Before getting into today’s presentations, we need to talk about yesterday’s tremendous Bethesda’s showcase some more. It has been brought to my attention that the Amazon Alexa version of Skyrim is actually a real thing, and not just a joke made for the conference. Amazing, yes, but don’t this distract you from the fact that we still can’t play Skyrim on a TI-83, a Tiger Electronics handheld, or a Casio F-91W.
SQUARE ENIX
God, I hate Square Enix. Don’t think you can win me over just by hiring Keith David to do your voiceovers. I forgot to mention it at the time, but I think it was Steve Blum doing the Microsoft conference and saying “world premiere” before every trailer (and right before some idiot in the audience yelled “WHOO!”). That guy is still everywhere.
The stealth sections of Shadow of the Tomb Raider definitely have my interest piqued, keeping in mind that this is co-developed by Eidos Montréal (the previous two games in the reboot series were by Crystal Dynamics). This is shaping up to be the best one yet. It’s weird that they didn’t coordinate the release timing with the movie that came out earlier this year. The same thing happened with Assassin’s Creed.
There’s almost nothing to go on here, but since it’s by Platinum Games, it might be worth keeping an eye on. I was barely paying attention to this trailer until that popped up. It’s pretty generic.
I mentioned this yesterday — I still think the marketing for Just Cause 4 is a little too serious, unless the tone of this one has completely changed. The series is absolutely insane, and really fun.
Speaking of weirdly dramatic ads, I still have no interest in Kingdom Hearts. If that’s your thing, great. I know fans have been waiting a long time for this, but just like the Final Fantasy VII remake (which was a no-show here, despite being announced about ten E3s ago), it can’t possibly live up to the hype. Isn’t this the same trailer from yesterday anyway? Man, this conference was pretty lacking, but I’ll give them credit for only taking up 30 minutes of our time on an overstuffed day.
UBISOFT
I’m not a huge fan of Ubisoft these days, either. I think they’ve run some of their best franchises into the ground (Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry) while totally neglecting others (Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia).
This cinematic was pretty rad, practically movie quality, but it’s hard to get too excited without knowing much about this series. I’ve tried to play the original game but unfortunately it doesn’t run properly on Windows 10. Why did they waste so much of this presentation on some kind of fan artwork/music submission program? Just so they could have Joseph Gordon-Levitt up there? This presentation was long on talking and short on gameplay, which indicates to me that this game is still nowhere near being finished, even though it’s been in development for over a decade.
I think the more I see of The Division 2, the less I want to play it (I’m not even going to link the new cinematic here, just watch the gameplay demo from yesterday instead). I’m actually kind of surprised at how big of a deal they’re making out of it, as my impression was that the first game wasn’t exactly a runaway success. Why has this become the preeminent Tom Clancy series? Where’s my fucking Splinter Cell? And why did they have to cancel Rainbow Six: Patriots? Yeah, I’m still bitter about that.
This has been done already! It’s already underwhelming because it feels like it’s just a stand-alone version of the sailing parts of Assassin’s Creed III and IV, plus Rare beat them to the punch with Sea of Thieves. The game doesn’t look bad, but it’s just coming out at the wrong time – same thing with Sekiro. Unfortunate.
They spent a lot of this conference talking about For Honor DLC. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think this was that big of a hit, either. Is this part of a larger Ubisoft strategy for building trust? Rainbow Six: Siege faltered out of the gate (personally, I hated it) but Ubisoft didn’t give up on it, and kept producing updates until it found a big enough playerbase. Compare this to Boss Key Productions giving up on Lawbreakers, attempting to break into BR with Radical Heights, and then closing up shop and ultimately abandoning both of them. Ubisoft has a good approach, actually.
Probably the worst-kept secret of this year’s E3, the Assassin’s Creed series is going to ancient Greece to deliver an epic experience that will surely be forgotten a year from now, just in time for the next game. References to Leonidas, Atlas, Prometheus, the Odyssey – I really like history and mythology, so this should be hitting the right notes for me, but I just don’t care. Do you really have to debate Socrates in between missions? Why do they keep emphasizing the story and RPG elements instead of assassinations? Is that just not what these games are about anymore? Didn’t the plot of Assassin’s Creed basically get abandoned after III anyway? They may never run out of historical settings for this series, but my interest ran out long ago. If any series needs a hiatus, it’s this one.
Wait, it’s over?
So, uh… about that Splinter Cell leak… you’re gonna come through for us, right Sony? I’m actually in disbelief right now. Did they cancel the announcement BECAUSE it got leaked? What the hell is happening? This conference sure went out with a whimper.
PC GAMING SHOW
Day[9], please come back to StarCraft. I don’t blame you for leaving us, but we need you. At least you haven’t fallen off the face of the earth like Husky.
The new game by Coffee Stain Studios game looks very ambitious compared to their other games, which I generally enjoyed. This could end up being a pretty fun little game. I think that’s what this PC gaming show is about – I don’t know if you’d call them indies, but they’re definitely not AAA titles. Most of these games aren’t going to sell for $60.
You can barely see anything in this brief teaser, but this game is badass and looks like it could fill that Left 4 Dead-sized hole in our gaming lives. It’s in early access right now, so I’m patiently waiting for the full release. This game has tons of potential. Speaking of Left 4 Dead… I would love to see some kind of Valve announcement at this show, since they said they’re making games again. Not holding my breath, though.
