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So E3 2017 has come and gone and me and Dane made sure to tune in whenever we could, missing only two live shows, which we caught up on the next day.
I’ve never watched E3 so religiously before and only ever tuning into the conferences and talks after they’ve been live. It was pretty awesome to be honest cuddling with Dane to tune into the talks and at some points we even chatted to our friend Lee via Xbox Live whilst watching the Microsoft talked. We have now both said it will be a tradition to watch E3 every year.
BUT enough of that, let’s talk about what games we’re excited for and what we thought about E3 overall!
I’ll go first! I was tempted to try to do a top 5, but that shit isn’t going to happen. I may only want a select few but Dane wants loads of games… And I can’t say I blame him. 😛
I have to be honest and say my favourite conference out of all of them had to be a mixture of Ubisoft and Sony, I sway more towards Ubisoft however due to two of their announcements.
I am a huge South Park fan and have been eagerly awaiting for The Fractured But Whole to come out. I’ve been waiting a year longer than expected in the first place too due to Ubisoft pushing the release date back since late 2016. A new release date has been announced though AND Ubisoft showed off another trailer for the game!
The game play and story looks like it has completely changed from the one at E3 2016. I had heard rumours that Trey Parker and Matt Stone weren’t happy with how the story was going so scraped what they had and started all over again. Although I get pissed off with having to wait for the game to come out, I am grateful that Parker and Stone want what’s best for the fans. They’ve never worked so closely with game companies when South Park games have come out in the past and they’ve commented how they regret it due to how poor they turned out. As usual from the gameplay being shown and played at E3, the guys never fail to be rude and crude and make me piss myself laughing. The footage I’ve watched is set in a strip club! You even have to do a strip dance mini game and your just constantly farting on the guys crotch. NICE! The graphics look so much better than The Stick of Truth which already makes me really happy! It just runs smoother. I’m never ever arsed about that sort of stuff either. Like the first game your character doesn’t talk and is fully customise-able. The battles are completely different now from how they used to be. You still take it in turns to fight your enemies but you can move all around the area now to attack people, which I think is pretty cool! It also looks like you’ll be able to play alongside more characters than before which is exciting! I really can’t wait for this  game and closer to the release date I’ll be pre-ordering it.
South Park fans were spoilt though as after The Fractured But Whole we were given the above trailer for Phone Destroyer, which is obviously a phone game. I’m just so damn excited for what this game will bring! I’ve been after a decent game to mong out and play on my phone for ages, and alas it’s finally here!
One of the first games that was announced and I was excited for was Life Is Strange Before The Storm. I LOVED Life Is Strange when it came out and I was addicted to it for a while. I loved it so much that after playing it on Dane’s Xbox I ended up buying it to play on my PS4 too. This game is a prequel to the first and follows Chloe three years before the first game and won’t contain time travel, that’s Max’s thing. We follow Chloe after her dad has died in the car accident and basically from what I can tell, how she’s dealing with it and becomes who she is when she is reunited with Max. We see her befriend Rachel and if anyone else is like me when playing Life Is Strange, I was constantly asking myself, “What the fuck happened with Chloe and Rachel? Are they lovers? Or was Chloe being clingy due to what happened to her dad and thought it was more than what it was?” I’m really excited to find out all about Rachel though as she felt like a main character in Life Is Strange even though she wasn’t existent. From what I have gathered so far though from the gameplay she heavily influenced Chloe to become the person she was when Max saw her. We will find out in the prequel all about Rachel though! FYI this is not the second Life Is Strange, that is currently in development. I’m so damn excited for this game though and I WILL be getting it on PS4!
Holy shit this is a game I have been excited for for as long as I can remember now. Quantic Dream are the people behind Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, which are both two of my favourite games! They work exclusively with Sony and PlayStation, which in turn makes me happy as I’m a PlayStation girl at heart. 😛 Detroit: Become Human was announced a couple of years ago and since then has been worked on! I was really hoping for a release date to be announced after the trailer was shown at E3 this year, but sadly we still haven’t been given a date. From what I can gather from gameplay footage and trailers you play as various different droids who are trying to (as the name suggests) become human. They use their abilities to free the droids who aren’t able to control their abilities and basically make the world between them and human equal and fair. It looks amazing to be honest and the story behind it sounds unique and full of twists and secrets, like the previous games really. To think this game only started off as a way for Quantic Dream to show off what they were doing after Beyond: Two Souls. I’m so glad they decided to go with it though.
Do I really have to talk much about this game? It’s definitely one of my favourites that Microsoft announced during their conference. It’s a new game, Super Lucky’s Tale and it’s coming out towards the end of the year, only to Xbox One. It reminds me of Spyro and you know what? I REALLY miss games like that. I wish people would bring them back, and I’m hoping that this is just the start. It’s also equally appealing to me due to the main character being a cute little fox! I cannot wait to get this when it comes out! A part of me hopes it’s co-op so me and Dane can play it together, but I highly doubt that!
I don’t recall watching the trailer for this at first and due to that Dane was confused whenever he mentioned it to me and I didn’t get excited. “Nat you will want Ooblets!” he kept saying to me over and over again. He popped the trailer on to refresh my memory and I knew straight away that he was right, I would want it. It reminds me of Animal Crossing to be honest… But not as good as Animal Crossing will always have a warm spot in my heart. This will be on the Xbox One so that’ll be the platform of choice for playing this cute game.
