Although the PS5 has been out since November 2020, they’re still hard to find and it’s still early days for the console. This is sort of a review, sort of a discussion about the PlayStation 5, some games, and the industry in general right now.
This was probably the most challenging and involved video I’ve done yet. The Nintendo Switch review was similarly complex, but this had a few more wrinkles to it.
To begin with, getting the console itself was tricky. I also wanted to do the video in 4K. Over the last couple of years, I’ve acquired the means to do this. I have a 4k camera, monitor, capture device, and now a 4K console. As of this writing, the 4K version is still processing on the YouTube backend. It’s been doing that for over a day now and there’s no telling how long that will take. But eventually this will be viewable in 4K.
4K 60fps video takes up a lot of space especially if you capture in a format that’s good for editing. All told, this project wound up being about 6TB of data. There was a ton of work to do – lots of games to capture, different versions of games, different modes, on-camera footage, and whole lot of graphics and supplemental material. It took much longer to edit than anticipated.
At the beginning, I also wanted to do HDR, but I abandoned that idea after some experimentation. HDR editing workflows are still too cumbersome and the amount of people who are actually going to watch a YouTube video in HDR is miniscule – especially when your channel has fewer than 100 subscribers (hopefully that won’t be the case for much longer!)
“Who won E3?” is a silly question that’s still kind of fun to ask. I love video games and over the years I’ve gotten into following the industry as a whole. E3 might be less important than it once was, but it’s still an event that functions as a barometer for the games business. Almost everybody is there or adjacent to the event. Watching E3 informs you about upcoming games, but read between the lines and you’ll also be informed about what’s going on with the organizations and people who make them.
I heard one commentator refer to E3 2018 as a transitional year that everybody refused to acknowledge as a transitional year. I think that sums it up well. There were major games shown, but few major announcements. Sony and Microsoft seem like they’re in the thick of R&D on the next generation of consoles. Nintendo still seems to be rebounding from the stellar year they had last year.
Because I am a huge nerd, I watched all the press conferences from the major players (no PC Gaming Show or Devolver Digital) and will now recap them in reverse order of how good I thought they were.
7. EA
EA’s event marks the unofficial start of E3. They have their own event in LA where their fans and “influencers” can come and see play their games. It’s indicative of the company’s attitude as a whole. EA seems content in their little corner of the games market these days. They’ve got a couple reliable moneymakers in FIFA, Madden, and Battlefield and own a host of old, beloved IPs that they’re willing to exploit as mobile games if they need some extra cash flow.
EA is the most safe and businesslike of all the major game publishers. They’re dull. They don’t take a lot of risks. A few times a year they put out smaller, more intimate games from indie studios they’ve acquired or partnered with, but it really feels token at this point.
This year’s conference was completely predictable and included all the regular staples of an EA show but with a dash more awkwardness, I think. There was a lot of talking to developers, but it all felt canned and insincere.
BioWare’s Anthem was the most interesting part of the show. It looks like a Destiny/The Division style loot shooter with Iron Man suits and on paper that sounds fun. It looked fun too, but this is the sort of game that’s difficult to get an impression of in a stage demo – at least the kind that they’ve been giving.
6. Square Enix
It’s been a few years since Square Enix even had an E3 show so this was something of a surprise. Unfortunately, the presentation itself was surprising due to its brevity and lack of content. Most of the games shown off were seen elsewhere or were already known quantities.
Seeing Shadow of the Tomb Raider actually made me less interested in playing it. Just Cause 4 looks like another one of those games and has a lot to prove after the disappointment of Avalanche’s last couple outings.
Admittedly, I’m not a fan of Square Enix’s Japanese franchises, but I think even those fans were left cold by the lack of significant announcements and especially the lack of news about the much-anticipated Final Fantasy VII remake which was announced years ago.
