Are you looking forward to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on Nintendo Switch? How much do you want it? Do you love it enough to watch almost a half-hour of a detailed fighter parade, move demonstration, and an exhausting reel of changes from previous games? Good news! The Nintendo E3 2018 presentation was basically the Smash show.
Sony’s E3 2018 show was a bit odd. Not Ubisoft quirky, but just plain weird. First they put everyone in a makeshift church tent, and played some banjo for everyone. Then Naughty Dog premiered some gameplay from The Last of Us Part II. Once Ellie was done getting her Lara Croft murder spree on, Sony had the audience move out of the tent and into the regular auditorium for the rest of the show. While that was going on, an awkward panel of hosts at an ESPN-style desk showed off Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer maps remade in Black Ops 3 to promote Black Ops 4. There was an underwhelming trailer for Days Gone. Then, a gaggle of PlayStation VR stuff was played. At the end, Destiny 2: Forsaken got a vague teaser.
When the lights came up in the main auditorium, a puzzled crowd watched someone play a bamboo flute in front of a large screen showing videogame grass blowing in the wind. Thankfully, this was the prep for the Ghost of Tsushima gameplay trailer showcasing some violent samurai antics. We got a new Pirates of the Caribbean trailer for Kingdom Hearts III. Remedy Entertainment announced Control, which looks like the best parts of Quantum Break and Alan Wake combined. A rat discovered the remake of Resident Evil 2. Hideo Kojima’s super odd Death Stranding confused everyone with Norman Reedus acting like the walkabout delivery service, then CG young Lindsay Wagner busted in and really perplexed viewers. Finally, Marvel’s Spider-Man from Insomniac Games returned us to the normal world of AAA action videogames.
It was a nice try from Sony, but they’ll have to get some drum major pandas and dancing cartoon girls next year to outdo Ubisoft.
That wasn’t the weirdest thing. There was the intro from Just Dance 2019 with a truck dock as a backdrop. Joseph Gordon-Levitt pimped his media company Hit Record (pronounced like the verb “to record” and not the noun) that’s working with Ubisoft on Beyond Good & Evil 2. Elijah Wood then hyped his media company Spectrevision that’s partnering with Ubisoft on Transference. Starlink: Battle for Atlas is still a toys-to-life game, but on Nintendo Switch you can play with the Arwing from Star Fox. The cherry on top was when Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot brought Shigeru Miyamoto on stage to present a nifty model of the Arwing to him.
For Honor’s starter edition is completely free on PC through Uplay now, and Chinese combatants are coming in the Marching Fire expansion. Ubisoft also announced a new Trials game. Trials Rising is kicking off a beta soon. Finally, Skull & Bones, the multiplayer ship-to-ship pirate combat game got a neat cinematic trailer.
Skyrim is on everything! That’s the joke. Everyone has said it at least once since the third or fourth version of the game was announced. Skyrim VR, Skyrim Special Edition, Skyrim for Nintendo Switch, Skyrim, Skyrim, Skyrim. Bethesda joined the fun in their E3 show with the above video. Skyrim is on pagers, refrigerators, and Alexa now. Get it? But wait! Skyrim on Amazon Alexa is not just make believe. It’s real.
Microsoft spent all the money for their E3 2018 kickoff event. To be more accurate, they spent their money to purchase a bunch of studios and showed off 50 games for Xbox and Windows 10.
First, the reveals that were a given. There was a snippet of the next Master Chief game. It’s something called Halo Infinite and it involves dinosaurs and camping in the woods. Forza Horizon 4 goes to merry old England with dynamic seasons and a more massively multiplayer Crew-like structure. Crackdown 3 may be delayed to late 2019, but Terry Crews is still blowing things up in trailers that are looking more and more dated as we go. Sea of Thieves will be getting some much-needed content soon. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds continues its desperate hold on the system as an Xbox console exclusive. Gears 5 (that’s just “Gears 5” and not “Gears of War 5”) will feature Kait’s story in the Gears saga.
In more surprising news, there’s a mobile game bit of oddness coming called Gears POP! which is a collaboration with The Coalition and bobblehead manufacturer Funko POP! There’s also a Gears Tactics which looks to answer the burning question “What if Gears and XCOM had a baby?” (Funnily enough, there was a similar prototype concept back in 2014 that was eventually canceled.) Battletoads is a thing. Goofball Dante is back in Devil May Cry 5. We all got another painfully scripted play demo from Ubisoft, this time for The Division 2. Dying Light 2 features more parkour, melee, and zombies, but now you can supposedly influence the story with your choices.
Microsoft’s Phil Spencer announced the acquisition of Undead Labs, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, and Compulsion Games. The company is also starting The Initiative, another new in-house studio based out of Santa Monica.
Finally, this year’s “oh, and one more thing moment” was for CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077.
If you watched the Electronic Arts “EA Play” E3 2018 event, congratulations for making it through a pretty bad show. Host Andrea Rene did her best to pluck up the proceedings, but between DICE apologizing for how they flubbed the launch of Battlefront II, to the audience applauding over the announcement that Battlefield V and Anthem wouldn’t have loot boxes, it was a dire affair. Also, for some reason, EA thought we’d like to watch a full live match of Command and Conquer: Rivals, the new mobile take on the beaten but not quite buried C&C franchise.
In sports gaming, there was the usual roster updates and gloss. FIFA 19 has a partnership with the UEFA Champions League. Madden 19, with some voice help from Michael Kenneth Williams, looked suitably Madden. NBA Live 19 is pushing harder into the management space with its Build Your Squad gameplay. Then, when things seemed to be going fine, EA trotted out Young Kiv, the current Madden champion, to mumble his way through some clumsy bro-justification for missing his own graduation to play more Madden.
There were a couple of bright spots. Unravel Two showcased some co-op side-scrolling puzzle jumping. The pitch for Sea of Solitude, an adventure through a young woman’s discovery of loneliness, seemed like the most German art game ever. Vince Zampella of Respawn announced Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, before disappearing in a puff of awkwardness.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson traded in his supervillain suit for a cozy casual outfit and declared that streaming and subscription are where the company thinks things are going. To that end, he announced Origin Access Premier, another level to Origin Access (presumably costing more) that adds brand new games to their current subscription service. He then cackled madly and flew away in a rocket made of recycled loot boxes.
