E3 HYPE TRAIN: The Best and Worst Trends

For the most part, I got what I wanted - and a lot more - from the six press conferences that kicked off this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

My spreadsheet runneth over with cool games, many of which - aside from looking awesome - represent the most interesting trends in the medium, good and bad.

Let's break them down:

They Cried "Gore, Gore, Gore"

E3 is full of games about shooting people. That's not news.

The surprise of this year's conferences was how brutal they looked. Doom, in retrospect, was the perfect game to kick off E3 at Bethesda's presser Sunday evening: its demo included several bodies blown apart by close-up shotgun fire and a monster ripping a person in half.

Fallout 4, which is a much brainier game and aspires to much more than Doom, squicked me out with copious blood minutes later, and many other shooters followed over the next 48 hours, from Gears of War 4 to The Division to Hitman.

I'm not asking for games to be PG. But hopefully there's an option in the menu of each game to make it a little less stomach-turning.

My face looked a lot more like his than hers after Sunday's DOOM demo.

It's Getting Hot in Here

Speaking of Fallout 4, imagine the following:

It's Nov. 10. You get off work and head down to your local game store to pick up a copy of Fallout. When you arrive, however, you see another familiar face next to it on the shelf.

That's right: Rise of the Tomb Raider and Fallout, two of the most-anticipated games of the year, release on the same day.

Forget the money - we're talking about leisure spending, which is malleable to begin with. How are you going to allocate time, your most precious resource, for a behemoth RPG and a cinematic adventure that also rewards hours of exploration?

A crowded fall isn't unusual for games, but it's still a problem. Can't we spread these releases out and give them room to breathe? They'll still be stocked at Walmart for Black Friday, promise.

VR Is the Future - But the Future Is Not Now

I debated editing my pre-E3 post to mention virtual reality (and to fix the name of Assassin's Creed: Syndicate), but now I'm glad I didn't.

Don't get me wrong: the biggest HOLY SHIT moment of E3 2015's pressers was Microsoft's HoloLens demo. The practical applications of the technology remain blurry, but it's a step closer to the Holodeck scenario I've always envisioned.



Microsoft execs also mentioned partnerships with Valve and Oculus for virtual reality, fighting back against Sony's Project Morpheus, which was mentioned during the PlayStation press Monday night.

Both comments were fleeting, however. We have no release windows, no prices and no reason to care about VR yet. Just a mountain of unfulfilled potential that will take years, not months, to be realized.

Look at These Cool Indie Games! Not Too Long, Though

Another future of games was also present Monday but hardly accounted for.

As risk-averse as studio games have become, I believe the fresh, innovative, trailblazing games of the next generation will come from independent studios. But you would never know it from this E3.

While I was thrilled to see my nos. 9, 7, 5 and 2 most-anticipated games coming into the show, all indie titles, appear at press conferences, that dissipated as each received very little time and, in the case of Cuphead, a delay to 2016.

I rage because I love.

What's more, Microsoft and Sony continued their practice of showing off indie games in sizzle reels rather than giving them prominent spots in their presentations. They never even had a chance from EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo or Square.

I went into E3 excited about a few indie games. I finished the show excited about those exact same games. That's a problem. These games are not second-class citizens, and they deserve better.

It's a Girl!

Enough cynicism. How about something positive?

From the presenters on stage to the characters on screen to the commentators taking it in, women have been out in force at E3 2015, and I couldn't be happier.

Aisha Tyler and Angela Bassett presented the latest Rainbow Six. Two of the show's biggest exclusive game announcements, for Armature Studios' ReCore and Guerilla Games' Horizon: Zero Dawn, feature women kicking ass. Bethesda specifically showed character creation options for a male or female protagonist in Fallout 4.

Not quite what you expected from the makers of Killzone, right?

Gaming still has a long way to go to achieve gender equality or anything close to it, and most of the women prominently featured at E3 this year were white. But this is definitely progress.

Revenge of the Vaporware

Fans, Sony has heard you.

Monday night's PlayStation press conference included a stunning trifecta of maybe/probably-not/don't-bet-on-it games: Sega's Shenmue III, Square's Final Fantasy VII remake and Sony's own The Last Guardian.

While each one comes with questions - none has a release date, Square is notoriously slow and Shenmue's KickStarter goal (which they met in less than a day) is hilariously small - simply seeing them on the E3 stage is a victory for optimists everywhere.

Now Sony reveals Half-Life 3 and the rest of E3 is cancelled because everyone's dead #E32015

— Derek Beigh (@derekbeigh) June 16, 2015

Coming Soon, Probably

That optimism will come in handy for the rest of Sony's lineup too.

By my count, PlayStation 4 will feature four exclusive games - truly exclusive, not "console exclusive," "first on," "best on" or other nonsense - showed Monday night: Media Molecule's Dreams, Horizon, The Last Guardian and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

Those games have something important in common besides looking cool. None of them will release this year.

Drake will emerge from the mist... eventually.

Nintendo's conference had a similar problem. Each game showed Tuesday morning is set to release this year or early next, and many of them looked cool. But some force - possibly the Wii U's successor, which will be discussed a year from now - left the next 3D console release for each of the company's heavy-hitters, Mario, Metroid and Zelda, on the bench.

It's cool to think ahead, but anyone looking for a compelling reason to buy a PS4 or Wii U needs to look in the past or significantly in the future.

Screw You, Metroid Fans

It's official: another Video Game Christmas with no Metroid under the tree.

But wait, you say. What about Metroid Prime: Federation Force? To which I respond: What about it? Federation Force has as much to do with Metroid as Link's Crossbow Training does The Legend of Zelda.



I should be patient. Nintendo doesn't release games until they're good, and it doesn't announce them until they're close to release. But I'm getting tired of buying off-brand Metroid products to convince Nintendo another proper release is worth their while.

(Also, if Valve is reading, a new Half-Life, Portal of Left 4 Dead would be great too. My money is waiting.)

Screw You, Casual Fans

Speaking of money: For the first time, I'm pissed at Harmonix.

I was disappointed but not stunned the big Rock Band 4 price and release date announcement came not by press conference but email. What infuriated me was attempting to pre-order the game and discovering I had two options: the full band-in-a-box set for $250 or the game and guitar for $130.

Here's what followed:

@derekbeigh We’re focused on making sure people can get the hardware they need right now.

— Rock Band (@RockBand) June 15, 2015

I believe Harmonix is using the current pre-order choices to gauge demand for instruments. But even if that's the case, why not give consumers options? Why should I believe there will ever be a version of this game sold with the disc alone?

I've put up with a lot for Rock Band - I'm buying an Xbox One for it, for one thing - so, naturally, I've reserved my $130 package. But if that and the $250 version, which by the way is the price of a refurbished console, are it, this franchise reboot is dead on arrival. And that would be a damn shame.