Update Patch | June 2024 - THE NOT-E3 SPECIAL EDITION
This is the regular time of year when we all become oblivious to the plights of the industry and its devious behaviours because the ever-brief sense of hype overtakes as companies show us endless trailers to get us excited for the next game that we might like and forget about six months after. Let’s run through those shows and check out the best of each, the underlooked entry and the most underwhelming of each.
1. Microsoft’s Xbox Games Showcase
A month after the closure of Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, Microsoft showed up with a Games Showcase with plenty of intriguing announcements all with Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond and Matt Booty happy to show up and extol the virtues of the companies under their control who haven’t been closed. They didn’t address those issues in this show, but there was plenty to highlight.
When it came to the best, there was certainly plenty to get excited about from the first-party studios but it was a third-party reveal in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 that raised eyebrows. A concise trailer with strong turn-based RPG gameplay, with a beautiful visual quality that aims to evoke belle-epoque France in a fantasy setting, and a simple but fascinating fantasy concept driving its narrative.
On the other end of trailers, the bland character-based trailer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard went down like a lead balloon with a vibrant visual flavour that seemed to lack the gritty fantasy desired by some. A gameplay trailer released days after certainly provided more intriguing and concrete details.
For the overlooked, one of the Xbox Game Studios that many were worried about following the previous closures, Compulsion Games (We Happy Few), provided an excellent trailer for South of Midnight. With a great blend of fantasy and Southern American stylings, it is a visual treat before its bold decision to animate on twos in cutscenes and for the player's character. While the action gameplay could have plenty of scope and exciting boss fights if developed properly.
2. Summer Game Fest Starring Geoff Keighley
Geoff Keighley hosted the Summer Game Fest to kick things off with numerous announcements from companies across the industry.
Whilst there were plenty of indie and AA titles to catch the eye, Sony’s much-rumoured Lego Horizon Adventures finally appeared and seems like it has managed to blend the classic LEGO charm and format with a Horizon franchise conducive to the creativity of its brick counterpart through its boss fights and visual design.
As for the worst, a game licencing Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and a reboot of the classic PC series, Delta Force: Hawk Ops. Scott’s film was awards nominated at the time and well-received by critics so naturally, it's strange to get another video game adaption all these years later. Hopefully, there’s more substance to the single-player segment of this free-to-play Battlefield-esque shooter, but an uninspired trailer coupled with a less creative name in Delta Force: Hawk Ops certainly didn’t excite.
For the surprise here, I could pick Sonic X Shadow Generations to spite our dear editor, but one game that certainly caught the eye was Wanderstop. The game sees you controlling a former warrior now running a tea shop. The premise of a management sim with encroaching dark themes around PTSD seems promising, and the trailer’s colourful environments may help that contrast shine superbly. There’s plenty of pedigree at the studio as well, with the co-creators being Davey Wreden, creator of The Stanley Parable, and Karla Zimonja, co-creator of Gone Home and Tacoma.
3. Nintendo Direct
One of the few major companies relatively controversy-free in recent months, Nintendo had another Direct presentation for viewers to peruse with the company holding off on mentioning the next console on the horizon.
Luckily, plenty was on offer outside of hardware, with the best of the bunch being The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Finally, a Zelda game where you actually play as Zelda, with a magic wand allowing her to create all sorts of structures, spawn companions in battle and allowing players to create silly and unconventional solutions in a way similar to the building in its predecessor, Tears of the Kingdom.
For the worst, it is apparent that Nintendo are reliant on remasters to keep interest afloat in the Switch, with remasters of Luigi’s Mansion 2 and Donkey Kong Country Returns on the way for 60 dollars/pounds. Meanwhile, a Metroidvania that wasn’t Metroid Prime 4: Beyond snuck in as a pleasant surprise in MIO: Memories in Orbit. A gorgeously mellow colour palette combined with gameplay which seems to emphasise speed in its world, which is always crucial for the genre. Combining that with an original but mysterious sci-fi concept, this could be a smashing time whilst we wait for Samus to get an adequately powered Nintendo device for her next venture.
4. PlayStation State Of Play
Sony was the early bird this year, hosting a State of Play as early as the 30th of May. The show saw plenty of trailers demonstrating the company’s renewed focus on multiplayer games. However, the show’s strongest point was the reveal of Astro Bot, a new 3D platformer following the bizarre but oddly good Astro’s Playroom. This looks bigger and more beautiful and is due out in September.
For the low point, the show once again had a trailer for Bloober Team’s remake of the horror classic Silent Hill 2. For a game famous for its psychological horrors and storytelling, the marketing seems very keen to ensure players that the focus isn’t on those things, with this trailer once again highlighting third-person combat.
However, there was one thing overlooked - Omega Force is back with the franchise that has defined them. Dynasty Warriors: Origins is the first mainline console game since Dynasty Warriors 9 and its related Empires version and hopefully will provide fans with the familiar warmth of musou combat, endless enemies and definitely not pursuing Lu Bu.
