E3 2018 - Sony

Cocaine beard has seemingly created his own Santa's Grotto for Playstation's audience this E3. He spouts the standard platitudes inside their "church tent" before introducing a similarly low key mellow banjo player. Did Sony lose half the company gambling or something?

Nobody hold your lighters up, you'll burn the place down.

I retain my stance from Bethesda's review that non-game music always kind of misses the mark at these events. Thankfully this banjo guy segues into the soundtrack and footage of The Last Of Us: Part Two with Ellie at some kind of post-apocalypse prom dance with her girlfriend. This transitions very brutally into a gameplay demo that, as expected sees Ellie taking the lead role and much of Joel's functionality.

Stealth, gunplay and melee gameplay all seems intact as does the viciously vacant morality of the people of TLoU's world. Not much is different aside from some new stealth and dodging manoeuvres and an overall smoothness that is suspiciously impressive. If the demo was doctored in any way i certainly didn't spot it but perhaps we're just at that blurred line of cutscene and gameplay now.

Unfortunately this strong start crumbles into a shoe salesman telling us that the crowd "is currently moving on to the next part of the experience." which makes Sony's E3 sound like a theme park or one of those haunted trails where minimum wage graduates in face paint scream at you in the dark for an hour...I'm sure it's not that though #livingwage.

Shoeman and Clementine interview Shawn Layden behind what looks like a hastily assembled worktop tucked into the corner of a room somewhere. Shawn talks about letting developers reach their creative vision unimpeded which is great and all but this looks like the shit I usually skip before and at the end of the conference. Is this the first time an E3 conference has had a broadcast intermission?

Continuing with what I hesitate to even call a trailer so much as an advert ripped straight from Facebook we're shown a moving bullet in the hope it keeps our interest/arousal piqued. "Preorder CODBLOPS4 and get 4 REMASTERED CODBLOPS2 and CODBLOPS1 MAPS TO USE IN CODBLOPS3 BY WAY OF CODBLOPS9 TWINNED WITH HAUBOURDIN IN ASSOCIATION WITH PEPSI AND CODBLOPSCROPTOPS IN SHOPS NOPS...CODBLOPSPHWOAR! COMING SOON" Sadly not even the ghost of Billy Mays could convince me to care about this and it's now painfully obvious they're just stalling for time.

Soggy shoes and clementmind desperately drag some other randomers to their panel to chat shit before barricading themselves with some bewilderingly brief trailers which they themselves admit most people have apparently already seen.

Ping-ponging back and forth, the panel flounder and flail trying to fill for time. It seems even the pretence of not talking pure shite falls away into filling dead air with "we're almost ready. We're so almost ready, only a few mere seconds away at most surely before we return to the main E3 showcase just as soon as we go to see that which is very soon so stay tuned as we nearly head over to where it's almost time for more things of actual substance and importance."

The only thing more annoying than the pungent awkward video-game-less atmosphere there was realising here with a final sixth trigger pull that I forgot to load the gun before starting E3 Russian Roulette.

Guess I'll have to settle for cringing myself into lockjaw.

Evidently the barn location was just for TLoU and not worth the set up frankly. Now we find ourselves in a domed, more traditionally E3-looking place with a lone man in traditional Japanese robes playing a wind instrument on stage. I am sensing a pattern and it's a potentially drawn out and painful one as our musician repeatedly struggles with his instrument.

Finally this leads into Ghost of Tsushima, a game I knew nothing about until just now. Shawn laden with cocaiden however claims the conference is focusing more on a few games in depth rather than "big surprises" which is actually very welcome after writing the words "CG trailer" so many times this year it might as well be my signature.

Ghost appears to be an action game set in the midst of a Mongolian invasion of Japan. The gameplay seems unremarkable but certainly not bad and graphically it seems better looking than the actual setting it was based off probably did.

Thankfully without needing another musical introduction, a trailer for Control plays. A surreal third person shooter where your character can seemingly be subjected to MC-Escher level design at any moment. A handgun, powers of flight and telekinesis look like your primary skills against malformed human creatures but the actual plot is unclear at this point. I'm always down for trippy mind-bending aesthetics but the best games incorporate them into the gameplay too so worth keeping a cautiously optimistic eye on this one.

