There sure were conferences and such. Given last year was down on development and hardware, I guess they somehow expected expectations to be lowered even more as precaution because they said up front to not expect major news about new entries in series. Going in expecting nothing really could at least bring a few things out as some kind of surprise.
As far as what I decided to look at, I’ll just summarize it. I did end up seeing the kickoff show for the most part, with another updated version of Death Stranding for PS5 this time, Jeff Goldblum talking about Jurassic Park, some re-released and now more expensive DLC for that dumb car ball game Epic stole and milked the hell out of, Overwatch 2 still somehow going to exist and the only proof being two character models, and that Elden Ring game people are excited about for some reason I guess maybe because we didn’t get enough Dark Souls games yet.
Ubisoft was the first specific publisher show I saw, and it was an Ubisoft show. Believe it or not, they’re making a Just Dance 2022. They also decided to make a sequel to that Mario Rabbids XCOM game that also plays a bit differently. I would look into the first one because it does go on sale a lot but I’m not sure I can stand Rabbids for that long. Also apparently an Avatar game many years after the movie and probably before any of the supposed sequels. No new Assassin’s Creed this time, but they’re adding the educational mode again.
After that was Devolver, doing something weird again. This time it was something about a subscription that everyone may already be signed up for automatically and maybe it doesn’t cost anything but it allows buying games from Devolver or something. I don’t recall anything as far as games that stood out there to me aside from the aspect of Black Mage-like wizards with guns, which I like the character design of course but not sure about the game style. I think someone said it’s like Hades. I don’t really know what a Hades is, I think it’s another roguelike thing? Everyone liked it for some reason.
Last one of that day I saw was the VR showcase, which had some neat ideas and wasn’t entirely just Oculus exclusives but there were several of those in the mix. The hand tracking thing seems to be the next step they want to do, and probably requires a mod for a PC VR headset, which Valve thankfully provides a slot for on their current offering, but I already put a fan there. However, not much stood out to me aside from remembering the existence of a new Sam & Max game and then also remembering it’s exclusive to Oculus for some arbitrary period. VR should really not be treated as consoles or how Epic wants to treat PC stores. Speaking of the alleged devil, they were pretty scarce this year compared to previous years.
The next day was pretty long in terms of it being almost non-stop conferences. The best of that day was the Xbox and Bethesda joint conference, no contest, if only for revealing Slime Rancher 2. I hope they expand on the VR demo from the last one, and people really want co-op. There was some other stuff too, as well as more content getting put into online Bethesda games instead of new singleplayer installments, because the focus is on Starfield which I still don’t really know how that plays. However, for being the best conference of the day, I don’t remember much of it aside from there also being a fridge shaped like the Sexbox. Why didn’t they make a VCR shaped like the original Xbone?
Square Enix was mostly Marvel games for some reason, a new one and trying to save their previous Avengers one, and then some Final Fantasy Devil May Cry type game for some reason. The PC show felt long and I don’t know what they’re doing aside from maybe trying to have a narrative, which is the very thing Devolver mocked themselves for doing in their past presentations the previous day. The New Blood guy showed up to be weird again and have funny website names while showing brief moments of interesting games. Also Gaben was there to mention how Steam has demos. Nothing about threes or Ricochet 2 once again. I’m pretty sure he just lives in New Zealand now. Finally, there was some game called Death Trash. The Future Games Show felt too long at that point, just more random indie stuff that I already forgot most of. Something about “exclusive new footage” of the remaster of the old Sonic Colors game that I already have on Wii and was probably just an old level.
The next day, pretty much nothing I looked into, a bit of a break from the onslaught of constant trailers the previous day. I looked into the Intellivision console for the hell of it, which is a very specific niche product and they seem to realize it somewhat at least. Also the guy who apparently owns the rights to Roblox meme noises was hosting it. And then Capcom had pretty much nothing, just saying they would make DLC for RE8, Monster Hunter stuff, a newly translated Ace Attorney game with Super Mario Bros. Super Show character Herlock Sholmes starring, and then acknowledging eSports. That’s about how a Monday goes I guess.
Nintendo was the focus of the last day of the conference stuff from what I’d only guess. They acknowledged a lot of things existing this time, like Advance Wars in the form of a remake and Shin Megami Tensei proper as a new game, as well as gathering a bunch of classic elements of previous Mario Party games to try to make a new one that’s regarded as good, including going harder on the online aspect. F-Zero was acknowledged by a guy from Tekken throwing Captain Falcon off a cliff into lava, because the Tekken guy is new in Smash. There was no Metroid Prime 4 news, but they had Metroid 5, which I guess takes place after Fusion if I put things in the right order. And they actually had footage of Breath of the Wild 2 this time, which could almost be mistaken for Skyward Sword HD 2. Even Square Enix got in their new Marvel game again, but going by some fine print on the footage it’s going to be another cloud-based game instead of trying to get it to run on the device itself, more things to limit the portability of the Switch and increase the questions of what buying a game even means.
As far as stuff I didn’t watch, I guess the demand for Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties was somehow high enough to warrant an updated console release of that… slideshow on horny drugs or whatever the hell. I think there’s literally only one part in that which is actually FMV and it’s the short intro video. Cock Media or whoever their name is had a really boring show so I heard, one really aimed at stockholders apparently, so therefore it was contractually obligated to be boring. That’s about all I heard about for the most part.
I’ve pretty much seen all I really wanted to look at from E3 at this point. Whatever the big hype awards end up being, I don’t really care, I know what I look forward to. As I don’t regularly visit the busy and extremely hot streets of Los Angeles, having E3 being all streams changed nothing for me, but not having live shows means less potential screw-ups and therefore less potential funny moments. Therefore it’s just been pretty dull when it’s not interesting. Out of the games I haven’t heard of before, the one I was most interested in turned out to be Slime Rancher 2. I hope that turns out well. I don’t know about much else as far as things that interest me, which given how my interests have gotten to be further narrowed down as far as new games, is a bit hard to hit. I could only hope for live shows to eventually be a thing again just so we can see people mess up live.