News Roundup for Summer Game Fest 2023!

 Hey friends! As you may or may not know, Summer Game Fest just kicked off late last week and has been going a little bit pretty much every day. While this special time of the year may not have the same pizazz of E3, which previously has gone on during this time over the summer, we still get pretty good information from all across the game development community. I'm always excited for new game news, and so today I want to talk a bit about the games that I'm most excited for from this event! I'll try to keep it brief this week, because I could be here all day otherwise, and no one wants me waxing poetic about all this, I'm sure!

    The Summer Game Fest Showcase started with the announcement of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, which is a 2D Metroidvania in the style of Metroid Dread, and I can honestly say that it is one of two Ubisoft games that interests me at all from this whole time. It looks like it has really nice platforming mechanics that give your character (who I think is named Saga), a nice feeling of weight, while also allowing him to be pretty acrobatic, to allow for the swinging motion that Prince of Persia is somewhat known for. Also the time travel mechanics are back from the games on PS2 with the Sands of Time, which is nice to see. Mortal Kombat 1 got a nice showing, with the addition of Kameo characters, which definitely reminds me of the support characters in Marvel Vs. Capcom or Project X Zone, and it seems like a nice addition. As always, with a new MK game, there are new ways to brutally kill your opponents in darkly over the top ways, which is always nice to see, in a twisted way. Nicolas Cage actually walked out on stage with Geoff Keighley to talk about his upcoming appearance in Dead by Daylight as a new Survivor character, which is just a really fun idea, even though I don't really like that game. Sonic Superstars is a new 2D Sonic game where the characters look really well animated in smooth 3D. Playable characters include Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy, and even more than that, there is going to be 4-player co-op! This game was definitely one of my favorite things that they showed, as Sonic Mania was amazing, and I would love for this game to be another one like that, especially since it's being orchestrated by Tee Lopes, who also did Sonic Mania's soundtrack! Fang the Sniper also appeared in the trailer, and it's nice to get him involved in proceedings again since most people probably don't even know who he is. Lies of P got a new trailer and a demo, as well as a release date. This game looks like Bloodborne, which is too hard for me, but it looks really good, and the demo plays really well too!

    The team from Remedy showed off Alan Wake 2, which they've promised will be the first Survival/Horror game from them. They didn't show off a lot of footage, but they did say that there are two different playable characters, Alan and Saga, that you can switch between at multiple points in the story, so it will be interesting to see how their two stories play out. Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 made an appearance with one of the devs bringing some concept art and revealing the release date of October 20! Obviously I'm extremely excited for that game, and I'm so glad that we won't have to wait too much longer for it! Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis is coming out for Mobile devices, and honestly I still don't really understand what it is, but it looks interesting, whatever it is! They showed off a new game in the Like a Dragon (formerly Yakuza) series, Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. I don't know anything about these games, but I'm very excited for people who love them, since we also got a trailer for Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, which looks insane based on the short cinematic that was shown. What I am very excited for myself is Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, which is coming in early 2024. Final Fantasy VII Remake was definitely one of my favorite games of its launch year, but it was really only the first three hours or so of the original game that was expanded and made into a much longer game than that original section! I'm so excited to continue this little remake miniseries, especially since the first game played so well. I just hope they'll be able to live up to the hype!

Xbox also had some stuff!

