’tis the season of the E3. There’s a LOT of streams that will happen for the next 6 days. I will watch everything (I mean, I might skip the Verizon presentation, because why is that a thing), but I don’t know if I’ll actually do posts about every presentation. I will try as far as what’s reasonable to even post about. Like, I’ll obviously do a post for the Microsoft and Nintendo ones, but some like Capcom and Square Enix are more questionable. I’ll write something, but I may not post them if there’s just nothing interesting to talk about. And then stuff like Verizon and Intellivision… there’s basically no way I’ll do postws about those.

What I’ll be writing for these events are LIVE commentary, though I will edit those and make them more readable, and I’ll have a conclusion about the presentation as a whole at the end. Also of course I’m writing the intros before watching the streams.

So the first E3-but-not-actually-E3 presentation comes from the Dorito Pope himself, boring reptilioid robot Geoff Keighley. Not a fan of the guy, he reeks of soulless corporatism, the way he says “presented by Doritos” proudly after the name of his events is rather chilling.  Summer Game Fest was a fun idea where not much of note was really announced last year at those few streams that were spread out through the summer (I think the biggest announcement was THPS1+2?). This is a kickoff stream for the rest of the summer. Apparently 30 games will be shown, and it will last a whole million years.

Let’s go and see if Dorito Pope has a good show or not! I doubt it, but let’s see! Stream is starting in a minute so I’ll be down in the post writing my reactions. IKZ

The Show

Hi lizard. We don’t really need to hear you talking. We don’t need guests, we don’t need “performances”, please don’t waste my time. You have 90 minutes, stop talking and show us the goods.

Gearbox and 2K. World Premiere. Getting Borderlands vibes from the graphics. Dude shooting guns at a dragon. Starring: some actors I guess. Whatever. There’s Butt Stallion. And it’s called Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Okay. I dunno how hyped I should be since Borderlands 3 was ass. Keeping those expectations in check. Hoping to see some gameplay soon, cinematic trailers are the big oof.

World premiere. Dotemu. Metal Slug SRPG? Okay I’m in for this. Looks great. It’s called Metal Slug Tactics. Looks really fun. I’m pretty excited to see more about this one and eventually play it.

The lizard is talking with Kojima now. My interest is waning. “We have 30 games to show in 90 minutes… anyways, let’s spend a few minutes talking about Covid with Kojima”. This is a waste of time.

Okay we’re seeing a game. It’s… Death Stranding. Sure is dude from Death Stranding emptying a box of oranges and jumping into it and then putting it away for really no reason, what  a pointless cutscene. Director’s cut of the first game. Okay, so basically nothing, thanks Geoff.

We have Jeff Goldblum here for some reason. Apparently he’s there for a world premiere. I don’t know why they needed him instead of just, you know, playing the trailer for whatever this is. World premiere. Looks like Jurassic Park, barely explaining the random Jeff Goldblum. Is this another park simulator? Yeah. Evolution 2. Sure is a game.

Performer coming up, no idea who this is. Japanese Breakfast. Never heard of it. Geoff, you tremendous moron. Just show games. This is such a time waster. It’s showing scenes from a game while the girl is singing, not sure what the game is. Geoff said it, but I wasn’t listening. Looks… Like lots of walking. Sable. Don’t care. September 23 this year.

World Premiere. Lost Ark. Showing lots of environments. Some cool monsters. Seems to be a top-down RPG in the style of Diablo. Hard to say anything just based on this trailer, could be interesting. I’ll forget to look into it more later.

Amazon Prime advertisement. Fucking lol. Shut up Lizard.

Call of Duty. Apparently a new season. I don’t care. I’ll sleep for the rest of this part.

Look, we’re supposed to see 30 games in 90 minutes. 30 minutes in we’ve seen 6 (maybe 7 if you count the COD update?). You need to up the pace a little bit. The filler is awful. Yes, COD is filler.

Surprise guest… again. Ryan Reynolds. I find it hard to care. He’s talking about Free Guy. Why? “World premiere” trailer. Geoff, you tremendous moron. Get back on track.

Among Us? World premiere trailer for the Among Us roadmap… wow. They’re really wasting our time in this show.

