E3 has come and gone and things were a lot more fun than usual. I attribute this to being a less packed floor that allowed press and those there to actually get to see more games. After a long three days we have rounded up our picks for best of show, but we do have a couple of rules for these awards. Unlike so many outlets whose award badges littered the walls of games that you weren’t allowed to play, the main rule for GAMbIT is that every game picked had to be playable on the floor.
While the new God of War and Days Gone looked gorgeous, not being able to play them and only watching a very scripted demo means they, and others doing the same thing, are out of the running. I know, it’s totally weird asking to actually play a game to earn an award for being a, well, video game. We should also mention that if we didn’t play a game on the floor and it was playable there, we still can’t count it as that wouldn’t be right either (sorry Zelda fans).
The Technomancer
The Technomancer is a game we’ve been following for a little bit, but after getting our hands on the title at the Focus Home Interactive booth at E3 did everything really click with it and us. The game looks stunning running with what we assume was final code as the game is dropping this very month. How weird is it that we are giving a “BEST OF E3” award to a game that you’ll actually be able to play this year and not three years from now! The game is an action-RPG that isn’t set in a fantasy world, isn’t full of random encounters, and isn’t done by a Japanese studio.In fact, The Technomancer more resembles The Witcher 3 with makes sense as the developers (Spiders) is based in France.
The Technomancer has a very western feel and the setting makes it fairly unique in the RPG space. The game takes place on Mars and pulls from ideas like Total Recall and even some classic Red Faction. As a Technomancer you have a lot of options to progress through the world and upgrade special abilities to your play style in various class-pools (four skill trees to upgrade). You also have a number of stances (three combat styles) that can be switched on the fly to deal with baddies of different kinds. You’ll also gain party members to help you on your quest and these too can also level up and grow with you. They also seem to have pretty solid AI and can deal with enemies in the real-time battles effectively.
While the game isn’t a true open-world (I’m actually glad for this), it does offer lots of side-quests and large areas to keep things interesting, but the overall story of a sort of civil war on Mars has us very intrigued. Spiders says that the game will have five different endings so the choices you make during missions will impact what happens at the end which depending on how different they are could add to some good replay value. Not only is The Technomancer a “BEST OF E3” winner, but it’s also our “BEST OF SHOW” pick. Here’s to hoping the full version is something special when it drops soon.
Find out more at: http://thetechnomancer-game.com/
Cuphead
Cuphead was another game that we wished we could have given an award to last year, but since we could now play it at this years show we totally can! So many games won awards last year (Cuphead included) that still haven’t come out, but after playing it we can say it’s totally a joy to play. Sometimes all those big sites do get things right!
The team went back to work on the game over the past year adding more platforming sections instead of being solely focused on boss fights. This has worked wonders as it feels like a complete game, as opposed to just mini games. It’s this weird mix of hard as nails platforming, and SHMUP like shooting difficulty which I adore. Cuphead is going to push you to the limits, especially with two players onscreen at once, but the feeling you get when you beat a level (we could only complete one while playing) is lovely.
Where Cuphead really shines is in the art style that perfectly captures that early Disney animation, especially that of Max Fleischer. This is studio MDHR’s first game as a company and it is setting one hell of a high standard. After three appearances at E3 in some form we are happy to finally jump on the bandwagon and give Cuphead one of our BEST OF E3 award winners. Happy to also see that it’s dropping this year!
Find out more: http://cupheadgame.com/
Troll And I
From the surface this one could be confused for a The Last Guardian style of game, but it’s a lot deeper than that game. Well, I assume so because after years of E3 conventions since the PS3 days, we still haven’t been able to play any of The Last Guardian. What we did get time with was Troll And I alongside the Creative Director of the studio (Spiral House) behind the game. Troll And I was running some early code at the Maximum Games booth, but after an extended time playing the game we didn’t manage to glitch out the game in any way (cough Ghost Recon cough) while enjoying our time with it.
Troll And I is a third-person action adventure where to play as both characters to complete various tasks in the world. Each character plays much differently, but still must work together to get things done. While the game looks warm and charming on the surface, underneath it’s a brutal experience full of melee action, long-range attacks, and even some stealth, although we didn’t experience the latter in the short demo. There is a lot of magic too, and each character has their own abilities to learn and upgrade. The baddies are also really interesting and a mix of The Dark Crystal and your worst nightmares.
