The Britelite E3 Wrap-up.... Excited Yet?

Well… another E3 has come and gone and we are left rifling through the ashes looking for leftover playable demos. If you read our initial E3 review you know there are some wild things coming to the world of digital entertainment soon, and at the very least we have been promised that the future will be really, really, ridiculously good looking.

Here are our favorite things coming down the pipe:

Hitman

Hitman has one of the all time, most compelling adolescent fantasy setups. You are a superhuman clone made to kill people who are really hard to kill. Frankly… sign me up. A lot of people were disappointed by Hitman: Absolution, the last game in the series. I had fun playing it, but I see how it does not really live up to the bar that was set by GTA 5.

Well IO games has stepped it up and is (allegedly) bringing the full Skyrim to the Hitman experience. IO is promising an open world, sandbox experience with unique missions updated regularly, and new mission types such as one-chance hits. IO says that there will be missions that you only get one shot at (pun intended) and if you miss, it’s all over. All that, plus this is the first one where you can drive the batmobile! (I’m pretty sure that is this game).

Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst

Mirror’s Edge was one of 2008’s most talked about new games. It brought the platformer to a new, more acrobatic and more parour place. The original game was pretty much non stop jumping off walls with the occasional break to grab a totally useless firearm and “Stormtrooper aim” yourself to victory.

Well the new installment, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst promises to bring you more of what you love with less of what you dont. The firearms are done away with completely in this game in favor of more aggressive wall jumping. The designers also incorporated the all-but-ubiquitous open world structure to let you parkour off all the structures you can see, not just the mission critical ones. It will be interesting to see how the game mechanics hold up in the open world environment, but if it is anything like the 2008 original, it should be a great time.

Uncharted 4

You would think that things have started to be charted, but no its Uncharted 4. Well it looks like everyone is back in this game: your long lost brother, your esteemed mentor Victor Sullivan, and your lovely wife Elena. This game promises to be bigger, better, and more destructible.

The preview that was played at E3 still leaves a lot up to the imagination, but there are some confirmed new features that we can talk about. First, Nate is finally 16 and can drive! Yup, as seen in the preview you are no longer relegated to riding shotgun, you can finally jump behind the wheel and go exploring. It is unclear how big the game world will be, but developers have said that players will be able to drive “great distances.”

Developers also announced the ability to use the environment to your advantage, throwing boxes and using nearby ropes in the heat of combat to gain an advantage. It looks like Nate will also adapt to the environment to use cover more carefully. Players will get down behind low cover and be able to crawl between objects to stay out of harms way. It looks like this is going to be the most “immersive” (see what I did there) Uncharted to date. We can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

Bioware is almost certainly lying to us again, but I can’t say that I’m not loving it. I think most gamers still remember to oft promised, never delivered features in Mass Effect 3. Who can forget the fulfilling experience of three games worth of choices being condensed to a different colored explosion, and nothing else.

Well Mass Effect is back and it’s time to rest more of your hopes and dreams on the promises of your overlords. The trailer at E3 was full of hints about features and characters, but was filled with little actual information. It will be a waiting game to see what is on the table for this installment. That being said, Mass Effect 2 was all of the awesome and I hope that someone from that team is still roaming the halls of EA giving pointers.

Total War: Warhammer

Shogun: Total War was a watershed moment for gaming; It was the first time that players could see 2,000 individual soldiers on the battlefield of an RTS. Total War also introduced players to a deep and complex level of strategy that was almost unheard of at the time. Well the makers of Total Was have spent the past 10 years bringing us face to face with medieval pikemen, Roman Centurions, and the noble Samurai, but today Total War brings us a new team to play on, Warhammer. It is hard to tell what the specifics of this game are, but I can’t believe that nobody has thought of this before. The deep strategy and characters of Warhammer with the engine of Total War sounds like one of my favorite things ever. Everyone should stay tuned for the next trailer, coming later this month.

Well that's our E3 best for this year. Check out the wrap up this week for what BLI has been up to during this madhouse.

Written by Jeremy Rosenblum