My Takeaways from E3

E3 has come and gone and left us with a lot to talk about. Several cross-platform titles are on the way. Playstation is seemingly bursting with exclusive titles. There’s even another Justin Roiland VR game on the way, even if VR overall didn’t have much of a presence there. Nintendo Switch announced another Super Mario Smash Brothers game (do they do that every year?) and seemed to focus on the party scene. Xbox announced a lot of new partnerships, even if they didn’t have a lot of new exclusive titles to talk about. Overall, it seems like there’s a lot of good things on the way. Here’s my take on E3 2018.

The Last of Us 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are day one buys

The Last of Us is one of the few lengthy titles that I’ve actually taken the time to play through twice. It’s one of those rare masterpieces where there’s a great story, amazing graphics, and gameplay that’s both fun and replayable. The sequel looks both brighter and darker than the original, and the impressive trailer makes me excited to pick up the game on day one. Cyberpunk 2077 is a little more of a stretch; the gameplay sounds fun and the graphics look pretty awesome. However, the Witcher series provided two of the other lengthy titles that I’ve played through multiple times (both 2 and 3) so I’m already anxious to pick these this one up, too. There are a lot of other titles to get excited about as well. Spiderman looks like a lot of fun (definitely want to play, not sure I want to buy). Ghost of Tsushima and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey also look pretty great. Overall, I’m gonna start saving up; there’s a lot of great titles coming.

He kinda looks like a young Geralt, actually.

Xbox is playing the long game (and offering few exclusives)

It’s really hard for me to get too excited about the future of my trusty Xbox One. There aren’t a whole lot of exclusive titles on the way, and what is coming (Gears of War and Halo) are probably years away. Xbox is already talking about a new console (vaguely) and describing a lot of partnerships with some great studios, but the presentations were really light on exclusives. Crackdown is ostensibly coming in February 2019 and Below is thought to be on the way. Meanwhile we have a sequel to Ori and more Cuphead DLC, which is good news, and a new Battletoads game (which I hope is better than any of these godawful new Double Dragon games). Playstation, on the other hand, has exclusive titles all over the place, from Death Stranding to Last of Us 2 to Spiderman. It’s a little early to be sure, but it looks like Xbox is focusing on the next generation and letting go of this one. So, unless you like Sea of Thieves, you may be out of luck for exclusive fun titles for the Xbox for the time being.

Forget Master Chief, what happened to Jameson Locke?

Wolfenstein going coop is brilliant (how ’bout it, Doom?)

Wolfenstein is a great series but it definitely needs to evolve. We love the game’s cutscenes and characters, but the actual gameplay is a little repetitive and uninspired. The decision to make the game cooperative is a really smart move. I want to be a little cautious here as adding cooperative gameplay is no guarantee of a great game (see Resident Evil, Dead Space, and arguably Fear 3 as examples). But here it could work well and liven up the one part of these games that could use a boost. The other game that should consider making this change is Doom. The new Doom series is almost the inverse of Wolfenstein; gameplay is visceral blast while the actually plotline is kinda boring. Adding a cooperative partner to speak to while the game’s story plays out could work well there as well. Wolfenstein, meanwhile, just became much more interesting to me.

Hey maybe you guys can be the awesome cooperative experience that Crackdown 3 has promised to be for…like…three years now.

Anthem looks less and less interesting the more I see

So while I’m more excited about Wolfenstein, I’m a bit less interested of Anthem after seeing the gameplay. Anthem looks fun, but I have to admit I was really hoping for the next Mass Effect and Anthem is clearly not going to be that. Gameplay looks pretty exciting and I’m optimistic that the flying mechanic will actually be fun (and not wild and disorienting, as it often is in games). I just think this game is going to be less of an RPG. It looks more like an action shooter on an alien world, which is great, but Bioware is really good at storytelling and character building. Sure, I hated Peebee but Jaal was my favorite NPC last year. Hearing that there were no romance options was a little bit disappointing given how much fun Bioware made those options in Mass Effect. But, again, Anthem isn’t the next Mass Effect, it’s a different game entirely and I’m not convinced yet that it’s a game I want to play.