The Games That Got Me Excited at E3 2015 - Part 2

We went through a lot of smaller titles and a few AAA blockbusters, didn’t we? Here is part two of the games I got excited for at E3 2015.

Doom

One of the most influential and popular games out there, Doom has been under the radar lately. A sequel to Doom 3 was always teased but nothing came to fruition. There were talks about a Doom 4 but that was quietly scrapped in favor of a reboot of Doom. I would say it’s a gritty reboot but Doom was already pretty gritty and metal. This new version was shown behind closed doors at QuakeCon which surprisingly never had a leak! And while my tastes in games have shifted towards less violence for the most part, I couldn’t help but get excited out of eviscerating demons and hellspawn in new and creative ways. It looks very much like Doom with a glossy new pain job and some modern updates but nothing too drastic.

Dreams

Media Molecule games have always been about play, exploration, creation, and cooperation as their previous games LittleBigPlanet and Tearaway demonstrate. This tradition continues with Dreams, a collaborative effort to build characters and things into interactive dreams. From the teaser demo, this looks really neat with characters able to be sculpted from digital clay, not unlike in ZBrush, and other players are able to tweak or add on their own creations. This looks very promising.

Drawn to Death

The new game from David Jaffe (Twisted Metal, God of War) is basically a high schoolers’ notebook doodles come to life. Take an arena shooter, add the imagination of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, plus his sketches and some over the type whimsy of Sunset Overdrive and you got something roughly like Drawn to Death. Completely unrelated to Drawn to Life, Drawn to Death looks frantic in its action and its art style will definitely help it stand out from the crowd. And it’s that art style that has me interested in it.

EarthNight

One thing I haven’t really mentioned in this series of articles are which platforms the games are coming out for. Most are multiplatform but there is a surprising amount of games coming out only to the PlayStation 4 and Vita, especially for smaller games. It’s good to see Sony supporting independent games and EarthNight is another example of this. It’s a simple enough game by being a rougelike runner bent on killing dragons that have infested Earth. There is promise of more depth and options to suit different playing styles.

Fallout 4

Everyone knew this was going to happen at some point from all of the rumors and fake teasers, Bethesda finally dropped the bombshell and revealed a new part of the Fallout universe. Fallout 4 does the best of sequels by improving upon every aspect of the previous games and expanding upon what made them great in the first place. The character creation system has been greatly expanded and weapon and town creation have been added for more custom content. I’m sure the writing and story will be top notch. Probably the best part about this is that we don’t have to wait long at all, November 10!

Final Fantasy VII Remake

OK, this one certainly came out of left field for pretty much everyone. Sure everyone was hoping for a remake but Square Enix would give extremely vague answers and most evidence would point to them not even attempting this. The teaser led to millions of gamers to orgasm simultaneously and to endlessly debate how the game will turn out after they changed into new underpants. Some details were revealed post-E3 such as that it’ll be more of a reimagining than a straight up remake and that some scenes (the crossdressing one in particular) will remain. I already wrote up what I think should and should not be in the remake. 

Firewatch
Another first-person adventure title but this time it follows a lone fire watchman who has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a couple of teenagers and some strange goings-ons around the forest. His only outlet is via radio. This looks like a very interesting game that should have a fantastic story.

Horizon: Zero Dawn

This is another game that came from nowhere but only because it’s a brand new IP from Guerrilla Games (Killzone series). I wasn’t a big fan of Killzone but I know they are at least well-made games so I wasn’t expecting something like this to come from the Dutch company. A cataclysmic event has basically wiped out humanity except for some survivors who have lived on long enough to have forgotten about the origins of the event and robot dinosaurs. This looks like it’ll be an open world action game with some RPG elements and the combat looks really good with different ways of taking down the robo-dinos.

Last Guardian

Here is a game that’s been in development hell for over six years. Since it was foretold in the Neanderthal cave paintings this game has been fraught with rumors of cancellation. I always maintained that if it wasn’t going to be outright cancelled then it would be brought over to the PlayStation 4. And look at how right I was! To be honest, it doesn’t look like much has changed since we last saw the game but it already looked good and I was already excited for it. Given the pedigree of Team Ico, I’m not terribly worried about how this game will turn out when it’s released.

Mass Effect Andromeda

The Mass Effect series is one of my favorite game franchises with the first one being my favorite of the trilogy. So far there isn’t a lot known about the game but I know I’ll pick it up when it comes out. My main concerns are that it’ll venture too far from the more hard “science” that the first game had and the subsequent sequels started to move away from. And after something like the near annihilation from the Reapers, I wonder what Bioware will do to ante up the stakes this time.

Need For Speed

This is a series I’ve been a fan of since pretty much the original. I didn’t play the original until many years after it was released but I always enjoyed the idea of the games – racing exotic supercars. After a year break from annual releases the series is back and looks to get back to its “roots” which for many now means more street racing. The Underground parts were not really my favorite aspect of the series but as long as everything is done well I know I’ll have a blast with the game.

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

The original Mirror’s Edge was quite an experimental gamble. A first-person game with few guns and fewer moments of shoot outs!? The outrage! Fortunately it worked when there wasn’t shooting going on. Thankfully DICE are taking the best aspect of Mirror’s Edge (the parkour) and ditching some of the worst aspects of it (the shooting). Hopefully the story will be improved from the original too.

No Man’s Sky

I’ve been following this game for a while and I’m glad it’s coming closer to being released. A universe where the worlds are procedurally generated and each one can be explored is pretty awesome. Fly around in space ships, discover things and get credit for it and join others in your adventures. I seriously cannot wait for this to come out.