Welcome back! It took a bit longer than I anticipated to finish this off, but better late than never, right?
I‘ll be mentioning a reason for it later on, so stay tuned!
Also, Afterwards I‘ll rank them just like I do with Wrestling matches on a PPV card.
There‘s a few minor conferences that I‘ve not looked at, such as Devolver or PC Gaming, but as of now I‘m not sure if I‘ll do them in the not too distant future or not. I just need to take a break from gaming news for a while. E3 was intense.
So, I hope you‘re ready for the second part of my look at E3 2018.
Square Enix:
Well, that was short and sweet. SquareEnix thought it would be a good idea to have their presentation in pretaped form instead of live on stage and I totally agree! While I‘ll certainly miss all the awekwardness that were their live conferences, this was way less painless to sit through.
Just a quickfire look at their games then off you go again. An extended look at all we had previously seen was provided. Tomb Raider, Just Cause, Life is Strange, Kingdom Hearts 3, Dragon Quest 11.
We got a few mini things for Final Fantasy 14 and Monster Hunter World and a super short trailer for Octopath Traveler.
I think that was it for the stuff that was already revealed during prior events.
As far as new stuff goes, there were actuallt two new games!
The Platinum Studios produced Babylon‘s Fall and another game from someone else called The Silent Man. But I couldn‘t tell you what these games are possibly about. i‘m guessing Babylon will be a Hack and Slash since it‘s Platinum, but I really couldn‘t tell you, it was just a quick tease.
And that‘s the whole thirty minute presentation.
Nothing big, nothing bad, it was simply there.
I guess Square had way worse outings than this one, but I can‘t help but feel that one more reveal during their own event would‘ve done it a bit more good. Maybe they could‘ve kept Just Cause 4 to themselves and not give it to Microsoft, but, oh well.
Yeah, this was good. It wasn‘t bad and it wasn‘t awesome, it was just more of what we already knew was coming, and when what‘s coming looks this promisng that‘s not really a bad thing.
Ubisoft:
Well, crap! I‘ll be damned! Remember when Ubisoft used to be really bad? Not just their conferences, but their games as well! Assassin‘s Creed pretty much always had the subtitle Glitch instead of whatever itiration name they were giving it that year.
And now everything‘s different! Last year‘s conference was incredible and I‘m happy to announce that this year‘s was also absolutely incredible!
They opened like they always do. A dancenumber to introduce the next itaration of Just Dance.
Ea, that‘s how you do it! They don‘t show gameplay because people already know that game by now, and I‘m sorry to break it to you, but soccer is soccer and basketball is basketball, you don‘t have to show this to me each and every year!
With that out of the way they delivered on pretty much all fronts! Beyond Good and Evil 2 looks just more insane each time they show it! That whole audience creation thing they are doing with Joseph Gordon Lewitt just appeals to me as a creative person on so many different levels! It‘s truly great!
Heck, even the games that didn‘t interest me before like the Division 2 and Skull and Bones looked insanely great! Give me Skull and Bones now! I‘m a motherfreaking pirate, ya‘ll!
I preordered StarFox… I mean, StarLink, right after the showcase, cause that game just looks like the No Man‘s Sky we never got! Although I gotta say that given Miyamoto‘s history of slapping Starfox into other people‘s games, that part about it is a bit eerie to me. Amazing, yes, but eerie.
The only three things that weren‘t really interesting were the old titles that got new stuff. Mario and Rabbids dragged on way too long and I just don‘t really care about Rainbow Six Siege or For Honor.
but heck, even The Crew 2 looked kind of cool, and it‘s hard to excite me about racing games.
And Trials Rising just looked fun! I loved the developer! He was just so amazing!
And look at that! When did Assassin‘s Creed become really, really good? Odyssey just looked like some next level shit! It‘s about damn time that you can play as a woman! And it‘s pretty much an open world RPG at this point, which is right up my alley!
So, yeah, this was an amazing show!
and the crazy thing is, they‘ve still got tons of Franchises they didn‘t showcase this year that they can show off next year! Ghost Recon, Far Cry, WatchDogs and Steep come to mind.
It‘s truly an amazing time to be a Ubisoft fan!
Sony PlayStation:
What the hell was that?!
