While Christmas in July does not really exist, gamers get probably the closest thing to it. The biggest video game conference in the world, E3, runs usually in early June.
At this event, people get to look at games coming out this year from major and small developers alike, and even get to see and hear what they are working on for the future.
This year, E3 ran from June 9-12 and many different developers got to show their stuff. Here is the unbiased breakdown of the show and the games that you should be excited for, along with the ones that you should have caution toward.
The first day started off with "Electronic Arts." With their press conference being first, they had a lot of pressure to basically get the conference going. EA's announcements mainly focused on updates to their sports titles, including having "Madden 19" available for the PC, which a lot of people were excited for.
The biggest news for them though came from their heavy hitters in "Battlefield V" which takes place in World War Two, and Bioware's new looter shooter in "Anthem," which brings a new take on the Destiny formula.
Respawn Entertainment also announced a new Star Wars game, "Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order" which takes place between episodes three and four, but it is still in development. No gameplay was shown this year, so look for that at next year's conference.
The team also announced and released "Unravel 2,"which was a nice little star on their report card after the success of the first game.
Unfortunately, the EA team did not really manage to wow anyone despite their strong games being shown. I would give their conference a C+ grade.
Some of the games hold a lot of potential such as "Battlefield V" and "Anthem" and I would recommend picking up "Unravel 2" if you enjoy single-player games.
EA's conference was the only one on June 9 and the next day brought some of the industry's heavy hitters. Microsoft was the first one up.
The Xbox developer came out swinging, announcing over 50 games at the conference.
They started out giving the fans exactly what they wanted with a trailer for "Halo: Infinite" and while it is nowhere close to being finished, they at least acknowledged that it will come in the next few years.
Microsoft also hammered home the trailers for the exclusive content including "Ori and the Will of the Wisps", "Forza Horizon 4", and "Gears of War 5." Oh, I forgot to mention a new "Battletoads" game as well.
On top of this, they even announced "Devil May Cry 5", "The Division 2", "Jump Force", "Just Cause 4", "Shadow of the Tomb Raider", and finally ended their conference with a trailer for a game that was announced forever ago by CD Projekt RED in "Cyberpunk 2077", which looked incredible.
The Xbox team covered everything they needed to cover and then some, and showed off some fantastic titles and surprised fans. To put the cherry on top though was the announcement of "Kingdom Hearts 3" coming to Xbox, which was formerly a PlayStation exclusive. The team killed it and they come out of the conference with an A+ grade.
Later that night, Bethesda rolled out their conference. The "Fallout and Elder Scrolls" developer showed off some 2019 titles in "Rage 2" and" Wolfenstein: Youngblood" and some games that could be at least a few years away in "Doom Eternal", "Starfield" and the game I will talk about in a few.
Mainly their conference was focused around "Fallout 76" which is a new multiplayer game in the franchise set in West Virginia. The game worried people that it was going to be an MMO but it looks more like a "Fallout"game with multiplayer, which is very nice indeed.
The game also has a map four-times the size of Fallout 4 which is also a nice touch. The game looks promising.
The team also tends to meme themselves during the event like the fake "Skyrim: Very Special Edition" trailer for the Amazon Alexaafter hearing feedback that "They will launch Skyrim on anything!"
Bethesda also does not hold back on language either, as they exclaimed F*** Nazis during their announcement of "Wolfenstein: Youngblood" (a game about killing Nazis), which gives some great entertainment value to the presentation.
Memery aside, Todd Howard's team killed it towards the end. He announced a mobile game "Elder Scrolls: Blades" which honestly looks cool despite my usual disdain for mobile games, and then flawlessly transitioned into talking about "the one everyone has been asking about."
That game of course is "Elder Scrolls VI." After seven years since the launch of "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" Todd Howard and his team finally unveiled the crown jewel of the entire four-day event.
While the trailer just showed a sweeping few of the land and the name, the mere fact that they announced it means that it will probably come in the next two years, and that makes fans very excited indeed.
No more memes and no more games. Bethesda came out guns blazing. Their conference gets an A grade.
Next up was Square Enix's showcase on June 11. I'm not going to talk much about this because they pretty much dropped the ball at the event.
While a lot of the games are probably going to be good games ("Shadow of the Tomb Raider", "Kingdom Hearts 3", etc…), they showed off a bunch of recycled trailers. The main show of the event was a Monster Huntercrossover event with Final Fantasy XIV, which is Square Enix's MMO, and while it is a fantastic MMO, that should not be your main showing when broadcasting to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
Add that on top of the fact that they did not talk at all about the remake of "Final Fantasy VII" and you have all the makings of a poor showcase. Square Enix gets a D- grade from me.
Ubisoft was next on the list that day, and once again the team really did not show anything spectacular.
The show started well on with a dance routine at the beginning.The team also had no dedicated speaker, which gave developers much more time to speak about their games, which is a nice touch, and showed off some nice surprises like the new "Trials Rising"game and raids in "The Division 2"
"Assassin's Creed Odyssey" was the climax of the show and the game looks beautiful.
While it is probably a reskin of "Assassins Creed: Origins", a game in Ancient Greece will be cool to say the least since there really is not much like it out there besides the original God of War games and those were a fictional tale of Kratos, not based around actual historical events.
Ubisoft did not blow anyone out of the water, but they certainly did not lose anyone like Square Enix did with their showcase. I give them a B- grade.
Next on the list was the second of the console heavy-hitters in Sony, and while they only showed off a couple of games, oh my lord those games looked incredible.
They started off in a tent with a man playing the theme of "The Last of Us" on banjo, which seamlessly transitioned into game-play of the "The Last of Us Part II."The game-play was incredibly visceral and the movement was fluid as you saw Ellie move between bookshelves and crawl under cars.
Everything looked to be dynamic and the combat looked fantastic. Oh, did I mention that the tent they were in looked like the tent that the cut-scene was in? Because it did and it was well done.
Also, Ellie kissed a girl in the cut scene during #pridemonth and it turns out that girl will be her main romantic interest during the game. Well done, Sony.
Moving on to the rest of the games, Sony showed off "Ghost of Tsushima", "Spider-Man"¸ and the long-awaited "Death Stranding."
All of which, not only looked fantastic, but played smoothly from the game-play that was shown. Top this off with the announcement of a remake of "Resident Evil 2" and you have a kickass showcase.
Hats off to Sony, because they killed it. While they did not show as many games this year as Microsoft, the major games they did show all looked to be home runs.
Sony gets an A+ grade for this conference.
Finally, the last of the big three console developers in Nintendo was up on June 12, the last day of the event. Nintendo showed off 30 minutes of "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate" and it looked good.
Also, smash finally added Ridley as a playable fighter and had all the old fighters return such as Snake, Ice Climbers and Pokémon Trainer so that was a nice surprise to see from them.
Other than smash, the team did not really show too much else, and there continues to be a lack of third-party support. While "Super Mario Party" and "Mario Tennis Aces" are coming out for the Switch as well as a new "Pokémon" game, I cannot say that it will be enough.
At least the games that have been out for it have been excellent because the Switch is still doing quite well despite this, but I would have liked to see more personally in terms of third-party support. Nintendo gets a B grade from me.
All in all, E3 was an incredible event for gamers across the country and there are a lot of promising titles coming out soon as well as hype being built for some incredible games that will launch in the next couple of years or so.
As for the overall winner of the event, I would say that Sony due to the strong showing of their flagship games, but Microsoft is close behind them in second and Bethesda comes in third.
Look out some of the games that I have on this list, as some of them will be some fantastic stories and experiences.