Shenmue, Shenmue 2, Yakuza Kiwami, and Yakuza Zero are all coming to Steam. I’ve never played any of these, but think this is the first time that games from either of these series have been on PC. I might have to finally check these out. Don’t get me started on Shenmue 3, though. I knew this show would be kind of uneventful, but I’m finding it hard to come up with very much to say without going off on tangents.
Yes, this game is still being made. Like I just said, I can’t get into crowdfunding campaigns without losing my damn mind, so I’ll just leave this trailer here and move on.
What a weird coincidence that I was just thinking about Left 4 Dead earlier, and here we have (what I assume is) a co-op first-person zombie game for four players. One of the characters in this trailer looks exactly like Bill, too. Can they do that? If I was GabeN, I would be talking to my lawyers right now. I feel like I should mention that I did not especially like PAYDAY: The Heist (the series Overkill and Starbreeze are known for), and with the Walking Dead TV series possibly winding down soon, I’m not super excited about this one. Licensed games are usually rushed to market and turn out pretty badly, but I think they still missed the ideal release window for something like this by several years. Whoops.
I already talked about this game in the Saturday blog, but they made a Flying Circus reference in this trailer, so I’m duty-bound to include it here. It might just be more of the same, but the game looks fantastic.
I have nothing else to say about this conference except to point out that it featured not one but TWO very stylized indie games about talking to people in taxis — coming soon to a Humble Bundle near you. Truly, this is the golden age of gaming.
SONY
Excusing that two of the other conferences this year have led off with musical performances, too, what the hell is going on with this Sony conference? This guy in a hoodie has been sitting here strumming his banjo for like 5 minutes. Is that supposed to get me hyped? This is lame as fuck.
This trailer comes out of the gate slowly, too. The conference is moving at a snail’s pace and I can tell it’s going to be really, really long. At least they eventually started to show some gameplay, though that was front-loaded with some tedious crouch-walking through a parking garage. The combat in this looks pretty amazing once they actually got around to showing it. Would it have been possible to use stealth to get past that whole encounter? I’m not sure how much of this is scripted.
Oh no, are they going to analyze every trailer afterwards, too? Is this scheduled for two hours or three? I really have to go to the bathroom…
Another lengthy solo musical interlude? Wow, so artistic! Whose idea was this? This conference sucks. Another slow intro to this trailer too. I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on these games — they’re encouraging stealth-minded gameplay, which is fine, but I’m naturally going to get impatient when I have to traverse through a big, empty level just to get to those encounters. Just like The Last of Us, the combat looks like it could be pretty fun, but I’ll have to actually try it out before endorsing it. At this point, all I can say is that this is a very pretty open-world game.
I was getting major Quantum Break vibes from this, so it’s no surprise that this is by Remedy (who also made Max Payne and Alan Wake). Great dev team, so I’m definitely going to keep an eye on this one. Not too many observations I can make without any idea of what the actual gameplay is going to be like, but it looks pretty sick.
Warning, this next one might be too spooky:
We knew this was coming, but we’ve been waiting for the first look at it for quite a while. This looks like a way bigger overhaul than the remake of the first Resident Evil, so I’m starting to see why this has taken so long. Can’t get too hype over a remake, but this one looks pretty good.
Hey look, there’s pirate ship stuff in Kingdom Hearts 3, too…
Why are they front-loading all these trailers with a bunch of walking around? I think this is gameplay footage, but I hope to god it isn’t. “I deliver things, that’s it,” isn’t thrilling me as a gameplay idea. Thankfully, they eventually showed off some actual gameplay… maybe? Can you fight these enemies or is it strictly stealth? When Norman Reedus’ character got spotted, it seemed like it led to an immediate game over. It’s hard to tell with this game. This was nowhere near as weird as last year’s trailer, and therefore it’s hard to find much to say about it other than the obvious “I’m sure it’ll turn out to be pretty great and we shouldn’t doubt Kojima.” I’m way past ready for Death Stranding to come out, but I’m resigned to the reality of this being hyped at the next 3-4 Sony conferences too.
Hey, look, another samurai game. It doesn’t look bad, but come on… this is just getting comical. Now if only we could get a “very artistic” post-apocalyptic open-world samurai cab driver game with strong female characters, naval warfare sections, a BR mode, and lots of walking, I think we would be checking all the boxes. Don’t try to tell me that there were no female samurai or pirates. I bet you don’t think women can be Ghostbusters either, you damned misogynist!
As far as licensed games go, this looks pretty great, though I still don’t like the red, white and blue spider suit. Yeah, that’s a minor gripe and maybe you can change it, but it just feels like a gimmick to distinguish it from the 20 other incarnations of Spider-Man that are around right now across all forms of media. Lot of QTEs in this gameplay. Something I’m noticing in these Sony trailers is the lack of a clear delineation between gameplay and cutscene sections. I think you could call this deceptive advertising. Despite all the complaining, I think this game actually looks pretty fun, but it’s not original enough to get me to buy it day one. Actually, I don’t think I buy hardly anything on day one anymore.
Thankfully, the conference wasn’t too too long. There are lots of games here that look good, but not great. I’m surprised that neither Microsoft nor Sony had a single trailer for Red Dead Redemption 2, one of the biggest AAA games coming out this year. It feels like a lot was missing today, too, based on the leaks. Seriously, where the fuck is Splinter Cell? Is it going to be a Nintendo Switch exclusive or something? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.
Professional Difficulty 
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