By Lucy Ungaro
It’s that time of year again, which means that this week The Circle is bringing you massive amounts of E3 coverage, and of course, some indie news as well, because we cover the whole videogame spectrum in these here parts.
First, our Steven Petite covered all of the big E3 pressers and reveals for The Circle. Of these, Steven feels Sony may have had the best E3 presentation — in E3 history!
For all the horror fans out there who felt slighted by the unjustly broken promise of PT, your day of reckoning is almost here. At E3, Kojima returned with a new company and a new game. See the trailer and thoughts here by Chelsea Stark.
You know what’s even more hip than the apocalypse? The apocalypse in VR. Dan Ackerman writes about experiencing both Fallout 4 and Doom in HTC Vive. For a studio like Bethesda that specializes in immersion, among other things, this is certainly the next step.
Speaking of Bethesda, here are highlights from their EA press conference, brought to you by Jeff Bakalar. There is some mention of Fallout 4 and Doom VR, and also Dishonored 2, which is happening.
Jeremy Voss offers another refreshingly honest opinion piece. This time, it’s on Microsoft’s E3 presentation, which has led to some not uncommon confusion: why bother with the Xbox One Slim when the Xbox Scorpio is coming out soon? Who in their right mind would buy the Slim, unless they had considerable money to throw away? My worry is that the Scorpio will be so expensive, most people will have to settle for the Slim.
Here’s Eb Samuel on Sony’s E3 conference, which he says ignores the “new-ish” console to focus on a whole lot of upcoming games, as well as VR. PlayStation and the horror genre seem to go hand in hand; that Resident Evil 7 trailer was chillingly good, and Kojima’s Death Stranding looked like PT reborn, as mentioned.
We’ve covered Sony and Microsoft–time for Nintendo. Samit Sarkar has compiled and is updating everything we currently know about The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Read it all here, and trust me, it’s better than the Wikipedia page. I’m curious to see how this stab at open world goes. It’s not easy to do it right, as we’ve seen from the many failed attempts.
Beyond E3, Harold Goldberg reviews Edge of Nowhere and other Oculus Rift games for The Washington Post. He took some Dramamine to combat motion sickness and went on a gaming binge. The result? Promising games but one that have a way to go to perfection. Harold also chose the Best Games of E3 for Boys’ Life.
Okay, prepare yourselves for the indiest of indies: Four Last Things is an adventure game made with Renaissance-style art. In Michelle Ehrhardt‘s piece on the game, she describes the hilarious plot and says that the humor throughout the game could be in a Monty Python bit.
And now for news outside of the Circle…
South Park: the Stick of Truth was a genuinely good game. And I don’t mean that it was simply funny–the RPG system was actually surprisingly well designed. It leads me to wonder, is there anything Matt Stone and Trey Parker can’t do? Or was it just a fluke? I guess we’ll find out in South Park: the Fractured but Whole. Read about it and watch a trailer here.
Mass Effect: Andromeda is more of an origin story than the previous games, according to this article. Instead of playing as the already established hero, Commander Shepard, you build yourself up, which is much like the Dragon Age series. I don’t think either approach is necessarily better, but it will be nice to have that sense of control and personalization in a Mass Effect character, whereas Shepard was a force of nature no one could mold to their will.
Ever wondered why the Legend of Zelda games never have a female protagonist? Well, apparently there is a good reason for it that is not silly at all. Read about it here.
That’s it for E3 week! See you next time.
