You know how if you ask your mother or father why they both get a Day and there's no Children's Day they'll reply "every day is Children's Day"? Well every E3 conference is a PC conference. Once again the madness is over for another year, and as you may have predicted Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo were still fighting to prove who has the least irrelevant hardware. There were plenty of nuggets for PC-only gamers to chew on, but to save you wading through hours of chat about TVs, Betas and "Conceptual Footage" we're here to offer you the edited highlights and those crispy (and not so crispy) nuggets in a nice bullshit-free box. We'll go through the five conferences, picking out the good and bad stuff, then check out a few general points at the end.
THE MICROSOFT CONFERENCE
GOOD: Unlike Sony or Nintendo, Microsoft are still synonymous with PC gaming (albeit less so in recent years). Any one of their Xbox games or exclusives could feasibly make the jump to PC during one of their occasional "seriously, we haven't forgotten about PC" splurges, so the fact that their conference was 90 minutes of solid well-paced gaming is good news. Plus most of their stuff was multiplatform anyway, so yay.
BAD: That said, Sunset Overdrive, Forza Horizon 2, Fable Legends, Scalebound, Crackdown, and most of the recent Halo's probably won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Still, we live in hope.
GOOD: Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare impressed with proper next-gen graphics rather than the middle-of-the-road stuff Ghosts went for, and it looks more astonishingly cinematic as ever. Things are getting even more futuristic and, dare I say it, Titanfall-y, and the fact this is the first Call of Duty by a brand new developer since Treyarch started will hopefully inject some fresh blood into things. I'm still not going to get it, but hey - I like to stay positive!
GOOD: 4v1 multiplayer shooter Evolve introduces playable for-all-intents-and-purposes Cthulhu. There are four new Hunters too, including a robot, but Cthulhu! The Kraken, as it's really called, is tentacle-y, can fly and shoot lightning at players. Evolve was great fun when I played it a few months ago (check out our preview) and I've a feeling every new announcement will make me want it more. And it's only out in October supposedly. Not a chance probably, but we'll see.
GOOD: Assassin's Creed Unity looks incroyable, yes as good as that this-can't-be-in-game-can-it teaser that Ubisoft released. Paris actually feels like a real city with proper gigantic crowds filled with unique people. Getting down from buildings has finally been revamped so you're not just hopping and hoping anymore, and the mission systems seem a lot more natural and open-world-friendly now. It also has four-player drop-in co-op now, which seems to be Ubisoft's new thing. Excellent, says I...
BAD: ... Although there's no guarantee it'll be out on PC the same time as consoles. Ubisoft have a habit of delaying their PC version at the last minute.
GOOD: Dead Rising 3 is coming to PC, so the new DLC the "Ultra Dead Rising 3 Super Plus Alpha Championship Edition" will probably be coming too! A huge homage to Capcom past, closer to an insane old-school side-scrolling beat-em-up than usual Dead Rising 3, it's all a bit of mindless fun. You can even play as Tofu. Not kidding.
BAD: Microsoft seem to be abandoning Kinect altogether, as apart from a brief mention of a new Dance Central for Xbox One there's nothing at all - which means we're getting even less than the pitiful support the PC already has for the device. Yes, I know, no one cares, but I still have to say that it's a bad thing that Microsoft has given up support for a device that was supposed to be the future of gaming so quickly and so easily.
GOOD: Project Spark, Microsoft's answer to LittleBigPlanet and Minecraft's ethos that gamers like to create things and that equals money, is still a thing. And now has Conker, the foul-mouthed squirrel not seen since Microsoft censored his Nintendo game remake. However, PC gaming already has mods and many easy ways to make games, so I doubt it'll take off here. Or on Xbox One either, since the E3 trailer is actually less advanced than the last time they showed it. This is only barely good, incidentally.
GOOD: Ori and the Blind Forest is a lovely Studio Ghibli-inspired 2D platformer, and despite Microsoft's word-play it will be coming to PCs in 2014. Although I have to say, who the heck are Moon Studios? I can't find any information about them at all, and they don't have a website. I think they're headed by an ex-Blizzard guy, but that's about it. Their only other game in development is so-called FPSRTS Warsoup, which was announced in 2010...
