My E3 2018 Experience With The 'Big Three' Companies In A Nutshell

I’ve been going to E3 for a little while now, and even though every show experience manages to be different from the previous year’s, this time it was something else entirely. That’s because I was only able to attend it for a couple of days, so I missed watching the pre-show events like the press conferences live in attendance. Instead, I got a mix of the two kinds of E3 experiences I’ve had ever since I started caring about it: a little bit of it at home, streaming videos on my computer, and the rest, actually being there in person.

As far as the big three were concerned, my schedule around this year’s edition certainly favored a couple of them more than the one left. Since Microsoft held pretty much all of their game-related presence outside of E3’s actual venue, the Los Angeles Convention Center, instead opting to use their own theater, located a block away from the show floor, I was not able to go and see what they had in stock. Instead, the only bit that I glossed over was whatever they had on display in their Mixr setup, which honestly I don’t remember much of -- E3 is always a rush for me, going from appointment to appointment between the two LACC halls.
 

Still, I managed to see quite a bit from Sony and Nintendo. This year’s E3 felt like the middle chapter for both of them, given that there were no hardware announcements from either, and the games that they showed were -- outside of some exceptions like NiOh 2, Super Mario Party, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and a few other stragglers -- all already announced. And even in that account, Nintendo failed to show some of their most anticipated games, like Metroid Prime 4, in favor of dedicating a painfully long amount of time apparently showing every single detail of their fan favorite Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Safe to say, it was a disappointing year for Nintendo. 

As for Sony, much has already been said about the weird approach that they took with their press conference, but their presence at the show was somewhat more substantial than the other two’s, with playable demos for some of their previously announced games that are about to come out, like the excellent Spider-Man, which I had a chance to play for about an hour, swinging about New York, pummeling criminals and eventually getting to fight with Spidey’s classic foe, Shocker. That bout in particular made a great show of the game’s physics, since I had to beat the snot out of that baddie by swinging huge concrete blocks at him, with bits of them flying all over. Other than that game, I tried my hand testing a single PS VR title, the hotly-announced Tetris Effect, a Tetsuya Mizuguchi project that had me on the edge of my seat while playing. It combines the tried and true gameplay of Tetris with the musically-styled game design that’s intrinsically tied to Mizuguchi.
 

Outside of venturing inside the abodes of these two giants, I had the opportunity of giving a go at quite a few other games that will be coming out for all of the current gen platforms. Metro Exodus proved to be one of my favorites, thanks to the incredible hour or so I spent trying it out. Sadly, nobody at the show was able to play CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, but man, that presentation sure knocked everybody’s socks off. It was basically an hour for uninterrupted gameplay that showed a lot of that game’s systems, including the character upgrades that are literally bolted onto their flesh, up to the already fantastic world built for Cyberpunk. Details are still quite sketchy when it comes to whether or not that game will be coming out for next gen systems, but CD Projekt Red has assured journalists that it is in fact going to be releasing it for the current platforms -- even if it proves to be quite a system hog, especially on PC. There’s no firm release date, obviously, but the wait will sure be worth it if that presentation was any indication.

Granted, since my time at the show was so limited, I’m sure I missed plenty of other gems, but the ones that I did get to see were incredibly impressive. I don’t regret for a second making the effort to fly out to LA in the middle some personal business that was going on at the time. Even though this year’s E3 proved to be a little less exciting to anyone expecting news about their anticipated games or even new machines to fork some cash over for, the stuff that was in fact shown proved to be really good. I was hoping to see more from Nintendo for sure, but that’s what the other international shows are for, as well as their own Nintendo Direct streams, so hopefully they’ll have more to tell us in the coming months.