I’m super happy E3 was not a thing this year. The ESA sucks and E3 has been very pointless for a while, providing nothing good for the consumer. With the internet being a thing for a long time now, we should have evolved beyond E3 LOOOOOOOOOOONG ago. Nintendo, with their Directs, set the stage to how game announcements should happen. Sony badly copied Nintendo with their State of Play presentations (there’s been only ONE of them that has been any good so far (the March 2022 one)), but went a step further by dissociating from E3 pre-pandemic. That’s good. All companies need to dissociate from E3.

With E3 gone in 2022, people thought there’d be nothing, because people are idiots who thing the gaming industry revolves around E3 for some reason. But the presentations came just the same. Of course they would, game companies don’t just… stop announcing games because there isn’t an expo for journalists.

So let’s talk about this year’s not-E3 and see if any of the presentations were any good! Hint: no.

What makes a good presentation?

Announcements. New information for new, exciting games. Specifically, new announcements entirely are the best. They’re even better if the release date is soon. Release date announcements for known games are great too. Gameplay for a game that previously didn’t have gameplay shown, that’s pretty good as well. So that’s the standard. For a presentation to be good, we need new games, release dates, and gameplay.

A bad presentation would have no new announcements, very little gameplay, and games that are far off in the future (Over a year). Games that are shown without gameplay are negative points. Games shown without release dates are negative points. If a game is over a year in the future, that’s negative points.

And then I’m adding my own bias here. A good presentation? It needs shit I care about. I just happen to like all sorts of games so that’s not a high hurdle.

Presentations

Sony State of Play

This was awful. The only new announcement here was Eternights, a game only a weeb like me would care about. Maybe Rollerdrome was a new announcement, I’m not sure, but that trailer was not very good (that or the game is meh, hard to tell). And we had release dates for Callisto Protocol for this year which looks okay, as well as Stray (though that gameplay looked really fucking boring). Everything else? Pretty shitty. We knew about everything here, saw VR versions of things that are better without VR, and man that Street Fighter 6 trailer was not good. RE4 we knew about, but at least it has a release date… next year. And we’ll see more of it at the Capcom presentation, so it wasn’t worth talking about here.

Everything here shows that Sony is useless. All the games shown are on other platforms, so Sony is kinda losing its place in the industry and isn’t doing anything about it (Which I’m kind of all for). The only other game they have coming this year is God of War, and they’re being very silent about it which is a bit weird at this point. And it’s on PS4 too and will come to PC, so… whatever.

Sony needs to start doing things to make the PS5… worth buying at all.

Grade: F+

Summer Game Fest

This is Geoff Keighley trying to appear human even though we all know he’s a reptilioid robot. I have no idea why he insists on being on camera so much, he has so little personality. Anyways…

This show was really long, really boring, and didn’t have much to talk about in the end. There was a large focus on Last of Us for some reason, which is getting a remake on PS5 because we just can’t get enough of the third shittiest game ever. I assume they’re remaking it so they can try to write in things that make the plot holes in the even-worse second game make more sense (Joel was never the bad guy in the story as it’s written in the first game, and the murder-surgery on Ellie would’ve likely not worked, and not led to any improvement in the world anyways because the world is already wrecked). They need to reduce Ellie’s IQ considerably reducing in the sequel, and remove all thoughts and experience from Joel’s brain, but I’m sure they can do it, they’re bad enough for it.

Other than that… There were a few very minor highlights, mostly release dates for games that I was interested in (TMNT, Neon White, Metal Hellsinger, Midnight Suns). But the new announcements were a bit… underwhelming. Geoff hypes up a game featuring Mick Gordon’s music, then shows a trailer that has just a few seconds of walking down stairs, with no music… okay… I’ll keep an eye out on Routine, but this did nothing for anyone. There was gameplay for Witchfire that looked fucking amazing, but we’re still waiting on a release date for that. Zenless Zone Zero could be interesting if it’s not gacha… I’m assuming it’s gacha.

There really wasn’t much here, but there was certainly more than the Sony thing. Dorito Pope isn’t particularly at fault for the games shown, but he could have improved the presentation aspect considerably by… not being on camera and not inviting guests to have really boring conversations with.

Grade: E+

Devolver Direct

Devolver keep doing their thing with fairly senseless b-movie shlock stuff, I’m okay with that existing and have some fun with it. What continues needing improvement is Devolver’s game selection. Most of this was pretty subpar game-wise. There is only one game that caught my eye. Most of the trailer looked kinda meh for The Plucky Squire, a bit imaginative with the book concept but… eh. Then the character comes out of the book and it becomes very Mario Odyssey-like and oh shit this looks good.

Other than that, Devolver Direct was boring, only one game worth thinking about.

Grade: E-

IGN Expo

I liked this show. Not specifically because there were all that many good announcements, but because it was just trailer after trailer after trailer. They really shouldn’t have done the ads, but otherwise, not a bad presentation. We’re getting at a point where your mileage may vary, because there’s some games that didn’t interest me at all that might be your thing. But because this was pretty much all.

