Posts Tagged ‘fest’

12 Jun

Very Quickly Breaking Down an Almost-E3 to Remember

Posted by vagrantesque in Games. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Geoff Keighley, you son of a gun.

The actual 2025 Summer Game Fest show may not have been one for the history books, but something has clearly shifted around the event by now. Despite the largest console launch in gaming history just days earlier, and an ongoing reluctance from the big-boy publishers to allow their messaging to clash with that of their rivals, the light shining from Geoff’s would-be E3 replacement in 2025 was too irresistible to ignore for too many important names, and we ended up with an unusually dense June showcase season.

Because I only just put up a monster post for the Switch 2 launch, this annual show analysis will be much shorter, less formatted, and perhaps slightly more unhinged than usual, but I wasn’t going to miss doing one anyway.

Warm Nostalgia For Dishonest Trailers

The first of the big names to show themselves in that sweet early-June hype slot was – rather surprisingly – CD Projekt Red, who teamed up with Epic Games to release a mighty impressive State of Unreal demo for The Witcher 4 at this year’s Unreal Fest. The demo was so impressive, in fact, that the comparisons to that infamously overambitious E3 2012 Watch_Dogs trailer immediately came out in force among YouTube commenters. More like Un-Real, am I right?

All that said, despite the old-school E3 stage vibes of the presentation I am slightly more inclined to believe this crazy demo – which is purported to run at 60 frames per second on a base PS5 – is more likely to lead to something comparably playable than that fateful Ubisoft misdirect over a decade ago. Epic has already proven that Unreal Engine 5 can improve its capabilities and efficiency through the games releasing on it, and CD Projekt just proved with Cyberpunk 2077 on the Switch 2 what they are willing to do in the name of optimisation. Cautiously exciting stuff that started the season off with a bang.

Quirky Playstation Returns, Brings Fight Stick

“Live service games? What are those?” mused a pensive Playstation as they kicked off one of the best State of Play shows ever with the glorious return of Lumines. The company’s traditional tendency to ignore Summer Game Fest in nonchalant fashion and do their own thing now looks suspiciously like a multi-year plan to circle slowly around the June hype season until they can go before Xbox; I joke, of course, as not much about Playstation’s last five years screams “well-planned”, but if they bring the heat like this again we will be in for some good-old-days June appointment viewing.

The flavour of the 2025 State of Play could hardly be more different from that of last year, as even third-party online multiplayer game mentions were kept to a blatant minimum. The cheeky return of Pragmata set off my Capcom-streak alarm once again – the game is looking fabulously different from anything else in their current catalogue – and closing with an all-new Arc System Works Marvel fighter could not have shouted “hardcore traditional audience” any louder from the proverbial rooftops (announcing a new official Sony fight stick came close though). Elsewhere, the return of Suda51 via Romeo is a Deadman (a title that not-so-subtly pairs with the protagonist of Lollipop Chainsaw) will always be welcome in my house, it’s great to see the ongoing survival of the Bloodstained and Nioh series, support for Astro Bot remains stellar, and Final Fantasy Tactics LIVES! More of this please, Sony.

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23 Jun

The Winners and Losers of Summer Showcase Season 2023

Posted by vagrantesque in Games. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Another one has come and gone (mostly – a few smaller shows may still appear around the place): though the name of the period may change, the last 4-5 weeks have unmistakably been the match of any classic E3 period for bedazzling game reveals, gleefully inconsistent presentations and feverish chatter. Because no time of year is more conducive to wildly unfair oversimplification, let’s sum up the fun via a strained list of quickfire winners and losers.

Winner: The Big Three Showdown

It took the better part of half a decade, but 2023 finally gave us a showcase season where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all showed up with full, uncompromised presentations bearing their top branding – just like the old days. Whether those presentations lived up to that top branding – or whether they even needed to – are entirely different topics, but it’s certainly worth noting that this was a treat in a post-E3 world where the very possibility of an old-school first-party showdown seemed like a pipe dream.

Loser: Scattered Third Parties

It’s the first set and we’re already exaggerating a bit here, but the craft of the traditional third party participants was a tad lacking this year. EA and Square Enix didn’t have shows in 2023, Ubisoft’s return was mixed at best and Capcom returned largely to 2021 form, where the entire point of staging a showcase got lost in the glow of recent game hype. One of the best shows of the whole month-long festivities was technically only third parties, but it wasn’t beholden to the output of just one. Which brings us to…

Winner: Live Geoff Keighley

You would be forgiven for being apprehensive about Geoff Keighley’s decision to bring his Summer Game Fest kickoff show into the chaotic world of live-in-person events, a space of course shared by his famously ad-driven and bloated annual Game Awards extravaganza. But it turns out a couple years of experience, a keen ear for feedback, and a sprinkling of genuinely great game announcements (plus Nicolas Cage) add up to an event well worth watching.