Shuhei Yoshida here to talk about Playstation Indies. Maybe we’ll see actual games here, who knows. There was this drawing game that looks like it might have fun ideas. I missed the title. There’s a thing from the devs of Salt & Sanctuary, I think Shuhei said Salt & Sacrifice? It looks fine. I haven’t played Salt & Sanctuary yet so I don’t care yet.

World premiere. Solar Ash trailer. That looked kinda cool before. Still feels it’s lacking anything really meaningful about the actual gameplay, but it still looks cool.

Chivalry 2 now. Not my kinda game. I’m sure many people are hyped.

Valorant now? Oh, no, just an amazon ad… Oh okay it’s a tease of the next character. And that was nothing, like 3 seconds. We saw a dismembered robot.

Escape from Tarkov? Is there gonna be anything interesting shown soon? This is a lot of updates for old games so far.

The sequel to Two Point Hospital. This was leaked before. It’s called Two Point Campus. It looks fine. TPH was pretty decent from the little I’ve played.

Netflix. For some reason Geoff is talking about other streams he’ll be on. I don’t care. He did quickly mention a Cuphead cartoon, not sure if that was announced before? Either way, fuck this Netflix ad.

Smite? Another update on an old game. I’m ignoring this.

Announcing a new game publisher. 12 games coming from this new publisher. Very disparate kinds of games… Wait was that Gungrave? Huh. And a few other things. The publisher is called Prime Matter. Some of these are older games, or sequels to games from other publishers, not sure what’s up with that. Prime Matter is publishing a new Painkiller too. Okay cool I guess but why announce a publisher?

New IP from… Stray Bombay? Coop shooter where you fight hordes of aliens. Looks like a very cheap Left 4 Dead. With aliens. It’s called The Anacrusis. Looks meh.

Tomorrow there’s gonna be a deep dive video for New World. Whatever that is.

Rocket League? Come on, stop with the pointless updates for old games. Ignoring this.

Developer Sharkmob with a multiplayer game in the Vampire the Masquerade world. World Premiere. Vampire the Masquerade Blood Hunt. This trailer showed nothing that really… means anything. I can’t tell what the gameplay is supposed to be. What a waste of time.

New Dark Pictures Anthology thing. I care exactly zero. I heard pretty bad things about some of them. At least someone may be excited for this somewhere. It’s called House of Ashes. I guess this was announced before huh.

Tales of. New “World Premiere” look at a Tales of Arise trailer. This game is a known quantity at this point. Don’t really need to see more of it, it’s already about to come out anyways in september. No need for more trailers.

Sky coming June 29 on Switch. No idea what this is. Apparently it’s a game worthy of getting “seasons”, as there’s a Le Petit Prince season coming up, whatever that means.

World premiere. Planet of Lana. Pretty cool art style for the backgrounds. For the human, not so much. It’s hand-painted which is cool. Seems like a pretty simple side-scrolling platformer ALA Out of the World. Not super interested but at least it’s a new game announcement and it might be pretty good.

Overwatch 2. Overwatch 2 changes to 5 v 5 for whatever reason. And the guy is here to show new… skins… What a pointless reveal!

DnD Dark Alliance. I guess Geoff is showing some gameplay from a recent stream or something. It feels like they’re wasting time. This is, like, just about to come out, I don’t know why this is needed.

I think I missed something for a second there. There’s characters being shown off. No idea what this is…. Looks like Paladins. I don’t know what Genlock is. It is Paladins, so this is yet another update to an old game.

Another amazon prime ad. Shut up lizard.

World premiere. It’s yet another Monster Hunter Stories 2 trailers. How many trailers does Capcom need to make for one game? They’ll probably be showing this again at the E3 presentation too. Waste of time. Yeah the game looks good and I’m getting it, but there’s no reason to show so much of the game before release.

Weezer is here. For some reason. I have no idea why. This isn’t advertising a game or anything. I think? There’s a game-like thing in the background. No idea if it’s an actual game. Waste of time. Lizard mentioned a game coming out. I have no idea what it was called, must be the thing that was in the background. Didn’t look particularly interesting. The song was meh. (EDIT: The game was “Wave Break”… I dunno, doesn’t look particularly interesting)

Endless Dungeon is a game that was announced in the VGAs. There’s a new trailer. It’s a co-op tower defense. Looks okay.

