PC Gaming Show with Day Nine and apparently Teddy
This time of year is normally a magical time for gamers. It is during June that we traditionally get a bunch of announcements surrounding E3 that ultimately set the expectations for what we should be anxiously watching for the remainder of the current year and most of the next. However there have been a few forces at work that have changed this dynamic significantly since the heady days of the early 2010s. Firstly a number of companies have broken out from the show and started doing their own thing on a more regular basis. Secondly we have a global event like Covid 19 that is causing pretty much everything to be cancelled.
As a result there is a void to be filled and it seems as though we have a wealth of options to fill it. Instead of getting a few big shows from various publishers or console manufacturers, we get an entire summer filled with smaller shows that really started reaching a fever pitch this week. Traditionally I have done coverage of each of the big shows, but quite honestly there is too much to cover at this point and not enough desire to do so. One of the interesting things I have noticed this year is how the various show options have more or less democratized access to smaller studios. As a result we are seeing a lot of A and AA studios punching well above their weight limit and going toe to toe with AAA announcements.
However before I get into specific games I feel like it is important to lay out the landscape. Here is a list of the shows that I am aware of, each of which filling the same sort of niche that the traditional E3 shows have. I have links to videos/vods if available currently and links to what information I do have for everything else.
There are a handful of events that IGN talks about on this schedule, but they don’t seem to be “named” like the Expo days so I have slipped those in separate from the IGN Expo block. The short of this is that we have a massive block of shows available if we so wish to partake. For those of us who never actually attended E3, but were instead limited to the pre-game that happens with the publisher shows… this is effectively like getting three different E3 periods. It is making me wonder if we are going to see a similar burst of shows around the time that GamesCom and PAX West would have normally been happening.
On With the Games
As I said before there were way too many games being announced to really talk about them all, so instead I am going to talk about a handful of games that stood out for one reason or another. I’ve not managed to make my way through ALL of the content to this point, and now have mostly just been focused on watching individual trailers since some of the shows have way more “couch chat” element than I care to partake of.
Godsfall PC Trailer
First up in the list of things that I want to talk about is Godsfall, which up until the PC Gaming Show I had only actually seen information surrounding it related to the PlayStation 5 release. The PC demo reel showed off significantly more of the world which is good, because I was getting to the point where I was a bit afraid that it might be an arena game. From the look and sound of it, this game is essentially Destiny but with melee combat. I am significantly more interested in it knowing that it is coming out on the PC, given that I tend to prefer this sort of game on that platform. Still very much looks like a higher resolution SkyForge.
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
This game only means something if you were either a Sega Master System kid, or were friends with a Sega Master System kid. There once was a department store chain called Montgomery Ward, and in it they sold Sega an TurboGrafx systems… and I spend so much time while my mom shopped hanging out and playing Alex Kidd. Years later I eventually owned a Sega Master System and the Master Gear Adapter for my Game Gear and these games are criminally underappreciated. Looking forward to playing this in a prettier form and hoping it holds up as well as my memories of it.
Werewolf: the Apocalypse – Earthblood
I feel like I know next to nothing about this game. I’ve done a bit of digging and it seems that this is going to be a third person single player action roleplaying game, but all of the trailers I have seen to date mostly just focus on cinematics of the World of Darkness setting. I am very interested because Werewolf: The Apocalypse was without a doubt my favorite of the World of Darkness settings, so with Bloodlines 2 coming out soon I am super down to see this setting get its due. I guess we will have to wait until July 7th when Nacon is set to show off some footage.
Mafia Trilogy Definitive Edition
I’ve never played one of the Mafia games, but I have to admit this trailer for the reworked first game really interested me. I always assumed incorrectly that the Mafia series was more Grand Theft Auto than story driven tale, and because of that I had more or less ignored it. With the first game getting a remaster treatment, and the second game having already gotten this… I feel like it might be a good time for me to sit down and play through the entire thing.
Torchlight III – Early Access Release
I’ve been in the alpha process for Torchlight III, previously Torchlight Frontiers for quite some time. The thing is however it was NDA bound and as a result I have not been able to talk about it much. During the PC Gaming Show, they shadow dropped the early access release and… what can I say… it is VERY early access. If you are interested in this game I would suggest maybe giving it a few weeks to stabilize before diving in. I spent most of Saturday getting disconnected or not being able to log in generally, and I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon getting disconnected after every quest. Its a good game, but very raw still and I question if they are maybe rushing it out the door a bit since there appears to still be the same infrastructure issues I experiences when a new version released and everyone flocked to test again.
