Our Red Hot Games of E3 2015

Red Hot Games is back! Just a bit different. Instead of talking about the games we played recently, we’re going to talk about E3. The convention is over now, so the staff of Big Red Barrel got together to tell you about the games we’re excited about.

Simon:

For the first time ever, I watched some of the press conferences from E3 this year. I mostly enjoyed the ones I watched though one presentation in particular caught my eye. At EA’s conference, a Swedish man stepped on stage and talked about his indie game Unravel. Instead of PR-rubbish and big promises, he talked about how he got the idea for the game – about his family holiday and the little yarn plushie he made. He placed it on different scenes and took pictures of it. This sparked the idea for the game.

You play a little yarn figure which has to solve puzzles. We did see a bit of gameplay. It looked lovely but the developer’s presentation sold me on the game. In a sea of scripted PR-blabbler, he walked on stage and was the most adorable and charming presenter there. I highly recommend to check it out.

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Tim:

There are a number of games which made my jaw hit the floor at this year’s E3, from the familiarity of snowy tomb raids and Hoth battles that look better than they did in the films, to the unexpected delights of Guerilla’s Horizon Zero Dawn. Not to mention the plethora of unexpected returns with Shenmue 3 being perhaps the most surprising. However, there are few titles that put as big a smile on my face as the surprise announcement of a new South Park game. Firstly the title just made me laugh, even though I didn’t twig the first time I read it and it was only when it was read in Cartman’s voice that I actually heard it; South Park: The Fractured But Whole.

Stick of Truth was my game of the year for 2014. It was a fun recreation of the South Park universe that was mechanically well thought out and had a very well realised integration of RPG mechanics seen through the lens of South Park comedy. The trailer for The Fractured But Whole was magnificently self-aware and self-depreciating – although this was the one element that worried me. The change to a superhero parody rather than fantasy was unexpected, but makes perfect sense given that I thought they got everything out of the fantasy based setting of SoT. However, I am concerned they may have kicked the baby out with the bathwater in possibly changing the combat more than necessary. Cartman references the “crappy combat”, no combat is shown in the trailer and I would have preferred a superhero version of the previous RPG style. Time will tell, but I am still really looking forward to heading on back to South Park to have myself a time!

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Diarmuid:

I can still remember seeing the first screenshots of Final Fantasy VII running on PlayStation 3 and getting wildly excited – before realising it was a tech demo. Then, infamously at last year’s PlayStation Experience, Shinji Hashimoto both raised and dashed my hopes in the space of a minute when he confirmed that the game was coming to the PlayStation 4 – as a port of the PC version.

As you can imagine, when Adam Boyes began his introduction of the next game to be shown and the image behind him changed to the familiar, pale-green life-force image, the only thing it raised for me was an eyebrow. Over the course of the next minute, my mind began to frantically jump from “this seems to be an overly elaborate trailer for a port” to “is this a sequel to Advent Children?” It was only when the new logo for the game and the dramatic REMAKE text appeared that I allowed myself to smile maniacally.

Will it be good? I have no idea. Will we even see it again? Possibly not. All we know for certain right now is the game is currently in production and it will arrive first on PlayStation 4. I, for one, am counting the days before I re-enlist in AVALANCHE.

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Alex:

The EA press conference opened with the trailer for Mass Effect: Andromeda. I think we all knew the game was in development, especially with several leaks that may or may not have been true out there. However, that knowledge did not dampen my excitement in the slightest.

The trailer has also confirmed that the new Mass Effect will not be happening in Milky Way, but, as a title suggests, in the Andromeda galaxy, and thus this new game and Shepherd’s path are unlikely to overlap. This is also neither sequel or prequel, but a completely different story with the new and exciting worlds to discover. While a lot of Mass Effect fans have been instantly upset about this development, as it implies that their ending of Mass Effect 3 will not have any resonance on the new game, I am for one happy that Bioware have chosen that route. Shepherd’s story has ended. Coming back to it, narratively would be a cheap move. I think it is great that they have decided to not grind to dust characters and stories of the original Mass Effect trilogy. I am excited for the new worlds, new characters and a new adventures.

(Pssst! The character in the trailer was not the protagonist! Dun dun DUN!)