Speaking of the best games, after so long a trailer finally reveals the Resident Evil 2 remake. Not a lot of gameplay shown but just confirmation it still exists is a relief. A January 2019 release and answering the burning question of camera style, it has ultimately opted for the RE4 over-the-shoulder type. Otherwise it appears to nail the atmosphere and hit all the right beats of the original...Apart from the inclusion of better voice acting though which is a relief/shame (delete as appropriate)

Swinging all the way to the other end of the tonal scale comes a goofy sci-fi platformer called Trover Saves The Universe. It doesn't look like much right now but with the creators of Rick and Morty behind production it could be at least be an amusing affair.

Kingdom Hearts 3 continues to be the most confusing nonsensical shit I've seen since Death Stranding which then proceeds to upstage it by a degree of Whattheactualhelltillion and five. The trailer seems to show a lot of gameplay and yet I still can't say for sure what is happening.

Norman Feetus is some kind of hellscape Fed-Ex delivery man who has to traverse mountains and ravines, whilst also avoiding the semi invisible black tar ghost monsters. There is a lady with spiky shoulders who mentions something called "Timefall" and seems like an ally but in her spare time eats fleshy bug things so...yeah...That's about the best I can do to describe the now seemingly unfiltered madness of Kojima's mind.

To balance out the confusing weirdness, here is a tame shot of a lady with a Sci-Fi umbrella...Unless it's just broken.
Agh fuck! Even this just poses more questions!

Far more knowable and less challenging, at least to us but perhaps not FromSoft and their lawyers. Nioh 2 continues the Japan Souls experience, right off the back of FromSoft announcing Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice at Microsoft's event. I can't say much about Nioh 2 unfortunately because my nemesis the brain-dead vision-mixer returns to implement that infuriating pointless fuckery of zooming out of the screen to show the motionless audience silently watching the screen.

Last but not least comes the Spiderman game (Is it really just called Spiderman?). The writing seems on point, the passable if now slightly overdone Arkham style combat is coupled with what looks like smooth and fun web swinging. Forever the biggest mystery and seemingly the hardest yet most essential thing for these games to get right. Lots of classic and some lesser known villains get involved and overall it's a very promising look at the game.

This weirdly structured conference kind of comes to an end with the typical summary montage but then shoeman and satsuma return to show a cryptic CG teaser of a Fromsoft VR title about fairies. Following this we see a lot more of Spiderman in its open world environment followed by an explanation of what the weird creature interludes were in between all the major game segments this conference.

Turns out they were manifestations from the seemingly limitless creation game Dreams that was hinted with an intriguing yet sceptically ambitious trailer last year. We get a brief look at some gameplay and the devs are keen to emphasise the simplicity with which you and friends can use the tools.

If you have dreams about pink trees it means you were a flamingo in a past life.

This seems like one you'll need to try yourself to really know the limits and details of what's possible and whether it satisfies what you personally want to create. These types of games aren't for everyone but myself, I'm pleased to see it at least still exists and a beta is approaching later in the year.

I don't know if I'm covering post-show content now or when this thing officially ended but all else that happened was more of the panel chatterblabbing, schedules and time-lapses of Shawn's lesbian barn so I think it's safe to call it a day there. An odd, different, patience-testing and quite clumsy conference from Sony but they did show more actual raw gameplay footage than the others and most of it was of a very high quality. Perhaps next year just do that without all the musical chairs and indeed musical non-chairs.

E3 2018 - Ubisoft

Soulless corporate stooges and transparent fake pally businessmen step aside, the masters of cringe are here. Within seconds I'm looking at a dancing tool in a panda ringleader costume relegated to an alleyway but sadly not a dumpster. More preening pantomime humiliations convulse all over the place and I try to escape early to be met with another empty chamber. After being absorbed into one dancer's stomach we finally reach a stage but not an end to the costumed carnival of cheese.

I get that this is Just Dance's shtick but by Christ I cringed the skin on my face inside out. They didn't even show the fucking game either.

