E3 2017: Best & Worst

All the months of hype, all the potential leaks and rumours, all the hours watching conferences and writing notes, and it’s pretty much now all but finished till next year. Sure we’ve got other conferences like Gamescom & TGS, but they don’t build the same sense of hype as E3. The next thing I will personally be looking forward to is PSX in December. But now the dust is settling on E3, with the conferences and game reveals still fresh on our minds, it’s time for us to declare our best and worst parts of E3 2017.

Best Conference:

This year I personally felt all the conferences were actually lacking that little extra that they’ve had in previous years. But surprisingly for me this year I think Nintendo had the best conference despite it only being 25 minutes, and technically not even a conference. They did exactly what they needed to do. They reminded people of the games that they had already previously announced such as Fire Emblem Warriors & Xenoblade Chronicles 2, with release windows and dates. They revealed trailers for new games that will be arriving in 2018 with Yoshi & Kirby, and the most important thing I feel is that it seems Nintendo are listening to it’s audience. Over the years It seemed like Nintendo were just developing games with their eyes shut, fingers in their ears making “la la la” noises. But during this brief but packed spotlight show, they handed us over to Gamefreak who gave a soft confirmation that a “core” Pokemon RPG game is in development for the Switch, but we shouldn’t expect to see anything for at least a year. Perfect, that is honestly absolutely perfect. We don’t need a rushed put together trailer of the game that is probably 2 years away. Just the knowledge that Nintendo and Gamefreak know that the fans want a proper Pokemon Switch game and that one is in development is brilliant. Same again for Metroid Prime 4. There was no game-play, no cut-scenes, no images of Samus at all, just the logo appearing on the screen with the familiar Metroid Prime music with the text “In development for Nintendo Switch”. After the Metroid Federation Force game, fans were resounded to thinking that we’d only ever see Samus or the Metroid franchise in spin off games or perhaps even more worryingly,never again. But Nintendo appeased all of us by saying “Hey, we know you want a Metroid game, and here it is!”. Plus Mario Odyssey and Zelda Breath of the Wild DLC. It was a very strong showing. Kudos Nintendo, Kudos!
 – Murr

Worst Conference:

I won’t spend as long babbling on about conferences here as I did in the best conference part. Simply put. EA. EA gets the honour of the worst conference, and I think that’s 3 years in a row now I’ve gone with them for this dubious honour. It was diabolical, having the “Suit guys” on the show talking about Ronaldo in spandex. Having guys playing drums in New England Patriots jerseys (I’m not from America, but I’m pretty confident one of, if not the most disliked NFL teams, I dislike them because I’m all about New York Giants!). And good grief, the 2 guys that were tasked with introducing Need for Speed Payback. Jesse someone or another just fucking froze on stage when trying to announce the name of the game, It felt like time stopped as he said “Need For Speed…………….[45 seconds later]…………………Pay…….Back?” It was like someone put a question mark on the end of the sentence on the teleprompter akin to Anchor Man (“I’m Ron Burgandy?”). Terrible, it was saved slightly with Anthem, I’m sure that game will go on and be successful, personally didn’t look to be my cup of tea. But each to their own.
– Murr

Biggest Surprise:

This is a pretty tough one to call this year. Shadow of the Colossus PS4? Undertale physical version for PS4? Metroid Prime 4? I think if it hadn’t of leaked last month Mario X Rabbids would have undoubtedly got the crown for biggest surprise, but unfortunately for Ubisoft and Nintendo it did leak, in a big way. Despite all those great surprises I’ve listed, I think the biggest surprise for me was actually Metro: Exodus. It was the first 3rd party game revealed during the Microsoft conference and it threw me during the initial reveal. It had a Fallout vibe to it, and as Will and I were messaging each other, Metro was brought up by Will, then it clicked of course it was Metro. It looked phenomenal. I’ve played the first Metro game back on the 360, but didn’t pick up the sequel. Judging by this trailer, I will be definitely picking up Metro Redux for PS4 and getting my fix of both games remastered in preparation for Metro Exodus.
– Murr

Biggest Disappointment:

