Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Not-E3 2025 Part 7: Miscellaneous Highlights

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with:
Jun 092025
 

Table of Contents

State of Play
Summer Game Fest
Ball x Pit: The Kenny Sun Story
IO Interactive Showcase
Wholesome Direct
Future Games Show
Xbox Games Showcase
PC Gaming Show
Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous

We’ve pretty much come to the end of the showcases, so all that remains is to cover a few miscellaneous highlights from the other showcases throughout the weekend. First up, I only mentioned Blighted in passing during the Summer Game Fest post, but after getting a closer look at it later on, it interests me more than I expected. The devs also said it has metroidvania elements, so I’m curious about that.

Then there’s Death and Faeology, which looks like an intriguing murder mystery.

Prison of Husks also seems interesting. Yes, we’ve seen a lot of souls-likes, but this one has a old PS1 sort of aesthetic that makes it stand out.

Wander Stars looks interesting, and I was excited to see a new trailer for Tormented Souls II. I loved the first game, and the sequel looks excellent so far.

And speaking of horror games, Shadow Sacrament: The Roots of Evil caught my attention as well.

A.I.L.A. is another horror game that stood out to me from the showcases.

And while not horror despite its spooky aesthetic, the action-adventure game Nightmare Circus looks like it could be a lot of fun.

I also enjoyed seeing the 3D platformer Junklands and the delightfully titled Schrodinger’s Cat Burglar. Schrodinger’s Cat Burglar describes itself as “a puzzle heist adventure with a quantum flavour” and “Portal with cats,” and if that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does. It looks pretty neat.

Finally, I enjoyed watching the trailers for Ayasa: Shadows of Silence, which reminds me a lot of Little Nightmares, and also the puzzle adventure game Ascend. Both of those look like games to keep an eye on.

So while there weren’t a lot of big-name titles that stood out to me from this year’s showcases, it’s nice to have some indie highlights here and there as well.

Meanwhile, that brings us to the end of this year’s Not-E3 (although Konami is having a showcase later this week and Koei Tecmo is hosting a live stream about Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian) unless Nintendo decides to hold a Nintendo Direct this week after all. What were your biggest highlights from the event?

Not-E3 2025 Part 6: Xbox Games Showcase and PC Gaming Highlights

 Video games  5 Responses »  Tagged with:
Jun 082025
 

Table of Contents

State of Play
Summer Game Fest
Ball x Pit: The Kenny Sun Story
IO Interactive Showcase
Wholesome Direct
Future Games Show
Xbox Games Showcase
PC Gaming Show

Xbox Games Showcase & The Outer Worlds 2 Direct

Today’s showcases began with the Xbox Games Showcase. Now, I’m not much of an Xbox person, but sometimes they have some great third-party surprises, so I was hoping for some exciting announcements. They started out with The Outer Worlds 2, which will be out on October 29. I enjoyed the first one, so I’m interested in this.

(I’m not $80 worth of interested, though, which is the price it seems to be set at.)

High on Life is getting a sequel, which I didn’t expect, and there’s a third game in the Plague Tale series called Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. They spent some time showing off the ROG Ally, which I might not have mentioned at all except that it including the tiniest Silksong tease.

There was also a new trailer for The Blood of Dawnwalker, a vampire game that looks interesting, although I’m not sure if it’s my sort of thing. Super Meat Boy 3D was announced as well.

And Ninja Gaiden 4 continues to look pretty cool. It’s coming out in October as well.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is getting DLC, but the next big surprise was from… Game Freak?? And it doesn’t look anything like previous Game Freak games. I’m pretty curious about this one.

Steampunk game Clockwork Revolution looks like it could be interesting, a sequel to Grounded was announced, and Bloober Team was there with a new trailer for Cronos: The New Dawn. I’m definitely keeping my eye on that one.

After that, new stuff was announced for The Elder Scrolls Online, and Dontnod announced a new science fiction game that looks interesting called Aphelion.

I’m also somewhat curious about the musical adventure game There Are No Ghosts at the Grand, although I’m not sure if I’d enjoy the gameplay or not.

The next announcements were a new expansion for Age of Mythology, a stealth action game called Mudang: Two Hearts, Planet of Lana II (I’m not familiar with the first one), and new content coming for Fallout 76. I was almost interested in Solo Leveling: Arise Overdrive despite its odd title, but it seems it’s at least related to a gacha game, so we’ll see.