Was really hoping one of these chucklefucks would get devoured by a street-sweeper.

A CG trailer for Beyond Good and Evil 2 shows...honestly I don't even know. I didn't play the first but was it always full of awfully voiced, horrific looking animal people? I thought it was about taking photos.

A producer and narrative designer arrive on stage to show 20 seconds of footage alongside a lot of rambling about the seedy sci-fi world they've created. Then suddenly Joseph Gordon Levitt bum rushes the stage and explains his new company HitRecord and the slightly unclear way it allows the community to be a part of creating the game, which sounds...convenient for Ubisoft.

The giddy devs then exit the stage and while they think they "nailed it" the person in charge of their microphones clearly didn't.

A new bloke appears to praise Rainbow Six Siege before introducing Another Mindset. Unfortunately not a literal mindset that could perhaps convince Ubi to have less circus shit at their conferences, but what I think is an emotional documentary about pro-gamers of Rainbow Six Siege. Was anyone asking for that? Will that footage not essentially be a Let's Play with occasional live action scenes going to get more Relentless from the corner shop?

The onesie gimp duo from last year apparently got divorced and only one of them got custody of the tiny dirt bike.  Arriving very slowly in an Evel Knievel get up before climbing on stage and eating shit face first into a collapsible podium. Credit where it's due, the drawn out aftermath with stagehands sweeping up the wreckage got a smirk from me.

Somehow less embarrassing than most of EA's conference.

The chunky funnyman gets another less ridiculous but still self-admitted fatman to introduce Trials: Rising which looks the same as the last game except apparently they got Youtubers involved in the development. The closing trailer does at least seem aware that a large part of the appeal of these games is crashing rather than completing the courses.

This E3 seems weirdly denim themed as a melodramatic dev caught between dressing down in jogging bottoms and trying to invent a denim corset comes on stage to talk about the Division 2.

A lengthy CG trailer tells us nothing I didn't already know even when I've actively tried to avoid watching anything related to this game out of sheer boredom. Mr Lacking a Wardrobe Division returns to introduce unique weapons like an explosive crossbow and a grenade launcher which surely are practically the same thing.

Those are the names of the three clothing brands he mashed together.

They also have three DLC's planned but they're free so that gets an applause. From the crowd I mean not me. I was distracted by how much of his speech started sounding like political commentary.

Maybe that's the appeal of these games? Abe Lincoln quotes and talk of "History's defining moment." makes the generic third person squad shooter seem deeper than it actually is. They even use music from a band (admittedly one I'm a fan of) that blends Chain-gang black slave songs with satanist heavy metal in the needless second CG trailer so I guess political controversy is just their marketing angle.

"Shut up and plant the C4." - Abe's Squadmate

Crew members attempt to inconspicuously move an orchestra on stage whereupon a live musical performance accompanies the next trailer. Mario Rabbids Kingdom Battle Donkey Kong Adventure is a fucking stumbling homunculus of a name even if it is just DLC but from what I hear about the prior game it will probably be at least half good.

People continue to mutter obscenities and racial slurs into their accidentally audible microphones before a CG trailer plays for the pirate ship sections of Assassin's Creed 4. Now shrewdly made into a full game called Skull and Bones.

A man with time to grab a scarf but not to do up his blazer explains more of the game before edited footage somewhere between a demo and a trailer shows gameplay at last. It is still blatantly the torso of AC4 but there appears to be enough new depth and tactics to justify its existence and it still looks fun after the remodelling.

Continuing the celeb train Elijah Wood and game director Benoit Richer introduce Transference. A cinematic semi-live action psychological thriller intended for VR but thankfully not exclusive to it.

Star Fox has been demoted to some toy tie-in spaceship shooter called Starlink. That said, it appears functionally more interesting than Star Fox Zero did. To ram the point home they bring a slightly befuddled Miyamoto into the audience to give his implied blessing before handing him a model Arwing and taking him "backstage".

"Mate I've already got like a hundred of these."