As I touched up on in the Best Conference blurb, I feel everyone was lacking that little extra sparkle this year. And when I mean sparkle I think I mean megatons or bombs. Sony pretty much set the bar so high in it’s previous 2 E3’s I expect this every year, but of course it cannot be conferences of that magnitude every year. It still had bombs mind like Metroid and Pokemon Switch, but you can get so carried away with the rumours in the E3 pre-season, when they don’t happen you feel a little deflated. I think the one that let me down the most was no Shenmue 1&2 HD Remasters. I was sure they’d be shown at E3. All the trademarks, rumours, “leaks” pointed to them being shown. At this point in time, they surely do exist or are in the works. But they never came, Shenmue never came 🙁
– Murr

Best Game:

This was a case of writing down all the games I liked on a list, closing my eyes and just pointing at one. I think my best game of the show was Spider-Man. This game closed out the PlayStation conference via a first look at game-play. It has elements of the Arkham series with regards to fighting mechanics. It appears to have plenty of quick time events during major game-play scenes such as avoiding crumbling buildings. Visually it’s spectacular which is never a bad thing. The only disappointment from it, it’s not coming out this year.
– Murr

Best Conference

I actually went in to this years E3 without many expectations, my hype levels were low, which I think has actually worked out for the better because I came away from most of the shows feeling pretty satisfied with what I’d seen. As for the best show I’m going for Xbox, not because of the Xbox One X, not because of exclusive games shown, and not because I think they presented the best or anything like that. Simply because when I look back at the games that excited me the most, most of them were in the Xbox show. Personally I felt the opening was a bit of a…. car crash – get it, because it was about Forza…. I’ll see myself out. Why oh why did they announce a car at a games conference? It was weird and I just didn’t get it.

Anyway, like I said, the Xbox show had the most games that appealed to me, Ashen, Metro: Exodus, Anthem, Ori and the Will of the wisps and Sea of Thieves were my highlights. They showed a lot of games that I’ve either been following already or that just had really good announcements and  are all games that I’m now really looking forward to playing! Plus there were quite a few others shown during the show that I thought looked really good like of Crackdown 3, it looks like a lot of fun and I’ve been waiting to see more of it for a little while now.

Worst Conference

Take a bow EA, you’ve done it again. I’ve got nothing else to say about it. They just need to either stop, or really mix things up. The only good thing about EA’s show for me was A Way Out from the guys behind Brothers a Tale of Two Sons. It looked really interesting and I think it could be a pretty unique game.

Biggest Surprise

As Murr has said it was probably Metro: Exodus being announced, I really didn’t see it coming and I have to say that I’m really happy that it is. The Metro games really are outstanding single player games. They delivered a good story, strong gameplay, tense combat and interesting weapons and environments. The idea of more of that, is a tantalising one for sure!

It’s come out that the game isn’t open world, despite it looking like it was in the trailer and I’m actually a fan of this. Some games just don’t need to be open world and at times it can feel a like it detracts from the whole experience. I’m all for big open worlds to explore in certain circumstances, but with the Metro series, I want tight corridors, dark rooms and tension. With moments of respite when you breath a bit of ‘fresh air’

Exodus looks to leave the Metro behind as you travel across Russia by train visiting a whole load of different locations and experiencing all the seasons as you go on your, roughly, one year journey as Artyom.

I can’t wait to hear more about the game!

Biggest Disappointment

I think it has to be the no show of Below from Capybara games. I haven’t actually looked in to whether they said they wouldn’t be there, but I was pretty hopeful that we would see at least something from them.

Below has been on my most anticipated games lists for a long while now and when they went completely dark last summer, I was hoping that this would the time to resurface and give us some more details about where the game is at. But no, we got nothing and we’re still no closer to knowing when the game is going to come out.

Best Game

I’m a little torn on this one, on one hand I was pretty blown away with Metro: Exodus, then Ashen showed me something that looked amazing. But I think Anthem was probably my favourite and there are a number of reasons why.

Firstly if you know me, you know I love multiplayer especially co-op. Secondly I love Destiny and Anthem has some serious Destiny vibes going on. Thirdly, it looked beautiful. Forthly – that’s a word right, you’re basically Ironman. What’s not to like?

Ok, the scripted gameplay and voice actors were supremely annoying – seriously, stop doing this. But everything about it looked really interesting and I’m desperate to hear more about the game. Also Drew Karpyshyn is working on the story – he’s the guy who did Mass Effect 1 & 2 and Kotor, so we might actually get a decent story where they have time to explain WTF is going on.

-Will