Now that I’ve spoken about some of my highlights from E3 2017 it’s now Dane’s turn to take over the rest of the post and talk about his thoughts on the games announced this year, as well as the new Xbox One X.
From the looks of it I will be going against the grain with the populous and say I was and still am pumped from E3. Peoples excited reactions from this years E3 seems to have fizzled out and there are even some people who found this year to be wholly underwhelming. I completely disagree.
First things first is the elephant in the Microsoft shaped room with their new console.
It actually took me approximately 2 years into the Xbox One’s life before I made the transition from the Xbox 360 and I am glad I made the jump. I had serious reservations and complaints about the way Microsoft were handling their launch of the One and did not think it was worth my time and money. Since then they have gone back on many of their plans and with the announcement of the Scorpio (development name of the X) they have rebuilt my faith in Microsoft.
The best thing to do is watch the video above to find out about the specifications but it is all POWER!
In terms of games though there are way too many for me to list here so I will copy in the Xbox game showcase.
Natalee has already mentioned her big ones she’s excited for and I too am also excited for those games, particularly Ooblets and South Park: FBW but she has already spoken of them so I won’t say anymore. For me there is really just too many to discuss and I will most likely forget about some things but I will try to pick a few things out to share my excitement.
Crackdown 3. JUMPING, SHOOTING, THROWING and BLOWING SHIT UP.
The multiplayer for this game will be where it’s at. Making the most of the power of their Azure servers Crackdown is hoping to cause citywide destruction in an online environment. What can I say? I like blowing stuff up… and Terry Crews. NUFF SAID.
Player Unknowns: Battlegrounds is one I never expected to come to Xbox exclusively. I don’t have a PC good enough (yet) to play many games like this. I have always wanted to play a survival/arena game with my friends but the consoles are very limited with what you have available so this is a welcome treat. Here is the trailer from E3:
Sea of Thieves is one more multiplayer game that I have had on my watch list since it was first announced a while back. Open world, multiplayer pirating. There is not really anything more to say. Well, I should also mention it is a Rare (the developer) game who have a brilliant development record until Microsoft bought them out and forced them to do Kinect games. So hopefully this is a return to form for Rare which I am truly excited to go plunder with my friends when it is released.
Anthem was a surprise showing at E3, others may have been expecting a new IP from Bioware but I most certainly was not. This game was gorgeous and also online coop. This is one I am definitely keeping my eye on. I don’t really know much more than it is a 3rd person RPG in power suits. It looks good, take a look!
That’s the main ones from the Xbox conference that made me excited, I just can’t wait till November! I could talk forever about all the games on show so I have really tried to limit myself, but a few honorable mentions are:
Black Desert – Online RPG that looks pretty epic.
The Last Night – Funky retro adventure game akin to the original Flashback.
Cuphead – Bullet hell platformer in the style of the old-timey cartoons.
Ashen – Dark and desperate RPG.
Deep Rock Galactic – Mining with friends!
I am only going to really talk in detail about three more games. Two from the EA conference and one from the Playstation conference.
So first let’s go for the interesting epic that is Days Gone from the Playstation conference. Zombies may be overdone but this really overdoes it in a good way. SO MANY FUCKING ZOMBIES. It actually makes the zombie scary again, not like Dead Rising where the sheer amount is awesome but they are just cannon fodder to have fun with, but a true zombie horde.
I wasn’t so impressed with the Sony conference as much, put that down to me being a fanboy but this year it just wasn’t there for me. There are some games I know I am excited for but there just wasn’t enough for me. Here’s a few honorable mentions:
God of War – An epic story about a gratuitously violent beefcake with a child.
Spiderman – Shame its PS4 Exclusive! No achievements for me on my Xbox. 😦
Shadow of the Colossus (Remake) – Never played the original but damn I want to play this.
EA had a massive show, second only to Microsoft. One of their new and VERY intriguing announcements was their split-screen adventure A Way Out.
Games and their developers seem have forgotten what it means to play with your friends. You may have noticed the majority of my highlights are largely multiplayer, but these are mostly online multiplayer. Gone are the days of playing on the couch with your friends sharing a tiny little CRT TV. A Way Out says fuck that and forces you to play with someone and share the screen regardless of where you are. The story is there too.
Finally from EA is this.
I can safely say both Natalee and I are extremely excited for this. I had the first one and it did not live up to the hype. Yes it was one of the best looking games but there was no substance. EA have promised a single player campaign, free dlc and ALL THREE TRILOGIES. I cannot wait to be playing as the clone troopers in the frostbite 3 engine. The thought makes me moist with anticipation.
YAY after days of asking Dane to write his part of this post, he’s finally done it! 😀 I can safely say I am so damn excited for both Days Gone and Star Wars: Battlefront 2. They’re both going to be amazing games! Spiderman is also one I was surprised to see as a PS4 exclusive! This makes me really happy of course due to being a Playstation gamer. The gameplay for it was gorgeous and obviously is steps above games from back in the PS1 days, but it reminded me of the Spiderman game from back in the day. I loved that game so much and would spend hours after school playing it.
I cannot wait for November to come now so we can play new games together, as well as with our gaming friends Lee and Sam!
What were your highlights from E3 this year? Make sure to let me know in the comments, as well as over at Twitter @maybeecoffee ^_^
Until next time all, take care! I hope you’re enjoying the gorgeous weather, I know we are.
There Might Be Coffee 