I’m still doing this Debug Mode video game show thing! In fact, I’ve been working on content for the channel a lot lately. If my plans don’t get too derailed, 2019 should be the biggest year yet (which is to stay I plan on releasing more than 2 videos – hopefully many more than that).
For now, here’s a look back at the games of 2018: the good, the disappointing, and my top 5 favorites. Happy New Year!
“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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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’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.
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 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.
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.
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.
There were a couple things outside the big press conferences I wanted to highlight as well.
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 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.
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.
E3 is still going on through this afternoon, but the press conferences are over and most – if not all – announcements have been made. My E3 thoughts got long and I want to include a bunch of trailers and photos so I’m splitting this into two (maybe even three) parts.
I’m only going to be talking about what I find personally interesting or worth commenting on. Video games are broad and there are whole genres and styles I’m not down with so this won’t be a comprehensive recap. That would be crazy.
Let’s run through the first three of the six major press conferences.
As predicted, EA’s show leaned heavily into sports and celebrity. There were lots of camera shots of people playing games which is annoying when I’m tuning in to see the games themselves – not the people. Still, it was overall a better presentation that I expected from EA.
I like this game. I wish the DLC wasn’t so expensive. I would enjoy new maps, but I don’t play it enough to justify buying them. New single player stuff would have been neat, but you don’t generally get single player DLC in online-focused FPS games.
I haven’t cared about this series in a long time, but the gameplay demo for this looked really sharp and fun. There was a definite Burnout vibe to it which is nice because EA killed the Burnout series almost 10 years ago. I suppose they’re also aping the Fast & Furious movies. Wouldn’t exactly know since I’ve never seen one.
I doubt I’ll play this, but I’ll be curious about the reaction when it comes out. It’s on my radar now and it wasn’t before. I could see myself picking it up when it gets cheap if the car takedown stuff is really fun.
This is a co-op prison break game from the creators of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons which I’ve never played but heard great things about. It’s restricted to splitscreen co-op only.
Co-op is awesome in theory, but can often be frustrating in execution. I can’t tell how much A Way Out will let players off the leash to make and execute their own plans. It looks fairly scripted and linear to me. They talk about “scenes” and different ways to progress through scenes. Does the way you play affect the story or just allow you to accomplish the same goals in different ways? Donno. The concept is really cool though. I’ll be watching this one.
Right up front in the presentation, EA’s CEO acknowledged there was a fair amount of negative feedback for the first game which is a good sign. EA does indeed realize that Battlefront was thin on content and that fans (including John Boyega) want a single player story mode as well. We’re getting that, but none of it was shown. The demo focused on multiplayer – a map set on Naboo from Star Wars: Episode 1.
It looks as sharp as the first game. They’ve made a bunch more really nice looking Star Wars assets. The gameplay shown didn’t excite me all that much. There are different classes now which is a welcome change, but it looks largely the same.
What did entice me was the announcement that Battlefront II will be supported post-launch with 3 free seasons of DLC. It’ll likely just be maps, weapon, and class updates – not single player stuff, but that’s a pretty good way to win back fans who thought the first game lacked content. I’m looking forward to this one.
Microsoft needed to bring on the games at this year’s show and they delivered at least in terms of number of games. Head of Xbox, Phil Spencer declared early in the show that 42 games would be shown off and 22 of them were Xbox console exclusives.
Scorpio got an official name and price. It’s the Xbox One X which is a stupid and terrible name that’s easy to confuse with their other product, the Xbox One S. Oh well. It’s definitely not the worst name for a video game console ever. The One X is going for $499 which is $100 more than the PS4 Pro, but the One X has significantly more power and the capability to run games at 4K natively whereas the Pro uses an upscaling method.
I have a pretty nice gaming PC already so the One X does nothing to entice me, but the visuals shown off were very nice. The “exclusive” games are also coming to Windows 10 so that makes Xbox hardware completely irrelevant to me (except, maybe, as a UHD Blu-ray player).
It will be interesting to see how the market reacts to the One X. 4K TVs are still fairly rare from what I understand (I don’t have one yet either) and Microsoft went hard on 4K as a selling point.
I like the Metro series, but had kind of forgotten that the developer might be working on another. I’m up for it! Game looks really, really nice.
The portion shown was mostly above ground rather than in the titular Moscow metro system where much of the previous games have largely taken place. Metro has always had a distinct feel and ambition and I’m curious what will be emphasized in the game and what makes it different from the last two games.
