When did we stop distrusting the ad men? It seems to have been drummed into me from the earliest age possible; “Be sceptical of the street salesmen”, my subconscious tells me, “the estate agents, the people who want your money”. But watching this year’s E3 press conferences, it seems there are still plenty of people who will happily throw their hard-earned cash away at the promise of magic beans.
Cries of “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!” are heard from the crowd, and of course, can be seen spreading all over the universe’s collective comments section. This super creative meme-spouting bunch laugh along in blatant disregard (or dumb, self-aware celebration) of the Futurama joke’s original context: a satirical jab at unthinking zombie consumerism.
“We’re all being played for saps!” Shouts an audience member, throwing his arms up in the air in celebration.
“I don’t care how little you show me!” Cries another, this one in Fallout 3 cosplay gear. “It’s a popular franchise with a bigger number on the end! Of course I’ll buy!”
“I’ve already pre-ordered!” Yells a third, not wanting to be outdone. “You’ll still get my money even if you just come out and take a dump right in my lap!”
For my less video gamey and more parenty readers, E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is an annual trade fair for video games, full of trailers and announcements from the industry’s biggest players. On paper, that is. In practice, it’s more like a great big sauna where all the highest profile game publishers relax and put their feet up, while crowds of willing volunteers queue up to throw their money on the furnace just for a fleeting glimpse beneath the robes at their shrivelled genitalia.
So without further ado, I think it’s about time for an adamantly anti-hype deconstruction of some of the games announced so far. Why not use the hyperlinks below to watch each game’s respective trailer as we go along? Although if you are doing that, I would recommend keeping a photo of a loved one or some prozac handy to reduce the chance that you’ll slit your wrists open with a WATCH_DOGS case.
Batman: Arkham Knight. So the makers of Arkham Asylum and City are back with another sequel, after letting someone who didn’t know what they were doing mess around and make Origins. If the new trailer is anything to go by, the new Batman Arkham instalment will feature real-time, first-person, walking-to-a-table gameplay; at which point a cutscene will be triggered from the new DOOM game. A bit of a change from the previous titles, but at least it’s original.
DOOM: Hey, are you sick of all the identical military war-simulators around these days? Do you long for the old classic arcade-style shooters? Well piss off, because the game that put the FPS genre on the map is being dragged kicking and screaming into the modern age with a bloody reboot, full of all the wanky cutscenes and over-long kill animations that were missing from the original. Do you like pressing a single button and letting a bunch of ones and zeroes do your kill for you? You’ll love new DOOM. And with the all-new CHAINSAWTM, every kill is extended, over-animated, and basically unplayable!
Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Ha ha, no, there’s no way I’m watching all of that bollocks.
Halo 5: Guardians. Looks much the same as usual, which is to say, dull as a dead dog’s doormat. But now, you don’t just play Master Chief, you also play another power-armoured Spartan who uses all the same weapons and is basically no different apart from a slightly modified helmet. Christmas has come early!
“It’s happened again…” begins the narration to the Dishonored 2 trailer. Indeed, that would appear to be the case, mystery voice, so why should I buy it this time? The trailer was completely pre-rendered anyway, which means it’s about as trustworthy as a Kotaku review, and you can’t tell whether or not they’ve fixed any of the problems the first game had. There’s no way of knowing if all the NPCs are still 100% unemotional and professional the whole time with no actual character or personality, like almost everyone in the Star Wars prequels; there’s no way of knowing if you’ll still be able to blink-teleport past every hazard and threat after just two levels, removing all challenge from the game; it was made clear, however, that the developers are still enthusiastic about the moral choice mechanic, so at least we can be sure of a couple of shit endings.
Hitman. I feel like I’m probably a bit biased about this one. I loved Blood Money, but I think I’m still bitter because when I tried to play Absolution my save file corrupted two thirds of the way through and I had to restart. Twice. So as far as I’m concerned, Agent 47 can go eat a dick.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. So it’s another one, and this time it’s set in Victorian London. Which famous historical figures do you think will be making contrived appearances in this instalment? They’ve already shown Charles Darwin and Dickens. Jack the Ripper, perhaps? Queen Victoria herself? This series is quickly getting less and less about assassins and more and more like Horrible Histories with less stabbing. Although I admit the game could still win me over if it lets you shoot beefeaters right in the face.
