Another E3 has come and gone. Once upon a time I would take vacation time to watch all the coverage as it happened, but now I'm content to just catch what info I can and then watch a bunch of trailers and gameplay at the end of the week. So maybe it's because of my lessened interest in it, but overall I really enjoyed what was presented this year. Moreso than a lot of previous years really. Anyway here's a few rambling impressions of what I saw, good, bad and ugly (like playing Monster Hunter with an insect glaive or hammer kind of ugly).
1. The Trials of Mana remake was my happiest surprise of the show. I've played through the translated SFC rom almost half a dozen times, and I can tell you that everyone is in for a treat if the gameplay turns out even halfway decent. It was a fun story, with a lot of replay due to multiple characters and class changes that unlock different unique abilities. The Mana Collection on the other hand was kind of a disappointment. Just the first three games?? Even with a fully translated copy of Seiken Densetsu 3/Trials of Mana, that was a hugely missed opportunity. That's not even half the games in the series. Granted most of the others were kind of crap, but they still would have been nice to see.
2. The new Contra game.... who the hell is that for? An overhead shooter? With a Panda? Yeah I don't get that at all.
3. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake is finally within a year's time (if there are no other delays and I wouldn't put money on that). It looks great, and I do look forward to playing it, but I will likely wait until the full collection is released.
4. Link's Awakening looks even better than the last time I saw it. I'm a little disappointed that the new content seems to be multiplayer related instead of expanding the main story. Still it's probably been 20 years since I've played it so I'm sure most of it will feel pretty fresh all the same.
5. On a related Zelda note, Breath of the Wild 2? Wow. Guess I should get around to playing the first. Probably should get around to playing Skyward Sword too.
6. Persona 5 Royale and DQ 11 are definitely looking like the definitive versions with tons of new content, but dammit I don't know if I'm going to pick them up. I loved both of them, but fuck man they were both 90+ hours in length. I'm not sure I want to play through all of that with another 10 to 20 hours of content. A man only got so much time.
7. Panzer Dragoon was another left field surprise. Can't wait to play that. I spent serious time with very few Saturn games, so this would be cool.
8. Romancing SaGa 3 might be good. Romancing SaGa 2 was pretty dull, but from what I remember from the few times I tried a fan translation of RS3, it wasn't half bad. Scarlet Grace is a fairly unknown quantity for me though, so I'm going to have to do a little research on that one.
9. What the hell happened to No More Heroes 3? The first game was fun. The second was less fun. This looks just stupid as hell. Sure it was only a trailer, but it was a stupid trailer.
10. The new footage of The Sinking City looks great. That's a game I keep forgetting I'm looking foward too. Damn thing comes out in about 2 weeks. Looks good enough that I might not even wait until it hits hobo pricing. Going to have to wait for a couple reviews, but it could be my game of the summer.
11. The new multiplayer BurgerTimeParty! is going to make me shoot someone. It looks so bad.
12. Etherborn??? Well that might be interesting. Then again it's made by FromSoftware so that pretty much means it will be too hard for me. Pity too since George RR Martin helped develop the story or world or whatever it is. He got a credit so he did something.
13. Ghostwire Tokyo!!! When I saw that Tango Gameworks was making this I kind of peed my little bit. Those are the same guys who've been making the Evil Within games, so there's little doubt that there will be some fucked up chaos going on in the game. Very curious to find out more about this one.
Like you I used to take off the whole week for e3, but now I don’t. Luckily most of the conferences are at times out of work, Nintendo during my lunch break so it all works out. Also show floor coverage has become horrible the last few years. It used to be you could find impressions and gameplay videos of every game on the show. They would be substantial demos with new info, I feel only Nintendo is doing that now. It’s not the same.
Nintendo and square saved this e3 from being one of the worst ever. Nintendo brought it big with loads of great games and announcements. FFVII is the game of the show with stunning gameplay and a game that looks like it enhances and expands the legendary game. I’m getting a panzer dragoon remake! New Zelda is always exciting except this felt more like a no shit confirmation, obviously you are working on a new Zelda, I am kind of bummed it looks so similar to BOTW.
The whole event this year felt forced and scattered, like half the people didn't want to be there & the other half either weren't there or didn't have anything to show while they gear up for next-gen. The ridiculous focus on movie trailers over actual gameplay for games that are right around the corner is a joke also.
I was happy with what I did see from the big games coming up. Obviously Cyberpunk & Final Fantasy stole the show and look incredible. Very happy with what Nintendo showed at their event too, namely Link's Awakening & Luigi's Mansion 3 & Astral Chain.
Biggest disappointment was also Nintendo related, no Metroid yet again. Even just an announcement of a port for the 3DS remake they did to Switch, or a Prime Trilogy port would have been enough. But doing NOTHING with it at all is starting to get annoying. Two entire console generations with no Metroid? Pfffffffft.
I also must give a shout out to Devolver Digital. Not the best games, but definitely the best event.
People should be channelling this energy of disappointment towards a new Star Tropics. Something that everyone would enjoy.
Agreed. We should all be hoping for a new StarTropics game.
I think the Keanu Reeves reveal in Cyberpunk 2077 showed how awesomely cool these big live events are. There is no way that something like this would have been as impactful or memorable if it was done in a video direct or something like that. You need to present this surprise in front of a live audience to fully take advantage of that “wow” factor.
Not that I saw any E3 footage of it, but Lego Horizon restored my faith in gaming, until I found out how light it actually was on content. So it was a bit of a "meh" like always.
Link's Awakening does look awesome, though.