There is no point making the best game in the world, if nobody knows about it. For decades the games industry has dedicated one week of the year to letting us all know about what is cooking. All the sites, content creators and gaming bods enter a collective frenzy as hungry gamers guzzle down the trailers like Blackpool seagulls eat chips.
So while E3 was run by the much disliked Entertainment Software Association, I still miss watching the event from afar. I know many gaming journalists lament those early days, if nothing else it was a great opportunity to meet other folks in your profession. E3 was born in 1995 and I believe back then it wasn't even open to the public. Over the years it grew into a massive event that would house all the main players in the games industry. However, slowly support for the show began to ebb away and the big companies started running their own shows. Like so many institutions, the pandemic took its toll and acted as the final nail in the coffin for E3.
Game publishers will always want to show off the projects they have invested money in and this is where Geoff Keighly saw an opportunity. This year saw the fourth annual Games Fest, which kicks off a week of separate gaming shows. While I see Geoff is listening to feedback, there are clearly some kinks to work out. The main criticisms seem to be around too much advertising and game developers not getting enough time on stage. However, there also seemed to be a real lack of big games this year: I suspect Microsoft held onto as much as possible for their own show.
The Playstation show would have been ok, but the news that Sony is doubling down on their idiotic PSN policy is very frustrating. This was made clear when it was announced that God of War Ragnarok would be coming to PC, which should have been a cause for celebration. However, Sony is now insisting PC gamers sign into PSN, even with single-player games. This would be bad enough on its own but unfortunately, there are one hundred and eighteen countries that just cannot access PSN. This shows how desperate Sony suits are to get PC gamers into the club and rarely have I seen stupidity on this scale from a major publisher. After the Helldivers 2 debacle, Sony said they were still learning what PC gamers wanted and backed down on their requirement to use PSN. It seems they were just regrouping and in fact, hadn’t been listening at all.
Microsoft has been under fire in recent months for a catalogue of failures. A painful lack of big games, some absolutely terrible releases (Redfall, Halo etc) and the albatross that is called Series S hanging around their necks. Xbox had also just shuttered a few studios they recently acquired in the massive Activision/Blizzard deal. What was especially galling was that Tango Gameworks had done about as much as they could, in terms of making a successful game. My take is this: why on earth would you spend all that money on studios only to just mismanage and ultimately drive them into the ground? So it was probably even more of a bolt from the blue to see Xbox smash the show this year. Opening with a blistering trailer for the new DOOM game they were off to a great start. After that it was just game after game: no filler, no ads and each one was fantastic. I have published a review of the games that stood out over all the shows, but for me, the two picks of the bunch were MS Flight Sim 2024 and Stalker 2.
Last month we saw V-Rising finally leave early access which meant I could give it the full review treatment. To celebrate the release a group of friends hired a server and for two glorious weeks, we sucked hard! The game was always great, but now in its final form we have the big boss himself in place, a new zone and some new end-game systems to keep players happy. I'm sure we will be returning to this game many times over the years, you can see my full review here. The other game I recently reviewed was the PC release of Ghost of Tsushima, which was ported by the most excellent folks at Nixxes. This studio is now the best in the business at porting games to PC and this could be their best work yet. The game runs great and looks stunning on PC with a silky smooth fps. You can check out my review here.
As our wet summer trundles onward we are now entering a period of relative calm. My first game to dive on (in between sessions of Helldivers 2) was Still Wakes the Deep, the latest game from The Chinese Room. I'm not sure I have time to do a review now, but if you are a fan of horror games in a similar vein to Alien Isolation, then this is a must-buy. The less you know going in the better but it is worth noting this game has a very short run time of around four to five hours. However, those few hours seemed much longer when hiding in lockers and gasping for air in the bowls of a crippled oil rig!
Once we enter July I am very much looking forward to the survival MMO Once Human. I gave the demo a whirl in the Steam NextFest and it was surprisingly good. The aesthetic reminded me of Control, with otherworldly objects and creatures cobbled together from everyday appliances. There seems to be plenty of things to do from building bases, learning new skills and hunting down boss encounters. The combat is mostly based on ranged weapons and here I was also pleasantly surprised how tight the shooting was. I'll be giving it the full review treatment once I've played enough later in July. This year still has some massive games to drop such as Black Myth: Wukong, Indiana Jones and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. For now, that's me signing off until next time, take care for now.