SGF Kickoff Live was hardly a perfect show – certain reveals felt distinctly contractual and it was an absolute sausage-fest – but the mix of trailers and jovial on-stage interviews felt more like nostalgic fun than dull pace-droppers, and that was due in no small part to Keighley’s deft touch with the microphone. The moment when he playfully shooshed the crowd after mentioning “Final Fantasy” – knowing full well the bombastic Rebirth finale he had in store – summed it up for me. You just could not wipe the smile off the guy’s face all show and it was infectious to watch.

Loser: Live Ubisoft

Coming off an ocean of game delays and the quietest year in its recent history, Ubisoft was poised to make a big statement with its own fully-live show backed by enough announcements to re-establish its relevance. But if the SGF-branded affair showed us all the benefits of the live format, this ‘Ubisoft Forward’ reminded every viewer of just how badly a real stage can tank momentum and drain excitement. It was all downhill from the (legitimately fantastic) opening live Just Dance 2024 transition: far too many nervous waffling presenters, a litany of terrible camera angles, and some head-scratching inclusions (uh, Skull and Bones? What’s going on mate?) sent exactly the wrong message about Ubi’s immediate future – even if the company did bring some believably cool games.

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17 Jun

I Can’t Believe It’s Not E3! The Best Moments From June 2022 Hype Season

Posted by vagrantesque in Games. Tagged: , , , , .

As an event trading on often delirious hype, the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo has always been intimately familiar with the importance of expectation. So when, in February of 2022, the event’s governing body the ESA announced that E3 would not be taking place this year – not even in its pretty successful restricted 2021 format – the expectations of an entire industry were reset. Reset, perhaps for some, to the sprawling hodgepodge of digital showcases from 2020 that spanned multiple months, each stream slapped with a cheap sticker denoting either Geoff Keighley’s “Summer Game Fest”, “IGN’s Summer of Gaming”, or both. That year felt like a few enterprising marketing teams trying to make the most of an awful situation; on the other side of E3’s brief return, however, the atmosphere felt more calculated.

Trying to lasso together all the videogame announcement vehicles of various shapes and sizes that we’ve just seen rolling through gaming social media spaces these past two-and-a-bit weeks may seem unwieldy, but when compared to 2020, those stickers seem far more premium and better-aligned. Keighley and co. were clearly much more ready to step up in 2022. Though not all the traditional pillars were present this year, a proper “replacement” for E3 – should it officially go the way of the Dreamcast – at last looks not only possible but likely.

Was this 2022 edition of the all-too-short announcement season a success? That probably comes down to the comparisons you choose to make, but I for one had a grand old time. These are my ten favourite moments/trends from “Keigh3” 2022.

A Tone-Setting REveal

The lack of ESA oversight in 2022 meant videogame publishers didn’t have any particularly pressing reason to show up with the goods in June, and quite a few of the big guns took that as an invitation to walk right on by. Though it was a bit of a downer to see the absence of dedicated Nintendo or (arguably more shockingly) Ubisoft showcases within the traditional E3 period, Playstation pulled an ambush on regular E3 watchers by unleashing easily their best-ever State of Play program right at the beginning of June. And it began with a context-free release date, bringing exactly the right kind of what-is-going-on energy for which modern Capcom is so renowned. Then a Spanish guitar riff, a giant “R” in a very familiar font, and then bam- right into a confirmation of the long-rumoured, gorgeous-looking Resident Evil 4 remake.

To be clear, since leaving E3 behind years ago Sony has divided its hype-building trailer montages into an almost-annual “Playstation Showcase” (usually around September), where they tend to put their biggest announcements, and then lower-key, often third-party/single-title-focused “State of Play” shows scattered throughout the year. When one such show was slated for this June, it came with a disclaimer that this would be yet another third-party-dominated affair. But there are few bigger third parties to being along than Capcom, and so that RE4 trailer was more than just a look at a game I am beyond excited to play; it lifted the hype bar and set the tone for what an E3-free June could hold in store. The colourful re-reveal of Street Fighter 6 minutes later only backed that up (and there was plenty more in that show to get excited about).

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