Kicking off their conference with a strange, theatrical performance to part of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now. To Aisha Tyler’s credit, she played off it very well. Note the name drop of the Nintendo NX. Third-party support is confirmed!
Ghost Recon Wildlands showcased the cocaine conflict of Bolivia. The game looks promising, even if the demo doesn’t exactly fit it too well. Featuring a very scripted, pre-read dialogue between four players, it focused largely on cooperative play, though promises substantial single player content.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole did a great trailer reveal, riffing on contemporary video game trailers in a very South Park fashion. The game’s taking more of a strategy role-playing game that’s parodying modern superhero film tropes, taking the likes of Marvel and DC to task for being too big for their britches.
Eagle Flight was a big VR showcase for Oculus Rift. The demo went on for far too long, but the premise looks fun, albeit fleeting – a lot of what we see in VR. But it still looks promising.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew was a tad underwhelming. There’s little “game” actually happening, it seems like there isn’t a narrative pushing anything forward. It wasn’t particularly striking, visually, but the flourish around getting someone like Levar
For Honor looks a tad like Ryse: Son of Rome, the Xbox One launch title that had a lot of style, but not a lot of substance. There’s definitely more of an emphasis on combat, though. It didn’t go into details of what all you’d be playing as, though the Viking campaign seems to be their selling point.
Grow Up is the sequel to Grow Home, obviously. The first game was a treat, so seeing more from this cute little guy is more than welcome from the usual blending of brown and grey.
Trials of the Blood Dragon is the combination of the Trials series along with Blood Dragon, the Far Cry 3 spinoff. While not quite as exciting, it’s neat to see the Blood Dragon aesthetic drench something as safe as Trials.
Watch Dogs 2 got leaked in a pretty significant capacity before the event, but the game looks like it’s learned what not to do from its predecessor. It looks more fun, it has a lot more going for it than the first Watch Dogs.
Steep is a new IP from Ubisoft. There isn’t much to say outside of the visuals looking sort of subpar, but the game’s got a while before it comes out.
The verdict? While bloated as all get out, the games showcased were actual pretty good. Watch Dogs, South Park, Grow Up, they all seem very promising. It’s just that many of the demonstrations and theatrics went on for far longer than they should have.