Honorable mentions:
Most exciting announcement: Mirror’s Edge 2
Most unexpected announcement: Mirror’s Edge 2
Mirror’s Edge fans have been waiting for a sequel for almost five years now, and even though some pundits have predicted its inevitable announcement for a while, it just never felt like a game that Electronic Arts would seriously consider. The original, which I think is one of the best and most important games of this generation, has a vocal fanbase, but EA and the entire big-budget console apparatus aren’t particularly well-known for their on-going support of cult games. I’m still fifty percent sure Mirror’s Edge II will disappear like Beyond Good & Evil 2 apparently has. Still, EA says it’s coming, and until the publisher just suddenly refuses to talk about it I guess we can take the company at its word.
Longest line at E3: Titanfall
Even the press-only line for the new mecha shooter from the former Modern Warfare developers was insanely long. It was so long I almost missed out on the only demo at E3 where videogame people shot at each other.
Best use of the Ghostbusters theme song: Tom Clancy’s The Division
The demo for Ubisoft’s upcoming multiparanoiac shooter The Division was a bummer that only an Alex Jones Infowarrior could enjoy—until the Ghostbusters theme song blasted into our theater and flipped the script with its jaunty R&B grooves. Okay, that was just the Just Dance-off outside bleeding through the makeshift theater walls, but it was pretty much the only thing I remember about The Division. I’m not really sure who’s going to care about The Division if it doesn’t have that song in it (or at least “I Want a New Drug”.)
Best side-scrolling skateboard game for the PS Vita: OlliOlli
It was a packed field but OlliOlli came out on top. Kudos!
Best reason to buy an Xbox One: D4.
Best reason to buy a PlayStation 4: You like games and have money.
Best game feature DC Comics characters: Scribblenauts Unmasked: A DC Comics Adventure
You can summon Etrigan in the new Scribblenauts game. You can call the Doom Patrol to help you and Tomar Re out in a fight with Sinestro, and although Crazy Jane doesn’t appear, at least Larry Trainor is wearing the Rebis trenchcoat over his Negative Man bandages. You can even call on Genius Jones, although the art files hadn’t been entered yet and he appeared as a weird mass of disembodied limbs instead of a friendly child. Randomly flip through your old binder full of Who’s Who bios and odds are whatever cornball DC oddity you land on will be in the new Scribblenauts game. It’s sad none of these characters’ original creators will see a dime from this game, but even the most conscientious of comic book nerds will have a hard time passing this one up.
Best game based on a non-existent TV show: Quantum Break
Remedy made fantastic use of the episodic format with Alan Wake, but their next game takes the TV show inspiration to its logical conclusion. Quantum Break is part game, part live-action TV show, with the player’s actions during the game portions directly impacting the progression of the live-action storyline. It’s not clear exactly how malleable the plot will be (does the story actually have branching paths, a la Alpha Protocol, or will it mostly be a series of either/or decisions?), but at least it offered a slightly novel concept amid the constant and uncomfortable familiarity of E3. Also Community fans might like to know that Jeff Winger’s professor girlfriend from season one acts in the live-action scenes.
Best games of E3 2013 that were also the best games of E3 2012: The Wonderful 101, Beyond: Two Souls, The Last of Us…
The most surprising game announcement that might actually just be some guy in Canada fucking with us: Fez 2