Haven
This is a quirky game that appears to be everywhere right now and has appeared on multiple shows. I vaguely remember Ash talking about this briefly when we did the Pax South 2020 coverage show as it was apparently one of the Indie Megabooth titles. The idea is that you have a couple versus a hostile planet, and the game appears to move back and forth between ARPG type segments and more traditional menu driven JRPG style combat. There are also sequences that were shown that reminds me of a more Bioware style dialog choice story driven gameplay, so honestly right now I am a bit confused as to how the entire thing performs. That said it has made me interested enough to start watching what comes out about it. I dig the art style, and I did the concept of a romantic couple setting out on their own against a harsh environment.
New World
While in the case of Godsfall new information made me significantly more interested, I have to say the New World trailer has made me significantly less interested. I did not see a lot of game-play that actually looked interesting to me. What I did see instead was a bunch of siege game-play that reminded me of the big battles from Shadowbane, a game I was decidedly not into. I am hoping that this is not a PVP siege game that they just added PVE players in place of player characters, because the sizzle reel definitely looks like that. Public testing however will begin in just a few weeks, so I guess I will be able to see better footage of how the moment to moment feels at that point. For now I am super cautious about this maybe not being a game I am going to care about.
A Whole Lot of Games
Those were a few of the games that interested me. However as I said before there is a giant insurmountable wall of new games to talk about and as a result I only covered a small handful. Did you get to watch any of the shows over the weekend? If so what were some of the games that you were interested in that I didn’t cover? Drop me a line below with some of your favorites.
The post The Bounty of Not-E3 2020 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
PC Gaming Show with Day Nine and apparently Teddy
This time of year is normally a magical time for gamers. It is during June that we traditionally get a bunch of announcements surrounding E3 that ultimately set the expectations for what we should be anxiously watching for the remainder of the current year and most of the next. However there have been a few forces at work that have changed this dynamic significantly since the heady days of the early 2010s. Firstly a number of companies have broken out from the show and started doing their own thing on a more regular basis. Secondly we have a global event like Covid 19 that is causing pretty much everything to be cancelled.
As a result there is a void to be filled and it seems as though we have a wealth of options to fill it. Instead of getting a few big shows from various publishers or console manufacturers, we get an entire summer filled with smaller shows that really started reaching a fever pitch this week. Traditionally I have done coverage of each of the big shows, but quite honestly there is too much to cover at this point and not enough desire to do so. One of the interesting things I have noticed this year is how the various show options have more or less democratized access to smaller studios. As a result we are seeing a lot of A and AA studios punching well above their weight limit and going toe to toe with AAA announcements.
However before I get into specific games I feel like it is important to lay out the landscape. Here is a list of the shows that I am aware of, each of which filling the same sort of niche that the traditional E3 shows have. I have links to videos/vods if available currently and links to what information I do have for everything else.
There are a handful of events that IGN talks about on this schedule, but they don’t seem to be “named” like the Expo days so I have slipped those in separate from the IGN Expo block. The short of this is that we have a massive block of shows available if we so wish to partake. For those of us who never actually attended E3, but were instead limited to the pre-game that happens with the publisher shows… this is effectively like getting three different E3 periods. It is making me wonder if we are going to see a similar burst of shows around the time that GamesCom and PAX West would have normally been happening.
On With the Games
As I said before there were way too many games being announced to really talk about them all, so instead I am going to talk about a handful of games that stood out for one reason or another. I’ve not managed to make my way through ALL of the content to this point, and now have mostly just been focused on watching individual trailers since some of the shows have way more “couch chat” element than I care to partake of.
Godsfall PC Trailer
First up in the list of things that I want to talk about is Godsfall, which up until the PC Gaming Show I had only actually seen information surrounding it related to the PlayStation 5 release. The PC demo reel showed off significantly more of the world which is good, because I was getting to the point where I was a bit afraid that it might be an arena game. From the look and sound of it, this game is essentially Destiny but with melee combat. I am significantly more interested in it knowing that it is coming out on the PC, given that I tend to prefer this sort of game on that platform. Still very much looks like a higher resolution SkyForge.
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
This game only means something if you were either a Sega Master System kid, or were friends with a Sega Master System kid. There once was a department store chain called Montgomery Ward, and in it they sold Sega an TurboGrafx systems… and I spend so much time while my mom shopped hanging out and playing Alex Kidd. Years later I eventually owned a Sega Master System and the Master Gear Adapter for my Game Gear and these games are criminally underappreciated. Looking forward to playing this in a prettier form and hoping it holds up as well as my memories of it.
