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 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 once again note the games (and, occasionally, people or moments) that stood out - for good or ill. Today, we tackle that which was displayed at Sony's State of Play, the OTK Games Expo, and the Summer Game Fest... Sony State of Play The High Point: Astro Bot Is it nakedly playing off of lingering nostalgia for various Sony properties, current and forgotten? Yes. Is it unmistakably taking cues from other more successful platformer series? Absolutely. Nevertheless, the team at Sony seem to have nailed the charm when it comes to their robot mascot, which is half the battle for cr...
When it comes to the Game Awards, there’s an unspoken understanding of how events will progress and how we inevitably will respond. It goes something like this: everyone get hyped up to see their favourite games get a nod (or pissed as hell because something they loved was snubbed), the speculation runs rampant as to who or what takes the prizes for any number of reasons, and then on Award Night we all get worn down by the slow pace of the show itself, the abundance of product placement and advertising, and the growing realization that a lot of awards are destined for the normiest of normie titles that best posture as outsider art. Credit where it’s due, host/showrunner Geoff Keighley and company have this down practically to a science. But if we must engage with the Awards – and barring anything else compelling happening during this mostly frigid, empty, and miserable time of year – then we can at least have some fun attempting to pre-game the show itself. Yes, I’ve decided to partake...