By Jake Rushing and Marshall Garvey
Jake – Not bad this year. Overall it was ok. I even got myself to wear new garb from this Michigan clothing store just for this event. There wasn’t a lot that got me excited, but there was something here and there that got me excited. There were some new games introduced that I’m not as excited for, but curious enough to follow their development and hope that they turn out as great as they appeared to be.
Let’s start off with something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time: Kingdom Hearts 3 release date finally arrived, along with 3 different trailers with one each to be shown for the press conferences of Microsoft, Square Enix (same trailer as Microsoft with a few new tidbits thrown in there), and Sony. There was so much shown, and I’m even excited on what they have shown in these trailers. The Sony trailer that showed Sora and his crew returning Pirates of the Caribbean for Kingdom Hearts 3 legitimately got me almost as excited as Smash’s announcement at E3 (more on that later).
The Microsoft/Square Enix trailer was a pleasant surprise, with Kingdom Hearts going to Frozen world, and showing that they are actually going to be traversing the land and fighting the heartless without any musical numbers (thank god for that). Overall, the gameplay and combat looked even more amazing than it’s 2015 trailer, and Sora donning a pirate outfit was a nice plus. I am fine with waiting until the end of January, because nobody deserves a game that is less than stellar after waiting for 12 years for this game to come out.
Sony ended up being awkward with how they handled the beginning part of the presentation, but they showed some cool stuff. Last of Us Part 2 looked pretty promising. I haven’t played the entirety of Last of Us, but it looked like it could be a step up from Last of Us gameplay, so that’s nice! It was nice to see some gameplay from Death Stranding, maybe more than last year, but it didn’t really paint the picture on what’s really happening around here. I never played Resident Evil 2, but I’m sure it’s amazing that the remake is coming! Last but not least, the game that got the most of my attention is Ghost of Tsushima.
It looked like it was highly cinematic, but with the video game play elements to it. By that I mean no HUD, not much indicator for health, no map to point you where to go, you just follow the clues, and you fight some bad guys in the samurai style. It’s pretty neat! Oh and they showed more of Spider man gameplay, that is really cool on how they put the combat together. It still feels more like Batman Arkham series, but there’s an element to the combat that is more in line with Spiderman than Batman, so I can see this game doing alright. It showed that the Spiderman villains (Rhino, Electro, Vulture, and Scorpion) are in the game with alliance to Mr. Negative, the main protagonist of this game.
Bethesda had a solid line of announcements. Rage 2 looked pretty cool (although we could have done it without the Andrew WK concert, as much as I love Andrew WK), Fallout 76 looks like it could be exciting, and yay for the Elder Scrolls 6 announcement! The two games that excite me the most from the presentation was Wolfenstein: Youngblood as Wolfenstein’s newest upcoming sequel, and Doom Eternity was announced. Those games look like they could be promising, I’ll be looking forward to hearing more about those two games, as well as Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls 6.
There wasn’t anything from Nintendo that didn’t, at the very least, made me feel warm inside with a handful of great announcements. Super Mario Party looks like they learned their lesson from their previous Mario Party games, as it looks even more promising than I remembered in recent years. Daemon X Machina looks pretty interesting from the teaser and gameplay footage shown from Treehouse. I can’t believe that Killer Queen is coming to consoles, with Switch as their first target console, to be known as Killer Queen Black. I really want to get that when it comes out. I have been looking forward to seeing Hollow Knight getting released for the Switch, so I’m pretty excited right when it was announced that it’s already available for purchase on eShop. The sizzle reel was a nice reminder that Nintendo still have games coming for the Switch that doesn’t just have Mario, Zelda, or Pikachu in them.
Last but not least, oh mai gawd Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a very nice package. It’s amazing that it won’t be like a definitive port like the Switch port of Hyrule Warriors was, but rather more like Super Smash Bros. Definitive Edition++. Including every single Super Smash Bros character that has ever appeared in the previous title was something that all of the fans wanted, they added some old stages into this edition, and they made changes to all of the returning characters, from the change that gave subtle hints that Mario is actually wearing Cappy to the fight here and there, to reworking a couple of Legend of Zelda characters to where Link and Zelda are donning their outs from Breath of the Wild and A Link Between Worlds respectively with their final smashes altered and with Link’s bombs becoming remote detonation bombs from Breath of the Wild.
They could have stopped there, but no, they made so many changes I can’t list them all. They could have stopped after their seemingly endless laundry list of changes, but no, they brought in 3 new characters to the roster, starting with Daisy (being the ‘echo’ character of Peach, as Nintendo calls them instead of everyone else calling them clones, but whatever), and then showing Inkling that we all knew was coming. To top it all off, they had to bring in Ridley from Metroid as a brand new character. This is my second most anticipated game from this year’s E3.
Marshall – In prior E3 recaps, my evaluation always came with the restriction that since I didn’t own a current generation console or PC, my reactions were basically a moot point. But after getting a PS4 in 2016, that’s (at least for the time being) not an issue. Yet for whatever reason, I wasn’t terribly invested in E3 this year. Maybe it’s just because it fell in the middle of a relentlessly busy month in my life, and thus I was kind of distracted
My greatest excitement was for DOOM Eternal, perfectly timed as I spent a big chunk of last year addicted to the original 2016 reboot. After that is of course Smash Brothers Ultimate, perfect timing as I’m starting to hone my Melee skills on a weekly basis at Cafe Colonial. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was also refreshing, and gives me hope for a franchise I had honestly written off as dead. And for the sake of spoilers I had to bow out of watching the Last of Us 2 trailer as I still have to finish the first game. (It’s sitting on my desk as we speak, next to play after I finish BioShock: Infinite.) Lastly, I know I should be losing my mind over Kingdom Hearts 3 and the “promise” of the January 2019 release date, but I’m so jaded by all the delays and teases that I really, really refuse to believe it until I see it on the shelves.
Overall, plenty of promising titles, but ones I’ll have to wait until release to be absolutely sure if I’m going to get.