GOOD: Limbo developers Playdead announced their next child-in-peril moody-platformer Inside, which will debut on Xbox before making it to everywhere else. There seem to be zombies, and it looks a tiny bit more colourful than Limbo's shadow world.
GOOD: Young Lara Croft returns in Rise of the Tomb Raider, the poorly titled (was Tomb Raider Into Darkness taken?) next-gen sequel to the beautiful reboot from Crystal Dynamics. Coming next year, and bears are confirmed.
GOOD: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is still looking stunning, contains beautiful griffin-blood-tracking and cutting-people-in-half mechanics, and even better contains no silly "exclusives" for any system. Hooray. No idea why Microsoft showed it, but hey, kudos.
BAD: I'm going to be mean here and put this under "bad"... The Division. Still looking good, but apart from a few new gadgets was the highly-staged demo we saw any different than the one Ubisoft showed a year ago? And we're still only hoping it'll be out next year.
THE SONY CONFERENCE
BAD: Destiny is still looking like a fun sci-fi MMO/shooter hybrid, like a more ambitious Planetside that's eaten Halo. Beta goes live in late July so people will be seeing it in action soon, and it's got the full might of Bungie and Activision behind it. So why bad? Because it's still not announced for PC, that's why. Despite being multiplatform and seemingly most at home on the system Bungie continue to tiptoe around the idea that it might happen. Sigh.
GOOD: However I've got no regrets about The Order: 1886 not coming to PC. We've already got Dragon's Lair. Yes graphically it looks stunning, but it seemed like Ready At Dawn wanted to make a CGI movie and just grudgingly added gameplay moments. It's like they saw how popular Telltale's The Walking Dead was and set out to make a next-gen version with even less interactivity. Pathetic. I've never been so happy not to get a Playstation game on PC.
BAD: More sadly though we probably won't see Bloodborne either, and after From Software did such a bang-up job with Dark Souls II (and taking so damn long getting both out) seeing Sony publish their next game kind of dashes all my hopes that this "Victorian Souls" will be released on PC. Sniff.
GOOD: Far Cry 4, on the other hand, will be out on PC and will be out this year, almost certainly challenging Wolfenstein: The New Order for Best FPS of 2014. Ubisoft's current predilection for drop-in co-op looks particularly appetizing here too, and that crossbow looks a nice replacement for the ol' over-used regular bow. In terms of gameplay I'm sure it'll be great...
BAD: ... however it'll still be tethered to Uplay, which will probably go down on release day stopping PC owners buying it and even console owners from playing multiplayer. And even when it all works at last I probably won't get more than ten minutes of co-op time before one of us gets kicked out.
GOOD: Dead Island 2 is announced, and as Techland have moved on to Dying Light (for reasons that I now realise was that they lost the license) the sequel is being made by underrated Spec Ops: The Line developer Yager. It seems to be focusing on a less sombre and more ridiculous side of the zombie apocalypse (much like Dead Rising) with Jack Black playing one of the characters. I'm excited, let's just hope we get a finished game this time.
BAD: I don't even know if anyone reading this cares about Disney Infinity on PC, but the announcement that the Avengers will be Sony-only is deeply troubling news. Parents and young children don't know about stupid backroom exclusivity deals, the joy of Skylanders and Disney Infinity for them is their simplicity - buy toys, wave them in front of your system, play them in-game. That's all cool and easy to grasp, which is why they're successful. If little Timmy's mummy buys him an Iron Man figure and it doesn't work with his copy then Timmy will be upset and mummy will be angry. No one wins here - the people who care about console exclusives don't care about Disney Infinity, and vice versa.
GOOD: Magicka 2 is announced! And despite Sony throwing around the word "exclusive" it's definitely coming out on PC. Hooray!
BAD: But it looks exactly like the first game. Sigh. C'mon Paradox, impress me.
GOOD: Highlight of E3: a special edition of Grim Fandango is announced, and despite Sony doing its best to make us think otherwise it will be out on PC too. Since LucasArts couldn't even be bothered to re-release the original before they died this is very good news indeed, as the game is one of the best ever made. A bit of resolution tightening and the removal of tank controls and it will be again.
GOOD: In the midst of a sizzle reel from Devolver Digital they announced that Serious Sam developer Croteam is making a Portal-style game in the SS3 engine called The Talos Principle. Despite sounding like an episode of Star Trek it looks quite fun, very Myst.
