E3 is like my birthday and Christmas all rolled into one. I absolutely love it and thus enjoy covering it. While the big press conferences were fun to watch and full of surprises this year, there was something off. There was a change that prompted me to create this list, focusing more on the negative impacts rather than the positive. The one thing that annoyed me, and was shared among most press conferences, big or small, was teasing games without any info. Bethesda was the worst, which is odd considering they have been the kings of E3 with their surprises. They got so good at announcing projects at E3 for release a few months away from the show. That’s the way you announce a game! Unfortunately, they failed hard at their own strategy this year. I’ll get more into it later.
Negatives aside, every game on here, mostly, looks cool on some level. The ways we were introduced to them are what I have a problem with. E3 is the time when all eyes, even the general consumers, are looking at the game industry. Shouldn’t that prompt these developers to put their best foot forward? Well, some did and some didn’t. While most of these were bad, I added in ten surprises that I am super jazzed about. The most obvious one, which I will spoil now, is Resident Evil 2’s remake. That may be unfair to award it such a high honor since I love the original, but I don’t care. My article, my rules.
30 Worst: Conquering The World One Phone At A Time
Command & Conquer is, or at this point, I should say was, a long-running PC RTS game. It began in 1995, had many sequels, expansions, and spin-offs for many years, but a new game hasn’t launched since 2012’s Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances, which was a free to play browser game. Hardly one even worth mentioning. Needless to say, fans have been eagerly anticipating a new game and EA brought it back this E3 with…a phone game. How could you be so cruel?
29 Worst: Star Wars Has Fallen
In many of my articles, for various reasons, I’ve discussed how the Star Wars reigns need to be wrestled away from EA. It couldn’t be clearer after this E3 wherein they not only came out on stage to talk up Star Wars Battlefront II like anyone cared anymore. No, the real nail in the coffin was how they announced Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. Did you miss this one? Understandable, because it was announced casually offstage, in the audience, from Vince Zampella, the founder of Respawn Entertainment, with just a title. That’s not how you announce a Star Wars game!
28 Surprising: Welcome Back to the R.C.P.D.
In 2015, Capcom teased, with just a logo on a TV screen, that they were going to remake Resent Evil 2. This was just a few months after Square Enix officially revealed the Final Fantasy VII remake.
Save yourself first.
By all accounts, these are two of the finest PS1 games ever made, let alone great games for video game history as a whole. Final Fantasy VII was missing from E3, but Resident Evil 2 surprised all with not just a tease, but also a full-blown reveal, announcing it will release in January 2019. Your move, Square Enix.
27 Worst: My Kingdom Heart Has Broken
Make no mistake. I am one thousand percent jazzed about Kingdom Hearts III. Frozen and Pirates of the Caribbean wouldn’t have been my go-to choices of new worlds, but hey, they look cool regardless. All trailers shown at E3 looked good. The thing that disheartened me and made me put it on the worst list is the fact that they teased 2018 all year like they were ready to announce a real date at E3. Then we got to E3 and they delayed it. Mind you it’s only until January, but still. It hurts a little.
26 Worst: All Rise For The Confusing Anthem
Anthem, I hope, will be the game that will renew my faith in BioWare. And like a few other examples on this list, I still think it looks like a cool alternative to Destiny. That is, I think it will be. Despite EA’s press conference closing with a Q&A segment, I didn’t really learn much about how the game works. That is to say, what is the story? Will there will classic dialogue choices and romances? I have a lot of unanswered questions.
25 Surprising: Blade Runner Meets The Witcher
The first teaser trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 came in 2012 before The Witcher 3 was even announced. Years later we finally got a look at the game proper and boy does it look freaking amazing. It’s the exact kind of punk meets tech game that I dig from other media like Blade Runner and Deus Ex.
Ciri will bring us the techno.
The best part is that while there are vile parts of the city, it’s bright and colorful, just like the 80s imaged the future would be like. It oozed with style and I can’t wait for more.
24 Worst: An Infinite Amount Of Questions
Halo is to Xbox as Mario is to whatever system Nintendo puts out. It’s what made the original Xbox a thing and while Master Chief doesn’t command the presence he once used to, he’s still an integral part of that brand. Halo 5: Guardians came out in 2015 so it was about time Microsoft announced the next core title: Halo Infinite. They missed one thing. What is it? Six is not in the title, but Master Chief is clearly in it. I think fans needed more than just a tease especially when you start a press conference.
23 Worst: Get Your Minecraft Out Of My Fallout
Fallout is my favorite Bethesda property starting with Fallout 3 and New Vegas. I was kind of meh on Fallout 4 because of all the building mechanics and now what do I find out about Fallout 76? It’s all about building stuff. I like the concept of the area taking part in West Virginia and that it predates all other games in the series. The online even intrigues me, but the building and survival stuff simply does not. Who knows? Maybe it will surprise me this fall. As of now, I’m pretty disinterested.
22 Surprising: Beyond My Wildest Expectations
The reveal of Beyond Good and Evil 2 was incredibly surprising last year. All we got to see was CG and Ubisoft basically said we’re just starting. One year later we got to see a glimpse of the “real game” next to another incredible CG trailer.
Jade is back!
I was certain that they would skip this year and show it again when it was closer to being finished. I was wrong. We didn’t see much, but what we did see, I’m happy with. Plus, Joseph Gordon-Levitt made an appearance.
