Wow. I mean...where do you begin? Trust me I am so unbelievably glad to be so completely, utterly wrong.
They did it!!Ok, press conference review go!
Bethesda - That Fallout 4 game looks pretty cool! I'm the least creative person in the world so the building stuff doesn't really apply to me. But everything else sounds really cool already and I'm sure there's more to come. Doom was pretty bland I thought.
Microsoft - Dark Souls 3!! So unbelievably excited for it but you might already know that. Halo 5 did nothing for me, neither did Gears or Tomb Raider honestly. Backwards compatibility and being able to play PC mods for Fallout is a real boost though, kudos to them. For me, I would have wanted to see more of Scalebound. Best game they showed? Had to be Cuphead
E3 - Honestly pretty dull. Usual talk of sports games and too much of a focus on mobile games. Need For Speed using the FMV so seriously is so dumb I can get behind it. Mirrors Edge looks wonderful. Battlefront is essentially Star Wars crossed with Battlefield so I'm all over that. Unravel is probably the most charming thing to come out of E3 so far, in terms of the game and the presentation by the guy on stage. Just wanted to give him a hug and say everything's ok.
Ubisoft - Aisha Tyler again trying to work her best with what she has but at least most of the games shown seem solid. To me at least, the most interesting was For Honor, a new multiplayer game kind of like a AAA Mount and Blade. Uses a unique control scheme too as you fight using the right stick.
Sony - I honestly couldn't believe the announcements when I woke up this morning. Last Guardian, a FF7 remake and Shenmue 3, a game I've waited over 10 years for and thought would never come. They asked for £2m on Kickstarter and it reached that in less than 12 hours. It feels like Christmas. Now that said, it will probably take FF7 forever to come out and Shenmue 3 is asking for £2m when Shenmue 2 cost about £70m (I think), so it makes you wonder about the scale of the game and whether it can live up to the ambition shown in the past 2 games. I can only assume that, like other Kickstarter projects, it's to gauge the audience's interest to publishers who will then provide the majority of the funding needed to make a full on Shenmue sequel as £2m, for any game lately, seems a bit low. Here's hoping.
But we can put that aside for a minute and revel in the fact that the confirmation of those 3 games actually existing is enough to get my heart pumping. Truly incredible. There's no more surprise E3 announcements left I think. It's over
The rest of Sony's conference was ok, Uncharted 4 continues to looks absolutely stunning
Perhaps the biggest surprise I've seen so far is Horizon : Zero Dawn. A new IP, looks great and the combat looks really solid. Also hunting robot dinosaurs? I'm in for that.
Nintendo - Disappointing. Don't get me wrong, I would play and enjoy most if not all of the games they showed, but everything shown today was for games we already knew about. They announced an Animal Crossing for the Wii U. But it's a board game. There's a new Metroid! But it's a 4 player co op game. Again, I'd still probably enjoy these, but they're not what anyone was expecting or sadly even wanted. Sadly no Zelda Wii U either but that was to be expected. The presentation itself was charming as hell though, probably the best to watch from that perspective. New Star Fox and Paper Mario x Mario and Luigi RPG looks great!
Square Enix - Pleasantly surprised at how good a lineup Square Enix have. More Deus Ex is always welcome. I have an interest in anything Platinum Games do so it's great to hear their involvement in a sequel to cult classic, Nier. The new Hitman game is also a great announcement, I found my appreciation of the series through the HD trilogy and will be happy to play the new one. My personal pick would be Just Cause 3, which promises to be as crazy as ever. I had a huge smile on my face throughout but as soon as they said Unlimited C4, I was all in.
And Kingdom Hearts 3! Amazing there's any gameplay at all, it's been so long!
Phew. What a ride the past 24 hours have been. What a great future there is to look forward to.