GOOD: I may have given The Division a hard time for showing a similar trailer twice, but I ain't gonna do the same for No Man's Sky because it still looks mind-blowing - and the previous VGX Awards trailer wasn’t one long cut, which this was. Cave, interesting world with alien dinosaurs, pop in a starfighter, fly out of the atmosphere and into space, a fleet of ships arrives, a dogfight, then down on to a completely new desert world utterly different from the first. Incredible. Just don’t get swayed by that Sony money Hello Games, we want to see this on PC at the same time.
GOOD: Mortal Kombat X is the first next-gen version of the classic gruesome brawler and mixes the disturbing X-Ray moves of the last game with the scenery interaction of Netherrealm’s last title Injustice: Gods Among Us. It also looked exactly like the supposed CGI teaser released a few weeks ago. Awesome.
BAD: But it’s not yet confirmed for PC, and both Mortal Kombat and Injustice took ages after their console releases to come out and were extremely badly ported. Let’s cross our fingers that Netherrealm don’t do the same things a third time.
GOOD: I always said that the reason Grand Theft Auto 5 wasn’t announced for PC yet was that Rockstar were clearly going to announce it at the same time as a next-gen version. I was right. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY. Now, er, Red Dead Redemption please.
GOOD: Batman: Arkham Knight is still looking amazing, and a long slice of gameplay plus Batmobile equals Chris Capel getting a funny feeling in his pants.
BAD: Although that experience was soured by the knowledge that the PS4 are getting exclusive Scarecrow maps. Not again, Rocksteady...
THE NINTENDO “CONFERENCE”
GOOD: Smash Bros! Yoshi’s Woolly World! Bayonetta 2! Legend of Zelda! Xenoblade Chronicles X! Hyrule Warriors! Er, Splatoon!
BAD: … None of which will be coming out on PC. Well, eventually I guess. That Dolphin emulator’s pretty great you know...
THE UBISOFT CONFERENCE
GOOD: Far Cry 4! The Division! Assassin's Creed Unity! The Crew! Exercise Bollocks!
BAD: With the exception of The Crew and Exercise Bollocks all were shown off better at Microsoft's or Sony's dos. Oh well, still exciting stuff.
GOOD: Valiant Hearts, the World War One-set UbiArt game, got a really heartfelt trailer and is only a week or so away. This is definitely a game I'm proud that Ubisoft can put up alongside their major titles. They're even making a documentary.
BAD: Rainbow Six: Patriots is probably dead.
GOOD: Rainbow Six: Siege is definitely alive! It's proper old-school Rainbow Six, with tactics that you have to plan beforehand, infiltrating houses carefully and slowly, and one shot will end you. It's like the original Rainbow Six or SWAT 4, and is exactly the sort of return to the sort of tactical shooters Takedown: Red Sabre tried and failed to bring back. Also, incredible environmental destruction!
THE EA CONFERENCE
GOOD: Star Wars: Battlefront 3! AT-STs! Landspeeders! Helmets! Proper Star Wars!
BAD: It was all early prototype test footage, a theme with EA's conference. So it's ages off, and we have just as much an idea what the game will be like as we did after the ten-second teaser last year.
GOOD: Dragon Age: Inquisition showed off plenty of gameplay footage, with party members illustrated, a big dragon fight, the overhead tactical camera shown off (YAY), and it's all still looking very pretty. And out this year. Plus they used a female main character in the demos, which makes a change.
BAD: Mass Effect 4 on the other hand is still a way off, with more test footage and some vague hints that it's going to be well away from the original trilogy. My bet is that it's centuries after Mass Effect 3 and Bioware are going to pull a Dune on us.
GOOD: They're also making a new IP, that may or may not be a post-apocalyptic Fallout-style RPG. So they're not doing Knights of the Old Republic 3 then? Whatever, new IP is good and Bioware have never made a less than stunning original title.
GOOD: You can laugh yourself to death in The Sims 4. Wait, is that a good thing? It's out September anyway, and looks even WACKIER than before.
GOOD: Dawngate is EA's attempt to enter MOBA territory. It could be good I suppose.
BAD: Mirror's Edge 2! Hooray! Erm, except they're still only at the test level stage? That trailer from last E3 had more in-game action! They say they've gone back to the drawing board with the game, meaning this is waaaaaay off. If it doesn't get cancelled.
