Returning To A Series After E3

E3 is a magical time of the year for gamers, both hardcore and casual. While the hardcore will stay awake till the early hours of the morning watching the ‘earth shattering’ announcements being made live during conferences, the casuals will still be drip fed news on the biggest games via social media and word of mouth.

It’s not all about the announcement of brand new IP’s or games though, E3 is a time for franchises to make their returns or sequels to be announced. On occasion the returns can be unexpected. Awash with all plethora of E3 news, did you know that Bubsy is back? Yeah The Bubsy the cat. With the revival or return of other nostalgic franchises of late such as Wipeout, Parappa the rapper and Crash you’d be forgiven if you didn’t see much on this announcement.

So this E3 was no different, in that new installments in beloved franchises were revealed. For me the hype of these announcements, and looks at new footage of returning characters or franchises will always give me the urge to play other older games in the series in anticipation of the new release.

I mentioned in the ‘Best & Worst of E3‘ post that my surprise of E3 was the reveal of Metro Exodus. I also mentioned that due to that announcement I would now go out of my way to pick up Metro Redux for PS4 so I can play the first 2 games in this franchise. I still feel this way, I’m excited for payday to pick up a new PS4 game to keep me going through the month till next month, but now I’m asking myself some pretty important questions such as what game should I buy? Do I pick up some games in franchises that have just had new installments announced? It turns out I might not need to buy any new games due to already owning some games in standout franchises sequels.

While I do want to play the Metro games thanks to Exodus reveal which would mean parting with money for the Redux collection, I also have an urge to go back to Wolfenstein after the absolutely sensational reveal of Wolfenstein: The New Colossus. Fortunately for me I have New Blood sat waiting to be played in the backlog of games I got at Christmas, So this is making it’s way up the list of games to play next (once I finish the superb Horizon: Zero Dawn).

Then there’s Life is Strange. I picked up the original pretty late after it’s initial release, I got the physical version with the soundtrack included. That game ended up being one of the greatest gaming experiences I’ve ever had, and you can bet your bottom dollar that thanks to the reveal of “Before the Storm” I am now also determined to play through that masterpiece again, reliving each emotional decision again and no doubt needing to compose myself between episodes as I did the first time I played it.

Oh and let’s not get started on Metroid Prime. Despite Metroid Prime 4 being years away, I have the largest urge to go back to the Gamecube’s heyday and retrace my steps as Samus in Prime 1 and 2. There are select games where I wish my memory could be erased so I could replay them for the first time and experience them in their glory again, and Metroid Prime is one of those games.

So has E3 done anything for you with regards to giving you an itch to return to a franchise that had a new installment announced?

– Murr