In the ashes of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, amid the bloat and pretense of the games industry, always must there be a presentation... always must there be game trailers... and always must there be those who commentate. So it is that we find ourselves in the aftermath of this year's collected summer showcases, a cavalcade of announcements and information to parse in its wake. For my part, I set forth to note the games that stood out among the pack. Today, we go over the high points of the Future Games Show , the Xbox Games Showcase , the PC Gaming Show and, yes , even the Ubisoft Forward . Heaven help us all... Future Games Show The High Point: Duck Detective: The Secret Salami The premise of “riffing on the hardboiled detective story with talking cartoon animals” would be a fine selling point for a game in itself. The choice to also lean into a sticker book aesthetic, complete with characters hobbling around as barely moving objects in a scene? Now that's a fun time ...
Yes, I'm doing this again, running down the games set to release in a given year that are (from my perspective) the most immediately compelling based on their marketing and thus have me convinced that they could turn out well. Yes, I recognize that some of the following games don't have firm release dates, just general windows for release like "Q1" or "Q3" or "sometime in 2020". Still, we're doing this because I have some thoughts, this has proven the best format for expressing said thoughts, and it's January March, what else have you got going on? So, without further ado... 9) Carrion , by Phobia Game Studio (??? 2020) An entire game whose premise seemed to have emerged from watching 1982's The Thing and thinking "This is cool... but what if we let you be the monster?" I'd already be onboard with the concept and its apparent embrace of lurid, pixelated brutality, but Devolver Digital's been on a tear thi...