Rick's Super E3 Roundup!

Last of all, Square Enix provided a good look at the latest Deus Ex. Titled Mankind Divided, it follows directly on from Human Revolution, making it a prequel-sequel. My brain hurts. It's too much. The story surrounds a growing rift between augmented and non-augmented humans, with powerful figures on both sides attempting to exploit the political tension for their own gain. As sequels go, it looks fairly straightforward, sending Adam Jensen to several new locations and considerably expanding his range of abilities. It's also a lot less yellow than Human Revolution, although that's still pretty yellow.

The PC Gaming Show

And so we come to the final conference of E3, which was also arguably the strangest. The PC Gaming Show had a completely different format from the other presentations. Much more intimate with a greater focus on developer discussion, it was hosted talk-show-style by Sean Plott, better known as Day9.

Let's run through the highlights. TripWire Interactive took to the stage first, discussing Killing Floor and its impressively squishy rendering of monster intestines, before announcing Rising Storm 2, which is set in Vietnam. The first Rising Storm is a brilliant and incredibly tough multiplayer shooter, well worth looking at if you fancy a change of pace from Battlefield. We've also yet to see a top-drawer Vietnam game, so this is a big opportunity for TripWire.

Aside from that, there weren't a huge number of new game announcements. But there were plenty of smaller announcements, many of which were interesting in their own right. Microsoft unveiled that Gears of War: Ultimate Edition is coming to PC, as is the fighting game Killer Instinct. Obsidian revealed it's working on an expansion pack to its superb RPG Pillars of Eternity. Frictional Games dropped by to show off a new trailer for its ambitious undersea horror game SOMA. Joris-Jan van 't Land of Bohemia Interactive gave us the scoop of a whole new island for ArmA 3, while DayZ project lead Brian Hicks stated that DayZ is getting a singleplayer component.

(A quick aside. I'm a little worried for DayZ. It has been crawling through Early Access for eighteen months, and it isn't even close to being finished. Player counts have dropped lately, and I'm concerned that the community will lose interest in the game before it has been completed. Perhaps that's why they're adding a singleplayer, so you don't need a big community to enjoy it.)

Alongside Tripwire's announcement, the two biggest chunks of news both emerged from developers of space games, although one wasn't actually about a space game. Elite creator David Braben sat down and chatted about Frontier's new title. It's a theme-park building game called Planet Coaster. That might seem a bit of a tangent from Elite Dangerous, but Frontier have a lot of experience creating rollercoaster games, given they developed the pretty-damn-good-actually Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and its various expansions.

Lastly, Sean Murray from Hello Games announced that No Man's Sky - its insanely ambitious space-exploration game, will be releasing on PC at the same time as the PS4 version, which is wonderful news. There's no official release date yet, but if I were a betting man I'd lay down some chips on early 2016.

And that's it! Generally, I think this was a particularly strong E3. All the publishers had something interesting to show, and there were a few huge surprises hidden amongst them. The best presentation was probably Ubisoft's. It was smartly presented, and, except for The Division and an agonisingly poor Just Dance presentation, every game had something going for it.

Speaking of which, picking a favourite game from such a huge list is never easy. I'm very excited by everything Bethesda is working on, the Last Guardian looks delightful, and No Man's Sky gives me butterflies every time I see it. But if I had to choose one, it would be For Honor. It's an entirely new game, and its announcement was a complete surprise. Moreover, I know just how difficult it is to do a decent representation of swordfighting in games, and Ubisoft look as if they're putting the effort in. That's why For Honor is my game of E3.

Until next year!