Lame! That‘s what this was! And totally underwhelming! Maybe I expected more than two or three new games, but this was just so underwhelming! First of all, the VOD‘s on their Twitch channel were weirdly fragmented. We had one part about Last of Us 2, one weird part about Ghost of Tsushima which had the audio glitch in and out throughout and then a third main part.
And I thought it was rather short. We saw deeper looks at games we already knew about. Last Of Us 2, Death Standing and Ghost of Tsushima were the big ones, with Spiderman closing the show again.
Let‘s go over all of those real quick. Last of Us was too damn long and why did it have to be at a different theater? It just created a weird 15 minute or so break of the event. Just weird.
Ghost of Tsushima looks awesome and more ancient Japan is always something I‘ll be excited about, but the audio was screwed up, which made it hard to enjoy! Also, what I wanna know is, will I be able to play the game in Japanese Audio with English subtitles? That kind of stuff is important to me!
Death Stranding looks…empty? Amazing, weird and… empty. It‘s probably by design so I won‘t judge that part too harshly just yet, but something just felt off to me.
That describes the whole showcase actually. It was just a bit off.
Not off however was Spiderman, that game just looks so amazing, although they didn‘t really show that much gameplay, so that would‘ve been nice.
As far as new games go there was Nioh 2 (okay, I guess, haven‘t played the first one), a weird game by the Rick and Morty creator that doesn‘t interest me in the least and a third game that‘s Science Fiction and… I forgot its name cause it looked bland.
And that‘s about it.
Like, really?
Microsoft showed 50 games and you give us 10 or so?
Really?
No, Sony, you done goofed! You can do better!
Heck, there wasn‘t even anything about VR! Does this mean you are abandoning the platform just like you did with the Vita?
What the hell was this?
Lame! That‘s what it was!
Nintendo:
Even lamer than Sony was Nintendo. We got a million years of Smash Bros and not much else. In fact, this is why I have not released the second part yet. I just din‘t wanna talk about it. I didn‘t like it. I mean, the big reveal, the big new Nintendo game, was Super Mario Party.
Are they seriously thinking that anybody would get excited for that?
Fortnite and Hollow Knight got same day releases, so that‘s nice I guess.
DragonBall Fighter Z is also coming to Switch, but that‘s not surprising. Fifa 19 isn‘t either.
No other first party announcements of not.
They showed a weird Mech game that honestly just looks like garbage, so that‘s great.
I hated this Direct! As a Nintendo fan this was painful to watch.
I don‘t want a billion hours of Smash coverage from my E3 announcements, thank you very much! No, what I wanted was spitfire announcements. A lot of new stuff. And I didn‘t get that.
I know that‘s not judging it objectively, but I can‘t.
Objectively, however… If you like Smash, I guess it was okay. If you wanted anything else… I guess it wasn‘t.
Ranking from worst to best:
EA:
This was truly the lamest of them all! Just nothing of interest here! No, not even Anthem, I‘m sorry!
Nintendo:
As a Nintendo Fan this was freaking painful to sit through. The big N disappointed me! E3 kinda isn‘t their thing, is it?
SquareEnix:
While this wasn‘t bad per se, there wasn‘t just anything new it added. Okay conference.
Sony:
Yeah, I wasn‘t really feeling this one to be honest. However, the few things that hit, like Ghost of Tsuhima or Spiderman, elevate it a bit.
That‘s not because you did so good, Sony, that‘s just because the competition did so poorly.
Bethesda:
I honestly forgot about that one. Not a big fan of it, but there‘s also not much to really hate here… I just still have no idea how to feel about it. Isn‘t that weird?
Microsoft XBox:
Well, I‘ll be damned! Who would‘ve thought that Microsoft would trump Sony? Fifty games! Packed to the brim with interesting stuff! This was awesome! Jump Force, anyone?
Ubisoft:
As amazing as Microsoft was, Ubisoft was a bit better! Crazy, right? They won basically two years in a row! Why? Well, simply because everything, every single game, they showed or discussed was of some interest to me… well, new games! I don‘t care about Rainbow Six or For Honor… oh and also… no one cares about Just Dance, but the way they incorporate it into their shows as an opening dance number is genius!
This conference was just great! It just worked!