Before the show we thought we’d get our first look at Crystal Dynamic’s Avengers game. Surely now would have been a great time to reveal that since Infinity War just made $2 billion globally. I guess it’s not ready, nor the Final Fantasy Remake which begs the question: why did they even bother to assemble a presentation? Oh well, at least Keith David got paid.
5. Nintendo
For me, Nintendo’s presentation was the most personally disappointing. 2017 was a banner year for the company with the release of the Switch and amazing new entries in the Mario and Zelda franchises. Like a lot of fans, I was looking for Nintendo to paint a picture of the next year or two of Switch games. Instead we got a smattering of mostly previously announced games and then Smash, Smash, and more Smash.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate looks fine. It’s another Smash game, but I think Nintendo made a real mistake putting so much focus on one game. It worked better in previous years when focusing on Mario and Zelda. Those franchises have broad appeal. You could say Smash is broadly appealing as well – to a point. Despite featuring so many beloved characters, it’s still a fighting game and those are more niche than Mario and Zelda.
Also, it was easier to forgive Nintendo for focusing on a single game in previous years because we knew they were revving up production on a bunch of new, exciting Switch games… right? This presentation leaves me wondering how true that’s been. Does Nintendo really not have much more to show or did they just colossally overestimate the amount of fans who would just be content with Smash Bros.?
There was no Metroid Prime 4, no Mario Odyssey DLC, no Retro Studios project reveal, no Animal Crossing, no Pikmin 4, no old games remastered, and no additional info about the company’s forthcoming online service. Nintendo looked weak and that’s especially disheartening after last year.
4. Ubisoft
Ubisoft is a lot like EA except instead of being corporate and stodgy they’re oddball and awkward. Ubisoft tries so very hard to make their conferences fun, but I think they’ve been in a rut for a while in terms of actual games.
The main reason I compare EA and Ubisoft is that Ubi often feels stuck in a box creatively. There’s some unique stuff being produced on the periphery, but their bread and butter is open world games with different coats of paint. Do you want to shoot terrorists in an open world? There’s a Tom Clancy game for you! Do you want to slit people’s throats in an open world? Assassin’s Creed. Do you want to race vehicles in an open world? The Crew 2. Do you want to be a pirate in an open world? Skull & Bones.
That assessment is a bit reductive, obviously, but I feel like “do X thing in an open world” isn’t a compelling pitch by itself anymore. It hasn’t been for a while.
There’s nothing really wrong with what Ubisoft showed this year, but it was all so underwhelming. The regularly recurring series’ looked fine (except for The Division 2’s shockingly tone-deaf premise), but the more experimental games were presented too vaguely to really get excited about.
But Miyamoto showed up briefly and that was great. Nintendo didn’t even feature him this year! Why?
3. Sony
As I’ve been writing this and reflecting on the show, I realize that only three of the conferences actually made me excited about the video games they presented this year. Only three of them were “good” in my eyes.
Congrats, Sony. You made it. Barely.
Sony’s conference was odd from a presentational standpoint. It started off in a venue that looked like church or wedding tent complete with string lights. When the first trailer began we saw that they’d recreated a location from it. The rest of the presentations took place in a different location after a disruptive break in the action. Novel, but very, very odd.
Sony didn’t show many games, but the ones they did feature got a lot of room to breathe. Most of them featured extended gameplay segments and a little bit of story and character interaction. After so many action-packed trailers that were all style and very little substance, this was a breath of fresh air. It’s a far better way to show video games than imitating movie trailers or traditional ads.
Ghost of Tsushima and Spider-man were the standout games for me. The former was jaw-droppingly gorgeous technically and artistically and the latter looks like it’ll be a ton of fun when it releases later this year. We saw more of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding looking weird and inscrutable as ever. Weird and inscrutable is all that game has going for it right now, unfortunately, because there’s been little-to-no clear indication of what the gameplay or story actually is or even when can expect the release.
