E3 Special 2016

There was probably only one game that really got me excited at this year’s E3. There’s several titles that caught my eye – more than I expected, in fact – but only one I’m desperate to get my hands on. That game is Titanfall 2.

I f**king loved the gameplay of the original Titanfall, and I was a little concerned they’d f**k around with the formula in the sequel. But based on what I’ve seen and heard, the sequel plays almost identically to the original.

It’s also coming with a full single player campaign which I’m pretty happy about. What little we saw of the Titanfall universe in the original was full of potential for an engaging and enjoyable campaign mode. Give me a beta now, damn it!

Another game I’m interested in, is the new South Park game. I enjoyed The Stick of Truth a lot, but I didn’t feel any great need or excitement for a sequel. But they really won me over with the footage they showed. I’m also excited for Dishonored 2, which looks to offer an expanded world and more varied gameplay.

Watch_Dogs 2 looks neat. I’m probably one of the few people who really enjoyed the first game. It certainly felt like a game cobbled together by three different development teams, none of whom were in contact. But there was so much potential in Watch_Dogs that I hope the sequel can tap into and deliver upon.

Of course, they’ve already f**ked up by offering about seven different Special/Gold/Deluxe type editions that we’ll probably need another spreadsheet to decipher. I’d also like to see Aidan ‘Batman voice’ Pearce make at least a cameo. The dude got so much unwarranted hate, and I hope Ubisoft don’t simply drop him from the series.

For Honor also looked neat, but not particularly inspired. As far as medieval style combat goes, I was more interested in the new Mountain Blade – Bannerlord – which boasts an ‘improved’ siege system. And it did look nice, at least until it turned into a very familiar clusterf**k on the narrow walls.

We saw a little of the new Mass Effect, which I must admit caused a slight surge of excitement. Very slight. But I can’t deny it happened. There was a lot of new Star Wars shit announced, but practically nothing shown. There was also a reveal of a new Prey, which looks like it has nothing to do with the original, or the now cancelled original sequel.

We saw quite a bit of Battlefield 1 footage, but it didn’t get me very excited. It looks a lot like the clusterf**k that was Star Wars: Battlefront. Fun to play in short bursts, but lacking in depth and any long term appeal. Pretty, but shallow, and probably as short in content as Battlefront was on release.

A new Quake? No gameplay, but I’m interested. Fallout 4 is getting more DLC that is practically turning the game into a new Minecraft. Do people even still play that game for the story or quests, or do they just like building shit? I’d consider returning to the game if there was a ‘Repeatedly shoot Preston Garvey in the f**king face DLC’.

Bethesda also announced a Skyrim ‘Special Edition’, which looks like they slapped a poor quality ENB over the original game and textures. I recently began playing Skyrim again, and my modded game looks twice as good as this shit.

What else? The new Ghost Recon looks like a slightly more shoddy MGSV in terms of gameplay, but with co-op. Co-op! I really wish they’d stop with their scripted ‘gameplay’ demonstrations and unrealistic player communication.

There was a new Star Trek: Bridge Commander, only it wasn’t a new Bridge Commander (which sucks), but a VR Star Trek experience for you and three friends. If you have three friends who are all Trek fans and can afford VR.

We saw a little of Vampyr, which I’m willing to give a shot, if only because I really enjoyed the last two games from the developer. There’s a new Gears of War (meh), Dead Rising (eh), and a sequel to State of Decay which, if they can refine, expand and improve upon the original, might actually be really good.

A Gwent stand alone game was announced, which I’m not really fussed about. I enjoyed Gwent in The Witcher 3, but only really as part of the game, not it’s own thing. We saw a little of Scalebound, which I’ll keep an eye on. Oh, and Halo Wars 2. But that would mean ‘upgrading’ to Windows 10 which is something I’m reluctant to do.

Overall, a pretty good show this year. There’s enough coming up I’m interested in to keep me happy. I’ve not covered much from the Sony conference, but that shit always drags on for over two hours, so I normally just skim through it, and nothing this year really caught my eye.

There’s a new Resident Evil, but after the last few, do we really care? There’s a new God of War which looks like so many semi-open world, third person action games these days that I’m kind of amused. We also had Horizon, which still looks neat, but also another zombie themed game with a moody biker. All this third person ‘cinematic’ action shit starts to blur together after a while. I’m getting kind of tired of it.

And I really want to play Titanfall 2.