Werewolf: the Apocalypse – Earthblood
I feel like I know next to nothing about this game. I’ve done a bit of digging and it seems that this is going to be a third person single player action roleplaying game, but all of the trailers I have seen to date mostly just focus on cinematics of the World of Darkness setting. I am very interested because Werewolf: The Apocalypse was without a doubt my favorite of the World of Darkness settings, so with Bloodlines 2 coming out soon I am super down to see this setting get its due. I guess we will have to wait until July 7th when Nacon is set to show off some footage.
Mafia Trilogy Definitive Edition
I’ve never played one of the Mafia games, but I have to admit this trailer for the reworked first game really interested me. I always assumed incorrectly that the Mafia series was more Grand Theft Auto than story driven tale, and because of that I had more or less ignored it. With the first game getting a remaster treatment, and the second game having already gotten this… I feel like it might be a good time for me to sit down and play through the entire thing.
Torchlight III – Early Access Release
I’ve been in the alpha process for Torchlight III, previously Torchlight Frontiers for quite some time. The thing is however it was NDA bound and as a result I have not been able to talk about it much. During the PC Gaming Show, they shadow dropped the early access release and… what can I say… it is VERY early access. If you are interested in this game I would suggest maybe giving it a few weeks to stabilize before diving in. I spent most of Saturday getting disconnected or not being able to log in generally, and I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon getting disconnected after every quest. Its a good game, but very raw still and I question if they are maybe rushing it out the door a bit since there appears to still be the same infrastructure issues I experiences when a new version released and everyone flocked to test again.
Haven
This is a quirky game that appears to be everywhere right now and has appeared on multiple shows. I vaguely remember Ash talking about this briefly when we did the Pax South 2020 coverage show as it was apparently one of the Indie Megabooth titles. The idea is that you have a couple versus a hostile planet, and the game appears to move back and forth between ARPG type segments and more traditional menu driven JRPG style combat. There are also sequences that were shown that reminds me of a more Bioware style dialog choice story driven gameplay, so honestly right now I am a bit confused as to how the entire thing performs. That said it has made me interested enough to start watching what comes out about it. I dig the art style, and I did the concept of a romantic couple setting out on their own against a harsh environment.
New World
While in the case of Godsfall new information made me significantly more interested, I have to say the New World trailer has made me significantly less interested. I did not see a lot of game-play that actually looked interesting to me. What I did see instead was a bunch of siege game-play that reminded me of the big battles from Shadowbane, a game I was decidedly not into. I am hoping that this is not a PVP siege game that they just added PVE players in place of player characters, because the sizzle reel definitely looks like that. Public testing however will begin in just a few weeks, so I guess I will be able to see better footage of how the moment to moment feels at that point. For now I am super cautious about this maybe not being a game I am going to care about.
A Whole Lot of Games
Those were a few of the games that interested me. However as I said before there is a giant insurmountable wall of new games to talk about and as a result I only covered a small handful. Did you get to watch any of the shows over the weekend? If so what were some of the games that you were interested in that I didn’t cover? Drop me a line below with some of your favorites.
The post The Bounty of Not-E3 2020 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
For those who have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I have a semi-monthly series that I call “regularly playing” where I attempt to update the sidebar on my blog. This is the second month where I am trying to do this at the beginning of the month rather than remembering to do it towards the end of a month. June was a pretty stable month as far as game playing, and effectively there is really nothing much changing in the mix. However I am still going to go through the actions of this post to keep myself in the habit.
To Those Remaining
Bloodstained – PC and Switch
I am completely in love with this game. I’ve written so much about it recently, but effectively this is as thought you had sat down immediately after creating Symphony of the Night and just kept going on and adding in all of the features you ever wanted in the game. The experience is flawless, and while I am hearing there are issues with the Switch port, I am too busy making my way through the PC experience to care. They have all the time in the world to fix that. I have gotten the “bad” ending, and now am trying to work on better endings.
Destiny 2 – PC
I went on a brief binge of playing this game and then once again got distracted by something else. I want to return to playing on a more regular basis, but I am going to have to burn down some of the other games I am working on to free up the mental bandwidth. Bungie is doing a great job of stewarding the game into this new era and I am looking forward to some of the changes that are coming with the new expansion. The game is in a great place, so well worth checking out.
Diablo 3 – PC and Switch
This is still very much in the rotation because I have more objectives to accomplish during this season. I’ve completed one conquest which can be seen in the above screenshot, involving collecting a 50 million gold streak. The next up is going to be doing a bunch of GR55s as multiple classes. I still have yet to master any set dungeons so I should probably knock that out soon as well. Essentially I got distracted but I still very much want the penultimate reward this season.