Best Of The Rest
To end before the month’s news in the Patch Notes, there were many other conferences throughout the month so let’s pick out some of the best from each.
Ubisoft Forward saw the typical hour-long showcase from the company, with the best in my book being the to-the-point news around 2024’s Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. The company announced a free update known as the Divine Trials with new platforming & puzzle challenges, as well as combat challenges and revisited boss fights. The show also had a tease for the game’s story DLC, entitled Mask of Darkness, due to arrive in September. Elsewhere, the show focused on its two big hitters for later this year in Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows.
The Day of the Devs show immediately followed the Summer Game Fest show and had many exciting games across its 75 minutes. Fans of Dontnod’s climbing game Jusant will be excited by Cairn, which adds some harshness and camping elements to the climbing journey. For horror fans, Karma: The Dark World offers a more psychological and violent measure of Psychonauts alongside classic first-person horror. For the puzzle fans, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure takes a familiar RPG adventure but has you moving the world through shifting tiles in the world, a strong puzzle concept that hopefully has plenty of legs.
Devolver Digital held its own showcase this year which as usual, was an unhinged mess with a man slowly putting their face in a cake, but more interestingly there was the news of a local co-op update for Cult of the Lamb, an exciting and punchy looking new pixel-art roguelike called Tenjutsu, and another game from Heart Machine (Hyper Light Drifter) in side-scrolling adventure Possessors.
Limited Run Games, which will be implicitly mentioned later in my writer’s note, had a showcase as well for games that they will be releasing with physical editions. The show mainly focused on the remasters of classic titles that the company will handle physical editions for, with highlights including Clock Tower: Rewind for fans of wrestling tag team The Acclaimed (check their obsession with scissors if you don’t get it), a re-release of PS1 classic Fear Effect and a Nintendo Switch remaster of Hitman: Blood Money.
Finally, The Guerrilla Collective show was stuffed with gorgeous indies including cyberpunk detective pixel-art fest Neon Blood which combines a blend of graphical art styles excellently and should be a good slice of detective storytelling. Demonschool continues to look impressive with a character-focused trailer showing their different abilities in the party. Meanwhile, publisher Raw Fury and developers Red Soul Games have concocted a new horror in Post Trauma, with monstrous creations, puzzles and a mix of first-person and third-person gameplay that can hopefully evoke classic psychological horror whilst providing a fresh twist.
Patch Notes:
A legal claim on behalf of UK customers has been put against Valve for allegedly “unfairly shutting out competition for PC games and in-game content, which has meant that UK customers have paid too much for these products.”
The Embracer Group has closed another studio in Alone in the Dark (2024) developers Pieces Interactive. Separately, Rock Paper Shotgun released a report on former Embracer Group studio Fishlabs who were working on a new Red Faction game at the time of closure.
Speaking of cancellations, a recent patent has revealed what Xbox’s rumoured and cancelled cloud-based console, codenamed Keystone, would have looked like.
German games convention Gamescom is taking shape, with Microsoft confirming its attendance and Sony & Nintendo confirming their absence.
A remake of Disney’s Epic Mickey has finally received a release date for the 24th of September for all platforms.
Meanwhile, Dontnod has delayed the release of its new series Lost Records: Bloom & Rage to 2025 to avoid a clash with the latest release of its previous series Life Is Strange, with the newest entry subtitled Double Exposure due to launch on the 29th of October.
Capcom confirmed a remaster of Dead Rising in a showcase, with the Deluxe Remaster due for release on the 19th of September.
Finally, research from PCGamesN revealed that an estimated £14bn has been spent on unplayed games in Steam libraries.
Writer’s Note:
With all this discussion around hype, it's easy to forget plenty of issues exist and one that came to the fore was the quickly disputed report around UK retailer Game. Gfinity reported the company would stop sales of physical games, but the company quickly refuted this in a statement to Eurogamer, saying the reporting was “categorically not true”.
Regardless, the moments of doubt certainly shed a light on how precarious the state of physical retail is. Of course, many players nowadays buy digital, it is part of the new online age. However, it's a far cry from the last 20 years ago for physical games. There were rental stores like Choices, and Blockbusters, with Game throughout that time sharing market space with Grainger Games and in the 2000s, GameStation before that was purchased by Game. There are online retailers nowadays and second-hand places like CeX. But still, the reduction is concerning.
There are still plenty of people contributing to the 38% share of physical sales of the UK’s Top 20 selling games as detailed by the Entertainment and Retail Association. Believe it or not, some people do occasionally want to shop in a store. Having stores also do deals offers people greater choice, always good in a market. Of course, digital storefronts have democratised selling so smaller developers have marketplaces, a genuinely good result, but surely these two industries can be balanced for the good of all consumers. Hopefully, that Gfinity report isn’t a harbinger of what’s to come.