Gungrave G.O.R.E. looks good and confirms a 2022 release. Wanted: Dead looked interesting gameplay-wise though the presentation seems… confused. Gori: Cuddly Carnage looked like it might have pretty fun gameplay. And that’s all that really caught my attention. I need to look into Ground Divers more, that seems potentially fun. Like, there was a trailer for River City Saga: Three Kingdoms and that looks fun but that’s out next month so it’s a known quantity anyways. Sacrifire might be okay.

Overall I didn’t mind this presentation. Maybe there’s stuff I didn’t care about that you will, and it was well structured as a presentation with games, release dates and gameplay. Good job IGN.

Grade: D-

Netflix Geeked Week

I watched 2 seconds of this. Fuck Netflix. Fuck Geoff Keighley… Hopefully the new Castlevania show is okay, I’m curious where it’s gonna go since… well, the last season kinda removes Dracula as an enemy. That’s it, that’s all I saw.

Grade: F-

Tribeca Games Spotlight

This was a whole lot of nothing. The most interesting part of this was the gameplay for the new A Plague Tale, that looked fun. Cuphead is Cuphead and was at, like, a few other presentations, so I’m not counting that.

This was balls and was too long for nothing.

Grade: F-

Guerrilla Collective

I missed some of this. I will say the presentation was well structured, much like IGN. Mostly trailers with gameplay, and not much talking in-between.

Again, this is a presentation where your mileage may vary. For me, the only games that caught my attention were Nine Years of Shadows, Shashingo, maybe Symphony of War, and Skald: Against the Black Priory (which is this interesting Ultima-inspired RPG)… and, like, the third TMNT trailer this not-E3. Everything else did very little for me. Maybe Cassette Beast, which I’m pretty sure was announced before.

It was an okay presentation.

Grade: E+

Wholesome Direct

This was really boring. I’m sure maybe there was something interesting here, but at some point the trailers kinda started mixing with each other. Lots of very similar gameplay, very similar visual styles, very similar kinds of games (lots of very similar puzzle games, lots of farming/crafting shit), a paper-based RPG that stole the Paper Mario font, Frogun which was shown like 5 times this not-E3. It really didn’t… have anything that interested me.

But this is another one where other people might find something that really clicks with them, and that’s fine. Overall the presentation itself was fine.

Grade: E- for me, might be higher for you.

Future of Play

This felt like nothing. I’m not even gonna comment on this boredom. Can’t even dig for gold here, there was nothing interesting.

Grade: F-

Future Games Show

Well this was also a pile of nothing interesting, like the Future of Play one. Seems having “Future” in the name of your presentation is a great way to show you have nothing.

If I had to dig and find highlights, Morbid Metal looked fine. And the new Palworld trailer was fun.

Grade: F

Xbox & Bethesda

This was easily the best show. The first 3 games shown were pretty interesting, even the one from the Rick And Morty people which was pretty surprising. Silksong was a bit of a shame to be shown without a release date. Redfall definitely needs to have a bit more info shown because I’m still not sure about the core gameplay of it. Like the shooting and such looks fine, but beyond that… who knows.

The problem of this presentation was having a lot of kinda meh stuff, spending too long on some things (like Forza and Starfield). The focus was definitely on pushing Game Pass. But hey, there were games, some of them even had gameplay. I can’t hate this TOO much.

Grade: D+ (Yeah, the best presentation doesn’t even get a passing note)

PC Gaming Show

Meh.

Grade: Agent 64 looked pretty cool/10

Capcom Showcase

It was Capcom giving updates about all the stuff they’ve announced recently or that’s coming soon. Not much to really talk about here. Updates on Sunbreak (which looks great), Capcom Fighting collection and the arcade collection thing (which was more of an ad), Exoprimal (this game refuses to be interesting), RE stuff… Not really much to talk about. There should’ve been announcements but weren’t. But we knew that, so they basically let us know it would be a pointless presentation before doing it.

I think it’s pretty insulting that we were told we’d get some RE4 gameplay here, but all we actually got is like 5 seconds of Leon walking.

Grade: Nothing/10

Nintendo Direct

Nintendo… didn’t appear. Huh. The current rumor is a Direct on June 29th because some twitch streamer (who I guess is currently also writing for the upcoming God of War) said so… okay, random. That’s worse evidence than the June 15th speculation (which at least speculated based on things that were actually happening), but whatever. So if there is a Direct later on, I’ll comment on it separately and not update this post to mention it.

It’s a bit of a shame Nintendo didn’t do the usual E3-saving presentation, but eh, they’ll announce games when they announce games. Not being a not-E3 doesn’t actually change anything as far as what will eventually be released. Would’ve just been nice to get this so that there’d be something worth talking about with this “event”. Remember that, not counting ports, Nintendo announced 9 new games last year (with ports, add like 4-5 games). Games that are at least semi-big. That’s what a good presentation is. None of these presentations did this.