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Michael:

So E3 this year has been massively dominated by a few ridiculous announcements that probably don’t need mentioning again. I’m obviously psyched but for me I’ve been impressed by some of the new IPs  that have been announced over the last couple of days. First off, there was Horizon: Zero Dawn being developed by Killzone Devs Guerrilla Games. It’s yet another post-apocalyptic game but with a pretty interesting take on the genre. From the looks of things Horizon is set in a game where civilisation crumbled a bloody long time ago and, the remaining humans live an almost cave-man like existence. The enemy machines which, likely caused civilisations collapse, are also very different to what I’ve seen in similar games. Rather than Skynet-style humanoid mechs, instead the robots resemble animals.

It has a female main protagonist which is nice and not that common. Combat looked pretty interesting too. Most of the trailer involved bow wielding Aloy taking down a pretty large machine animal…think Monster Hunter mixed with Transformers. She slid underneath its belly to hit weaker areas on its undercarriage. She used some different arrows to pin the beast to the ground before using an explosive arrow to shoot off a piece of the machines body – a piece she could then pick up and fire at the beast to finally kill it. It looked pretty darn fun! It had the usual E3 feel of in-game footage that’s a little staged and not 100% the final product but either way it was an interesting new IP.

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Another game that made an impression was Dreams by Media Molecule. Unlike the Little Big Planet series this seems to be more about creating strange dreamlike pieces of art than creating actual games. It was very hard to work out how it would actually play or even if it’s the sort of game I’d spend money on but it’s undeniably interesting and ambitious. It’s just another reason why the Sony press conference was my highlight of the last few days.

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But of course despite all of the above and all the other interesting “new” games we saw at the show…..all I really care about is returning to Midgar and beating the snot out of Sephiroth in fancy HD graphics. Of course, no idea how long I’ll have to wait until that happens but the fact that it finally actually is happening is enough for me! Most of all I just want to see this in HD…..

PacManPolarBear:

Tudor:

With the reveal of gameplay footage, avid fans of the series can now lay their worries to rest that their beloved franchise was set to become a re-skinned Battlefield game. What we were presented with was a pre-recorded match at the legendary Battle of Hoth, cutting between Empire and Rebel points of view in a fluid manor that only improved the experience.

A lot of the power ups and equipment used were already shown in the game’s pre-rendered trailer, including portable shield generators and jetpacks. But while we weren’t shown much that was new, and what was new was definitely not a surprise, the footage was enough to build my expectations of the game. Just seeing dogfights in the sky between TIE Fighters and X-Wings, while Rebels fought off Imperial Walkers on the ground was certainly showed me that the Force is strong with Battlefront.

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These are our Red Hot Games of E3. We hope you enjoyed E3 as much as we did. If you’re still curious about what some more thoughts on E3 2015 , why don’t you check out our Liveblogs and Overviews of the different press conferences. If we forgot about any game, please let us know in the comments.

Jess:

Sony was straight out of the gate with this one, it all happened so fast I could barely believe it was happening at all. When Shawn Layden announced that their first game ‘has been long anticipated by the gaming community’ we held our collective breath, and finally, six years after it was first announced at E3, The Last Guardian was once again on stage. Hints had been dropped that the game was being ported to the PlayStation 4, but with so many conflicting rumours over the years it was hard to know what to believe. But at last, it’s here. Opening with a single feather floating to the ground just as it did in 2009, the trailer quickly reintroduced us to the young boy and bizarre griffon creature, tentatively named Trico, that will be the central point of the game’s co-op puzzle solving gameplay. Poignant companionship has been a key aspect of Team Ico’s games (they may have handed over the reins to Japan Studios but still have a hand in the creation) and The Last Guardian promises to be no exception. The footage was full of endearing little flourishes, such as Trico catching the boy midair during a perilous jump and the boy helping Trico scramble up onto a collapsing ledge.

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If one half of what makes Team Ico’s games great is companionship, the other is atmosphere and aesthetics in equal parts. The crumbling ruins, towering wooden structures and filtered sunlight have all the familiar stark and eerie beauty of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, echoing the themes of two friends engulfed by a lonely landscape. While there were none of the stealth moments or antagonists that were shown in 2009 in this particular trailer, sinister griffon-repelling constructions hint at the presence of a malevolent force. Re-announcing The Last Guardian was a definite highlight, not just for Sony’s conference but for E3 2015 entirely, and just the ray of light needed for those who never lost faith in what is sure to be another groundbreaking and emotionally captivating game from the mind of Fumito Ueda.