Here is the official press release from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA):
E3 2020 CANCELLED DUE TO GROWING CONCERNS OVER COVID-19 VIRUS
After careful consultation with our member companies regarding the health and safety of everyone in our industry –- our fans, our employees, our exhibitors and our longtime E3 partners –- we have made the difficult decision to cancel E3 2020, scheduled for June 9-11 in Los Angeles.
Following increased and overwhelming concerns about the COVID-19 virus, we felt this was the best way to proceed during such an unprecedented global situation. We are very disappointed that we are unable to hold this event for our fans and supporters. But we know it’s the right decision based on the information we have today.
Our team will be reaching out directly to exhibitors and attendees with information about providing full refunds.
We are also exploring options with our members to coordinate an online experience to showcase industry announcements and news in June 2020. Updates will be shared on E3expo.com.
We thank everyone who shared their views on reimagining E3 this year. We look forward to bringing you E3 2021 as a reimagined event that brings fans, media and the industry together in a showcase that celebrates the global video game industry.
Here it is, folks. Between 3 different GHG members we demoed and covered 25 plus games at this year’s E3 and get into all of them…
Welcome to the Geekdom Gamescast’s Top 25 Games at E3 2019 special! Here, in our 10th episode, we talk multiple Avengers games, multiple Star Wars games, a surplus of new Switch stuff, new Doom and Wolfenstein entries, that funky new Battletoads, and, of course, Xbox Scarlett. Moody and guests, Artez Bailey (and the Defiant Bear), break down their E3 as Myke geeks out as always!
Also, remember to check out this link for full reviews of every demo — including some by the Gamescast family’s Sarah Obloy.
We’ll see you back here next time for Gamescom!
-Travis Moody & Myke Ladiona, the Geekdom Gamescast
THE OUTER WORLDS (Private Division/Obsidian Entertainment – X1/PS4/PC – October 25, 2019) – Space…the final frontier. As imagined by Obsidian games, that frontier is less high-tech paradise and more Wild West outpost, where smuggling is acceptable and everything has a price. In The Outer Worlds, the newest sandbox style RPG game from Obsidian, you journey into a civilization that is part Fallout, part movie western…
The lands are populated by foul mouth tavern owners, genetically altered animal stock, and enough tongue-in-cheek/punny dialogue to keep you amused as you play. Your character is created as a blank slate, neutral until your gameplay builds their character; you can choose to be a good guy, a bad one, or something in between.
Branching dialogue during quests allows you to send the story –and your character– where you want it to go, and your choices and their effectiveness are helped or hurt by your skills: lying, charisma, and the like. Your character comes with its own tiny posse, and all of your qualities can work together to enhance your play (or hinder it, depending on how you roll the metaphorical dice).
The game doesn’t have the sharpest visuals, but they lend themselves well to the gritty feel of the overall game, and the demoed gameplay runs smoothly. Plus, who can resist the opportunity to gain access to areas by flirting in binary with the patrolling robot guards?
For those of you with the game, and perhaps struggling with it, you can always check out a guide to help you along. Gnarly Guides gives the best advice and perks on The Outer Worlds game for those of you who are fans; there’s no shame in a helping hand!
Overall, The Outer Worlds E3 behind closed door demo offers a strong showing, and should be in the “need to play” list for anyone who enjoyed the Fallout/Bioshock series or likes a little strategy in their gameplay.4/5 Bibles.
WATCH DOGS LEGION (Ubisoft – X1/PS4/PC – March 6th, 2020) – At E3, I got a chance to play Watch Dogs Legion for about 20 minutes. With the third game in the series now set in London, players are able to control and recruit multiple NPC’s instead of one protagonist. Wilder, each character you come across and profile has their own background, special set of skills, and daily habits; after you recruit a character (to DedSec of course) they are signed to three classes, combat, stealth or hacking.
The combat class, Enforcer, is exactly what it sounds like– guns, guns and guns. Players can dodge and avoid incoming gunfire with more ease, use sticky mines and pack more powerful ammo. The stealth Infiltrator is the class I used in my play session, naturally. My character had the ability to make herself invisible (via augmented reality cloaking) and she used non-lethal force to take out her enemies. Shocking and hiding fallen foes was fun. The final class should be obvious: Hacker. Moody will talk more about that one in a minute.
Having the ability to control multiple characters definitely keeps the pace of game interesting, and keeping all of their egos in check to make a squad should be a great challenge. That said, Legion didn’t completely grab me. With the game not out until March, I’m still deeply interested in seeng and hearing more about details and story. 3/5 Bibles.