Grade: Please have a presentation soon to save the gaming industry. It’s your job.

Overall

This not-E3 was awful. Not a single presentation was good. Nintendo didn’t come in to maybe save it. What a waste of time. Not that there weren’t highlights, but they were very few and very far between. I will talk about them separately after this summary.

There’s some themes here though. 2023 is a big theme, as the second half of 2022 is still very fucking sparse if you look at release calendars (the only new game out in NOVEMBER right now is Pokemon, still… the consoles are getting a port of Humankind but that’s not a new game). There were a lot of games featuring frogs as a main element. There was a lot of focus on games that don’t actually seem any good (like As Dusk Falls) as if they’re this revolutionary thing. There’s a lot of very similar game, so many games focus on crafting and farming and such. A lot of the horror-ish stuff kinda blended together…

I may have to change my conclusion from previous years. Maybe game companies should just not do presentations. That would be nice. Just announce games when they’re a couple months away from release, build hype from there instead of hyping for years and always leading to disappointment. Just stop the current machine, it’s stupid and outdated. Let E3 die, stop with the E3-like events, do something sensible.

The highlights

I had to kinda dig to figure out what would count as a highlight. This was HARD.

Eternights, I believe that was a new announcement, and it looks like stupid weeb garbage, which is totally my thing. Looks fun.

Neon White, TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, Metal: Hellsinger and Midnight Suns got a release date. Nice. They’re all this year which is nice. In fact 2 of them are out NOW.

Witchfire got a new gameplay trailer. It looks super fucking fun. I’ve been following that game for a while and I’m hyped that we’re getting closer to release. For now it’s at a Q4 2022 release date for the Early Access, but I hope the full game pops out not too long after that, I will only buy once it’s actually out. Do check out the gameplay vid though, it’s amazing.

The Plucky Squire really caught me by surprise. It had this  storybook style to it for a while, where you play some top-down 2D game that looked okay but unremarkable. But then, when there’s like 20 seconds left to the trailer, the main character pops out of the book into the “real” world in 3D and starts walking around and going into 2D things from there ALA Mario Odyssey and it looks amazing. It’s coming out next year, but I really look forward to playing this one.

Agent 64. It’s Goldeneye, except new. The graphics, the gameplay, the controls, it’s all there to mimic how Goldeneye played and looked on the N64. I played the demo and it was pretty nice. I think you have to play this with a controller for a more authentic experience (I should replay the demo with the classic 1.1 control option, see how that feels).

Redfall is still a big question mark for me. We did see gameplay this time, unlike last year where we got only a cinematic trailer. It’s a pretty standard-looking team-based FPS (though the trailer did say you can play alone, which is what I’d do), with characters that have different powers. That’s all fine. What needs more precision, still, is what the actual concept is. It gives some Left 4 Dead impressions, but also there were some “blink and you miss it” moments where you saw maybe-equipment and almost-definitely-skill-trees. So this game has my curiosity until they’re a bit more straightforward about what this game is.

Silksong being alive is nice. It’s really a shame there’s no release date, but it being in the Microsoft presentation this year means it should be out in the next 12 months so that’s nice.

High on Life is by the Rick and Morty maker’s dev company or whatever (Rick and Morty has been shit since season 3 started so I don’t care much about Squanch Games generally). I thought it was surprisingly interesting. You play as someone who is seemingly forced to become an alien bounty hunter, but your weapons are gun-shaped aliens that talk to you. Gives me some Stranger’s Wrath vibes when it comes to weapons, and otherwise looks actually kinda fun. I’ll be keeping an eye on this. Also it’s out in October I guess.

Diablo 4… I’m not impressed by what I saw. I’m fan of Diablo that hated Diablo 3 and, well, things haven’t gotten better in the Diablo world with Immortal recently coming out and being one of the worst games ever made. So Diablo 4 has a lot of reputation to recover for the series, but it going away from the usual Diablo concept and making it open world… I dunno man. It could be good, but I need to play it at this point. I WILL buy this and review it, but I’m not… hyped. But hey, it’s a highlight. There’s a reason I’m highlighting this and not Starfield.

System Shock is coming back. That’s it, that’s the paragraph of text. I hope it’s good and a great revival of the series.

Skald: Against the Black Priory is one that looked pretty interesting because, both visually and gameplay-wise, it seems to be modeled around classic, early Ultima games. Specifically it reminds me a lot of Ultima III: Exodus. That’s pretty unique nowadays. I’m pretty curious about this one.

Just a rapid-fire set of highlights here… Wanted: Dead, Frogun, Gungrave G.O.R.E., Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, Scorn, Gori: Cuddly Carnage, Minecraft Legends, Demonschool, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Ravenlok, The Last Case of Benedict Fox, Ereban: Shadow Legacy and Nine Years of Shadows are other games that caught my eye in some way. They look pretty cool.

Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society wasn’t at not-E3 2022… It’s in this post though because it was announced today to be coming to the west. Because I’m very happy it’s finally coming.