Casual Game Guides took a trip to E3 this year to give you coverage of the gaming industry's largest annual event. The focus of E3 is all about the blockbuster core games such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare or Lord of the Rings War in the North. Oh and there was just a little hype over the new Wii console (see a pic of the new controller after the jump). We try to bring the Casual Game perspective, however, hunting out those gems you may find of interest.
We are always interested to see what SOE brings to the mix. Sony has committed a lot of resources to the Casual MMO space and their product lines in this area have definitely matured over the past year. Casual Game Guides had the privelege of a one-on-one with Floyd Bishop, Senior Artist/Animator at Sony for the Casual MMO Free Realms. Free Realms is a Free Massively Multiplayer online game geared toward kids, but fun for adults as well. It is packed with casual mini-games ranging from Chess and Checkers to dungeons and cave quests. Floyd gave me a demo of their newly released Farming mini-game. Ranching is coming soon where players will be able to raise pets that can eventually evolve into pets you can ride around the game (mounts).
As a Senior Animator, I asked Floyd to show me one of his favorite creatures. He immediately showed the Hydra mount and Hydra pet, a particular challenge due to the complexity of the creature's movement. He also let me deep into the pet's psyche, divulging that the two side heads of the creature do not like the middle head. This quirk manifests itself in various ways (such as the middle head never getting a bite to eat).
If you are interested in trying out the game, you can play Free Realms for Free here.
Another game offered by SOE is Clone Wars Adventures. Clone Wars Adventures is decidedly more focused on mini-game play than Free Realms. The virtual world where players socialize is somewhat limited, but the casual games offered within the game are deep and multi-leveled. There are a variety of mini-games available from Hidden-Object style games, Match-3, Real Time Strategy, Battleship, and many more. You can play Clone Wars Adventures for Free here.
EA Games gave Casual Game Guides an extended preview of their upcoming game expansion pack for the Sims 3, Sims 3 Pets. Pets now become like Sims, controllable in the same way and with their own goals, tastes, and even jobs. You can create cats and dogs and on the PC platform there are horses as well. The number of breeds they have built in for the dogs and cats is amazing, something around one-hundred or so. You can speak the name of the breed, such as "German Shepherd" if you have an XBox Kinect, and the breed will immediately show up. The pets are highly customizable just like regular Sims so you can make fine adjustments to their face and body structure as well as their hair color and patterns. Always wanted a neon-green poodle? No problem! Pets also have unique abilities to help their masters, such as helping a socially awkward Sim score points with a girl.
There are also mini-quests you can do with your pets as well. You can pre-order this game now which comes out in Fall 2011.
There are hundreds of games on display at E3, but we wanted to focus on the ones we thought our readers would enjoy the most. If you are interested in the more hardcore games at E3, check G4TV and click on the "Preivew" tab. Until next year, Gamers!