Textbook of Gaming

Arguable the star of this event every year, Sony’s conference is also an out-and-out celebration of their teams, not just their work. To this point, they started the show with a live performance of music from The Last of Us , thanks to the incredible Gustavo Santaolalla and his trusty banjo, before diving straight in to game play from TLOU: Part II . Cheekily, Sony modelled their first tent after the building we seen in the cutscene, with some sort of party going on. I’m sure there’ll be some screeching from the usual suspects and “the gay feeeeeeeeemales in muh vidya games!”, as Ellie’s sexuality is confirmed, but we move past the intimate moments quickly and get straight to the brutal, visceral combat that made the first game so unique. Ellie sneaks, slices, and shoots her way through a group of enemies in a reforested Seattle, and my God does this game look stunning. I know, I know, E3 vertical slice and bullshots; honestly though, this is Naughty Dog. I trust that when their ga...

Today has been a long day at E3, with Ubisoft, Square Enix, and the PC Gaming Show all hosting conferences. Square Enix unfortunately spoiled their own party a little by largely just talking about things we’ve seen at some of the other conferences so far. They dived a little deeper into Tomb Raider and Kingdom Hearts , but complete forgot to mention several games they have previously revealed as being worked on. Meanwhile, The PC Gaming show put on a lot of indie games and a lot of Battle fucking Royale. Sure, a couple, Mavericks (with 1000 players in a match) and Hunt: Showdown (set in post-civil war America battling both other players and horrifying critters), looked interesting, but overall these conferences were low key and not too noteworthy. Ubisoft, however, went all in. Billed as being “more interesting than a keychain”, the show certainly start off that way. Just Dance 2019 made its debut in a spectacular dance and marching band routine. I say Just Dance , the panda...

Here we are on the second day of Passover-the Controller, or E3 as everyone else calls it, with Microsoft and Bethesda both hosting their own press conferences today if you are in LA or North America in general. I’m not, I’m stuck here in the UK where one is today and the other is at 2:30 tomorrow morning, but nevertheless we’re lumping the two shows together! Let’s start with Microsoft, who have really outdone themselves this year by revealing 50 games, 18 of which are exclusive to Xbox and Windows – that’s quite something considering how much their competitor, Sony, have been producing for a long time before this. Phil Spencer reveals that this far larger effort is due to Microsoft acquiring 5 new studios to boost their first party selection: a new studio called The Initiative; Undead Labs, the creators of State of Decay ; Forza devs Playground Games; the sensational Ninja Theory; and finally Compulsion games, the team soon to be releasing We Happy Few . This is, as Spenc...

Whilst I may be a skint graduate with a full time job and little free time, if there's one thing I always make time for it is this week: Nerd Christmas! Game-adan! Religious Festival Analogy! Yes, it is E3 2018, where the biggest and brightest stars in gaming shine bright and attempt to drain your wallet with pre-orders and promises of things coming Soon™. It is fitting, then, that this year we start with one of the most vampiric, scummiest publishers in the video gaming world - Electronic Arts. We start off with Battlefield V , which did not have the greatest reveal event a few weeks back, with fans, critics, journalists and developers seemingly at war over whether the game was pandering to identity politics and engaging in historical revisionism, or if the game was highlighting the contributions by a multitude of people of both genders and all races and ethnicities during the dark times of the 1940s. At EA Play, this discussion has thankfully been ditched in favour of dem...