Unable to afford their Viking Commander anymore For Honor's less intimidating creative director insists the game works a lot better now and offers to give it away free for anyone who can traverse Uplay on PC. On top of this they're adding a new China faction and a castle siege multiplayer mode which I would have assumed was already in the game given its prominence in all the demos and trailers.

The Crew 2 is a racing game and between the lady introducing its' thick accent and being centimetres from eating her microphone I'm not sure anyone understood a word she said about the game. Thankfully I care only slightly less than this conference's sound engineers.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey is Assassin's Creed Obviously going to be shown since it was already leaked. Some irritatingly intermittent footage eventually gives way to a pretty undoctored seeming gameplay demo featuring RPG elements from Origins, all out war more than assassinations and as you'd expect a fantastic, authentic looking Greek environment.

The only game that lets you lie to Socrates' face.

Yves then brings everyone on stage to clap themselves or the audience or video games in general. It was very unclear but there was a lot of clapping and smiling going on. So as expected Ubisoft started horrific but unexpectedly at least nursed the wound into a peaceful death. It still doesn't redeem the nightmare-inducing panto shit they keep doing though.

I get that drama students need money but there has to be a better way.

E3 2018 - Bethesda

I almost didn't write a review for Bethesda this year since I thought "They'll probably do fine without much to mock or laugh at." Turns out I was both right and wrong which is the worst kind of wrong. Starting with such a saccharine "Look we're human trailer" it almost felt like parody with "This is Bethesda" actually being typed out and put on screen, while "Generic Inspirational Beats #4" and "Smiley Twee Tunes #11" played in the background. Bethany Esda goes on at length about how gosh darn diverse, friendly and fun Bethesda is to work for. You're not EA, you don't need to defend that. Doing so without provocation just makes you look weird at best and guilty preachy at worst.

Unless you're baking a watermelon-based video game I don't care.

Pete Hinemind walks out and flashes the cameraman before continuing the intro video's ride that nobody asked to be on. Yammering about how great their company is, the now obligatory and thus meaningless thanking of the fans and shitting on Walmart.

After promising a look at Rage 2 what we get instead is a live performance from Andrew WK a man connected to the game in so much as he said the title a few times. Unless someone performs a blood magic ritual and resurrects David Bowie or someone of his caliber, I don't think non-game music is ever going to work at these events. Even the cameras couldn't find enough people smiling to give the illusion of excitement.

When that finally ends instead of that look at Rage 2 we get the game's directors talking bollocks and doing a painful David and Goliath comedy act (or possibly an ad for Rogaine) Tiny Tim tells us "I know that you are here to see the game" Which must mean this pointless pre-amble is specifically included just to waste everybody's time.

The eventual gameplay demo features Mad Max aesthetics and Doom style FPS action which seems solid albeit very scripted in this instance. The protagonist acquires what I can only describe as a poorly chosen upgrade to show in this demo as "Shatter" is a dishonestly named, fairly limp Jedi force push and the protagonist seems like the only one impressed by it.

Next in eyeball range is a community manager for Elder Scrolls Legends. A card game video game that has apparently won awards without being released and has yet more cringeworthy people-focused trailers that outdo those usually done by Nintendo. At least theirs are usually speechless. "This is action. This is story." This is a fucking card game, shut up.

All the accumulated money this man has spent on microtransactions.

The director for Elder Scrolls Online arrives and signposts the third asked-for-applause of this conference so far. "We're over 11 million players now" "We were named MMO of the year for the third straight year" Who are you trying to convince? Anyone watching this has at least a passing interest in your games but the self-congratulatory circle jerk that has been 99% of the show up until now can undo your achievements pretty damn quick. "On the off-chance you aren't playing Elder Scrolls Online" Yeah that's the kind of thing I'm referring to.

Marty and Hugo and their identical smiles introduce sequel Doom Eternal, stoking the fires of hype with rhetorical questions only to piss it all away by admitting there's no real footage until Quakecon.

Quake Champions' community manager decides to repeatedly ask for applause and hype instead of showing us anything. "We've been doing this for a long time." and yet you haven't learnt not to put *pause for applause* in your auto-cue scripts. The trailer has progressed from CG to gameplay in a year but still looks to be a pretty mediocre hero/class shooter bandwagon affair. Doom's reboot was classic yet modernised, Quake Champions just looks outdated. 