Dragalia Lost – Android
This game is effectively my night cap. I crawl into bed and spend 10-15 minutes playing this on my tablet before eventually closing the lid and going to sleep. Dragalia Lost lives in this weird place where it is just engaging enough to keep me playing on a regular basis… and not engaging enough to keep me playing it constantly to the point of burning out. In part the later part is in thanks to its mobile mechanics which favor short bursts of play rather than extended play cycles. Whatever the case going on two years I am still doing this thing.
Elder Scrolls Online – PC
I am playing nowhere near as much as this game deserves but I am still periodically logging in to move the needle forward. Right now I am deeply distracted by all of the other games that are on the market and calling my attention. I will return to you at some point when a lull happens to continue adventures in Morrowind proper.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC
I am completely back on my bullshit folks… and loving it. Just prior to the launch of Shadowbringers I found a way to get re-engaged and as a result I think the expansion thus far has been all the more meaningful. I am not sure what else I can really say about this that I have not already said in a bunch of recent blog posts. Final Fantasy XIV is a lovingly curated game experience, and I am enjoying the hell out of the ride.
Magic the Gathering Arena – PC
This month I have not spent an awful lot of time playing, but it is still on the list of things that I dive into when I want something more quiet and contemplative. I am not entirely certain this one is ever really going to leave the proper rotation, at least not for the time being. The pace of magic sets being released really reinforces the need to keep popping ones head back into the game every so often. Yesterday Core 20 was released, so I need to pop in and check it out.
To the New and Returning
For the very first time in the history of this column of sorts… I don’t have any new games being added to the mix. I reached a point of stasis this month and for the time being it is a pretty great mix of titles to be engaged in.
To Those Departing
Once again… nothing to see here. I didn’t out and out stop playing anything this month but continued largely playing the same things.
Honorable Mentions
Wizards Unite – Android
This one is sliding in as an honorable mention and not something new… because quite frankly I don’t think I will be spending any more time with the game. Wizards Unite released for mobile platforms and represents an attempt to capture the same magic as Pokemon Go… but with the Harry Potter IP. I feel like they have failed to do that, and as a result have created a fairly cumbersome and often times unfun experience. It is worth mentioning, but only just.
E3 As a Whole
A lot of my bandwidth was taken up by watching the E3 coverage unfurl, and as a result I am giving it an honorable mention as well. It was not a great show, but there were several gems. The new Commander Keen game is not really ones of them, but I am just in part happy see ANYTHING to do with that IP. It was probably a toss up between Microsoft and Square for who had the best showing, and then everything else falls down significantly after that.
At this point we are out of the big shows that are associated with the lead up to E3. Now we are left with whatever happens to leak out of the show floor or through the various extended meet and greet streams that so many of the “networks” happen to be running. At this point I have talked about Stadia, EA Play, Microsoft, Bethesda, PC Gaming, UbiSoft and Square Enix. That simply leaves the lone standout from Tuesday… Nintendo and their latest Nintendo Direct.
Nintendo Direct E3 Show
There are a lot of folks that feel like Nintendo “won” E3 and I will admit it was a packed show. However along the lines of EA Play it was packed with a bunch of stuff that I didn’t necessarily care about. Two of the big reveals were related to Smash Bros, which is not really a game that excites me. Other than that we got some dates for games that had been in the pipeline, but it failed miserably because the one game I wanted more information on and or a release date… was completely absent. I am all about Metroid which is still more or less missing in action.
The Legend of Zelda – Link’s Awakening Remake
One of the highlights of the show is that we saw more footage of the Link’s Awakening remake and with it got a firm release date of September 20th 2019. There isn’t a lot to say here other than I am looking forward to playing it. I never played the original on the Gameboy as I had moved on to other things at the time. I would love to see more games get the remake treatment that look as gorgeous as this one does.
Panzer Dragoon Remake
This was definitely a shocker title, because it appears to be a remake of the Sega Saturn Panzer Dragoon title. I mean these were fun back in the day because it was a 3D shooter while on back of a Dragon. It does make me wonder if we are also going to get a remake of Nights into Dreams on the Switch given that it ran on I think the same engine? I can’t tell if this is a remake or a remaster to be be honest. Regardless it is really cool to see this showing up.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
I’ve never played a proper Animal Crossing title, but I did enjoy Pocket Camp quite a bit until I wandered away from it like I do most mobile games. I have been looking forward to this being my first title in the series to play so I am hoping it is excellent. Graphics wise everything looks awesome so far. I am not as pumped as some people might be for the title given again… I’ve never really played a mainline game in the series.
