My favorite time of the year has come and gone. E3 is something that I look forward to every single year. Even though I don’t actively game as much as I used to, I still get extremely excited about all the games and projects that are announced during the press conferences before the actual show.
With the direction the video game industry is heading in, it seems as though the hype around most platform specific games gets to be enjoyed by everyone who isn’t a platform purist. Some of the biggest games around are released on multiple platforms so nobody needs to worry about not getting in on some of the action with the latest and greatest games.
As for me, I mostly get excited about PS4 games and Nintendo Switch games. But with E3 2019 being the first year in recent memory that one of the big 3 platforms, Sony Playstation, decided to skip out on having any presence at E3 at all this year left fans feeling disappointed with a lot left to be desired. But just because Sony wasn’t present on the show floor didn’t mean that there would be no PS4 games being announced.
The beauty of having multiple 3rd party game publishers making and releasing games for any platform means that there weren’t any bump in the road for future PS4 releases for 2019 and beyond. The only thing that meant was that there would be little to no PS4 exclusive games.
But I will admit that I was among the PS4 fans that felt let down by Sony not being here on the show floor. In the years I’ve been to E3, they have most recently had a lot of amazing PS4 exclusive titles to show off, but the majority of the interesting parts of their booth were theatrics. Which isn’t necessarily bad in my opinion, but it leaves a random empty space in a booth that could be instead filled with more spots for playable demos.
Next year I hope Sony makes a somewhat triumphant return to E3 and announces some new exclusive game content that everyone can look forward to.
For me, the only things I looked forward to were the Square Enix presentation, specifically for the Avengers game announcement and Nintendo’s E3 Direct presentation. The majority of the games I’m most excited were announced during Nintendo’s event so they hold a lot of favorability in my eyes right now.
As for the games I got to play, I managed to postpone any and all line-waiting until the last day since it’s generally less packed. I was lucky enough to play the new Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield (although I’m not quite sure which one I actually played) but it was definitely a lot of fun. I also tried out the new Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 for the Switch, which proved to be a great multiplayer co-op game that I really can’t wait to play.
I also tried out Borderlands 3 and somehow kept dying since I’m not too good at shooters. But I had fun while playing it and I think I may want to try to get better at these kinds of games. I can definitely see the appeal and re-playability. I also had fun playing and getting absolutely destroyed in Mortal Kombat 11. The overall excessive violence is hilarious to me and was really fun when I managed to get a combo or two in. But the fatalities were so over-the-top that I couldn’t help but smile.
Like I said before, E3 is my favorite time of year and looking through all the footage I shot brought me back to the show floor. I definitely can’t wait to play all these new games in the comfort of my own home and can’t wait for next year’s E3.