    Xbox did not come to their show empty handed, of course, with quite a few heavy hitters in their corner. They finally showed something from the new Fable game that was announced a few years ago, even though it didn't have anything to show for it back then. Here we still didn't see much, but we did at least see Richard Ayoade in giant form interacting with the protagonist in what was a nice little display of the game's comedic roots, pulling from the older Fable games. They showed off Payday 3 for the people that loved Payday 2 and were begging for more, which I'm not interested in, but I do recognize that it's a big deal when developers count to three! Obsidian has a new game coming out as an Xbox and PC exclusive, called Avowed. Honestly I don't have much to say about this game either other than it looks like an Elder Scrolls-esque game, based on their Pillars of Eternity series, which I also don't know about. I'm excited for people to get their hands on it, even though I don't care about this one.They did have a few announcements that I was actually excited for, namely Persona 3 Reload and Persona 5 Tactica! As you may know, I'm something of a recent Persona fan after playing Persona 5, Persona 5 Royal, and Persona 5 Strikers, as well as the rerelease of Persona 4 Golden over the past few years, so I'm very excited for more. Of course, Atlus just rereleased Persona 3 Portable earlier this year, which was the version for the PSP with point and click sections outside of the dungeons, so it seems like a weird move to announce a full remake of the original game with art more closely matching that of Persona 5. The new remake still looks amazing, so I'm definitely not mad, and I'll certainly be looking to get my hands on it when it comes out in early 2024. I won't get into all the weird differences in different versions of Persona 3, but the remake is putting out the original game without any of the extra content, though many people are hoping they will include some or all of it later through DLC. Persona 5 Tactica is a Tactical Strategy game that seems to play along the lines of Final Fantasy Tactics, but it's hard to say exactly how this will play out. We'll have to see on November 17 when the game comes out to check for sure, but at least we don't have long to wait! The biggest thing by far that was brought by Microsoft was the highly anticipated and frequently delayed Starfield, now an Xbox exclusive thanks to the partnership between Microsoft and Bethesda. This game also doesn't interest me at all, but people who were big fans of Skyrim and Fallout will almost no doubt be happy with this game. I hope it lives up to the incredible expectations that fans have laid out for them, but again, we'll have to see!

    Outside of the Summer Game Fest and the Xbox showcases, there were quite a few other streams such as the Ubisoft Forward and the Capcom showcase, so I'll do my best to talk about the announcements here that I thought were interesting there. There were none. Just kidding (kind of) because amidst the trash fire that was the Ubisoft Forward event, we did get to see a little bit more of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (though the gameplay was interrupted by extreme close ups of a man talking about the game and standing in front of a screen for some reason). We also saw some gameplay of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora as well as Star Wars: Outlaws. While Avatar didn't really grab my attention, mostly looking like a standard First Person shooter from Ubisoft that was set in the world of Avatar, Star Wars looks like it's going to be pretty interesting. You play as a bounty hunter who works jobs to stay out of the Empire's business and make your way through the galaxy. I especially like the main girl's pet friend, it seems to be pretty helpful in picking up weapons for her in case of a sudden shootout, and it's also just very cute! Of course, with the main character being a woman, we have a bunch of sweaty nerds begging to play as a man, but honestly I'm super excited for it! I can't remember a Star Wars game that allowed you to play as a female protagonist since Lethal Alliance on the Nintendo DS (How's that for a deep cut?). I've said it before and I'll say it again, we need more representation for everyone, since games aren't just for men, they're intended for everyone. That shouldn't be a hot take, but unfortunately for a lot of people it's a deal breaker. I hope those individuals will learn to enjoy female characters eventually, but for now, I'll just keep supporting however I can. Sorry to get on a soapbox there, but it's just really frustrating to see an industry I love being constantly plagued with small-minded ideas like that.

    The rest of the Ubisoft showcase had basically nothing, unless you wanted to see three Assassin's Creed games in a row that look pretty much the same save for the VR Peripherals in Assassin's Creed Nexus, and the Mobile game currently codenamed Jade. Capcom showed off almost no new games other than a new collection for Phoenix Wright which was nice to see, it was also nice to see more of Dragon's Dogma II which is looking very good, I will say. The Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Trilogy will include Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies, and Phoenix Wright: Spirit of Justice (which people consider to be the 4th, 5th, and 6th mainline games in the franchise). I'm excited to see people fall in love with these games all over again, as people always do when more come out.

    As I've said many times, I just love getting more game news, and this time of year is always great about it. I wish that Nintendo was giving a presentation during this time, but there doesn't seem to be one in sight. Even still, this has been a fun time for news, and I'm genuinely excited for some of the games that are coming out soon, and I hope they'll all match up to the hype that people have for them!

    Thanks so much for reading this little review of the news that has come out in the past few weeks, friends! I hope you're looking forward to something that was announced. I know that I'm excited for quite a few things, and just in general for the near future! Hopefully we'll know what Nintendo is up to for the rest of the year soon, but seeing as they just put out Tears of the Kingdom and with Pikmin 4 on the near horizon (coming in July), it could be a while. I hope you're all having a great week, and thanks again for all the support! Until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed reporter, and I'll talk to you again soon!