Animo and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 + 4 didn’t especially interest me, but the sidescrolling game At Fate’s End might be interesting. It’s from the team that made Spiritfarer.

Then it was time for the remaster of Gears of War, Gears of War Reloaded, and (much more interesting for me), the long-rumored Persona 4 remake, Persona 4 Revival. Now, I’m on team “Persona 4 is fine and doesn’t need a remake,” but I have to admit the short teaser trailer looks good.

And that was the highlight for me. They followed that with new content for Sea of Thieves, an Invincible fighting game, the announcement of Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and Final Fantasy XVI coming to Xbox, a game from Double Fine called Keeper that admittedly looks interesting, and then the final announcement of the show was Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

After the showcase, they went into more detail about The Outer Worlds 2 and Grounded 2.

Then it was time for the PC Gaming Show!

PC Gaming Show

Lots of games are covered in the PC Gaming Show, so I’ll stick to the highlights here again.

The first game that caught my attention was Fresh Tracks, a rhythm game where you’ll be fighting the enemies you face to the beat of the song. The Rogue Prince of Persia is also leaving early access in August.

Mandrake also caught my attention, because even though it’s a life sim/farming game, it’s from the developers of Sunless Sea.

Demonschool continues to look interesting, too.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure if I’d enjoy DarkSwitch, but the cosmic horror elements at least got my attention. Likewise, I’m not sure I’d enjoy playing Hell Clock, but I like the trailer’s style enough that I’m sharing it anyway.

Blippo+ also stood out to me, because I watched the whole trailer and read the description on its Steam page and I’m still confused.

Overall, there wasn’t a whole lot that stood out to me this year, but maybe I overlooked some gems. If a game especially caught your attention, let me know.

That’s it for the showcases! What did you enjoy the most from today’s events? Here’s hoping we get a Nintendo Direct soon to round it out.

Not-E3 2025 Part 5: Future Games Show

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with:
Jun 072025
 

Table of Contents

State of Play
Summer Game Fest
Ball x Pit: The Kenny Sun Story
IO Interactive Showcase
Wholesome Direct
Future Games Show
Xbox Games Showcase
PC Gaming Show

Future Games Show

Our next showcase was the Future Games Show this evening. Once again, I’ll be covering the games that stood out as highlights to me, so check out the full showcase if you’re interested in seeing more.

They started with The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, and while I don’t know anything at all about The Expanse, this game looks interesting enough that I’ll keep an eye on it in the future. Right after that was the action-adventure game Echoes of the End, which I’ll also want to keep an eye on.

But the first game to really catch my eye was Whispers in the Fog. It looks like it has the potential to be a very atmospheric horror game.

Another game shown later on, Sleep Awake, also looks like it has a lot of potential. You know, it seems to me that at a lot of these smaller showcases, it ends up being horror games that stand out to me the most. I’m not quite sure why. Of all my favorite game genres, is horror the one with the widest appeal and more likely to show up at these events?

While not a horror game, the next game to catch my attention did so because it looked like it had cosmic horror themes. Not only that, but it reminded me strangely of Call of the Sea. Not so strangely, as it turns out, because Call of the Elder Gods is a sequel to Call of the Sea!

(I never played Call of the Sea, but I watched someone play it, and it stuck with me.)

SacriFire got a new trailer, and it looks just as cool as it did before. There was also a new, creepy trailer for Directive 8020.

That’s right, I’m back to talking about horror games already, and speaking of horror, Ground Zero looks like a delightful throwback to classic survival horror games, so I’m really curious about that one.

The psychological horror game Luto also looks like it has potential. See what I mean about my highlights from this showcase being mostly horror?

But for something that isn’t horror, Agatha Christie – Death on the Nile looks interesting. It seems to be an adaptation of the story with new characters and other changed elements. The same developers did a Murder on the Orient Express game, so I’d like to check that out sometime.

Okay, back to horror. The horror game Crisol: Theater of Idols looks pretty promising, and I’m also intrigued by the final game that closed out the showcase, another horror game called Ritual Tides.

These were the highlights for me from the Future Games Show, so be sure to let me know what games you enjoyed seeing! Tomorrow we’ve still got a couple showcases left, so stay tuned!

 Older Entries