Random Guesswork: E3 2015
E31 took place this week, and it was probably the best in terms of announcements for the last two or three years. Game critics are remaining sceptical about some of the announcements, but that’s their job – allow the rest of us to revel in the joy of some of the long-awaited titles that were announced!
Here’s a brief round-up of what I’m expecting, picking out the games I’m excited about.
Batman: Arkham Knight
I’m playing this next week, and it will be awesome. Can’t be any worse than the non-Rocksteady instalment Arkham: Origins, right? Moving on!
Hitman
Hitman: Absolution wasn’t a trainwreck, but it wasn’t a “proper” Hitman game either. Hitman games should be all about the free-form assassinations, but the last instalment was a linear story with stealth game elements, with only a few sandbox areas to let players loose in (like any gamer who doesn’t like change, I bitched about it at length in a blog post)2.
The developers at IO Interactive wrote an open letter to the fans saying that the new game would be “back to basics”, and if anything it looks like it has gone the other way: that there won’t be any story at all, just a series of contracts killings to fulfil. I like the stories that tie all the assassinations together in the games but I admit they are peripheral at best3. The developers have picked up on the fact that Contracts mode in Absolution, where you can create hits and be more creative with dispatching targets, was quite popular and have made that the focus of the new game.
I also like the implications of new contracts being made available for a short time and I am intrigued to see how the online competitive aspect works. It’s looking really good to me!
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
I love me some Uncharted, the game series where you’re dumped into an all-out action movie into the shoes of a John McClane “everyman” hero4. The Uncharted games have always looked and played great, and I’m just glad to see that the fact the The Last of Us’ creative team haven’t made the new game all grim and gritty off the back of their previous game5 like the first teaser trailer implied it would be.
The new gameplay trailer won me over by including my favourite character Sully, who’s moving around really well for a guy his age! The combat looks fun and there’s more of an emphasis on the vertical combat that you usually get in the multiplayer segments (i.e. climbing up things to get a new vantage point). Speaking of which, having enjoyed Uncharted multiplayer for many years I can’t wait to get the band back together for some sessions on UC46.
I also understand that the excellent company Bluepoint games has been appointed to bring the Uncharted trilogy to PS4 with new trophies and nicer graphics. They did an excellent job with the God of War, Ico/Shadow of the Colossus and Metal Gear Solid HD collections, so I will certainly be buying the Uncharted collection when it comes out.
The Last Guardian
Once upon a time, the team behind Ico and Shadow of the Colossus announced a game that was a cross between the two – a puzzle game where your character was accompanied by a massive creature who could help you solve problems you encounter. It disappeared into development hell for the longest time (apparently it’s really difficult to code a giant creature that acts intelligently without bugging out).
Beyond that, nobody knows anything. Sony have announced that it will be coming to the PS4 though, so I reckon that’s one to look out for. It will be nice to see a colossus that doesn’t want to smash you to bits for a change.
Fallout 4
I’ve always been a big fan of the modern Fallout games7, especially in the way you can be a complete bastard in them. The new edition looks beautiful. Here’s hoping that they have ironed out the uncanny valley expressions and that running at 45 degrees no longer looks weird. I am a little worried about the main character being voice acted – here’s hoping for a voice pitch slider so I can make him sound at least a little bit nasal. Other than minor gripes, it looks great – the customisation, the setting, even the ridiculous Pip-Boy accessory that you better believe I’m going to buy. Fingers crossed that you still get to be a complete bastard in it!
Geek note: the salesman at the door in the gameplay demo was voiced by Metal Gear’s Colonel himself, Paul Eiding. I squeed.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Yes, yes, and YES. It looks like Hideo Kojima8 and his team have taken all the things he played with in MGS: Peace Walker (fulton recovery, smaller missions, recruiting an army) and has expanded them into one cohesive world that looks amazing. I can already see myself spending entire evenings and weekends traversing all the places, collecting all the things and doing the side missions. Typically all details concerning the plot have been kept under wraps so I am chomping at the bit to find out more about what happened to Big Boss following MGS V: Ground Zeroes.
LEGO Dimensions
Oh dear.
I’ve managed to so far not at all be interested in Skylanders, and I have just about managed to hold back from buying anything to do with Disney Infinity despite some of the figures looking really cool but…well, you might already know that I have a thing for LEGO.
And holy shit you can play as Back to the Future meets Portal meets Batman meets Scooby Doo meets Doctor Who and there’s minifigs and sets to buy and it looks like it’s a fanfiction come true. My only concern is having neither the money or the physical storage space to indulge in this wonderful, wonderful thing that is coming soon.