We already knew this game was coming and the demo here didn’t really provide any new earth-shattering information. Still, I’ve got my eye on this one. State of Decay is a cool idea: a zombie survival game where you build up your base over time, recruit survivors, and push into new territory as you build up resources. The first game was neat, but a little unpolished. This looks better realized in every way.
They’re unifying Minecraft across consoles (sans PS4), mobile, and Windows 10. Players on different platforms will be able to play with each other. That’s neat. I have the game on Nintendo Switch, but I mainly play the “real” Minecraft – the original Java PC version that is built on a different framework. Probably none of these touted updates will reach that version so I don’t care for the most part, but it’s a neat update. Microsoft seems to mostly be doing right by Minecraft and its fanbase.
The trailer for this was an intriguing mixture of pixel art and modern graphics/lighting set in a Blade-Runner-but-more-colorful sort of world. Neat. Hard to tell what the actual gameplay will be, but it seemed like there will be a heavy emphasis on story. This is one of the most visually striking games announced at this year’s show.
Rare’s much talked about new pirate co-op game was shown in an extensive demo. The demo was engaging while it lasted, but I have to say the game looks kind of boring to me. Fighting skeletons with a blunderbuss and carrying treasure chests back to your ship seems like it would get old quickly. In the words of an immortal pirate, I have to ask: to what point and purpose, young missy?
There are still a lot of unanswered questions. What do you do with the loot you bring back? Will you run into other players? Are there story missions and questlines? Probably this info is out there, but I don’t care enough to look it up right now. Since it seems to rely on you playing with several friends, Sea of Thieves probably won’t be for me anyhow.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was a complete butchery of Tolkien lore, tone, and moral conviction, but it was a pretty well-made game. I lost interest after one too many super orc captains was immune to a particular type of attack for no good reason other than it was a video game. Still, I’m kind of interested in the sequel because the systems at play seem really cool.
Shadow of War allows you to fight orc chiefs and subjugate them as part of your army rather than kill them. You can then take that army and use it to assault enemy strongholds. There will also be counterattacks to contend with. It sounds like there will be some big strategy elements in what is otherwise an action game like the first.
Microsoft shocked everyone when they announced backwards compatibility for Xbox 360 games was coming to Xbox One. Now they’re bring original Xbox games. That’s a cool, consumer friendly move and that makes Microsoft the biggest champions of backwards compatibility at the moment. Weird. Good for them.
The new IP from storied developer BioWare was Anthem, a co-op 3rd person shooter that reminded me a lot of Destiny. I’m extremely skeptical of BioWare in recent years. They’re traditionally an RPG developer. Action games, like this appears to be, are not their forte. And even BioWare’s RPGs have been of poorer quality lately. It’s way to early to tell what in the world Anthem is except a pretty gameplay trailer.
Bethesda’s show was brief yet padded with a bunch of minor announcements and self-adulation. They really didn’t need to have a conference this year. The few major announcements (there were only two big games announced) could have slotted into Microsoft or Sony’s conferences and made just as much of a splash there.
I think Bethesda annoyed fans with this presentation as much as anything. They brought back paid mods – sort of – in a program they’re calling Creation Club. They talked VR, card games, their Elder Scrolls MMO, and Skyrim on Switch. There’s also a sequel to The Evil Within which is confusing because I didn’t think anybody liked or bought that game. Ultimately I was interested in only two items.
Confusingly this seems to be a standalone expansion of Dishonored 2. That’s probably smart. I don’t know that Dishonored 2 sold all that well which is a shame. It was very good despite some technical problems at launch.
“Death of the Outsider” is a very provocative title for those familiar with Dishonored’s lore. I’m intrigued. This will retail for $30 which is typical for standalone expansions. That suggests there will be about half the content of a full Dishonored game which is surprising if true given how quickly after the last game this is coming out.
This might be the craziest trailer of the entire show. Wolfenstein: The New Order and its standalone expansion The Old Blood were both crazy games. Tonally they oscillated between over-the-top action and very sincere, off-beat character moments and somehow it all kind of worked.
The New Order took place in an alternate history where the Nazis won World War II with crazy sci-fi weaponry. It took place mostly in Europe, but The New Colossus moves the action to Nazi-occupied America making this the best Man in the High Castle video game we’re likely to get.
Warning: the trailer is a little more crude and violent than some of the others. And weird. It’s extremely weird.
Back tomorrow with impressions from the rest of the press conferences.
Nintendo Switch? Didn’t that come out like two months ago? Aren’t you a little late to the reviewing game?
