Video Games Are Back You Guys! – E3 2016 Wrap Up

Well, there you have it. E3 2016 is officially in the can and we have a much clearer picture of what’s coming out soon from all of our favorite hardware and software companies. I have compiled a brief list of the games that I am most excited about and a short excerpt about what is so appealing to me. For more in-depth thoughts on the press conferences and the games presented, please stay tuned for the next episode of the VideoDestruct Podcast.

I picked my Top 5 Most Anticipated Games from the show. Check them out and let me know what you are looking forward to!

Forza Horizon 3

Two weeks ago I was sitting around and wondering if the announcement of another Forza Horizon would excite me and what they would have to do to push me from mild anticipation and into some kind of frothy, flop sweaty, mess of a man and they found it! Forza Horizon 3 is everything that you could possibly want out of a simulation inspired open world driving game. Horizon chose to take some inspiration from the Storm Island DLC released for Horizon 2 by including rally racing into the game, but Horizon 3 takes it one step further and also includes Baja trucks and rail buggies and the footage of the game chooses to showcase just how completely bonkers these vehicles are by featuring tons of ridiculous jumps across sand dunes and riverbeds. When you add in several more hotly anticipated features like body kits and deeper customization, Windows 10 cross platform multiplayer, and the ability to buy the game in one place and play it anywhere really makes Horizon 3 an incredible package. I couldn’t stop myself from throwing my wallet at my computer screen as soon as the pre-orders went up.

God of War

GoW is a franchise that has been in desperate need of reinvention for quite a while. With the exception of Ascension, I have enjoyed all of the previous games in the series. But, the formula had begun to wear thin. So, seeing the return of Cory Barlog to the Sony Santa Monica team to helm the series latest installment and for Cory to lead the team to so significantly redesign the entire structure of the game was heartening and left me incredibly excited to see what the team has up their sleeves. I just hope that we are left waiting too long for the return of Kratos. Hopefully this game hits in Holiday ’17 and doesn’t slip into ’18.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands

Or as I like to call it, “Cocaine Simulator 2017”. I am incredibly excited to get my hands on this game. Wildlands seems like a crafty reinvention of the series after poor outing with Future Soldier in 2012. This game seems to draw inspiration from the entire lineup of games that Ubisoft has published in the last decade. You can see plenty of Far Cry in the look and scope of the outdoor environments. The world seems to just stretch out for miles and miles with no end, which does so much to giving you the immersion into this world of drugs and kingpins and drugs… and drugs. I will gladly corral three of my best friends to go ride 4-Wheelers and blow stuff up. I need more of that Clancy action.

Titanfall 2

My past with Titanfall is interesting. I almost immediately bounced off of the original game. It didn’t have enough content and lacked any kind of meaningful single-player content. But, on a whim I picked up the season pass for the game on sale and all of the added content along with meaningful balance tweaks made that game really start to resonate with me. I really started to get into that game and stuck with it for quite a few weeks. So, I was excited to see what EA had up their sleeves with a new entry and they have ticked all of the appropriate boxes to guarantee that I will be first in line to check that game out in October. They have added a full campaign that seems like it is playing with the human/machine relationship that I am a really big fan of and also have added more combat and traversal options that make this game seem big, fast, loud, and immediate. It is hard to watch multiplayer footage of this game where guys are swinging around with grappling hooks and jumping off exploding mechs and not feel your heart rate start to accelerate.

Dishonored 2

I may live to regret this, as I never really got into the original game, but Dishonored 2 was the cornerstone of the Bethesda conference this year and it did a good job of proving why. It looks incredible. They have also put some really impressive tech into that game to make that weird retro-futuristic world come to life in a way that feels alive. I like the new option to choose between protagonists in the game to give you a choice between stealth and action approaches to combat. They have also chosen to lean into the DLC mission content from the original game that expanded your move-set and brought more magic into the mix.