Mad Max
The video game is currently coming under scrutiny since the awesome film Fury Road came out recently, and it looks like it will be a very different beast to the Tom Hardy grunt-athon that was on the silver screen in a good way9. Somewhere between Grand Theft Auto, the Batman games and Uncharted, the game is looking great. My only concern is that it might get lost amongst all the other great games that are coming out.
Shenmue 3
I was given a copy of Shenmue along with a Dreamcast by a friend on a birthday many years ago. I’ll admit now that I didn’t get very far with it; I remember checking my watch a lot as there was a button devoted to checking your wrist and I kept pressing it by accident. As far as I can tell the original games were mostly about looking for sailors in seedy bars and racing forklift trucks.
The announcement for this long-awaited sequel went down a storm but I can’t help but feel the whole thing about Sony using the Kickstarter to gauge interest being just a little bit seedy. Isn’t this just a collection for pre-orders, basically?
We all know what’s going to happen in the third instalment, anyway. Mega64 got that out of the creator in a video they did.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate
I fell out of love with the AC series around the fourth instalment of Brotherhood, Part 2 Act 3, which just goes to show how much of a mess the story is now. I tried the sixth instalment (Part 3) and found it an absolute chore, being a series of fairly boring fetch quests much like the previous games. The latest instalment has piqued my interest just through the virtue of being set in Victorian London, but I will be holding off buying until I see some gameplay videos after it’s release. Never mind once bitten, twice shy – this is several times bitten and very wary!
That was it.
There weren’t really any other game announcements worth noting. Oh wait, there was one…what was it called again?
Final Fantasy VII: Remake
HOLY F*CKING SHIT.
I saw it, and said “no way” ten times over the trailer, with the occasional “they said they would never do it”.
I know it’s far too early to really get excited. I know you shouldn’t judge a game based on a pre-rendered trailer. I know this is probably a blatant cash-grab from Square-Enix. I know they could mess this up horribly. I know they can’t possibly translate every tiny detail into the remake from the original. I know all these things, because a very long time ago I wrote down all the reasons why we don’t need another Final Fantasy VII.
But I don’t care. This is probably the most excited I have been about a video game announcement in many, many years and I’m just going to sit back and revel in the nostalgia of what that’s like.
That’s really it.
Those are my cherry-picked showings from E3, I may come back and edit this when I inevitably remember a game I forgot about. The bottom line is, there are exciting times ahead for gamers and I just hope I don’t have to use this tag on my blog again any time soon.
Got any games you’re looking forward too? Comment below! You can log in using Facebook or Twitter!
- The Electronic Entertainment Expo is where all the video game makers hype their new games coming out in the next year or so, although there’s a long history of games that never cam to be… ↩
- I tend to blame game director Tore Blystad for a lot of Absolution’s problems, as in interviews he didn’t seem to understand what fans like about the games. The final product feels as though he wanted to tell a different story entirely but was lumbered with the Hitman franchise so made do with what he had. ↩
- The “story” behind Hitman: Contracts was that Agent 47 was bleeding out in a hotel room and was having delusions about past hits he’d performed, which is one step away from “it was all a dream”. ↩
- You know the sort – they swear and sweat a lot because they are fearing for their lives but, looking back on it, they always single-handedly take out scores of henchmen with only few problems. ↩
- For the record I didn’t enjoy The Last of Us – it was very well made but it was a zombie game, which is a genre I never really enjoyed save for the Dead Rising franchise. ↩
- Gabriel Roman had better be a DLC character is all I can say! ↩
- I tried the isometric originals, but I don’t normally have three hours to spare to traverse a single screen. I might have to try the first one again at some point. ↩
- I’m not going to write about the whole Kojima vs. Konami thing, there are plenty of people out there more experienced and informed than me writing about this disgraceful falling out between a great video game director and the company he has been loyal to for years. ↩
- I’m feeling really sorry for the developers who are having to field questions about the film despite this being a completely different project that’s been in production for yonks, possibly before the film went into production. ↩
Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | June 20, 2015 at 11:39 am | Random Guesswork, Technology, Video Games | 2 comments
Tags: Arkham Knight, Assassin's Creed, Batman, E3, Fallout 4, Final Fantasy, Hitman, Ico, LEGO, LEGO Dimensions, Mad Max, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Shadow of the Colossus, Team Ico, The Last Guardian, Uncharted