What really caught our eye was the dual character control method, and if you have a fiend play with you in couch co-op (yes!) the game expands so that both characters are doing something at all times. The team also told us that there will be two narrative arcs that progress with the story so you get a lot here to be invested in from two wholly different characters. This one is still early, but the team is shooting for 2017 for retail on all major platforms. It’s a lot of fun and one of the few games at the show that actually featured, and was excited about having, couch co-op!
Find our more at: http://trollandi.maximumgames.com/
For Honor
This year’s E3 trailer was the first thing we saw on For Honor (they showed it behind closed doors last year), and holy shit, it knocked it out of the park in terms of presentation. The knight vs samurai vs viking combat is already enough to get us excited, and after actually getting time with the game, it seems like the first 3rd-person hack n slash that could hold our attention for more than half an hour. These game tend to be pretty, but ultimately pretty boring thanks to so much repetition.
Most enemies can be shredded en masse with your greatsword (we could only play as knights in this demo), but there are a few enemies that require a little extra finesse. Attack / defend mechanics rely on 1) locking onto a target 2) choosing a direction [up, left, right] and 3) choosing to keep your defensive stance, or to attack with a quick or powerful attack.
When locked on, your opponent shows which of 3 directions they’re focusing on, and it’s up to you to decide to block that direction, or attack another. Controls are exactly as responsive as you would hope, allowing for feints and quick parries. This mechanic opens up the game and allows for some real strategy, so one hopes they can build off of this as For Honor clearly has our interest.
Find out more at: http://forhonor.ubisoft.com/game/en-us/home/
The Turing Test
The Turing Test is very difficult to describe without bringing up games like Portal, even though The Turning Test has none of those. The game is a first-person puzzle game that has you navigating some sort of failing station via a series of wicked clever puzzles that you solve with your space gun. These puzzles start of quite simple, but quickly turn into intense brain teasers. While the team playing in front of us couldn’t figure out a specific puzzle, we could so everyone’s experience will be different.
What I really like is that these puzzles make sense, so when you finish you you’ll have one of those “Ah, ha!” sort of moments, as opposed to “That’s bullshit.” It’s also one of the few games where players watching and giving input actually makes it more fun! The weapon you see doesn’t shoot bullets, but rather absorbs and injects energy into various specific consoles. That is a necessary ability, as nearly every puzzle we played revolved around finding a way to get energy from one panel to another to open a given door, move platforms and so on.
And it’s almost never obvious just what you need to do and how, but that’s where the fun comes into play. We don’t know anything about the story, but the gameplay is fantastic as it stands which is the most important thing, so if the team can implement a decent story The Turning Test can be a real winner when it drops later this summer.
Find out more at: http://www.theturingtestgame.com/
Infinite-O
Infinite-O is an indie game that is more artistic statement than traditional game. In fact, Infinite-O asks many questions in the form of a dream that artist Corazon Del Sol had. The game “ask(s) the viewer to traverse a dreamscape exploring the female psyche.” Programmed by one of the people behind parts of the original Sonic Dreams, Infinite-O is a surreal experience. The most striking thing about the game is the special controller used to play it that takes the form of a large plush vagina.
I loved my time with the game, but what I found most interesting was that people kept walking by laughing, or chatting uncomfortably about the game and its controller. It’s really funny how one can get done playing a game about that lets you take a chainsaw to people, run over civilians, kill innocents, quick-scop headshots and all sorts of insane and realistic brutality, but the idea of a female body part made people uncomfortable. The vagina controller lets you control three legs in a large open space where physics work in weird ways. The dream of Corzon Del Sol is pretty wild and the game actually offers up a lot to do and experience.
Also, if you fall over you can reset the game by sticking your finger in the controllers anus. While this is more installment than full game, the team does hope to eventually release it in some form in the future. Infinite-O is a lovely mix of art and video games, even if it may scare away a lot of gamers thanks to its vagina controller. We are fans of pushing boundaries of a medium and indie games do just that, even if big publishers often steal those ideas and leave a lot of talented indie devs out to dry.
Find out more at: www.corazondelsol.love
About Author
