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...
Alright, it's been a while but we're back again to cover the PC Gaming Show, the Xbox Showcase and the Ubisoft Forward. After this, that's it, that's all, we're done here. PC Gaming Show The Most Questionable Stuff 3. Road to Vostok (???) Choosing to look down on a game for overt familiarity from the word ‘go’, even if all it has done at this point is have its existence announced to the world, is not inherently an act to be proud of. Much of gaming iterates and builds upon what came before, much of the medium as it stands (for good or ill) exists because someone looked at a past work and were inspired to develop their own take on the material. How many excellent games would cease to be if people decided that “it’s just a clone of X” was a valid argument in itself? I establish this now to make it clear that I do not roll my eyes at Road to Vostok for taking the form of a sparsely-populated shooter set in a post-apocalyptic wilderness area… but rather because it loo...