Another year, another hype fest comes along in the form of E3. It’s usually at its best at the start of a console cycle, when the heavyweights try their hardest to outdo each other.
Maybe we don’t have that in store for us this year, but we can still expect plenty of trailers with gratuitous fan service and prize shots galore, all with appropriate pauses for raucous cheers from the audience. It doesn’t help to be too jaded in these situations, or I end up feeling like I’ve found myself in the studio audience of a sitcom that I don’t particularly like, which is most of them.
With that disclaimer out of the way, what does 2015 have in store for us where earnest proclamations and suspicious promises are concerned? One of the big names is probably Doom IV. No, it’s not called plain ol’ Doom. I played Doom in the 90s. When I refer to a game called Doom, that’s the one I’m talking about. It’s pretty stupid, this trend of dispensing with a sequel number and calling it a reboot. I’m not about to let some uppity marketing department wipe out memories of my childhood and put me on a fast track to Alzheimer’s. Their engine looks solid, and the gameplay looks like they ditched the survival horror feel of the third and went slightly back to the all-out action of the first two. Not entirely convinced they can match those heights, but I’ll withhold judgement till it’s out.
Sony launched a nostalgia bomb right into their audience with the 1-2 punch of a Final Fantasy VII remake and the long-awaited Kingdom Hearts III. After all that goodwill came the sucker punch with them announcing the kickstarter campaign for Shenmue III. .
So, Gears of War Remastered is being developed for PC, because apparently it wasn’t mastered enough the first time around. You realise there were two sequels that didn’t even make it to the platform, right?
Speaking of war, judging by the Black Ops III trailer, Activision spent so much time developing the exosuit for Advanced Warfare they seem hell-bent on getting as much mileage as they can out of it.
Assassins Creed Syndicate lets you play a female character from time to time. Finally women can experience the same old mechanics through a new avatar. Progress! I guess the whole snafu with Unity’s ‘no-girls-allowed’ approach to multiplayer might have prodded that concession from Ubisoft. Another game which lets you have a go as a lady is the new Dishonored. Dishonor me once, shame on you. Dishonor me twice, sign me up again. As with all post-apocalyptic dwellers, Fallout IV gets by with the tools at their disposal, and gives their aging Gamebryo engine another chance at bat.
Of course, there were plenty more talking points. Cuphead and its fantastic 30s-style animation might make bullet hell tolerable. Hitman screams ‘We know we messed up Absolution, this one will be better, we swear.’ Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst – is it a sequel or a new AMD control centre? Can’t forget about Star Wars Battlefield... sorry, Battlefront. In what appears to be Ubisoft tradition, The Division shows a graphically downgraded trailer this year and the newly announced Ghost Recon: Wildlands puts forth a visually stunning trailer at the same time. Rinse, repeat. See you next time, folks.