Prey creators announce an impressive amount of new modes and DLC for the game in between some dreary comedy and live action "bits"

I'd like to direct your attention to the excellent side-eye the audience member between them is giving.
It was pretty much my reaction also.

The unfortunately named Jerk Gustafsson and the slightly more fortunate Jens Matthies arrive to namedrop more awards they've received before finally announcing Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Set in the 1980's and starring the most unfortunately named protagonist BJ's twin daughters, the game will have co op and...that's all we know because all they had was a CG teaser trailer of course.

I guess it will probably be good based on the success of its previous outings but that mindset seems to be the theme of this conference which all its speakers are relying on for unearned praise. Beans Means Hines returns to announce Prey and Wolfenstein VR with nothing more than a logo for each before spouting the nontroversial yet recently repopularised opinion that is "fuck Nazis".

This baffling scene atop all the wanky award wielding and constant screaming interjections from the audience are enough to make me try and quit like Hitler or "do a hashtag #QUITLER" if I was being as try-hard as these fucks to appeal to blithering youths. Unless Pete Hines is actually Saint Peter Hines however, my attempt dismally fails.

Just in time to see him introduce Todd Howard like he's a fucking rockstar complete with strobe lights, theme music and audience wailing. Todd paces up and down doing his stand up routine before playing a comedy sketch that knowingly mocks how often Skyrim has been rereleased on different systems. Still did it though didn't you.

A lot easier to do this now that you have all the money from it.

Fallout 76's arrival does seem to improve the overall quality of the conference or perhaps Todd is just better at working the room. Alongside footage he mentions the many creepy new creatures, sixteen times the graphical detail and six different distinct regions to explore in virtual Virginia.

All good sounding features until he announces the game is always online. Mercifully this is not essential and he wisely goes on to dissuade a lot of the panic that phrase normally immediately instils. The audience banshee that went bath salts apeshit on syllable one of the sentence didn't know that however so I'm curious as to what exactly she was excited for.

You'd have to be insane or EA to think always online is an advantage so it can't be that. Possibly the pay cheque for crowd plant fake hyper upper she'll soon receive, although I wouldn't hold that in too high regard when it seems it'll be split among at least 50 other shit-flinging chimps in the auditorium.

Griping aside (momentarily) Fallout 76 looks very promising and a lot of fun. The darkly comic 50's Vault-Tec infomercials remain entertaining and go into depth on a lot of the game's features.

Todd also announces a mobile game I somehow don't hate. Elder Scrolls: Blades looks genuinely pioneering in being a console quality, substantial game with multiple modes, connectivity and useful settings to alleviate the irritations that often come with playing these more intensive and non-arcade action mobile games.

If you can at least avoid hand cramp while playing, I'll consider this a success. 

Surprisingly it is also free which me suspects may mean in app purchases but regardless it seems like a good quality title with a release date later this year...and it's not a bloody card game. The next announcement is Bethesda's "first wholly original franchise in 25 years" which I don't think really reflects well on them and their creativity but okay.

An incredibly brief teaser is hopefully not all we'll see of this for 25 years but it's called Starfield and it's presumably Sci-Fi and/or space-based. It tells us next to nothing but I'm not gonna knock new IPs too hard when narrow minded fanboys will do that for me.

What I will knock however is the standing ovation that a CG helicopter shot of a mountain got. This was apparently The Elder Scrolls VI which is an exciting concept in our heads where we can speculate and imagine but not so much on screen from the people actually making it. Was this "trailer" just to say that you're making it? Because you don't need to be a business savvy stockbroker to know that was the most obvious guarantee of a thing being made since Snoop Dogg started buying up greenhouses..

Difficult to know which was more annoying here. The public displays of sneering businessman reach-arounds, the humiliating death rattle of uninvited "comedy" or the playpen full of volumetrically challenged shitheels. Either way there was some interesting stuff here but it wasn't worth wading through all the sewage to get to.

Is this supposed to be an iconic region I immediately recognise? Because I checked with other people and it's not.