Well, so far not-E3 2022 has been pretty terrible. Very few highlights, very boring, games kinda melting into each other because everything is so similar to other things that are also being shown. I hope Microsoft can finally break us out of this funk. I am writing this short intro before the show, so my current expectations? Basically nothing. Lots going around about Goldeneye, but that’s about it. I’m sure we’ll see another new Forza too because it’s Xbox and apparently we need one same-y car game every year from them.

I don’t know if I’ll post this, but either way, I will have an overall not-E3 post once all this shit is done. I am waiting a bit to post that until we see when/if Nintendo does something.

Well, the countdown is about to be done.

I’m writing these reactions as I’m watching, so hopefully, there’s something interesting for me to talk about as I’m watching.

Live Reactions

Xbox Console Exclusive, from Bethesda and Arkane. So… Redfall? Girl with a gun that is painted pink going through a church? Thing? Blood all over the place. There’s a vampire dude, his melee attacks hit from really far away. I hate this fake gameplay kinda shit, where they always move in ways that people won’t ever actually move while playing a game. They’re showing different character classes with different capabilities, like an engineer, a guy that turns invisible, and a girl with psychic shields. This just gives me Left 4 Dead vibes, but with vampires. It does say you can go single-player. There’s loot, and skill trees. I’ll have to see more but this is squarely on the maybe list. 2023.

Day 1 on Game Pass. SILKSONG!!!!!! They sure made us way a long time for this, but man is it looking amaing. I’m not describing any of this, whatever. And… no release date… Really guys?

World Premiere. Console launch exclusives. Squanch games, so it’s the Rick and Morty people. The Morty VA is an alien that’s also a pistol, and there’s a whole race of these gun aliens. You end up becoming a bounty hunter. High On Life. Huh. I’m interested, maybe. October 2022, cool.

So it seems every game shown will be on games that will be out in the next 12 months. That’s nice. It’s less wait than usual from E3 presentations.

Riot games. Bleh. Some game pass stuff for League of Legends, and the LoL mobile game, and Legends of Runeterra (I guess that’s their Heathstone ripoff), and Teamfight Tactics which is their Auto Chess rip-off, and Valorant. I guess Game Pass just unlocks champions and skins or whatever. Who fucking cares.

Play with Game Pass. This is… Oh, the Plague Tale thing. Just more gameplay for it. Still looks pretty good like last time we saw it. I should get into this series at some point. 2022.

Day 1 on Game Pass. Forza. Specifically it’s Forza Motorsport, rather than Horizon. Sure looks like a Forza game. Spring 2023, that’s kinda late. It’s just called Forza Motorsport, weird.

We’re getting a bit more Forza, showing some of the real nice graphical tech and physics simulation and such. The youtube compression is really not helping this, the framerate looks bad but again I blame Youtube. Anyways, I’m bored now, it has lost my attention. It’s Forza, you don’t need to talk about it for so long.

Microsoft’s longest-running franchise… so… Microsoft Flight Simulator? Yeah. Just some update I guess? Actually looks a bit better, so might be a new one. Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary. November 2022. Also Halo in Flight Simulator. Because reasons.

Play with Game Pass. Blizzard. Overwatch 2. October. I think the girl with the axe is new, I never saw that before. Anyways, meh. Early Access October 4. Yeah okay Axe girl is new. I kinda don’t care, Overwatch has not been super interesting since… Sombra release.

World premiere. New turn-based strategy game from the people who revolutionized the genre, apparently. I assume this is some Civ-like. Sure is a cinematic trailer for a strategy game. Why? It’s called Ara History Untold.

Day 1 on Game Pass. Bethesda. Elder Scrolls Online update, no one cares… Oh geeze ,they’re showing a trailer for it. I’m ignoring this. Fallout 76 shit, no one cares… And they’re showing a trailer for that too, why? I’m ignoring this.

Play with Game Pass. Still Bethesda. Later in the show, we’ll see Starfield. Okay why not now? Don’t just come up to tell use that we’ll see something later. Just show it later instead.

Forza Horizon 5. Man this presentation went to boring-ville quick after the first 3 games. Anyways, this is Hot Wheels DLC for Forza. Do you care? I don’t care. It’s out july 19.

Console Launch Exclusive. Oh it’s Ark 2, took me a few dinos to realize that. There’s Vin Diesel. And it’s 2023. Okay. No gameplay still, wow. So pointless to show.

Console Launch Exclusive. Seems like some horror-ish stuff. It’s an FPS. It’s very hellish and weird. Scorn, October 22. Looks potentially cool. It’s on the maybe list.

Day 1 on Game Pass. This is some action game I don’t recognize. You’re an axe-wielding girl that has this teleporting creature you can summon to help in a fight. Attacks look a bit weirdly slow, but otherwise this seems pretty cool. Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn. Early 2023.

World Premiere. Mohjang. This is a new game apparently, from the creators of Minecraft? Yeah no, I doubt Notch is involved, this is definitely a lie. It’s in the Minecraft world. No indication of what it might be gameplay-wise yet because this is a long boring cinematic cutscene. Gives me some RTS vibes, but also open-world exploration. Minecraft Legends. 2023… actually seems kinda interesting, not sure if I’d touch it.

Console Launch Exclusive. Space. Spaceship crash-landing but it became a mech before hitting the ground. Seems like one of those resource-gathering farm-management games that there were so many of this not-E3. Does seem not bad, but it’s not my thing. Lightyear Frontier, Spring 2023.

Gunfire Reborn. I played this on PC and reviewed it I think. It’s pretty decent. I don’t remember if it was already announced to be getting a console release. October.