I remain opposed to The Last of Us Part II on principle. The first game is one of my all-time favorites. The ending was perfect in such a way that continuing a story with those characters will only damage its mystique and ambiguity. Some would say Naughty Dog has earned the benefit of the doubt and that’s probably true, but I’d like to be given an idea of what story would be worth telling to risk spoiling the ending of the first game.
2. Bethesda
I resonate with more Bethesda-published games than those of any other publisher. The only stuff I don’t have any interest in are their mobile games and their MMO so Bethesda’s show was my personal favorite.
Bethesda is the only major publisher that’s currently championing the good, old-fashioned immersive sim (Prey) and the good, old-fashioned linear first person shooter campaign (Wolfenstein, Doom). I happen to really enjoy these types of games along with Bethesda Game Studio’s Fallout and Elder Scrolls series. I even tried Quake Champions recently having never played a Quake game before and really enjoyed my time with it.
If you were a Bethesda fan, you got serviced at this conference. New Prey DLC came out that night (and it’s excellent), a new Wolfenstein was announced, Quake Champions opened up to a wider audience, and of course Fallout 76 was detailed in-depth. Even Rage is getting a sequel. It’s a game that nobody asked for, but I appreciate that Bethesda is willing to give a disappointing IP another shot rather than letting it die completely.
Surprisingly, Bethesda Game Studios also revealed the existence of their next two projects following Fallout 76: a space game called Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI, the highly anticipated follow-up to Skyrim. We pretty much knew that both games were in development, but it was nice to hear actual confirmation. It seemed like they were saying: “please stop asking about these games. We’re working on it.”
But absolutely my favorite moment of the show was the announcement of Doom Eternal, a sequel to Doom 2016, my favorite game of that year. It’s not entirely unexpected, but it was by no means a sure thing and I’m super hyped that we’ll be getting more from the same team that brough Doom back from the dead.
1. Microsoft
Microsoft has been as boneheaded and corporate in years past as EA still is. They’ve been reeling and recovering from their disastrous Xbox One reveal for the entire length of this console generation. But under the leadership of Phil Spencer, the company’s gaming division has changed its stripes.
Xbox has presented a decidedly more consumer-friendly front in recent years with moves like Xbox 360 backwards compatibility on Xbox One and bringing most of its exclusive games to a wider audience on Windows. The company seems focused on restoring trust and goodwill with the gaming community.
This year’s presentation seemed to have the most games and most reveals of any conference and ultimately that’s what E3 is about. It was a show of strength and confidence as game after game was shown.
The lineup was diverse and included a healthy amount of indie and triple-A games from studios around the world. There were even several Japanese titles revealed like the new From Software game, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and the stylish Devil May Cry 5 from Capcom. That’s surprising given Microsoft’s spotty history of support from Japanese developers and consumers.
The expected Xbox mainstays looked healthy and exciting even long-running series like Halo, Gears of War, and Forza Horizon. I’ve never played any of those series in earnest, but now I’m interested in the direction all of them are taking.
Other highlights included a look at Metro Exodus (which has sadly been delayed to 2019), our first look at Shadow of the Tomb Raider (which showed up at a couple other conferences later on), and the surprise of Dying Light 2.
It concluded with a showstopper: the trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 which, according to industry insiders who actually got to see the behind-closed-doors gameplay demo, was easily the game of the show.
Final Thoughts
As I’ve written this, I’ve cooled on E3 2018. It wasn’t a downright weak year, but it was a hesitant one – one that smacked of uncertainty and caution from top companies in the industry. We’re probably 2 or 3 years out from a new generation of consoles and that means we’re getting close to seeing the last big games made for this generation. While future prospects are exciting, they aren’t in view yet and what we have right now is a bit deflating after 2016 and 2017 gave us so many amazing games.
We’ve still got quite a year ahead for video games. Battlefield V, Spider-man, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Hitman 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Fallout 76, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and Forza Horizon 4 all drop this year along with the highly anticipated Red Dead Redemption 2. 2018 has been a slow year so far, but the second half could really turn things around.