Talking about Ratchet & Clank. It’s coming out tomorrow, not sure why it’s needed to be talked about here. And it’s just an announcement that the devs will do a stream about it.

Giancarlo Esposito? Far Cry 6. Dude talking about the character he’s playing in the game. This is extremely pointless, it’s not information about the game in any meaningful way.

More amazon prime ads. Shut up lizard.

Fall Guys costume. It’s a Fall Guys costume. A sexy 2B costume… Maybe something interesting will show up at some point. I’m feeling my soul coming out of my body from this show being trash.

Not yet though because there’s a Genshin trailer. Let’s ignore this meh.

Deviation Games. They’re new developers. Not sure why you’d announce a developer, but no game from that developer… They’re wasting time, still. They’ve been wasting time since the Metal Slug reveal. This is ridiculous.

I guess this is longer than 90 minutes. Here’s the Sonic Orchestra, playing a song from one of the worst Sonic games for some reason. Why?

Sunday there’s gonna be a look at Back 4 Blood on some stream. We’re seeing a bit of a teaser now. Okay. Looks fine, but why show this if they’re gonna be showing it again later? WASTE. OF. TIME. LIZARDPERSON.

Tunic trailer! This looked pretty cool each time we’ve seen it. Hope it comes soon.

Vikings, Midgard. This is a game where you do some topdown beat ’em up RPG kinda things and build up your village with the resources you find, then you defend the village against big monsters. It’s called Tribes of Midgard. Looks okay.

Evil Dead, the game. With Bruce Campbell to talk about it I guess. Seems to be some coop game where you fight off zombies and stuff. You can play as the human group fighting zombies or some of the demonic creatures from the movies and show, or you can play as the Kandarian Demon to fight the humans. I dunno, it looks okay maybe. I’m really not convinced.

Grand Finale. Extremely special, apparently. Comes from a winner for the VGAs. Probably Elden Ring. Yup, there’s the From Software credits and stuff. There’s big environments.  Dudes riding on horses. And monsters. And there’s gameplay too. Sure seems to have that Souls look and feel to it. Seriously if you told me this was Dark Souls 4 I’d believe you. Looks cool. January 21 2022. Not too long a wait, nice.

Overall thoughts

I guess there’s more indie stuff being shown, past the “main” show, so I’m stopping there as far as this reaction post goes (as I’m writing this, there’s been a triangle on screen for 12 minutes with a dude under it. No idea what this is).

This started okay with the Wonderlands thing and Metal Slug Tactics. Then it went full stupid for a good long while. A long, long, dumb while. Basically the entire show was pointless. Lots of small updates to old games. Lots of pointless guests that were there for no reason. Lots of performances that were there for no reason. This was just a huge waste of time. There was a new development studio announced for some reason, but no game that they’re making. There was a publisher announced, that is publishing a bunch of old games I guess? I don’t get why most of the stuff in this presentation was in this presentation.

The highlights… I kinda already mentioned all but one of them, which is pathetic considering I only mentioned 2 games. Wonderlands might be interesting, we’ll likely see more of this during the E3 Gearbox stream. Metal Slug Tactics looks really interesting, I’m hyped for that. And the only other big highlight is Elden Ring. Finally we saw something for it, and finally we have a reason for hype (any hype before this was a bit foolish). Seeing more Tunic was also kinda cool but something resembling a release date seems like it’s not happening for a bit still. I’m re-reading/editing my live impressions to everything and I’m just straight not finding things worth talking about at all. Like… Tales of Arise and Monster Hunter Stories 2 are hype games, but we’ve seen enough of them already that we don’t need to see any more before launch. I guess Two Point Campus? I’m sure that’ll be okay.

There’s gonna be more Summer Game Fest later, maybe Geoff “totally not a lizard person from the Hollow Earth” Keighley will manage to get an interesting announcement or 2 at some point maybe. As it stands, this sucked balls. So much time wasted for not much payoff. At least the Metal Slug game looks really cool. And Elden Rings should be okay.