Console Launch Exclusive. Looks like some side-scrolling platforming adventure game? There is combat too. Seems you get some tentacles to fight with. The Last Case of Benedict Fox. Spring 2023. Could be interesting, kinda hard to tell what this is. Could be a linear game, could be a Metroidvania, I dunno. We’ll see.

As Dusk Falls. Oh we saw this at one of the shitty presentations, it looks awful. They basically took pictures of people and put a bunch of instagram pictures on them so they look like drawings, and it’s just a shitty visual novel. July 19.

Console Launch Exclusive. Naraka Bladepoint. That’s a PC game I have not looked into at all. Now it’s coming to Xbox. Okay.

World Premiere. This has some modernized medieval-style artwork. I can’t tell what it’s meant to be. It’s by Obsidian. Pentiment. November 2022.

Weird commercial on TVs. I figured it might be Max Payne for a second, but no, it’s just more content I guess for that game where kids are shrunken and fight insects in a big open world or whatever. Oh, I guess it was never fully out, this is the full version of the game. Grounded. September 2022.

World Premiere. Console Launch Exclusive. Seems like a stealth game of sorts where you control some shadow person destroying robots. Ereban: Shadow Legacy. 2023. Looks cool!

A lot of people are looking at this thinking Diablo 4, but I dunno. Sure would fit the style visually, at least partly. And it does feature a necromancer. Well shit it is Diablo 4. Huh. That gives us no real info since it was a cutscene, of course. And Immortal has soured a lot of people on Diablo, so the only question is… will THIS one cost 100000$ to max out one character? Anyways, here’s some gameplay. This one is open-world. There’s gameplay that looks like Diablo-ish stuff, but until we see how, loot, leveling and skills work… who knows. I don’t like the forced multiplayer aspect of world bosses. The open world seems to kinda remove part of what makes Diablo… Diablo. I want this to be good, I hope it is, I will play and review it. 2023.

Sea of Thieves updates. Don’t care. This game is ass. I’m ignoring this.

World Premiere. Girl gets pulled into a mirror, which brings her to an Alice in Wonderland-like world (a lot of the characters and enemy look like stuff Alice may encounter), with some things that are made with voxels… and some that aren’t. It’s an action game. Looks okay. It’s called Ravenlok. 2023.

World Premiere. Console launch exclusive. Annapurna. They’re a very random publisher, so some of their games are great, and some really aren’t. This looks like some top-down action puzzle game where you transport orbs around that have different effects. Looks kinda okay. It’s called Cocoon. 2023.

World Premiere. Koei Tecmo. Team Ninja. Kinda looks like a Warriors game, even though we’re only seeing cutscenes. It’s (maybe) not. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. Early 2023. No idea what this is, probably an action game of sorts. Could be cool, hope to see gameplay at some point.

Atlus. Persona 3 Portable is coming to Xbox. Okay? And Persona 4 Golden. And Persona 5 Royal. Cool if you only have an Xbox and never played these, definitely worth playing. P5R is first on October 21. Oh and PC too (though I think P4G is already on there).

Hey it’s Kojima. He’s probably making a new bad game. Good for his sycophants… Wait, what the fuck? Did Kojima come on here to announce absolutely fucking nothing? Wow. Nice one Kojima. “Hey guys I’m making a game“… yeah okay. So?

And this is gonna be the end, we are getting an extended demonstration of Starfield. I don’t know how much I’ll comment on this. I have zero belief in Bethesda Game Studios being able to make a game that isn’t shit. I will say it’s nice that we’re finally getting to see gameplay for this, considering they’ve shown LITERALLY NOTHING about this game since announcing it years ago. Todd Howard, most overrated person in the gaming industry, is talking BS after a nothing video. Anyways, on to the gameplay.

This is pre-rendered shit, and extremely laggy smoke effects. The framerate is ass and a half. There’s alien monsters that they’re not fighting, really boring resource collecting, “fake” gameplay (camera and movements that a real player would never actually do, it’s very annoying to see this). He’s got a proper gun out now. Pretty standard gunplay, though the guns seem really shitty. Like there’s no impact to the bullets. Really awful AI. You get recruited into some… gang? Government? Something? Very blah voice acting. Very meaningless gameplay shown in-between really boring conversations.

Man this sure wasn’t impressive. Like, there’s a chance this won’t suck balls. It’s not very high, but it might happen. It has a bunch of cool ideas that already give me the impression that they’ll be under-developed and not particularly interesting. 2023, as we know since it was delayed.

And we are done!

Overall

The first 3 games were already more interesting than all of not-E3 2022, on their own. After those 3 first games though, this was not a great presentation. There were a few minor highlights here and there, but it wasn’t very impressive overall.

Highlights are Redfall (which I need to see more of TBH, since the gameplay loop wasn’t obvious), seeing Silksong was great but where the release date, High On Life seems interesting… Then it took a while for anything more interesting to pop up, and they’re pretty minor highlights. Scorn looks cool. Flintlock looks cool. The Minecraft thing might actually be a little bit interesting. The Last Case of Benedict Fox looks okay. Ravenlok looks interesting. Ereban could be fun. Wo Long really needed to show gameplay but I’ll keep an eye on it. The Personas are nice to see on other platforms. And seeing stuff about Diablo 4 kinda scared and confused me, as a fan of Diablo who hated 3… but hey could be fun. And Starfield looks like a pile of lies, there’s no way this will be any good.

By FAR the best show of Not-E3 2022, but it wasn’t all that interesting. Needed a bit more. Needed less Todd Howard. Needed to spend less time on some of this stuff.

I hope Nintendo does something and saves Not-E3 again.