BAD: Sports games and Criterion's mad new title, none of which will probably end up on PC. For shame.
GENERAL THOUGHTS
BAD: E3 2014 became the year of the insubstantial console exclusivity deals, as Sony and Microsoft fought tooth and nail to have a bit of pointless DLC or a beta exclusive to their consoles for every game they could. The kind of stuff that doesn't sell consoles but just inconveniences gamers. The Joker-exclusive maps for Batman: Arkham Asylum are still PS3-only, and they won't make me buy a PS3 but it ticks me off that I'm not allowed to play a piece of one of my favourite games just because I prefer playing it on PC. The same will be true of the Scarecrow maps for Arkham Knight on PS4. Even if I get a PS4 I won't buy Arkham Knight on it, so I'm just being left out in the cold because of some anti-gamer backroom deal. Disgusting... and yet, I'll live with just the main game, so what was the point?!
BAD: At the same time, this is the year that the word "exclusive" totally lost all meaning. Potentially good this, at least for PC gamers, but it's still annoying. The word was thrown around liberally at the press conferences, with very few moments of it actually meaning anything. "Exclusive... to consoles, but it'll be on PC!" "Exclusive... two days early beta access!" "Exclusive... short sword which you can get later in the game anyway!" "Exclusive... but won't be after two months!" All of these happened with both Microsoft and Sony conferences this year, but they of course didn't use the full versions, just that one buzzword. Consequently we have the absurd situation where the entire PC community was left unsure whether Grim Fandango, a previously PC-only game, was actually coming out on PC. We're still not absolutely certain and Double Fine aren't allowed to say, and that's utter mierda.
GOOD: Nevertheless, most of the best games on show were multiplatform. The Witcher 3, No Man's Sky, Batman: Arkham Knight, Dragon Age Inquisition, Far Cry 4, Assassin's Creed Unity, Rainbow Six Siege, GTA5, Rise of the Tomb Raider, the list goes on and on. Oh, and speaking of raiding tombs, kudos to Square for announcing Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, the sequel to superb isometric co-op spin-off Guardian of Light.
GOOD: Indie games seem to be at the forefront of every conference with each company trying to outdo itself by helping as many little studios as possible, and this is a very good thing. Previously the domain of niche player groups smaller game studios can now feasibly compete with the biggest publishers at the year's most high-profile gaming event, and most people (including me) would argue that No Man's Sky from the four-person Hello Games team looked better than anything else at the show. We're in a golden age of indie gaming people, enjoy it while it lasts.
BAD: Ubisoft unfortunately spoiled their excellent showings of Assassin's Creed Unity with some badly-worded PR bullshit about not having enough resources to make female assassins. Four people in a flooded office in Guildford can create a universe, and yet 2600 people with infinite cash can't animate boobs correctly (despite having playable boobs in nearly every game in the series that for some reason they can't re-use). This nonsense excuse created a revolt of its own in the #womenaretoohardtoanimate group, who reminded me that the French Revolution is actually home to probably the most famous assassination by a woman in history (Jean-Paul Marat by Charlotte Corday). Irony.
BAD: The MIA PC titles at E3 include Fallout 4, Left 4 Dead 3, Game of Thrones, Deus Ex Universe, Sleeping Dogs: Triad Wars, Mad Max, Just Cause 3, Dishonored 2, Prey 2, Beyond Good & Evil 2, Cyberpunk 2077, non-Battlefront Star Wars, and of course Half-Life 3. And The Last Guardian, but we don't give a toss about that in PC land. Seriously, where are these at?
It was a funny old year, with Microsoft astounding everyone by only showing games and leaving Kinect to rot and Sony doing the reverse and spending too long talking about TV stuff. But by not playing favourites as usual the PC wins time and time again. We may miss out on Yoshi's Woolly World, Bloodborne and Halo 5, but look on the bright side - we've got tons of games that we know will run best on PC, another load that aren't coming to consoles like Divinity: Original Sin, Wasteland 2, Star Citizen, The Mandate, Pillars of Eternity and Everquest Next, and of course we can feel safe in the knowledge that we'll never get The Order: 1886. Hooray for PC gaming!
- Written by Chris Capel
