The Red Herb Roundup: Super E3 Hyper Fighting World Champion Edition

Greetings and hello’s, friendly gaming readers not phased by this block of text.  Welcome to a very special morning edition of the Roundup.  Once again, the Roundup serves as a gathering of news and happenings that The Red Herb missed out on because I’m a terrible human being.  And boy howdy, did I miss out on a lot of shit.  After a slew of conferences Monday, the E3 show floors filled with attendees yesterday – most united under the pen of journalism –  ready to get their mitts on the hottest upcoming games and the newest innovations in video game technology.

Me?  I was at work.  The Herb’s not exactly what’d you call a “paying gig,” so I had to while away the hours not streaming E3 goodness directly into my brain.  Because of my plight, I wasn’t able to cobble words in real-time and throw them at all the awesome, stupid, and stupidly awesome things we saw yesterday.  But don’t think I’d let that bastard news get away from me.  I may be late to it, but I’d sooner die face down, naked in a ditch than let these announcements go another second without me being mildly sarcastic about them.

I’ll have to be brief; my assholey-ness bitterly succinct.  Here goes – welcome to our first ever E3 Roundup ™.

Wii U Rounded Up:

• It just isn’t a Nintendo E3 presser without Reggie Fils-Aime referencing the readiness of his body.  People that obviously don’t get the big picture would say it isn’t a Nintendo presser without Mario (thankfully, Nintendo didn’t make us choose; delivering on both).  Watch the New Super Mario Bros. U trailer here – it ain’t cleverly original, but it’s nifty.
• Pikmin 3 may have been revealed twenty-odd E3’s ago, it was well worth the wait to see the gaggle of mobile vegetation adorably dismantle and destroy their enemies.
• By the way, the company confirmed all saves and downloads entombed in your Wii (including your previous Virtual Console games) will be transferable to the Wii U.  Now you can smash your old Wii into pieces without a hint of remorse.
• ZombiU got a little more of an in-depth look during its presentation trailer.  Though, having CG rendered hands playing your game just makes everything you show look fake.  If the concepts at hand are as cool to use as they look, ZombiU just may be the closest you can get to an all-out outbreak next to pouring bath salts into your town’s water supply.
• Mirroring the Wii Sports collection packaged with that non-HD Wii so many years ago, NintendoLand was announced as a bundle of mini-games featuring familiar, highly marketable first-party characters as they show you the different capabilities of the Wii U and its GamePad.  Now I can finally hate theme parks from the comfort of my living room.
• Namco Bandai’s Tank! Tank! Tank! plasters your friends’ floating, disembodied heads onto their respective cartoon tanks.  The Wii U will usher in a new era of desensitized, child killers (you can keep that as a slogan, Big N).
• Mass Effect 3 is officially coming to Wii U.  But we were already promised it’d be Better with Kinect, so disregard.

Everything Else, Just As Rounded:

• Square Enix unveiled its new engine to the world in a Final Fantasy inspired tech demo rendered completely in real-time.  Watch it now, clean yourself up after.
• Techland’s Dead Island: Riptide was announced to be in production alongside no information whatsoever.  If “Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?” returns, I won’t need any more information.
• Microsoft is planning to extend its $99 Xbox 360 offer to retailers like Best Buy and Gamestop (you know, mom and pop outfits).  The program will be offered in limited locations with limited stock and limited appeal.
• Pre-ordering Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (also announced for the Wii U) will apparently net you an arena where Snoop Dogg presides over fights from his throne like an infinitely more pimp, weed-addled Shao Kahn.
• Ubisoft’s showstopper, Watch Dogs, suspiciously debuted without too much attention doted on what systems it would be releasing for.  Probably because the demo was running on a high-end PC, of course, but you can still expect technically impressive, slightly less pretty versions of the game for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
• Finally, a Metal Gear game that understands I’ve only stuck with the series to see robot ninjas hack people into veal.  What Metal Gear Rising lacks in story, it makes up for in Kill Bill-extremes of sword-on-person violence.  Check out gameplay with Platinum Games alumni.
• The PS1 classic Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee is seeing a full-on reboot rather than an HD uplift (HD-ifying 32-bit games isn’t an easy prospect given the amount of work they need to not burn your eyes after being upped in resolution).  The official Oddworld Facebook cleared up the liberal use of “reboot” by promising the new game would follow the blueprint of the original.
• Gears of War: Judgement gameplay and details were divulged upon after the game’s faster-than-light appearance during Microsoft’s conference.  Keynotes: the campaign is supposed to break away from linearity while the multiplayer riffs on Team Fortress’ character class system.  People Can Fly keeps telling me how drastically different Judgement is as actual gameplay shows me the same story in opposite.  Until I see more Judgement, I’ll withhold my…shit, I’m blanking on a word.
• You came to The Red Herb and thought you wouldn’t find new Resident Evil 6 gameplay?  Tsk-tsk.  In Jake and Sherry’s campaign spotlight, the seed of Wesker oddly enough knocks RE into the brawler realm.  I guess it came down to a financial meeting at Capcom over funding another Resident Evil or rebooting Final Fight and some crazy sonuvabitch eating a Reeses Cup decided to let the shouting in his head out of his mouth that day.