Well E3 is now officially over. Let’s run down the remaining three press conferences and the games shown off in them!
Ubisoft
Ubisoft had a surprisingly strong show, but I’m interested in only a small subset of the games. I was glad to see that they didn’t linger too long on known quantities like Assassin’s Creed Origins… Assassin’s Creed Snoreigins, more like! I hate this franchise. I’ve never had any fun with it except for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – y’know, the pirate one. The premise is really cool and I like the historical settings in theory, but the characters all suck, the controls suck, the mission design sucks, the open worlds suck, and the self-serious tone sucks.
The show began and ended with big stuff – that’s how you do it, Bethesda. Even though I don’t really know what Beyond Good and Evil is, I know there’s a excited fanbase out there for the game who were very psyched to get news about the sequel. So well done in that regard, Ubisoft.
Mario & Rabbids Kingdom Battle
Initially I was repulsed by the idea of putting Mario & Rabbids together. The Rabbids are something I have no prior experience with, but I look at the characters and all I think of is Minions from Despicable Me.
But you know what? This presentation won me over. It’s a great looking art style. The clash of goofy Rabbid characters with Mario playing the straight man seems ripe for physical comedy. The gameplay is tactical turn-based strategy that reminds me of XCOM. And they brought Shigeru Miyamoto on stage which is more than we’ll see of him in Nintendo’s presentation ironically.
Yeah, I might actually get this game. This looks weird and goofy and cool. I hope the gameplay is as solid as it looked from the short demo.
I also love this interview with the XCOM creative director regarding the similarities between the two games.
The Crew 2
Wisely this presentation focused on gameplay. The story of The Crew is not only completely forgettable, it’s annoying. It gets in between the player and what they actually came to do which is drive around the smooshed up little United States open world. I thought the sequel might go someplace else. Europe, England, Japan, Australia (except Forza Horizon 3 just did that…). Nope back to America again. That’s fine by me, actually. I’d like to see a take two.
The Crew 2 adds boats, planes, motorcycles, and other vehicles to the mix. It’s kind of like what Steep did with winter sports. If they can manage to make a better game around that core, I might be interested.
Skull & Bones
The pirate video game market is apparently more crowded than I thought. Skull & Bones looks like a sequel to Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (a.k.a. the only good one) with the on-foot stuff stripped out and a renewed focus on the ship-to-ship combat. In Skull & Bones, teams of players will square off using different classes of ships to fulfill various tactical roles in their fleets. Players can also turn on each other to get bigger payouts. After all, what’s piracy without the ability to turn on each other?
I am skeptical that team-based ship combat can sustain an entire game, but maybe there’s more to it than was shown or maybe this won’t be a full-priced release.
Far Cry 5
Much like Assassin’s Creed Origins, Ubisoft showed shockingly little of this game. That’s probably because we already know what it is – mostly. It’s another open world sandbox of mayhem where your mission is to shoot all the crazy people who have taken the land from the non-crazy people.
Like I said in my pre-E3 post, I don’t appreciate the overtly Christian imagery mixed with the white supremacist stuff. This brief trailer added a bad guy singing “Amazing Grace” to the mix. Ugh.
The game looks gorgeous and fun otherwise though.
Sony
Sony’s conference was a bit of a sleeper this year, honestly. It was a strange show. Only one person walked out on stage for two brief speeches; the rest was trailers accompanied occasionally by actual live things happening the theater like live music or performers dangling from the ceiling.
The games on display were mostly underserved by the presentation’s lack of context. Only two games that I recall got extended gameplay demos that gave us some semblance of an idea how they might actually play.
Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wastes
I like Horizon a lot. I’ll play more of it! It’s coming this year too. I wonder if this will continue the story and follow up on the sequel bait at the end of the main game or if it will be a new side story. As much as I hate it when games “finish” their stories in DLC, I would kind of like to have the dangling story thread resolved.