Call of Duty: Hoth. Oh.. Wait, err.. Sorry, I mean Star Wars Battlefront. From the looks of the new multiplayer gameplay trailer, it’s pretty much the same as the last two battlefront games in all new HD graphics, which may have been the idea all along since it has the exact same name as the original. Hold on, that’s a bit pointless then, because I can still play the first two games on my 360… Oh right sorry, of course, you made those new consoles that weren’t backwards compatible, so you have to remake, reboot and re-release the old games that don’t work any more. That’s totally cool, nobody minds paying full price for a slightly shinier version of a thing they’ve already got. That’s why Blu-ray has been a total success that has effectively and completely rendered DVDs obsolete.
Final Fantasy VII Remake, Rare Replay, Gears of War Ultimate Edition. Oh for god’s sake.
Actually on that subject, Microsoft did announce that a number of Xbox 360 games will become playable on the XBONE. Well it’s about bloody time guys, maybe if you’d just released another 360 with bigger and better hardware in the first place, it wouldn’t have been so much effort to get them working. If you burn all the books, it takes a lot of work with paper and pritt stick to be able to read them again. Plus, if they’d just improved the 360 and kept the basic OS the same, we would still be able to play all the original Xbox titles too. Anyway, they didn’t mention how many games would actually work with the new patch, but they’d better go all out with this because it’s the only way I’d ever even consider getting a current gen console.
Horizon: Zero Dawn. Lara Croft meets Mechagodzilla.
Rise of the Tomb Raider. We get an exciting, exclusive glimpse at the all new gameplay, which appears to consist of a few quick-time event cutscenes, followed by a sequence where you’re thrown down a mountain by an avalanche. Yeah, talk about putting the control in the hands of the player. And seriously, how unlucky can one person be? The earth probably collapses beneath Lara Croft’s feet when she pops down to Tesco. Maybe the next game will just be Lara falling down a huge chasm for ten hours, at which point a prompt saying “Press X to Win Game” appears, causing her to activate her emergency jet pack and fly home, while sad string music plays over the credits.
Gears of War 4. Just because all the Gears of War character arcs were effectively concluded in the last game, doesn’t mean Microsoft are going to put this cash cow to sleep. Fans of the series will be happy to see that it’s just as gloomy and grey as always, full of slow paced cover-shooting and an all new fat armoured soldier protagonist.
No Man’s Sky. A game with dynamic spaceship combat, warring factions and a full galaxy-sized sandbox. Boy, the developers of this game must be pretty pissed off that Elite: Dangerous did all that stuff first last year.
Fallout 4: Okay, this one looks pretty good, even if there still wasn’t quite as much raw, unscripted gameplay as I would have liked to have seen. For one thing they’ve removed the horrifying fixed eye contact time-stopping conversations between characters, like everyone after the apocalypse suddenly became the G-Man. Giving the protagonist a voice was an interesting decision too, although it takes a lot of control away from the player in terms of your character’s personality. I can no longer imagine my post-apocalyptic wanderer cackling like Vincent Price while he kills an entire town with an atomic blast; instead, I’ll have a generic whitebread Nolan North-type voice quipping about sugar bombs. The environment appears to have got a bit of colour back into its palette, which is very welcome after Fallout 3‘s eye-rupturing grey/green aesthetic. But if I see even a single subway station, somebody’s getting punched in the fucking mouth.
So that’s my round-up of some of the games announced so far, but there’s a lot I’ve missed out and a lot more to come too, it’s just I can’t force myself to watch another second of press conferences, it’s borderline masochism already. I began to notice that all the presenters, especially from Sony and Microsoft, kept talking about how ‘everything they do is for the benefit of the fans and players’. They then go on to announce a load of properties exclusive to their platforms, which is basically just a way of holding games to ransom. So I urge everybody, it’s okay to be optimistic, but try to think independently, be critical and don’t buy into the hype, because you have nothing to gain from doing so. You can try to convince yourself that the streets of London are paved with gold but it’s far more likely to be paved with chewing gum and dog shit.
dilute creative 