New Game + June 10 - June 16

This week was all about E3 and we got you covered starting with Microsoft on Sunday and ending with Nintendo on Tuesday.

Xbox

The conference got off to a hot start with the Xbox E3 conference. Xbox came out fast with many popular announcements including an Ori release date in early 2020, Battletoads Rebooted, a creepy Blair Witch game that will be out in August, and a release date for The Outer Worlds which will launch in October. Easily the star of the show was the new Cyberpunk 2077 trailer, which included two huge surprises including Keanu Reeves being a main character of the game and finally a release date which isn’t too far away as its due out early April. After the reveal of Cyberpunk it felt like this conference really lost the wind in its sails. One of the big reveals was Gears 5 and it felt like they missed the mark there with moody trailers that didnt capture anyones attention and a lot of people on stage talking without really giving gamers a reason to care for the next entry. One small game that caught my eye was Killer Queen Black, which is a multiplayer arcade cult hit that I have been waiting to come to Nintendo Switch as it was announced about a year ago. I assumed it was console exclusive to Nintendo when it debuted at one of their Directs.

On the business side of Xbox, they announced a new addition to Xbox game studios with the acquisition of Double Fine Games and announced an all new Elite Controller redesigned from the inside out with many fan requested features over the years including internal rechargeable battery.

Then it came to what wasn’t there, they went step by step from the Project Scorpio playbook. They kept the title as Project Scarlett, as to not give the next gen a name until the final announcement. Next they talked about the specs similar to how they did for Scorpio with the this time being about SSD, ray tracing and 120 frames per second, whereas last time with the Scorpio it was all about the teraflops. Finally, just like last time they showed a video of members of the team talking about what a leap forward Scarlett will be and what features they are excited for. This will most likely lead to a full reveal sometime mid 2020 as they announced a loose release date of Holiday 2020 for the next gen console. I would assume they are targeting November but they are probably keeping there plans loose just in case the PS5 hits market early.

Another bittersweet moment was that we got a small slice of Halo 5 as well as that it would be a launch title for Scarlett as well as playable on the Xbox One. Im sure many were hoping after last years CGI trailer that we would be getting a few shots of gameplay but instead we just got another cinematic trailer. The upside of this cinematic trailer was that it said captured using in game engine and it did look pretty great. The high level of detail, the lighting effects and the smoothness as which the trailer was running did look great and I am very excited to see what 343 can do with the series since they have said that its back to basics for Master Chief.

It seemed like Xbox really had a chance to hit the gas with the conference but just announced most things that we already knew about. With Sony taking a year of from this E3, Microsoft had a good chance to capture the attention of gamers but in my opinion missed the mark with a slow presentation after CyberPunk 2077.

Bethesda

Todd Howard came out and immediately addressed Fallout 76 and some of its launch problems as well as what the future looks like for the franchise, trying to make it clear that they won’t be abandoning the game anytime soon. They announced some of the new content that would be making its way to the game in the near future with expansions. They also announced a battle royale mode for Fallout 76 called Nuclear Winter, which will be interesting to see how that mode holds up with the battle mechanics of Fallout. The shooting has never felt great in the Fallout series.

They also announced the next project from Tango Gameworks, the developers behind The Evil Within series called Ghostwire Tokyo, which Shinji Mikami called an action adventure game where you will battle paranormal. Its good to see that we are going to be getting a fresh IP from Tango who can take a break from The Evil Within and its also great to see that its still a supernatural horror type game that they have excelled at. They did say it would be different style than what they are typically known for.

One of the highlights for me was when Arkane Studios came out to announce a new game which was a little surprise since one of their studios was co developing Wolfenstein Youngblood. The new game is called Deathloop, as features two assassins stuck in a time paradox. They said it would combines mind bending story with meticulously designed levels with Arkanes signature gameplay that allows you to approach each situation anyway you like.

They closed out the show by taking a deep dive into Doom Eternal, which got a release date of November 22nd. This is later than I assumed but I think now that Doom has reestablished itself as a serious contender it can release in the holiday window and compete with the big holiday games. The new game will take you to all new locations from heaven to hell and everything in between, and based on the trailer it looks to incorporate a lot of envirnomental puzzles and platforming. The game will also feature an all new multiplayer mode called battle mode which features a 2v1 situation all controlled by humans where two demons try to take on the Doom slayer. If there is one thing you can say is that they are always willing to create and try new multiplayer modes similar to the originals inclusion of SnapMap.

Overall there wasn’t anything revolutionary at the Bethesda conference and it felt like they had to many montages of humans talking about their games.

Ubisoft

I think the Ubisoft conference would have been a little more exciting if the Watch Dogs Legion information hadn’t leaked as well as the Roller Champions. I actually think Ghost Recon Breakpoint would have made a bigger Splash if it was announced at E3, especially considering they spent enough time at the event going over the same thing that they already announced. They showed a clip of Jon Bernthal giving a motivational speech to his troops who will be your foes in the game and then they brought out Jon Bernthal to talk more about the game again.

