Summer Game Bullshit Top 10 Announcements

Geoff Keighley anointed himself as the new overlord of all the game awards and announcements, so we essentially have 3.5 announcement windows — Summer Game Fest and the follow-up shows as an E3 replacement, gamescom (which also has Keighley as a host), Tokyo Game Show, which is more for the Japanese companies, and in the last couple of years we didn’t get much juice, and The Game Awards (cheers, Geoff). This year’s E3-lite was so bad that even the poll made by Geoff on his Twitter was dominated by the answer that the show was underwhelming. Still, there were games that caught my attention despite everyone’s best efforts. This is a list of those games. I omitted the previously announced titles, this is purely for the new shit.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure

I don’t think anyone expected to see this at the Xbox Showcase, but I’m very glad we did. I very much enjoyed the original Life is Strange up until the last episode, and the fact that Max is coming back as the protagonist makes me very happy. She was amazing in the original — dorky, genuine, kind, determined. Her characterization was very much helped by the fact that we could hear her thoughts, so I hope that’s the case again. She also became so incredibly pretty, like holy.
I do have some reservations as well, though. The fact that she’s back means that one of the endings of the original is officially canon, so I do think it devalues the personal experiences somewhat. I would hope that they have the option to pick the major choices from the original, but I doubt that, as the game is almost 10 years old. Also, fuck that early access bullshit.
Anyway, I can’t wait!

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Another big surprise of the Xbox Showcase. At first, it looked like it’d be just another 3rd person action game, but it happened to be a turn-based RPG with some contextual action moments. The setting looks like modern-day France some artsy-fartsy fantasy France, destroyed by some kind of big bad, and now edgy-looking young adults try to fight it. Looks good, hopefully plays well too, and the story isn’t embarrassing.

Nobody Wants to Die

I love cyberpunk as a genre, and what they showed here appeals to my senses very much. A noir, retro-looking future is not what we get every day, and while we have no clue what kind of game this will even be, I’m going to play it regardless simply because of the setting. It also looked very good visually from the small trailer that they showed off.

Perfect Dark

Look, I get it that what they showed exists in one way or the other in numerous games already, and this isn’t quite what the fans of the old Perfect Dark expected. I’m also not sure if this tries to be an imsim, or is it just a shooty-stealthy-parkoury action, but as long as it’s not devoid of something, anything original, as long as the story is not complete degeneracy, and as long as those locations and the setting they showed aren’t just cherry-picked moments and it’s all like that, sign me up.

Sid Meier's Civilization VII

Civilization V was the best strategy game in existence for me. I spent an ungodly amount of hours on it, even before I got the Internet and Steam account. Civ VI was a huge step back for me, as they followed up Civ V’s unstacking of units by now unstacking cities, and it became bloated. The visual style also never appealed to me, and the lack of some basic shit in the release version (as is tradition) was also baffling. Nowadays, it’s mostly a good game that I still can’t get into, so I really, really hope that Civ VII is a revolution, not an evolution.

WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers

I honestly can’t pinpoint any particular element of this game that attracted me. On paper, it looks just like another action rpg that tries to piggyback off of you know which series, one specific entry in particular. But I liked how the protagonist was quite mobile during the fights (this is usually something the player is hugely disadvantaged at in these kinds of games), and the setting looked sufficiently dark and gritty. Anyway, we’ll see what it is in the end.

UFO 50

My first video game console was a NES knockoff called Terminator 2, it played all kinds of pirated NES cartridges, so I kind of grew up with those games. UFO 50 aims to bring that kind of aesthetic with its 50 NES- and SNES-looking games, which, as per the developers, are all feature-complete and highly playable. Let’s hope that’s the case, as the games of old were never known for being too player-oriented.

DOOM: The Dark Age

I’m including Doom in this list simply because I’ve played Doom (2016) and I liked it, but I still have to finish both that and Eternal. I’m not a huge FPS fan, but do enjoy some primal carnage and these are the premiere games at providing that. And while no Mick Gordon on the OST hurts, it still very much felt like Doom. Will get to it eventually.

Wanderstop

A game from the creator of the Stanley Parable is all that was needed to sell me on this. They showed off quite a regular life- or farming-sim, and while there’s nothing wrong with just that, it’s a game by the devs of the Stanley Parable, so it won’t be just that. They very much hinted at that in the last moments of the trailer.

Mixtape

I’m not sure why so many devs decided that choppy, low-framerate animations are something cool or appealing, but it is what it is. I’m not sure if Mixtape will be a good game. The Artful Escape wasn’t But I very much hope that another game by the same developer will be a good experience.