show floor.
Virtual reality is, with respect to the actual consumer experience, kind of a virtual reality in and of itself. It exists, but you can't exactly walk into a store, buy a VR game, bring it home and play it. At least not yet.
"It's very obvious this is where it's going in the future," said CNET senior editor Dan Ackerman. "It's not quite there yet."
Virtual future
Sony showed off its Project Morpheus VR technology for PlayStation, which combines a headset with a pair of Move controllers. It's not yet ready for primetime, but got great reviews on the half dozen demos the company offered on the show floor.
"That seems like the most consumer friendly version (of virtual reality gaming) because you don't need to buy a lot of extra stuff," Ackerman noted. "It works with the console you already have."
It's slated for release in the first part of 2016, around the same time as Oculus Rift. Oculus teamed up with Microsoft to bring the Rift headset to Xbox One games. It won't plug right into the console, but rather will work through the PC.
Microsoft was also at E3 with its augmented reality HoloLens, first revealed in January. No word yet on release date, but there was a very cool demo of a "Minecraft"-HoloLens combo that took the game board off the screen and put in onto the table, as a 3D hologram you could manipulate with hand gestures and voice controls.
There was also a demo of "Halo" through the HoloLens, though it wasn't actual game play so much as a show of what the experience will be like to walk through the shooter in first person.
The difference between the virtual reality of Rift and Morpheus and the augmented reality of HoloLens is that the former two block your vision of the real world entirely, whereas the latter incorporates 3D images into what you see around you.
"The 'Halo' demo was my first experience with HoloLens and it's one that left me pretty excited about the technology," wrote GameSpot's Eddie Makuch. "Whereas Oculus Rift and Morpheus block out your entire vision and fully bring you into a virtual world, HoloLens blends the real world with the virtual for a different effect that is striking in an entirely new way."
Here's how he described the beginning of his (literal) walkthrough:
"I entered a dimly lit 'lab' on the E3 show floor where Microsoft employees wearing white lab coats outfitted me with a HoloLens headset. Next, I walked down a physical hallway and a 'Halo' objective marker directed me where to go. I never had any previous idea of how utterly cool it would be to walk around the real world whilst being directed by 'Halo''s diamond-shaped waypoint. Next, I turned left -- again this is happening in the real world, not inside a game -- and peered into a virtual window to see a bustling UNSC base with ships hovering in the air and a window out into space."
A whiff of nostalgia
The virtual reality tech on display impressed a lot of folks on the show floor, as did new games with impressive graphics, such as "Star Wars: Battlefront," which Ackerman called photorealistic. But a few throwbacks stole some attention from the more futuristic stuff.
Ackerman said his favorite game of E3 2015 was "Cuphead."
"As a veteran of 15 E3 shows over 17 years, there's one game I saw at the conference this year that I can safely say people will be talking about for a long time to come," he wrote on CNET. "'Cuphead' is a casual 2D shoot-em-up (the developers call it a run-and-gun game) coming to Xbox One and to PCs via Steam, but it's not the simple gameplay that has caught so many eyes, it's the art."
"Rendered in a hand-drawn style inspired by early 20th century animation, the look of 'Cuphead' calls to mind early Disney cartoons from Steamboat Willie on, the work of Max Fleischer, and with nods to the character designs of Popeye and other classic cartoons."
Ackerman said that the game registered with a lot of people at the conference because of the way "it takes culturally familiar iconography, in this case animation art styles from more than 80 years ago, and recasts it in a new interactive context."
In other backward-looking news, GameSpot was happy to hear that Microsoft will make Xbox One backward compatible with Xbox 360 games. Players will be able to play about 100 Xbox 360 games on Xbox One by the end of the year and hundreds more are expected to follow.
And for others who are missing some early 2000s-era gaming, "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" is getting its first full injection of old school skate play in eight years. GameSpotcalled "Pro Skater 5" a "return to that classic skate-first-ask-questions-later gameplay, where the fingers take priority over the brain."
Here are some of GameSpots top -- and bottom -- picks from the show:
Best Gameplay: "Star Wars:Battlefront," "Cuphead," MicrosoftHoloLens/"Minecraft" demo
Best Trailer: "Ghost Recon Wildlands," "Final Fantasy 7" Remake, "Unravel"
Worst Gameplay: "NBA Live 16," "The Last Guardian," "Gears of War 4"
Worst Trailer: "Star Wars the Old Republic: Knights of the Empire," "Metroid" Wii U, "Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes"