After Bethesda and EA bored everyone--at least everyone with a functioning brain--to tears, yesterday brought us the first real day of E3. And what a day it was. Tons of release dates and announcements with games that I never thought I'd be so happy to see. It's a good year for video games, friends.
Microsoft
I have almost no interest in the Xbox, but I'm always open to have my mind changed. And while I didn't hate their show, Microsoft got me hyped for games that had nothing to do with their own console line. So when the show opened with the promise of a newer, slimmer, less ugly Xbox One that could output video at 4K, I'm pretty sure you could feel the wet fart coming from the stage.
To make matters worse, Microsoft then outlined their plan for all future digital Xbox releases to simultaneously release on PC through Windows 10. At this point I was convinced that Microsoft absolutely had to show their hand and somewhere down the line some poor fool decided this would somehow help their own console sales by begging people to not buy their consoles. Hey idiots, if I can have access to your entire line-up by building a PC with better performance all around, why would I waste time with your underpowered brick?
Following this announcement was some boring whatever about Gears of War because that series still has fans even after the pile that was Judgment. Then Rare completely turned me away from Sea of Thieves by drawing my attention away from the potentially interesting multiplayer sea combat with the most annoying group of teenagers they could possibly find to screech over the footage, thereby signalling that this game would give me a disease at random if I ever bought it.
God himself, Hideki Kamiya, then took stage to remind me I need to play Scalebound when it releases. Kamiya has never made a game that isn't the best game ever, so when Scalebound was a press-X-to-win action game with some dull shooting mechanics and no discernible depth, I was left cold. I'd like to believe this was just a cautious play style being shown or something, but it didn't leave me pumped up like Platinum usually does. And with the recent two or three games they've put out being stinkers, this is definitely not a good sign.
Recore and Final Fantasy XV went next--the first game seems boring and the latter is making me leery of my purchase of the wallet-destroying collector's edition waiting to be shipped. I just don't know about this game, and seeing more combat rather than exploration and more story makes me concerned. Final Fantasy XV's combat isn't the fast and loose Kingdom Hearts style I was expecting, but I didn't hate either of the demos like most seem to. This trailer put me off of the game more than any of the others because I just don't want to see anymore combat.
Dead Rising 4 looks great, if not treading the same ground as the last few. I like Frank West, he's a fun character and the series has always reveled in its silliness. I can't wait to play it on a PC! Oh yeah, and then a racing game. Someone cares deeply about these Forza games.
I have no clue what State of Decay even is and this stupid cinematic trailer didn't tell me a thing about it. I learned more about the following announcement, a stand-alone version of The Witcher 3's famous card game, Gwent, in the first few seconds than I did about the former. Halo Wars is getting a sequel as well, and I'm so happy we can play that game with a mouse and keyboard like God always intended. I won't play it, but at least it's a real video game this time.
The developer of Limbo is putting out another pretentious side scroller about the meaning of life and death or whatever, I don't care. A few more games were shown that I don't care anything about. I haven't played Killer Instinct yet; as much as I want to, revealing that the villain of the first Gears of War was being released into the game made me actually so confused I forgot who and where I was at the moment, so there's that.
Then Microsoft at last murdered their own credibility forever by announcing the biggest and baddest console ever created by gods or man, thereby destroying their current console line or the slim Xbox One model they announced in the same show. This was the most idiotic thing a hardware developer has done in years and I still think it's a joke.
All in all, a few of the games at Microsoft's conference weren't sewage water. That said, good job convincing me to just upgrade my PC. Hope your fans love your iterative consoles that are going to be useless in a year.
Ubisoft
Ubisoft didn't show a single new game and every year I find something new to hate about them. The only things of value were For Honor, a hectic melee game that will probably be the coolest thing ever and South Park: The Fractured but Hole, a sequel to one of my favorite role-playing games in recent memory. While the humor didn't play well out of context, the stream I was watching featured a grown man literally cry at the word "coon" and another starting screaming at his colleague because said colleague liked the last season of South Park, which apparently a certain internet crowd believe is going to cause the end of humanity as we know it. I wanted to bottle up their tears and ferment them to make salty alcohol. I hope you guys cry for the rest of your lives just so I can stay entertained by your petulant whining. That South Park trailer turned these grown men and half of Twitter into the most impotent crybabies in all of history and I want to see more of this game just so they might revert into literal babies and never be in my sight ever again. Seriously, this reaction to typical edgy South Park humor has so far been my favorite part of the show and probably my favorite moment from E3 ever.
