Gaming Dispatch - June #2

Welcome to back to Gaming Dispatch, where I tell you about some of the most interesting stuff that has happened in gaming the past weeks (weeks), at least what I find interesting. This issue will unfortunately be a bit short as a result of not a lack of time to keep up with everything that has happened, but regardless here is what you can expect in the following article. E3 happened a couple of weeks ago where some games were shown, Steam summer sale kicked off with over 18 000 items on sale, and some great Starcraft tournaments happened! So without further ado, let’s get to it.

In the aftermath of E3 we are left with some good, some bad, and definitely some cringe (not looking at you EA). The press conferences that I bothered to watch was EA, Microsoft, Bethesda, Ubisoft, Sony, and Devolver whatever that was. So let’s start with EA, or rather get that out of the way.

Let me tell you this much… they had sports, and more sports, another shitty Need for Speed game, yet more sports and some multiplayer gameplay of Battlefront 2 (that pretty much looks like the first one). It wasn’t all bad though as the new game from the people behind Brothers: A tale of two sons was announced, A Way Out it is called. Brothers was a very emotionally engaging game so I am interested to see how this new title turns out. I think A Way Out might be the only game from the whole conference that I am interested in, except for Bioware’s new IP though, but that wasn’t really a part of this conference however as they only showed a half minute trailer. And with that let’s get to the conference that actually talked about Anthem.

The Microsoft conference was pretty much packed with games, many of which was interesting too. I mean, with titles such as Metro Exodus, Cuphead, Ori And The Will of The Wisps, and not least, Life is Strange: Before The Storm, who can not be excited. There is also a smaller title that caught my eye called The Artful Escape, and in the words of the developer “It's an action, adventure, exploration, narrative driven, musical-laser-light-battle kind of game.”, and judging by that you can color me interested. And of course there was the gameplay reveal of Anthem, a game which seems to be like a mix between Mass Effect Andromeda and Destiny, which is why many are currently calling it the better Destiny. The final game from The Microsoft Conference that peaked my interest was Code Vein also unofficially known as Weebsouls. It has gotten this nickname as it looks to combine the combat from Dark Souls with anime characters, and they have also thrown some vampire stuff in there.

Going onto the Bethesda conference, they didn’t have much to show to be completely honest, other than “Bethesda Land”! The big thing they were going for in their conference was VR, showing of titles such as Doom VFR, Fallout 4 VR, and Skyrim VR for some reason… cause why not I guess (Skyrim VR wasn’t actually announced on Bethesda’s conference, but rather on Sony’s but it fits better in here). They also announced the now controversial Creation Club, something that many are calling out to be paid mods, although their FAQ clearly states that it is not. On the other hand it is kind of similar, a place where people can make content for a game which people has to pay for. But hey, why shouldn’t modders get paid? Luckily for most people that doesn’t have a VR headset they didn’t only show VR titles. Carrying on they announced a new Dishonored Standalone and the most exciting thing from the whole conference, Wolfenstein II The New Colossus. Watching the trailer for the new Wolfenstein game I started wondering if it has by any chance drawn some inspiration from the TV-series The Man In the High Castle as I can see some big similarities (German game shows for instance).

The next conference being Ubisoft I didn’t have much hope, but I was somewhat impressed however. I think the big thing to remember was the Mario+Rabids XCOM-like game (just look at that princess rabid Peach, it’s wonderful!). After showing Mario+Rabids Kingdom Battle the show went down a steep steep hill when they continued onto The Crew 2, a game that I have little to no interest in after playing the first one. I just don’t understand what there is to do in that game, and I didn’t get the impression that there will be a whole lot more to do in the next one despite the fact that we can now apparently drive planes and boats, and cars on rooftops? I don’t know, maybe it will be good. What I do know however is that I just loved person on stage who presented the game. I have never heard someone talking that slowly and calmly when presenting anything, let alone when having an action packed trailer in the background. When that reached the end we finally got a release date for South Park The Fractured But Whole, that being on the 17th of October. They also showed a pirate game that I might be interested in called Skulls & Bones, although I am a bit afraid that they are going to focus too much on the multiplayer aspect of it. What is then left on the plate that might be interesting is Far Cry 5 and Beyond Good And Evil 2, the latter definitely being the most interesting one. While I find the setting and possibly the story of the next Far Cry to be interesting it seems that the core gameplay is going to be the same as it has been since Far Cry 3, a game that I didn’t finish because I got bored of it.

Before talking about the Sony press conference let’s just mention the Devolver conference first, because that was definitely something! I don’t know exactly what it was but it was something. “A wonderful satire of E3” I think is reasonably describing, so I’ll leave it at that.

The Sony conference then. It did not impress me, mostly because I don’t play on a PS4 and therefore have little interest in most of the games that they were showing. There were some games that also are coming to PC, although there are pretty much only one that I am interested in, that being Monster Hunter World. Yes, I am not at all interested in another Call of Duty. Oh I almost forgot, they showed of the most important game of the century! The Final Fantasy VR fishing game! Yep, apparently Final Fantasy XV: Monster Of the Deep. Despite me not having a lot of interest in PS exclusive titles the PSVR game called Moss was pretty intriguing and I have heard good things about it as well. Additionally I would definitely play God of War (Dad of War) if it was coming to PC, but it’s not, so I don’t care. And that was that, E3 done, what I watched of it, and what I will cover in this issue of Gaming Dispatch.

On the 22nd of June the Steam Summer Sale kicked off with a metric ton of games on sale. The sale is lasting until the 5th of July so there is luckily no haste on deciding to buy a game or not. With such a huge list of games on sale however it’s no easy feat to find the good stuff, so I thought I would list some of my favorite deals from some various categories here:

• DiRT Rally $17,99 - A fantastic rally simulator
• Euro Truck Simulator 2 $4,99 - A great relaxing truck sim
• Just Cause 3 $12,49 - An action packed open world, do what you want as long as it contains destruction kind of game
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor $3,99 - And open world action game set in the world of Lord of the Rings
• Life is Strange $4,99 - A wonderful wonderful story game with many meaningful, and often difficult choices to make. One of my favorite games from the last couple of years.
• The Book of Unwritten Tales $4,99 and The Book of Unwritten tales 2 $7,49 - Two brilliant point and click adventure games with good voice acting.

An additional quick note, if you recently bought a game for full price that has now gone on sale, you can use the steam refund system to get a refund and buy it for the price it has currently has.

As for Starcraft news, Starcraft 2 in particular. It has been a good time to be a fan lately as there been several great tournaments over the last couple of weeks. Starting out with the foreigner tournament WCS Jönköping that I unfortunately didn’t have the time to watch, but nonetheless I have heard some great things about it.

Another tournament that I did watch was the final of GSL Code S season 2 between GuMiho and soO. Many a great games in that final that I highly recommend watching, escpecially to find out if soO will finally win a GSL after having been in the final SIX times already. You can expect to see long macro games, intense battles, and not least some cheese.

What followed straight after the GSL final as TotalBiscuit’s Shoutcraft Kings after being on a three month hiatus. Now I haven’t actually had the time to watch this latest installment of Shoutcraft Kings, but judging by the previous ones I am certain that TB and iNcontroL put on a great show! And fittingly as both WCS Jönköping and GSL Code S just happened, the theme of this month’s Shoutcraft Kings was GSL vs WCS Jönköping. So there is no doubt that I will watch the vods when I get the time to do so.