by mento
...What am I doing? @marino's been humblebragging about uploading even more E3 trailers than last year, and now I'm going to sit here and watch them all until either my eyes fall out or I've decided I hate all video games forever. In all seriousness, Marino puts a hell of a lot of time and effort into uploading all these videos while also managing the E3 banner contest and a whole heap of wiki maintenance, and someone should probably watch them and then maybe make fun of them in a list format. The least anyone could do, really.
In addition to a general summary of what the trailer contains and how far along the games appear to be, I'm also introducing two new sidebars:
How Thinkfluenced Am I?: E3 2017 was all about thinkfluencers, and I'd like to believe I'm as thinkfluential as the next guy. Here's where I interject with my own opinion on how the game looks and whether or not you should consider playing it.
How 90s is It?: Sonic Mania, the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and that Bubsy reboot monstrosity all represent a keen desire by the industry to get us back to the 1990s, when sassy mascots once roamed the Earth. Not all games are created equally 90s though, so here's where I sort the bogus and bunk chaff from the totally tubular wheat. (I sound like a breakfast cereal.)
(work in progress! this is going to take a while!)
(v0.2 - 22/06: up to sixty!)
(v0.3 - 25/06: up to a hundred!)
(v0.4 - 29/06: up to 110!)
(v0.5 - 02/07: up to 120!)
(v0.6 - 03/07: up to 130!)
(v1.0 - 06/07: 148! That's all the ones I can find! Sorry.)
Showing 1-10 of 147 items
What initially appeared to be a fairly dry, ultra-realistic golf sim soon gave way to the true meaning of the sport: being bourgeois as heck. Earn your way into high society, buying emblems with diamonds on them, as you escape the peasants and become the owner of your own exclusive golf club that turns away the type of people that you aren't into. Fun for all ages. How Thinkfluenced Am I?: Not very. The only golf games I like tend to involve Mario and Kirby, and I'm not talking about semi-obscure 70s golf pros Mario Gibiatti and Sanders Kirby. How 90s is It?: Golf is evergreen. But not always ever on the green, am I right folks? (Just need a few goofs about Mondays and that newspaper funnies gig is mine!)
Ace Combat's back! And this time, their radar equipment doesn't work? I'm extrapolating from that subtitle. Anyway, I love that the Ace Combat series are basically flight simulators with JRPG stories, though I've never been confident enough in my supersonic dogfighting skills to give one a shot. It's a franchise I intend to broach eventually. Anyway, the trailer's mostly CGI and we'll have to wait until next year to start bombing some fictional vaguely-European monarchies. How Thinkfluenced Am I?: I feel like if I was going to hop into one of these games, I'd pick a cheaper last-gen entry and try to catch up from there. Then again, it has been over ten years since #6... How 90s is It?: Ace Combats 1-3 were released in the 90s, and that was also the last time we regularly heard about jet fighters in the news that wasn't complaining about how expensive they are to replace. So let's say "very"?
Already we're running into new trailers for games that appeared in last year's E3 Trailer Blazer. It looks like DONTNOD's gothic horror action-RPG is coming along nicely, if this showy trailer and a ten minute gameplay demonstration are any indication, though it's clearly a bit more violent than their previous games. Definitely less Remember Me and more Dismember Me. (I already used up all my best vampire jokes last year. I know, I suck. Bite me.) Sounds like it'll be a November release. Huh, guess they just missed Halloween. Bummer. How Thinkfluenced Am I?: I'm optimistic. Vampire RPGs have left a bad (and kinda coppery) taste in my mouth before, in particular Troika's ambitious but flawed Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, but I'd be pleased to see a game knock it out of the park. With a bat. Umpires. I'm going to stop. How 90s is It?: Haven't heard yet if Anne Rice or Joss Whedon is involved, so maybe these are more your 1890s vamps than 1990s ones.
This trailer is too weak! All right, I just had to get that out of my system. I love the game's look, sort of going for the same exaggerated Pixar/Dreamworks CGI style Overwatch has, but I'm immediately turned off by anything with a lot of survival game crafting or tower defense, and this game has both out the wazoo. It's entering an extended early access period very soon, with the full game coming later. I also heard this is getting a T rating from ESRB, which I guess will make its eventual release date a "for teens day". How Thinkfluenced Am I?: Nope. Not for me. I wish it well though, looks like it's aiming for a big community to support it. Glad for its developers too; for a while I didn't expect it would happen at all. Very fortunite. How 90s is It?: Almost certain it was first announced in the 1990s.