Sony
Sony has had a pretty stellar E3 event in past years, and with the constant flow of diarrhea from other conferences I was sure that at least it wouldn't be the worst thing this year. The show kicked off with the most awesome symphony ever seen at E3, but I wasn't that impressed because it was the exact same orchestra that plays every time I do anything. I'm glad you could finally share it with the rest of the world, though.
After this we got to see the new God of War, featuring a new over-the-shoulder camera and a reworked combat system that was slow, clunky and boring. I saw a lot of people inexplicably excited over this dull mess and a few even comparing it to Dark Souls. You knuckle-heads seem to think every game with slow combat is Dark Souls, and I wish I could put you on a raft and send you off to sea for the rest of time. You're stupid and this game looks awful.
Apparently Sony grew a brain because, rather than lame skits like Microsoft's terrible live Minecraft presentation, a new trailer began right away with a very brief musical interlude. No business talk, no cringe. Shawn Layden did give a heartfelt tribute to victims in the Orlando shooting, like most of the conferences, but it needed to be said and he was classy about it while reminding us why we love video games.
Days Gone was unveiled and I thought it was a Last of Us spinoff. Ripoff is more apt. I hate the way this game looks and I'm sure it's going to be a trainwreck like all the other games following fads. I just don't care about open world survival games, especially after the second trailer which was just a guy shooting into a crowd of zombies for five minutes. It seriously might have been the most boring game of the show, and the overwrought melodramatic story they presented made me vomit all the liquid from my body.
Horizon got a new gameplay trailer, and they can really just stop showing this game. I'm going to buy it, you don't have to keep trying to convince me. The dialogue system was strange but not unwelcome. Just as long as it doesn't get delayed again, I'll be happy. Oh, and The Last Guardian. I can't remember a time when I wasn't excited to play that game, and now that it's been confirmed for October I don't think I can wait that long. It looks unbelievably good and I still think something horrible is going to happen to push it back another decade. Please just let me have it.
Oh, but keep that Detroit game. David Cage makes games for stupid plebeians to glaze their eyes over for one more pitiful day of their sad lives and I want nothing to do with his tripe. No amount of pretty settings and meaningless choices can convince me otherwise. Somewhere along the line Crash Bandicoot was revealed to have its PS1 trilogy remastered for the Playstation 4, and this overwhelming hype led to bitter disappointment when no new game in the series would be announced but instead Crash would be introduced into one of those dumb toy games. I'd rather have nothing.
And then it happened. The most beautiful thing to ever occur. While showing their stupid VR reel, a demo for a game came up that made me salivate so hard I died. When Konami decided to give up on life and prematurely killed Silent Hills, I was grief-stricken. The true revival of the survival horror genre died before it even got out the door, and I can't begin to tell you how utterly happy I was seeing that not Silent Hill, but Resident Evil--my one true love in life--was being given a similar first-person horror treatment with VR accompaniment. It looks great and I can't wait for my download of the demo to finish just so I can stare at it in awe.
That wasn't all. Hideo Kojima took the stage to tease his new game, Death Stranding. There are already dozens of theories on this short trailer being symbolic of Kojima's own exile from Konami and his emotional journey to a new studio, and of course there are simply others still piecing together if this is in fact just a trailer with no allegory. Nobody knows, but Norman Reedus and Hideo Kojima have piqued my interest in what could be a very interesting game. You guys do you and I'll gladly check it out.
That said, there wasn't too much else I was very excited for. I'm sure Insomniac's Spider-Man will be alright, and an off-stage Gravity Rush 2 demo reminded me that it was coming someday. Oh, and why was Nier Automata not featured on Sony's show? That game is probably going to cause an apocalypse of its own if it's half as good as I think it will be. Every game should be Nier, but then I guess not because not everything deserves to be the best thing ever.
The conference felt a bit short overall, but it gave me exactly what I wanted for a large majority of upcoming games. I'm bummed we didn't get news on Devil May Cry 5 which is absolutely definitely coming at some point, as well as the fact that those Red Dead Redemption 2 rumors didn't pan out. Overall though, Sony pushed back against the trite boredom of many of the other shows with tons of announcements and release dates.
Tomorrow's post: Nintendo
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