21 Worst: To Heck And Back
Since Bethesda stared presenting their own conferences back in 2015, they had a formula. Announce one or two huge games and date them for that year. It worked with Fallout 4, The Evil Within 2, and so forth. It’s some of the most genius marketing tactics ever. This year they got sloppy with half-baked announcements as if they did it just so Walmart couldn’t leak them. My first complaint is about Doom Eternal, which had a very short CG teaser, further announcing they’d show more at QuakeCon in August. I hate announcements of announcements. That is a cheap trick.
20 Worst: Did They Just Announce The PS5?
Bethesda’s next lazy reveal was at the end of the show in the form of Starfield, a long rumored space RPG. They showed some space and a logo. After that, The Elder Scrolls VI was unveiled in the same style with some rolling hills and a logo. That’s two “next gen” projects revealed. Does that mean we won’t see either of them until the Xbox Two, or PS5? Why announce them so early? Are they that afraid of Walmart leaking them again? We’re left with so many questions now.
19 Surprising: The Dragons Are Coming
A month before the Switch launched, Nintendo held a special Direct focusing on Fire Emblem. With just a logo they teased a core Fire Emblem game would be coming to the Switch in 2018.
Give me those medieval waifus and husbandos.
That game was finally unveiled as Fire Emblem: Three Houses and looks like classic games in the series albeit, with a bit more in-depth combat. Technically it was delayed into 2019, but since they never updated since 2017 and never had a set time for 2018, I’ll let it past because it looks too good.
18 Worst: Enraged By Walmart
If it wasn’t already clear, Bethesda, one of my favorite conferences since they started in 2015, did nothing for me this year. I don’t have enough time to go through everything in great detail, but I’ll complain one last time this time on Rage 2. Now, the first Rage was okay and I am open to the idea of a sequel, but the party hard, go out and destroy things marketing campaign turns me off. It feels too aggressively like Borderlands. Plus what they showed at their conference didn’t look unique.
17 Worst: Total Squaresville Man
Square Enix held their first press conference, like Bethesda, in 2015, which was chalk full of brand new announcements. The fact that they decided to come back this year made me excited. Would we see the Final Fantasy VII remake, their Avengers project, or perhaps a sequel to Chrono Trigger? Nope. It was completely useless, showing off the same trailers, or revealing the same information in a different way, from what they revealed at the Xbox conference. It blew my mind. I didn’t think anyone could be worse than EA, but boy, Square Enix came close.
16 Surprising: The Rebirth Of Ninjas
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice was teased at the Game Awards last year with just the subtitle and showing the main character’s weird looking technical, bone arm. A lot of speculation arose from this quick tease and people either thought it might be a new Tenchu or Bloodborne 2, since they are both FromSoftware games.
You got your Bloodborne in my Tenchu.
Well, it looks like the spiritual successor to Tenchu, which is perfectly fine to me. I don’t care what title it has because I just want it in my hands as soon as possible.
15 Worst: Terry Crews Can Only Do So Much
Crackdown was a somewhat niche, but respected series of games exclusive for the Xbox 360. When a sequel was teased at the 2015 Gamescom event, I thought we’d have it by now. Well, it went dark until the last E3 wherein it was supposed to launch with the Xbox One X in November. It was delayed to an unknown date into 2018 and now Microsoft had the nerve to bring it back and not release a 2018 date, but one for 2019. This game is never coming out and if it does, it’s going to be a stinker.
14 Worst: Toadally Lame
Since Microsoft acquired Rare back in 2002, fans and analysts have often speculated what properties the Xbox could bring back. Battletoads, for this generation, started heating up message boards when Microsoft was including them as characters in Shovel Knight and Killer Instinct. Well, a game is finally happening, teasing hand-drawn graphics and three-player co-op. Only thing is they basically just showed a logo. Come the fudge on, Microsoft. That’s the kind of thing you reveal when the game is almost done. This could have been huge!
13 Surprising: Nero’s Back Baby
I don’t know why, but a lot of the hardcore fans of the Devil May Cry series didn’t like the reboot: DmC. I, for one, loved it. Doesn’t really matter because after the Microsoft conference the fans have now been appeased with the proper sequel: Devil May Cry 5.
What’s up with the cut arms this year?
I wished Ninja Theory was given another chance at their rebooted franchise, but I am so down to get back to Nero and classic Dante. It looks over the top in the best way possible.
12 Worst: No Love For V
Call of Duty used to be my go-to hard military shooter, but then I discovered Battlefield One. It was the first game in the franchise that really hooked me. It may not have had as bombastic as a campaign as Call of Duty’s, but it was unique and I’m interested to see that again in Battlefield V. Only trouble is, EA barely showed anything off the two times they brought it out onstage both at their own presser and at Microsoft’s. It’s mind-boggling. I’m sure it’ll be good but come on guys. Show a little love.
11 Worst: Gears For The Whole Family
I may not play with toys anymore, but I sure do love to collect figures, statutes, or whatever you want to call them especially in regards to video game franchises I adore. That is unless we’re talking about Funko Pop merchandise. Those big, black, soulless eyes are terrible and they don’t stand up easily. They’re the worst infection to happen to collectibles since POGs. Oh wait, no, making a mobile-based spinoff of Gears of War using the same aesthetic is more horrendous. I cannot believe Gears POP! is real.
