2024 E3 Season Takeaways

            Whoa, easy there Philly, you know you’re promoting games right?  “It’s just not true that if we go off and build great games, all of the sudden you’re going to see console shares shift” is what you said. What a strange take, also; THAT’S EXACTLY HOW IT WORKS…

 Hello, the “E3” season is mostly over with the ever mysterious Nintendo waiting to drop whatever they’ve got tucked away on us at some point in the next four months but surprisingly what I saw got me excited about gaming for the first time in a while and more surprisingly it was mostly from the Xbox showcase.

            I haven’t really been genuinely excited about games for a long time because Sony and Xbox’s first party stuff haven’t really done anything for me and everything else has been hero shooters, other multiplayer focused crap or soulslikes. Nintendo always delivers which is fine but it’s nice to see the others doing SOMETHING for a change. Just recently I’ve been playing Astro’s Playroom in between Assassin’s Creed Mirage and it was a decent little game. It felt like something Nintendo or Valve would’ve put out and it was nostalgic to relive all the PlayStation stuff from the beginning. I’ve been grieving, basically, over the stupidity of my past self getting rid of or trading in old systems and seeing all the old PlayStation stuff kind of made it sting more but I’m coping. Anyway, Sony showed a new, presumably bigger, game; Astro Bot. So that looks like it’ll be fun.

            Nothing really interested me from the Summer Gamefest side of things besides Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers Rita’s Rewind. It’s a 2D beat ‘em up similar to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredder’s Revenge that came out the other year. Similar to the point I’m surprised they’re not made by the same people. I had mentioned in my last wishlist post that I would like some more Power Ranger games and lo and behold we get one. I kind of wish it was for Dino Fury though, I get that Mighty Morphin’ is probably the more popular and the most iconic but I’d like to see more from other rangers teams. I was really excited to see they even had the old monsters from the show. It looks like a good game to get for my Steam Deck.

            Monster Hunter Wilds also had a new video towards the end of the PlayStation showcase, didn’t show a whole lot, a new monster, I was expecting a little more but maybe they’ll give more information at Gamescom. I’m a little like, unnecessarily bitter and agro at people claiming that the smithy, Gemma, is Little Miss Forge from MH4U. Like literally Minayle from has her exact get up and people are like “uh no not her, hair different” when hair CAN change color as people age and maybe she even DYED it but now with Gemma people are like “OH THAT’S THE CARAVANEER’S JACKET AND SOME DOLL THAT THE GUILDMARM HAD A SOME PICTURE AND THE BLONDE HAIR THOUGH” like NO ONE ELSE could POSSIBLY have the same jacket as the Caravaneer, they only made ONE OF THOSE. People claiming that Minayle is just paying homage to LMF but you can use that exact logic for Gemma! Again, irrational anger, I know but it’s like, Gemma’s hot. I don’t want her to be LMF, it’s weird for me. Minayle is good looking too but in her own way. Buff gurl. I like the buff gurlurl. It’s like, I can admire Minayle but I can’t with Gemma. I don’t know, whatever, fuck you all. I mean, it’s hard to tell if Minayle even is buff, I just imagine she is.

            So Xbox ended up showing some other IPs other than Gears and Forza. Well, they still showed a Gears game but WHAT CAN YA DO?? I noticed during Xbox’s showcase there were a ton of medieval games like do something else fellas. Fable interests me, I’ve never played the others so I’m keeping an eye on it, would like to see some gameplay at some point. Perfect Dark looks cool though. Looks like Mirror’s Edge crossed with a bit of Cyberpunk so I’m watching that one as well. I was glad to see Doom the Dark Ages isn’t as medieval as it sounds. It still has elements of it but there are still guns and mechs and cyberdragons! I really thought in Eternal we were going to be able to use one of the giant mechs at some point, or even in the DLC but that never happened so I’m glad it’ll be playable this time. The dragon bit instantly made me think of Dragon Commander, or what I was hoping Dragon Commander would be so that looked fun. I was glad to see guns though honestly because I think I mentioned before about a past Doom with axes and maces and such and I just couldn’t really picture how Doom would play with primarily melee weapons.

            Expedition 33 looked kind of cool to me. It looked kind of turn based, old Final Fantasy style gameplay which I’m not usually a fan of but I was okay with what I saw there. I don’t know, I’ll have to see more. There was no mention of Certain Affinity’s project suerte, Xbox’s MonHun like, but with the behemoth that is Wilds coming out next year I can see why they wouldn’t want to go head to head with it, if it’s even anywhere near being ready.

            Aside from that Ubisoft showed off their things. No new Splinter Cell. No look at the new Ghost Recon. Pretty much, for me, just more of a look into Assassin’s Creed Shadows and so far it looks pretty cool. Hopefully what they showed is closer to how the game actually is versus how they showed Black Flag off and how it ended up. There’s so much hate swirling around this game (amongst others) though, most for really stupid reasons but whatever. People are stupid and just have the need to shit on everything. So far I really like the way each character plays. It’s evident that AC Mirage was the testing ground for Naoe’s playstlye while Yasuke is more like the three AC’s before Mirage. I hope Naoe is a little tighter than Basim though, still had some of that Ubisoft/Animus jank where he’d jump in directions I didn’t want him to or perch on crap I didn’t want him to. Get off of the side of the stairs Basim, people are staring! JUST USE THE STAIRS LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN!  I did like at the beginning of the trailer they said something like “Yasuke, who’s history is a mystery,” meaning “we can do whatever the fuck we want with him.” It’s a videogame people, have a little fun would you?? Would it kill you? Could it? Maybe just a little? That might be one way to help the situation. No! Bad Aztec! What’re you saying!? But I really liked with some of the kill animations how the screen goes black and white with the blood being the only other color, gave me a Mad World and/or Wet vibe.

            Yeah, so that’s that. I think why I’m more excited about these games is because they’re single player or co-op focused instead of YOU NEED TO POUR HUNDREDS OF HOURS INTO THIS GAME TO EVEN MAKE A DENT. Like, one game like that is fine, in this case MHWilds, but I can’t juggle multiple games like that, leave me be. If I like your game I’ll play through it more than once but don’t make me do dumb, grindy, battlepass bullshit. So did any games jump out at you? Any thoughts on my ramblings? Comment below and maybe I’ll be back when Nintendo does something. I finished AC Mirage recently so I guess I’ll go get scared and traumatized by Hell Blade 2. Maybe I’ll play some Kirby’s Epic Yarn if it gets too much. Until next time, bye-bye!

           @AztecSauce