Year of the Devs...
What an oddly confounding Summer of Games 2023. Another year has passed, and E3 has not been missed in the slightest, but in its absence came its replacement once again in Summer Game Fest. Geoff Keighley has risen to the occasion for gamers around the globe, banding together studios from independent to AAA, with hopes of capturing the essence that’s been missing for “Gamer Christmas” since June 2019. With COVID-19 placing the final nail in the coffin for the already fleeting exhibition, it’s proven that the golden age of E3 was not only dead, but buried. But how did we fare this year? Now that the pandemic has been officially declared over and the world is moving once more, was this year’s Summer of Games even worthwhile? Did we receive any real major surprises? Or were we left with nothing but gaming gaffes to snicker over? Aside from Nicolas Cage making an appearance on-stage to confirm himself as DLC for Dead by Daylight, Summer Game Fest was more snooze than exciting.
PlayStation kicked off the season early with their major showcase outlining the next twelve months for the Sony platform, but to say that it was anything exciting would be an overstatement. It was somewhere in-between fine, and great but mind-blowing? Not at all. The one thing to take away from PlayStation this year was the exciting confirmation of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater’s remake and the a lengthy Spider-Man 2 gameplay demonstration, but aside from these two juicy tid-bits and the promise of new hardware – the Project Q cloud device – everything else was fine. Alan Wake 2 looks good, but we need more to justify any thought on the title. Bungie’s new IP, Marathon looks cool but how long will it stand-up against Destiny 2? It’s going to be a tough trudge for the studio to convince its audience in suddenly switching off the sci-fi shooter for unfamiliar terrain.
Foamstars is a thing. Imagine Splatoon with soap? Yeah, it’s weird and what’s more odd is the developer behind the project; Square Enix. A title that may be a sleeper upon its release will be The Plucky Squire. It looks like an excellent homage to old-school Zelda, top-down RPG games with an illustrated storybook like aesthetic that carries over into a Toy Story inspired universe. No doubt this will have an emphatic presence once gamers gaze upon this charming little expedition. I wasn’t sure what to make of Phantom Blade 0 just yet, but details insist the title is an action RPG, hack and slash adventure. One that had me excited to play later this year is Ghostrunner 2. I adored the first title, a Mirror’s Edge inspired parkour slasher, that raised the bar exponentially considering the EA/DICE title had more hand-to-hand combat and melee weapons to aid its character. Above all else, PSVR was showcased with RE4: VR revealed – cool.
Now with XBOX, it’s great to see the positive reaction the green brand received this year, after a questionable dialogue put out by the studio’s CEO, “Daddy” Phil Spencer. Nonetheless, fans and gamers were quick to give Spencer and the XBOX Crew their flowers, but I wasn’t so quick to give XBOX acclaim myself with only one or two titles I was happy to see revived or shown. The Fable reboot looks excellent, and I’m certainly keen to check it out upon release. While the title certainly looked great in pre-rendered moments, there were some blemishes and texture issues I personally had that made the game look dated. Avowed looks, okay? I think this title got way overhyped thanks to social media than what it should have. I think Obsidian needs to let it stew a little longer before showing anything more.
To me, there were four standouts from the rest – Star Wars Outlaws, quite obviously inspired by Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and Ubisoft’s own Assassin’s Creed series, amalgamated into the IP. I hope it delivers what fans of Star Wars are looking for. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is the next instalment into the Yakuza franchise, and it look hilarious as ever, but it wasn’t a short reveal so I can’t wait to see more. Then the unfortunate leaks, yet awesome to see presented here; Persona 5 Tactica and the highly rumoured and heavily anticipated Persona 3: Reload. P5T looks to be a mixture of the franchise’s Persona Q series aesthetically, taking place within the Persona 5 universe and taking notes of XCOM and melding it into an RTS, top-down combat style theme to the title. However, the big one here was indeed P3R, the remake that has had the Persona fanbase salivating for quite sometime. Confirmed to be in the P5 engine, P3R looks to give one of ATLUS’ classics the “Royal” treatment.
As for Starfield, the presentation was way too long for what it was worth. I have no further comment.
Wrapping things up, Nintendo had a lot of fluff and little filler with their Direct as I believe they threw it together last minute, but they certainly had fans abuzz with the reveal of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, a brand new sidescrolling platformer that hearkens somewhat to the “New” series with a fresh look and feel, and of course for North Americans got their nostalgia hit with Super Mario RPG. Aussie’s will get to ‘officially’ get an actual release of the title with the remake landing on Switch in November. As for the Summer Game Fest itself, the only major takeaways for me personally was one; Door Dash and Keighley trolling us with Final Fantasy news and two; the Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth trailer – I want that game in my life so bad. But the best overall presentation I would say goes to Day of the Devs. An assortment of indie titles to look forward to.
If by chance you missed our full coverage of this year’s Summer of Games, or have yet to see any of the presentations, take a look at DashGamer’s Summer of Games 2023 Hub.