The conference started out with an Assassins Creed symphony that didn’t make a lot of sense considering we weren’t getting a new entry in that series this year. After that they didnt waste a lot of time and jumped right into the gameplay reveal for the upcoming Watch Dogs Legion, from creative director Clint Hocking. The game is set in a near future London post Brexit. In case you haven’t heard yet the big feature of this game is that you can control anyone in the game, as you recruit people for the greater cause of dead sec. With a decent amount of gameplay, some good explanation into what you will be doing in the game as well as a release date they delivered this point well. The game will be out early March 2020.

After that they had long feature about an upcoming TV series on Apple, the aforementioned Ghost Recon, a mobile game featuring Tom Clancy universe characters, Just Dance and a few more updates to their existing games.

Then they revealed a brand new game in the Rainbow Six universe.

They also announced the Ubisoft subscription service called Ubisoft plus. The major downside at the moment is that it will initially only be available on PC and didn’t mention if in the future it would be coming to consoles.

The conference ended with a nice surprise announcement from the creators of the Assassins Creed Odyssey team called Gods & Monsters. The game looks like a mythological Zelda type game.

Square

Taking Sonys time slot at E3 is trying to fit in big shoes. Well the good news is that FF7 remake looks like it has pleased fans as they took a deep dive on the world of Midgar and the new hybrid combat system. The FF7 remake took up the better part of 20 minutes as they showed plenty of in game action. The first episode in the remake will be hitting shelves March 3, 2020. in the original game the world of Midgar only took up the first portion of the game and lasted probably about 10 hours but according to the director the first episode takes place fully in Midgar and is the size of a normal FF game. It will be very interesting to see how they fleshed out that world.

Outside of the FF7 deep dive, we got a lot more Square Enix, which means a lot of RPGs, both old and new. There was a reveal of a new game from People Can Fly, the team behind BulletStorm, who showed off a new cinematic trailer for their new game Outriders. Keeping in the mold of what they do well, this will be a futuristic shooter that takes place on an unknown planet, where you are alone or with the help of either one or two other players via drop in, drop out co op. They said this game will have an engaging story but they can share anymore at this moment.

The final piece of their conference was finally showing the world game play for The Avengers. They didnt go into too much detail about the game and what you will be doing but it sounds similar to destiny in that it will be a living world with other superheroes and weekly and daily activities. This game was quite underwhelming for me personally, the writing from the little that we saw seemed very poor especially when you judge this game against what it should be judged against and that is the most recent comic book game from the Marvel Universe, SpiderMan, and as well that we have just received over 20 AAA blockbusters in the theatre from the MCU. Considering how long this game has been in development and considering how tight lipped the project has been the expectations were high for this game but as of right now it doesn’t look as good as Spiderman, and it doesnt look like it plays as well as SpiderMan and its definitely not written as well as SpiderMan but its very early so we will have to wait and see what comes of this game.

Nintendo

The last conference of the show went to Nintendo and their 40 minute Direct. Out of all the conferences this would have been the best one but I dont really feel like any of them did anything special. Even taking a deeper look at Nintendos it felt like almost everything they announced was bittersweet. Thats not even including a lot of things fans and myself included were hoping for or expecting.

If you’re a Smash fan then this would have been a pretty good direct for you as they announced two new characters coming soon to the game. The Hero from Dragon Quest and Banjo Kazooie are both making their way to the popular fighter.

One of the games I am looking forward to this year is the third entry in the Luigis Mansion series. The showed off plenty of gameplay with lots of Nintendo charm. They displayed the multiplayer aspects called the scare scraper where you can play local or online co-op as well as co-op in the game by one person controlling Gooigi, a goo version of Luigi who is able to ooze into areas real Luigi can’t. The game looks great but as became the trend the bittersweet came in the form of no release date for the game.

They took a deep dive on the new Links Awakening remake that looks absolutely adorable and amazing and I have nothing to say bad about this game or reveal. They showed plenty of new gameplay footage, a new dungeon builder mode which looks like it could be fun and even gave a release date of September, which is a lot sooner as I was expecting to see the game as the flagship December title for Nintendo.

A neat reveal was the new game from John Romero, called Empire of Sin which looks like an Xcom meets Gangster Era 1920. They didn’t show much other than a few quick screens of gameplay but was shown looked promising so we will have to keep an eye on this game.

One of the more anticipated titles coming to the Nintendo Switch is the next instalment in the Animal Crossing series and we finally got a look at some gameplay. The game looks great and looks like a natural evolution of that series. Nothing looks overly revolutionary, just more of what has worked in the past for that series with a modern touch on the Nintendo Switch. The bittersweet here came as we were told we would be seeing this game in 2019 but at the end of the trailer they announced they would have to be pushing it back to March 2020 to fully execute on the vision they have for the series. Its too bad as it seems like March is already getting a little croweded but most companies are trying to get all of their games out by the end of fiscal. Investors clearly werre’t happy with the delay either as the game delay cost the company 1 Billion dollars in market value.

The presentation ended with just one more announcement as has become the standard for these video game showcases. They showed off some in game cinematic for the next installment in the Zelda series. The cinematic was using the Breath of the Wild art style but with a much darker tone. At the end of the trailer all we got was a some basic font stating “ the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is now in development” That was all the information we got. It was bittersweet because its amazing that we are getting another Zelda using the BOTW formula and art style but the way it was teased probably means we wont getting that game until 2021.