State of Play

The first week of June has become quite the event for nerds that happen to like Apple and video games. PlayStation just had its State of Play, Summer Game Fest is Friday, and Apple's WWDC keynote is Monday.

I remember being about 13 years old and losing my mind when E3 was occurring. At the time, I didn't have access to a computer, so if I didn't catch things live, I missed them entirely. Though, there was a chance I'd be able to catch some trailers on late-night G4TV when they'd just run loops of game trailers.

Jump forward to today and everyone does their own keynote presentations. Nintendo will just announce new Pokémon details via a live-streamed pre-recorded presentation, while Sony plays what is effectively an hour of trailers.

Even still, Geoff Keighley is doing everything in his power to ensure an E3-like event is still held twice a year. I'm very excited for Summer Games Fest and hope that Kingdom Hearts 4 and/or Final Fantasy VII part 3 shows up. They're both long overdue for a trailer.

Anyway, on to what was shared yesterday.

Wolverine

In many ways, Wolverine looks great. The glorious 4K visuals of Logan's shoulder hair as he's walking around an enemy base can't be easily forgotten.

I'll say that the blood mechanics are a bit absurd. I understand that games like these have you killing people at a rapid rate, so gore buildup would be a problem if this were any kind of realistic. The problem is, the shower of ketchup-colored water-like blood sprays by the gallon out of every enemy, drenching Logan, only to slide away into the ether.

Bloodbath one second, sparkly clean yellow spandex the next. One scene shows Logan murdering a guy while he's wearing a white suit. Will that suit be bloodstained? Or will it magically become perfect again after a few seconds?

I understand that this is a game based off of a comic book, but the level of detail and realism feels like it requires a little thought in this space. The trailer did show Logan's uniform get more damaged throughout the level, but is that related to his health? Or is that a cosmetic change chosen by the developers for that specific area?

All I'm asking is for some kind of blood and gore mechanic that makes sense. The more you kill, the more bloodied Logan gets. If you kill every single person in an area (and there's no game mechanic for cleaning up in some way), I want to see a comically messy Logan by the end of the level.

Hell, lean into it. Reward players that refrain from leaning into Logan's killer instincts. Have bloodier crazy kills and quieter silent, less messy kills as options. Reward players for either being clean or incredibly messy in their playthrough.

As it stands today, it's just set dressing, no more threatening or interesting than the confetti Judy uses in the children's play scene of Zootopia.

God of War Laufey

I haven't finished God of War: Ragnarok, and now I think it's time I returned to it for a full playthrough. To be fair, it is mostly because my nephew accidentally erased my file I had made some considerable progress in, but anyway.

When the trailer opened up, I was worried it was going to be some kind of gag where they would announce better gameplay in an enhanced edition of 2018's God of War. Thankfully, they very quickly moved on.

Faye looks great. Her movement and animations for combat and traversal look well thought out and fluid. This is clearly going to be a very different game while retaining some similar elements.

I didn't clock that the cube, named Phranque, was voiced by Jack Quaid, but I did notice it was very familiar. I know that the internet hates a sidekick-like character with a lot to say, and this game may actually have two, but this preview didn't feel too bad.

I will say that the lack of any release window could be a good thing or a really bad thing. The fact that it looks this good could mean one of two things: either this is literally all they've built, the proverbial vertical slice, or it's actually quite far along and they could surprise us with a release date soon.

Either way, I need to get back to God of War. Frustratingly, the trilogy remake is also on an unknown timeline, so it could be a while before we get anything of note.

Other games

The first and last titles were the whole show, it feels like, but we still got some good announcements throughout. The English voice cast for Tōkon sounds great, Kemuri looks amazing, and I'm down for the new Silent Hill.

I'm also excited for a new Ace Combat. That game always has some incredibly realistic and bordering on uncanny valley graphics. The cityscapes in this one look wild.

Until Dawn was an interesting take on bringing classic horror tropes to a game where you could decide how things went down. The sequel isn't made by the same company, so we'll see if this one can hold up.

I saw that everyone was disappointed at the lack of Destiny news. Look, knowing Sony, that one is well and truly dead. They've basically gutted the team already, and Destiny 3 isn't in active development, if it ever will be. idk why people expected anything at all.

Marathon looks great, and now that it seems Sony isn't going to abandon it, I might have to give it a shot.

It's a great week for nerds. Can't wait for Summer Game Fest.