Yes, yes, and probably. Honestly I intended to get this review done a month ago but a number of things prevented that. On the other hand, I think anybody who did a “review” after only a couple days or even a couple weeks is being kind of disingenuous. That’s not long enough to seriously evaluate a games console especially when the launch lineup is so limited. The games that have come out since launch have provided a clearer idea of how the Switch might fare in the coming months and years in a practical sense.
I wasn’t even going to call this a “review” but that’s the search term I have to use if I want anybody to watch this thing. But two months is at least a somewhat feasible amount of time to evaluate a console. I feel like I have a much better handle on it than if I had tried to rush a review out early.
This video was a little different for me. I actually got to/had to use my camera equipment for once which was fun, but stressful at the same time. I haven’t done product videography before and it shows, but I did the best I could shooting almost everything by myself. I’m fairly happy with the results and I learned a lot.
E3 is less than a month away now. Nintendo will almost certainly have a lot of big announcements regarding games, services, and software updates. At least they’d better. Switches are still sold out a lot of places, but to keep strong sales they’re gonna have to bring the noise. Fingers crossed for a new Metroid. A real one.
Five years ago I did a post about Minecraft. It’s by far the most popular thing I’ve ever written on this site not because it was particularly good (it actually kinda sucks), but because something like 35% of the internet is dedicated to Minecraft.
Incidentally, the second most popular post I’ve written was about Disney buying Star Wars, so, y’know. Popular things are popular. That’s SEO, kids!
In my old post I made this foolish declaration:
No, I haven’t started playing Minecraft nor will I. The game, if you can call it that, seems like a gigantic time suck. It’s the sort of thing I could get into if I had unlimited time on this earth and didn’t feel guilty about such things.
About a month later I bought the game.
A lot has happened in five years – even just to Minecraft. Notch did not make the game open-source. He sold it to Microsoft for buckets of money. The game has continued to receive updates and is now available on pretty much every electronic device with a color screen. Minecraft merchandise is in nearly every retail space that sells stuff to kids or nerds or nerdy kids. And apparently there’s a movie in the works possibly with Steve Carell.
I hope he’s playing Steve.
I don’t really care about any of that. Minecraft has become essentially one thing for me: a replacement for Lego, K’nex, and all the other building toys I grew up with.
You know what? I was right. Minecraft is a huge time sink. In five years, I’ve gone from not playing at all to building all of this.
Audio-only version:
My buddy Joshua and I recorded a spoiler-filled discussion about Horizon Zero Dawn which would probably be the hottest new video game at the moment except then Zelda happened (and it’s really good too).
The short non-spoiler version is that Horizon Zero Dawn is very, very good and you should play it if you have a PS4 and like action games, open world games, sci-fi, giant robots, good fiction, and/or pretty landscapes. It’s gorgeous. The story is great. Fighting giant dinosaur machines is awesome. The initial reveal trailer from E3 a couple years ago showed a lot of promise and this game delivers on all of it.
It’s been a while since I made a Debug Mode video. In fact, I got all the way through 2016 without producing one even though I intended to do so.
I still have a bunch of ideas kicking around for topics. I want to move away from “reviews” like I’ve done in the past and talk more about concepts or specific aspects of games I find interesting.
2016 had so many great games. I wanted to comment on my favorites. So this is still more review-ish than I will probably do in the future, but I’m fairly happy with the way it turned out.
And it’s a list, of course. People like lists. I like lists. Lists are fun. Psychology, eh?
Well it took much longer to get this out than I wanted. It would have been released sooner if not for a few personal and professional matters that delayed things. And also that fight with the printer. Yeah, that story was about me trying to print the script for this video.
I have a lot of ideas for future Debug Mode videos: games I want to talk about and topical videos too. I’m even contemplating covering some movies or TV shows. I’ve got a lot of partially written scripts. A lot of footage captured.
I was working on a completely different subject but then Cities: Skylines came along and I knew I had to cover it. As a longtime SimCity fan, I was super disappointed by the 2013 entry in that series and Cities: Skylines is this amazing game because it fixes nearly everything that the other game got wrong.
A new year is upon us and that means it’s time to hand out meaningless accolades to various media properties because making lists is fun!
I am quite intentionally calling these “favorite” lists rather than “best of” lists because there’s a lot of games, movies, and music I didn’t experience in 2013 which no doubt deserve attention and praise, but I can’t consume everything in a year. With that in mind, I am limiting my lists to a Top 3 with possible honorable and dishonorable mentions.
3. The Stanley Parable
mattgoldammer.com 