It's out next month, so we get one more trailer for the road for FFXII's big graphical remaster. CGI trailer looks good, but surprisingly bereft of gameplay footage considering the game must be fully complete by now. I also appreciate that the trailer spends a lot of time on Ashe and Balthier and almost nothing on Vaan (and absolutely nothing on Basch, which feels odd), because they're trying to sell this game and Vaan isn't helping. Run along and yell at some soldiers about Ondore's lies, you little dipshit. How Thinkfluenced Am I?: I said this last time (and will again on my PS2-focused "The Top Shelf" feature) but Final Fantasy XII is a wonderful, innovative and overlooked entry in that series that I'm happy will find a new audience, but it's such an immense and completionist-punishing game that I don't have it in me to start playing it again. I seriously have enough new open-world RPGs to be getting on with. How 90s is It?: It's more 70s than 90s, given that it's Star Wars: A New Hope almost beat for beat.
Shadow of Wardor has two trailers, one to introduce the game and another to introduce an enigmatic side-character that - like Lithariel the barbarian princess in the previous game - seems to exist to offer players a distaff protagonist option. The Microsoft conference also provided a gameplay demo filled with very large, chatty orcs and a hint of what the fort warfare mode might look like. We regular schmoes won't get our hands on the game until October, but considering that Unfinished video back in March I think it's safe to say that game journalists like Giant Bomb have an Elvish press lead on us. How Thinkfluenced Am I?: I was a little late to the Mordor party, but I was impressed with what the game had and wondering how a sequel might build on it. Doubling down on manipulating the "politics" of orc-kind with your elf magic and wrecking havoc on their command structure was always the way to go, I think. Also: this game has way more weird Middle-earth literary cameos and less Gollum, so I think its story might be better than the first too. How 90s is It?: Not a whole lot. LOTR and the 90s don't really go together well, as the 1994 SNES game J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings Vol. 1 sadly proved.
I guess they're still making Dissidia games, huh. This PS4 conversion of a 2015 Arcade game looks to shake things up with a new three-on-three system, which will hopefully make the fights a little more dynamic and varied. The trailer used up most of its time highlighting that all the main characters of the first fourteen games would be in it - which is obvious to anyone who's played a Dissidia game before - rather than spend too long demonstrating any new systems it might have. Oh hey, look everyone. It's Bartz again. How Thinkfluenced Am I?: Ehhh. I've tried to get into Dissidia in the past - I'm a huge Final Fantasy mark - but it does nothing for me. They tried to build a Smash game around an obtuse system involving two different kinds of health gauges and it just got monotonous after a while. I won't say never, but there are other Final Fantasy games (and spin-offs) I'd like to play first. How 90s is It?: Final Fantasies 3-8 (and Tactics) were released between 1990-1999, so at least half the game's cast is as 90s as can be. Hell, I'll toss Tidus in there too as being 90s in spirit.
Lost Sphear, a.k.a. "I Am Not Setsuna", is the next project of Tokyo RPG Studio, the throwback RPG machine that Square (sorry, Squear) Enix set up to pump out classic RPGs for the fans that still want them. I've yet to play Setsuna, so I had a minor panic attack when they revealed a new game with a similar looking engine and melancholic story. Sounds like it's not going to be out for some time at least. How Thinkfluenced Am I?: Very. Setsuna got a mixed reception but if someone wants to produce old-school JRPGs I'm right hear, and no mear money issues will keep me from a genre I revear. I am so sincear right now. How 90s is It?: Very deliberately so.
Bloodstained is still a ways away (remember, it's "Igarashi" not "Igarushing") but we got some gameplay at least. Unfortunately, it looks like developers have dropped the iconic pixel look of the original Symphony and the many portable IGAvanias that followed and have gone with this generic 3D look. Still, the play's the thing, so let's hope when it releases it can retain the pace and excitement of Konami's series prior to its current sexy violence pachinko era. How Thinkfluenced Am I?: On the fence right now. I love my spacewhippers, but the horrors of a certain other iconic Japanese indie resurrection that proved to be decidedly unMighty is giving me pause. I'll see how much the KS backers are into it when it comes out. How 90s is It?: Symphony of the Night came out in 1997, so being 90s is definitely the goal here.
It's a medieval RPG from a Central European country that looks to focus more on human stories and warfare than traditional fantasy elements. Sounds like it might be a decent competitor for The Witcher, then. Trailer's mostly CGI, so I imagine this'll be a 2018 game at least. I was going to joke that the title makes this game sound like it's about a medieval mailman, but I think the main guy might actually be a weapons courier who gets killed and then is not killed? There are questions to be answered, for sure. How Thinkfluenced Am I?: Moderately. I have more CRPGs on my plate right now than I really have time for, but I could squeeze in another well-made one if it should kingdom come along. How 90s is It?: The 1190s, maybe.
