T w e n t y S i d e d

Let’s see what Playstation has for us:

God of War: Okay. That was really beautiful and interesting.

Days Gone:Nothing about gameplay. Just a very “Last of Us” looking cinematic setup. We don’t even know what kind of apocalypse this is.

The Last Guardian: Finally gets a release date?

Horizon Zero Dawn: Yup. Still looks amazing.

Detroit Become Human: David Cage’s next ambitious disappointment.

Resident Evil VII: Spent the whole demo looking like an old-school Silent Hill game with slow pacing and psychological tricks. But then it drops the Resident Evil name on us and we’re suddenly confused.

Batman Arkham VR: No footage. Just a name drop.

Final Fantasy XV VR: So I guess EVERYTHING is VR now?

Call of Duty Infinite Warfare: It looked fun when it was Rogue Squadron but then it Was Call of Duty.

Death Stranding: Ooookay. Literally nobody knew what to make of this. Look for the trailer on YouTube, because I’m terrified to try and sum it up.

Days Gone: Actual gameplay! And… I don’t like it. It looks WAY too scripted. It has the “guess what the game designer is thinking for this action set-piece” thing going on. It’s a game where you’re a movie stuntman who isn’t allowed to read the script. The zombies flow in and you need to move to the next thing that will slow them down. Sure, it’s all about creatively using the environment, but the game designer is the one doing the creating. The player is just enacting the script. I don’t know, maybe the final game will be less scripted.

That’s it for our E3 coverage this year. Tomorrow we return to our normal posting schedule, including the Diecast. Thank you for bearing with us.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Let’s see what insane things Ubisoft has for us:

Ghost Recon Whatever: I hate, Hate, HATE these pretend multiplayer demos with their scripted “player” dialog. It’s fake, it’s dumb, it makes no sense, and it means nothing. It was fun to heckle, though.

South Park: I’m curious what SP fans think of this. I know Stick of Truth was really well received.

The Division: What? The game still exists?

Eagle VR:

Trek VR: Charming. Looks fun. Wonderful to see all the Trek Alumni. All you need is about $3,000 worth of VR equipment to play it with your friends.

For Honor: We’re excited. Yes, it looks kind of multiplayer moba-ish, but it’s also a cool third-person melee game with single-player content.

Grow Up: That’s nice.

Assassin Creed: The Movie: The E3 Presentation: The Who Cares?

WATCH-DOGS_2: THIS IS SO AWFUL I LOVE IT. So childish, trying so hard to be “edgy” and “hip” in the most banal and clumsy way possible. So tone deaf, so without self-awareness, so predictable, and so unintentionally goofy. I’m going to love to hate this thing.

Steep: I dunno. If this was coming from anyone else I might be excited about a game where you parachute, ski, and snowboard down a mountain. But they said “Ubisoft open world” so I’m very skeptical.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

It’s the PC Gaming Conference. Last year this was long and awkward. We’ll see if it’s better this year.

Running commentary:

Dawn of War: Not really our thing, so not much to say.

Oxygen Not Included: It’s… uh. Five seconds of footage and then they move on?!? Not cool.

Ark Survival Evolved: Open world PvP survival. Meh. Dinos look cool though.

Giant Cop: VR Games are getting strange.

Mount & Blade: Mountain Blade! Josh is excited. Much improved siege combat.

The Surge: Again, another ten-second

Law Breakers: Multiplayer Team Shooter. Huge focus on mobility, vertival movement, and having different movement styles for each class.

AMD: We just made fun of graphics cards the whole time.

Vampyr: Didn’t see enough to say anything.

Killing Floor 2: It seems like the more I care about a game, the less time it gets on the show. Here is a title really far outside of my area of knowledge and interest, and it gets a huge block of time.

Observer: Eastern European cyberpunk horror. Interesting.

Dropzone: They’re calling it an RTS, but it LOOKS like a MOBA.

ARMA3: I don’t know anything about this series.

The Turing Test: Looks like a puzzle game. Sort of Portal by way of Space Engineers.

Dual Universe: Space Engineer building + No Man’s Sky planet-hopping + Star Citizen development approach?

And just like last year, the show ran long. Twitch cut them off and switched to Ubisoft. Oh well.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Let’s see what Microsoft has for us this year. My hot takes:

Xbox One S: The Xbox One-and-a-half. It’s smaller and has more oomph to make hitting 60fps more do-able. I feel strongly It should have been called the Xbone Extended Release, because “XBonER” is the only thing more fun to say than “Xbone”.

I spent the entire time snarking my way through Gears of Whatever and dumb crap about controllers, but then We Happy Few showed up and I basically stopped being able to think about anything else.

Minecraft: I don’t remember anything about the Minecraft presentation because they brought out John Carmack wearing a VR headset and had him say just 2 lines of dialog.

Scalebound looks like Marlow Briggs crossed with Final Fantasy.

Sea of Thieves: This looks like streamer fodder for the Yogscasts of the world.

State of Decay 2: I have no idea.

Halo Wars 2: RTS on a controller didn’t work last time, but… we’re trying again anyway.

Xbox Scorpio: Wait. You already announced the Xbox One S! Now you’re announcing the next gen console? What?

Final Thoughts:

Mixing “You have the Freedom to choose!” with “Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive!” was pretty hilariously dissonant.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

We’re watching the Bethesda press conference!

EDIT: A done: Fallout 4 DLC looked good. Dishonored 2 looks good. Prey looks interesting. Elder Scrolls Online still exists for some reason.

See you tomorrow for Xbox, PC gaming, and Playstation streams.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Josh, Jarenth, Ross, and I are going to be livesteaming / commentating / heckling the EA press conference. What we expect: EA is going to shove their balls in our face for most of the show with Madden / FIFA, but then they’ll end with Mass Effect: Andromeda.

Let’s see what happens!

EDIT: As expected, most of the show was dedicated to stuff outside our area of interest. We learned basically nothing about Mass Effect, we saw a lot of sports games, and there was one really gorgeous “indie” game that excited us. We’ll be back at 7pm west coast time for the Bethesda show.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.