It's going to be a big year...
E3 starts this Sunday, when Bethesda hosts its inaugural press conference to show off the likes of Fallout 4, Doom, and any other unannounced projects it has tucked away. Dishonored 2 anyone? After that, it's a week of big game announcements, hardware news, and loads of sizzle reels with upbeat soundtracks.
We're always excited about E3, and to get you in the mood, we've decided to tell you about the games we're most looking forward to at the show. As ever, feel free to let us know what's hottest in your world too. Or if there are any unannounced titles you're desperate to have revealed next week.
Check out the latest issue for more great comment from the GamesMaster team.
Joel: Dak Souls 3
Don't believe everything you read on the internet, kids, but this one seems like a shoo-in to be revealed next week. And even though I've seen nothing official of it yet, I want it almost as much as I want to take my next breath. Unpopular opinion time: I was very slightly disappointed by Bloodborne. It's an utterly brilliant game, of that there's no doubt, but it didn't draw me into its world in the same way that the Souls titles have. The environments weren't as varied or alluring, and the lack of depth in terms of character building and equipment selection left me a tad cold.
I hold the first Dark Souls up to be the finest game ever made, so to have Miyazaki back at the helm, and bringing the series to current-gen for the first time (in a bespoke manner, at least) is about as exciting a gaming proposition as I could imagine. If a new Red Dead gets announced to boot, there's a very real chance that I'll actually explode.
Matt: No Man's Sky
The numbers! The endless stream of numbers! It seems you can't go big at E3 without tacking a digit on the end of something we already know about (or, worse, a subtitle seemingly pulled out of the hat at random). That's why Hello Games' space exploration thing is my most wanted game of E3.
Despite chatting with the folk working on it and absorbing every last drip of info that has trickled forth I still have no idea what to expect, beyond colourful dinosaurs and weird fish aliens, once I get my hands on the pad. It seems like an age since that's been the case at E3, and so, barring Team Ico turning up to the party with The Last Guardian (ha!), I'm clinging to the unknown in that vast sea of sequels and reboots. That, and Joel bagsied Dark Souls 3.
Robin: XCOM 2
So canonically the bad guys won? Fair enough, that's certainly how 90% of my runs went in Enemy Unknown. Nevertheless I remain undeterred I'm positively itching to take command of my own scrappy band of resistance fighters and bring down the totalitarian forces of The Man (or, rather, The Alien).
Between the stealth, melee combat, airborne HQ, and the more futuristic bent, XCOM 2 looks like it'll genuinely shake up the franchise. Given Firaxis' track record, I'm optimistic that it'll be for the better. And as a loyal PC gamer, I can't help but be excited by the possibilities inherent in the studio moving away from consoles advanced procedural generation and robust, open modding tools, could make this a game with a seriously impressive life-span. I got tingles when the announcement trailer ended with Welcome back Commander. I've missed you too, weird, shadowy, Optimus Prime-sounding council man.