Contra Rogue Corps
I am mostly including this one because… first off I was shocked to see a Contra game at the show. Secondly it looks like absolute shit and I am wondering if this is something that had been in the works for the 3DS and then was later re-purposed to be a Switch game. The textures are blurry and muddy, and the color palette is complete nonsense. This just does not inspire much confidence. Coming back to this… after looking at the PS4 trailer it looks like this is just a shitty port to the switch because the Sony version looks way better.
Trials of Mana – Seiken Densetsu 3 Remake
Just like I was excited to see Romancing SaGa 3 get a proper localization I am very happy to see this game get a localization and a remake. This has been on the list of games I wanted to play for ages since the Super Nintendo era when I found out it existed but only in Japanese. Not a lot to say, it looks good and it also looks like the cast of characters have been represented from what I can remember as faithfully. The positive about a lot of these 16 bit era Japanese games is there was an awful lot of artwork that existed to be used as a reference.
Unnamed Breath of the Wild Sequel
Now we really shouldn’t be shocked at this announcement, but at the very end of the Nintendo direct they showed off that they were working on a Breath of the Wild Sequel. Now the internet or maybe just my twitter feed… seems to be losing their shit over short haired Zelda. Then again it is mostly just Ryuhkin generating most of those retweets. There had been rumors that they were planning on building a new story in the same engine and get it to market quickly, but now we have confirmation of that. Something definitely to look forward to but past that not an awful lot to go on yet.
General Thoughts on E3 2019
So at this point I sorta want to sit back and talk about E3 2019 as a whole, which I realize the show itself won’t be over until the weekend. However for the gamers at home the “show” is effectively all of the presentations leading up to the actual events. There were really two takeaways that I had, the first being that the absence of Sony was noticeable and felt really weird to have a vacuum from team blue. The second big take away is that in general it was a down year with what it feels like everyone preparing for the next console generation which by all looks seems to be targeting Holiday 2020.
I would have to go back and check my notes from the various E3 presentations of the past, but it definitely feels like this might be the first year when nothing really surprised me. What I mean by that is always in the past it seemed like there was a game that had come from out of left field and gave a demo or a slick marketing video that made me extremely giddy inside. That just didn’t happen this go around, and it could be the sign of a bunch of things. Maybe the industry has moved away from whatever games really made me tick, or maybe like I said before this is just an in-between year.
Regardless the end result is a very let down feeling after exiting E3 season. That is not to say there won’t be a lot of awesome things coming out during 2019, but we already knew about them ahead of time. I guess indicates that companies are retracting around the importance of E3 as a construct. Activision/Blizzard was a complete no show during the proceedings and so many of the games that I didn’t necessarily talk about… had been announced and were already deeply ingrained in the zeitgeist before the show happened. For an industry that used to revolve around E3 and CES… it seems like neither holds any importance at all these days which is bizarre as a gamer.
Early on I gave the analogy of the Christmas Catalog or the Toys R Us Big Book… and I guess it continues to be apt. Those are both things that faded over time as they lost significance and importance to the consumers. Similarly it seems that the E3 show is fading as they are no longer the primary vehicle of delivering information to the customers for the coming year. Nintendo Direct and shows like it seems to be the way we are heading. On one level I like getting little bits of information throughout the year within months of the release of a product. It feels good to know that the thing you just saw is going to be in your hands within a few weeks time.
However there is a part of me that misses the pomp and circumstance of having this big show meaning so much. That said of all of the shows I have to give credit to Microsoft probably being my favorite. They showed a lot of great games and gave a vision of being able to play those games on whatever platform you wanted to with XCloud. They also announced what the future was going to be with the Scarlett product, and because of all of that the E3 format still seems to be working well for them.
As far as a second place I would probably place Square Enix and Nintendo in a tie because they also delivered really great presentations. The worst is EA Play which is not shocking because I often time place EA at the bottom. However I was shocked to see just how bad the UbiSoft presentation was this year, given that is usually firmly in the middle of the pack. Bethesda did a fine job of displaying the titles that they had to show off, but it most definitely felt like an in-between year for them. I guess the ultimate question is… when is Sony going to do their own console reveal? Additionally after the sluggishness of E3 2019 and the financial troubles reported surrounding the convention… will there be an E3 2020?
So after seeing all of the shows at this point, which was your favorite? What were your general thoughts about E3 as a whole? Leave me a comment below.