Days Gone
Days Gone and all zombies games must overcome the question “do we really need another zombie game?” Days Gone looks very okay. At least the extended demo gave us an idea how the game plays. Will this be heavy on story like The Last of Us? It’s hard to imagine the narrative being anywhere close to that good. So what’s the hook of this game? I’m still not seeing it. It looks very well made though.
God of War
I never played any of the previous God of War games. Character action games aren’t my thing and I never owned a Playstation 2 or 3 anyhow. The new God of War (irritatingly and confusingly just called God of War even though it isn’t a reboot) looks to be changing the style of gameplay to something I could maybe get behind. It also seems to be putting the emphasis on a family story of Kratos and his son.
AND THERE’S FRIENDLY (maybe) SEA SERPENT! THAT THING IS COOL.
Destiny 2
Destiny is a really, really mechanically solid shooter that released without enough content and way too much grinding. The shooting felt great, but the game built around it was questionable. That’s far from an original opinion. I happen to agree with the masses on this one.
Destiny 2 is a chance for a fresh start that I’m excited to see. I like PvE shooters and since there’s no Borderlands 3 yet, I’ll likely give Destiny 2 a shot as a filthy casual player.
I say all of this based on my personal experience with the first game. Zero of my desire to play the sequel comes from its marketing which is a bunch of stupid nonsense. The trailer shown at Sony’s show was stupid, overwrought, and totally forgettable. I don’t want to play Destiny 2 so I can be a hero and save earth or take back the Last City or whatever. I want to play it because it has great mechanics. I will never care about the story in Destiny. Please stop acting like anyone does.
Spider-man
Spider-man really stole the show. For some reason I wasn’t expecting much out of this game. Superhero games aside from the Batman Arkham series have been pretty lame for the most part. Apparently the Spider-man developers thought so to because they’ve take a lot from Arkham. I’m fine with that. Those are great games and some of the mechanics fit Spidey decently well too.
What Spider-man offers that Batman doesn’t is, of course, web-slinging. Spider-man will reportedly feature an open-world which you traverse by physics-based webshooting and wallrunning. That sounds great!
What’s worrying is the abundance of quick-time events in the demo. What happens if you miss the arbitrary button presses? Do you have to restart the sequence? Hopefully this kind of gameplay is sparse and forgiving. Aside from those bits, Spider-man was one of the best games at the show.
Nintendo
I expected an underwhelming show from Nintendo. The rumor of a short 20 to 30 minute presentation was right on the mark. But Nintendo managed to pack more into 25 minutes than everybody else did in an hour or more. Nintendo blew away the low expectations announcing new major games – some distant and some coming a lot sooner than expected.
Kirby
I did not expect a Kirby game this early in the Switch’s life. Usually Kirby games come at the tail end of a system’s life, but this is slated to be out in 2018. I’m not for certain sold. Kirby games are fun, but light on challenge and kind of samey. But this looked delightful nevertheless. It’s the first HD Kirby and that alone might make it worthwhile. 4 player co-op is more at home with Kirby than Mario games.
Pokemon RPG for Switch
This was the block of the show about vague promises. Yes, we’re going to make that thing you want, the Pokemon Company assures fans… eventually. We kind of figured that would be the case, but it’s nice to have confirmation especially after the recent Pokemon Direct left fans wondering if mainline Pokemon would ever come to Switch.
METROID PRIME 4
YOU SEE HOW I CAPITALIZED THE TITLE OF THIS ONE? YEAH, I’M PSYCHED!
I thought a Metroid announcement was too good to be true, but here it is. Metroid Prime 4 is happening. Again, it’s a vague promise. No footage, no concepts, no release date or year. But it’s being made and that’s awesome.
Unexpectedly, Prime 4 isn’t being made by Retro Studios, but a new team. I think that’s great. The passion for a new Metroid might not have existed at Retro. They should make something else if they don’t want to make Prime 4. That means Retro’s new game is something else and we have a cool surprise from them still in store.
