E3 is more than a convention dedicated to just playing the newest consoles and software. It's a time when gamers, industry professionals and journalist can have a clear understanding of where the industry should be heading, for better or worst. The convention has been over for more than a week, and it's now time to take a look into some of the worst showings at this year's E3, that should really be reconsidered before hitting store shelves.
Ryse: Son of Rome
Visually, Ryse: Son of Rome is one of the best looking games for Microsoft's Xbox One at the time being. The problem? It was a buggy mess with lousy combat. Combat felt like a slow and uninspired take on Sony's God of War and Activision's Call of Duty. For a game that's due sometime in November at the Xbox One's launch, it just didn't feel polished at all. There was a moment during the demo in which arrows shot had some weird numbered coding attached to them. Simply put, this Crytek developed game was all bark and no bite.
Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z
From the looks of things, Tecmo Koei has yet to learn from the mistakes of Ninja Gaiden 3. Instead of improving what many loved about Tomonobu Itagaki's vision through Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden 2, Team Ninja along with Spark Unlimited decided to butcher the series again with Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. There's a lot wrong with this spin-off series ranging from the ridiculously easy combat that feels bland by series standards, unappealing cell shaded visuals to the cheesy Hip-Hop soundtrack. At this point, it's time to let the Ninja Gaiden series take a long break.
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
The ending of Assassin's Creed 3 should have meant a nice rest for the series but Ubisoft just couldn't do it. Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag just seems redundant overall. Turning naval combat into a fully fledged feature feels as if the French publisher is overreaching in trying to maintain the series relevance while everything else feels like previous iterations.
Knack
Overall, many of Sony's first party launch titles are lacking overall on the whole. Knack is the biggest culprit. Though it's a great showpiece of the Playstation 4's technical prowess, the game's frame rate was all over the place and played like a middle of the road platformer from yesteryear.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution Directors Cut
Deus Ex: Human Revolution was an above average reboot of an amazing series released on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 summer of 2011. Now Square Enix plans on porting the title to Wii U almost more than two years after the fact. From what was played so far, it doesn't seem like many improvements were made to the core game that developers mentioned. There's just the feeling of "What was the point?"