Super Smash Bros. Wii U & 3DS
Nintendo will release Mario Kart 8, a massive Wii U title and one Nintendo faithful hope will boost the system through to the second half of 2014, just days from E3 2014, but the company’s biggest game on the show floor is undoubtedly Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS. The venerable fighting franchise promises tons of characters, a host of different levels, and plenty of surprises and we can’t wait to get hands-on for the first time. With the game running in HD, will the Wii U have the power to provide the same smoothly playable experience we’ve come to expect from the franchise?
Nintendo has said that the Nintendo 3DS version of Super Smash Bros. will be out months ahead of the Wii U version too, so we’re hoping to discover more details on how the two differ. The company has stated that all the characters will be the same between each version of the game, but the jury is still out on differences in level selection and modes. Are items different between the two Smash Bros. experiences? We’ll know more at E3.
The Order 1886
Sony’s PlayStation 4 might burn down sales charts from now until Christmas, but that doesn’t mean the company can get away without software. We need to know more about The Order: 1886 before we can lock the holiday shopping season up for the PS4 hardware, especially given the competition from Microsoft. That said, you can’t really identify a more mysterious title than The Order: 1886 going into E3 2014. Whatever the company shows, it’s sure to leave us with more questions than answers.
The game itself is set around an alternate history in London and features monsters, unique weapons, and a conspiracy surrounding the genetic combination of man and beast, but what we don’t know greatly outweighs what we do. That could be a theme leading up to launch as developers Ready at Dawn do their best to keep us in the dark and wow us at release. That said, we’re dying for a lengthy gameplay demo either on stage at Sony’s press conference or in the publisher’s convention floor booth. With the recent delay from 2014 to 2015, we expect some serious improvements over the already impressive gameplay trailer shown during May.
Tom Clancy’s The Division
Ubisoft did its best to replicate the kind of attention-grabbing debut Watch Dogs managed a few years ago by saving this open-world post-fall military game for the end of its press conference last year. We got a decent demo of story and multiplayer gameplay before The Division went back into hiding. With the title slated for the first half of 2015, we might not be allowed to play The Division, but we definitely want to know more about this decidedly next-gen game.
The title centers around a pandemic that brings the United States to its knees and players are assigned to the Strategic Homeland Division in order to maintain order in a ravaged open world, but we want to know more about crafting systems, gunplay, and how exactly multiplayer works. The Division will give us an opportunity to face off against AI and other players alike, in addition to iPad support, but E3 2014 is the perfect time to build hype for the next major summer release following this month’s Watch Dogs.
Batman: Arkham Knight
Rocksteady is back at the wheel for the latest Arkham adventure with Batman, but this time the open-world looks bigger than ever before. The developer has promised new levels of interactivity, smoother transitions into story cinematics, and plenty of streets to tear up in the new Batmobile. The title is currently slated for next-generation consoles and PC only, which means it’ll mostly likely prove the best looking Batman game to date. With only months until release, we have way too many questions to ask at E3 2014.
Who is the Arkham Knight? Will Joker return? Scarecrow has taken a position of power in Gotham City, so does that mean he’ll have more psychedelic torment for our hero? Will Robin and Nightwing return from their cameos in Batman: Arkham City? What happened to Catwoman? Whether or not you played Arkham Origins, Batman: Arkham Knight promises to bring the explosive series to a close. We’ll be sad to see the Dark Knight go, but then the future of Rocksteady will be wide open. What does the studio have in store for Batman fans and what’s coming next? We’ll know more at E3 2014.