I hope the Prime 4 team isn’t afraid to break convention and make big changes. I am very much looking forward to seeing a modern (probably still first person) Metroid game. But it will probably be a while.
Yoshi
Yoshi’s Wooly World was a delightful platformer for Wii U. This is a similar-looking follow-up. Instead of yarn, the world is paper and cardboard. Like Kirby, I’m not sold on this one, but I’m glad to see it.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild DLC
I wasn’t expecting any info about the second DLC pack from E3 and I was basically right. We got some info: a name and vague concept, but that’s it. “The Champion’s Ballad” appears to be a prequel given the characters it features. That’s a neat idea, but we’ll have to wait for more info to get an idea of the expansion’s scope. Expansion 1 is out at the end of the month, but we already knew the features it would bring.
Exploration and puzzles were the strongest parts of Breath of the Wild. Expansion 1 doesn’t seem to building much on those aspects. Hopefully The Champion’s Ballad will find a way to recapture some of that magic.
Rocket League
Rocket League is an excellent game that I never play anymore, but the idea of having it on a portable system… yeah, that’s great. Plus it will be playable with players on the Xbox and PC versions of the game. Sony is the lone hold out there, but that’s their fault. Of course, like most third party games coming to Switch so far, the game will get the requisite Nintendo cosmetic items – Mario hats and such for your cars. The Switch version is targeting a smooth 60 fps at the cost of resolution. That’s the right decision for this sort of game.
Super Mario Odyssey
I was already sold on Mario Odyssey. The game looked incredibly creative and charming in its initial reveal and what was shown at E3 only increased my desire to see and play this game for myself. We’re getting it about a month before I expected – at the end of October rather than November.
Metroid: Samus Returns
I would never have guessed that Nintendo would drop not one, but two Metroid games at E3. While Prime 4 is probably years down the line, Metroid: Samus Returns for 3DS is coming out at the end of the summer.
I’ve wanted a new 2D Metroid game for ages. It’s been 13 years since the last one: Metroid: Zero Mission on the Gameboy Advance. While I would much prefer this just coming to the Switch, a new Metroid game is one of the few things that could get me to bring my 3DS out of retirement.
Samus Returns looks strikingly fluid. I’m used to the spite-based animation of the older games which had few frames of animation. This is quite a leap from that. Gameplay is also updated with the ability to freely aim, perform melee counters to enemies and stylish finishing moves just to name a few additions.
Other Stuff
There were a couple things outside the big press conferences I wanted to highlight as well.
XCOM 2: War of the Chosen
XCOM 2 was my 4th favorite game of 2016. War of the Chosen is a hefty expansion to that game. I’ll definitely be curious when it comes out, but the latter half of 2017 is starting to look packed with turn-based tactical games like Mario & Rabbids and the next game…
Wargroove
Wargroove is another indie title that picks up the slack of a big company who’s no longer making a beloved series. The company? Nintendo. The series? Advance Wars.
Wargroove is the spitting image of Advance Wars but with a medieval/fantasy theme rather than modern/near-future military. I am so up for that especially since it’s coming to the Switch in addition to PC. It’s also shipping with a full map and campaign editor allowing users to create lots of new content. If Wargroove can live up to the legacy of Advance Wars, this might be one of the surprise best games of the year.
Final Thoughts
Well, that’s it. Another E3 in the books. I’m glad I watched. There weren’t too many really exciting moments, but a lot of what I saw looked very solid and many of the most exciting games are coming this year. I thought 2016 was one of the best years for video games in my lifetime, but 2017 is shaping up to be nearly as good. Who knows, maybe it’ll be better?
Sure, getting excited about all this stuff plays right into the hype that the marketing departments at these companies want. On the flip side, most games are made by passionate and creative people who desire to make great and stimulating experiences. We saw that passion and emotion clearly at times through the developers themselves.
So E3 isn’t just about advertising products. It’s about the collective wonder and excitement shared by people who love games. That’s why we pay attention to it.
mattgoldammer.com 