-Artez Bailey
Travis Moody @TravMoody
Much like Keanu when he stole the show with Cyberpunk 2077 at E3 2019, Granny steals my hacktivist heart here with Watch Dogs Legion. She was easily the best part of my demo (Artez and I split our 45-minute hands-on time at the meeting), hobbling around, bitterly commenting on her uber tech/drone swarming surroundings; yet, she still had the willpower of intel and years of assassin training to be the Most Dangerous Woman on the Planet. Imagine if the main protagonist in Mr. Robot was played by Betty White instead of Rami Malek. Yea-huh…
My Granny hacker owned, with callbacks to PS4 Spider-Man in her use of spider-turrets and robots during enemy infiltration. But Granny may have “owned” a little too much. Legion got real spoofy once my senior ciritzen hacker alerted security, taking multiple gunshots with little problem clearing the area; though I’ll admit it was a hoot watching spider-bots pull an “Alien” and destroy the faces of many.
My hope is that settings were on “Beginner” to ease first-time players into the controls, or, at worst, that AI is still a work in progress and, in the retail version, players won’t simply be able to gimp around and clean everyone’s clock with Ms. Joanne Wick. We’ll see. Thankfully Watch Dogs Legion is largely a team effort. Players are required to assemble their own “fSociety” squad of hackers to battle the privately-owned security corp, Albion.
But don’t get too attached to Granny or anyone else. Permadeath is reality. When a part of your team goes, they go. There’s no coming back. Before you can think about the endgame for any in your team of hackers, you must first convince them to join DeadSec, even if they have strong feelings of hate towards the group. This goal can be accomplished by running a series of side missions to convince recruits that joining is the right thing to do.
Our demo host skipped all the small play in favor of the main mission at hand, but there’s no doubt that Watch Dogs Legion has an awful lot of depth to it. While overall density may have prevented Legion from being one of the better demos at E3 this year, that notion certainly didn’t keep it from being one of the most interesting. 3.5/5 Bibles.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING (Nintendo – Switch – September 20, 2019) – The original Link’s Awakening was released back in 1993 on the Nintendo Game Boy and then released again on the Gameboy Color in 1998 as Link’s Awakening DX with extra dungeons. Now it’s coming this fall to the Switch and, in all its pixel art glory, looks awesome.
Since I never owned a Game Boy, the E3 demo was my first time zoning in on the top-down 3D adventure/puzzle quest. The result was a satisfying play session and instant pre-order…
Going about 15-minutes, we began with Young Link stranded on the beach of a mysterious island; there, in Koholint, is an owl that guided me on where to go and what to do. There are lots of tough enemies in the Mysterious Forest that borders north of the beach, but there are plenty of surprise tunnels and fun dungeons to explore there as well.
The Switch controls are great and especially easy to grab if you ever played A Link To The Past or A Link Between Worlds. Nintendo has improved inventory in Link’s Awakening with an additional item slot, leading to faster combat. In addition to a new dungeon creation mode, there are a number of odes to Super Mario Bros lore (n/goombas, magic mushrooms, the chain-chomping Bow Wow, etc.) for those who also never played the Game Boy original, too. 4/5 Bibles.
TOM CLANCY’S GHOST RECON: BREAKPOINT (Ubisoft Paris – X1, PS4, PC – October 4, 2019) – Mission Alert: Xbox Showcase booth for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint currently experiencing insufficient audio frequency. Mission requires communication and cooperation to infiltrate enemy compound.
I repeat…
Damn it, Walker! Yet, despite a failure to communicate during my 25-plus minute hands-on with the latest Tom Clancy title, I still enjoyed my experience enough to recommend it. Be warned, however; the Breakpoint‘sA.I. is brutal and enemies are not nice. The environments, despite how gorgeous in their landscape — with wind-pushing tall grasses, impressive lighting from giant oaks shading out the sun and the most realistic rocky cliffs I’ve ever witnessed in 4K — are not nice to the soldier either.
You can’t just leap around Breakpoint like a madperson, as skipping a step and staggering down steep hills is a probable thing. Mud can track high on boots and battledress (which comes in handy to further camo-cloak the player); and injuries can happen from poor traversing and the heat of combat. It took me a realistic amount of time to bandage up my sniper behind enemy lines, too, so beware of your surroundings at all times.
Much like the new Modern Warfare has invested into the tactical more than previous iterations, Breakpoint‘s co-op is less about TTK ratios (and senselessly mowing down the enemies) in favor of the mission. Infiltration is tense, and even the most seemingly wide open, safe areas can instantly turn to a wild firefight if you’re not too careful. That’s where precision droning and scouting comes to play. I also suggest that squadmates don’t stray too far away from each other; though what do you expect from partnering up with three other strangers at an E3 demo?
Fans of American Sniper are in for a treat. Scoping out the opposition feels great; weapons, skills and even classes can be upgraded and swamped out at the team constructed bivouac camps. And while we weren’t able to try vehicles in our gameplay sesh, an Ubisoft rep informed us that choppers, Humvees and other armored wheels will be a much bigger part of the game than Wildlands.
While I’m excited to see how Breakpoint plays when my patrol can actually hear and respond to what the fuck I was saying, it’s the Age of Apocalypsesque potential narrative (with Jon Bernthal at the forefront) that has me shouting “hoo-rah!” in excitement. I can’t emphasize enough how breathtaking this game looks either, man. 3.75/5 Bibles.
