Game Bites: The Big Players And The VR At E3 Day 1

Welcome to coverage of the first official day of E3! We have a ton of news from a TON of events. The day started with Guerrilla Collective which showed a ton of indie games, followed by the very lovely Wholesome Games Direct with even more cozy indie games. We then had the Ubisoft Forward presentation which was followed by the gruesome Devolver Digital, then the Gearbox event and we closed the day with the Upload VR presentation. We’ll cover the big events first, then get to the indie games from the Guerilla Collective and Wholesome Direct events later.

Ubisoft Forward started at 3 p.m. EST and was the official opening event of E3 this year. Before the presentation they had an hour-long pre-event show which showed updates to lots of games coming out. During the main presentation they started off with Rainbow Six Extraction, coming out on Sept. 6, in which you fight alien-like hordes and a mysterious black goo. They followed that up with a subscription service model for Rocksmith, a game that teaches you how to play a real guitar from the PC and now with your phone. The new Rocksmith+ has a closed beta which you can sign up for today if interested. The extreme sports MMO game, Riders Republic was shown with some of the amazing BMX tricks, modes and different rides you can have in the game, set for release on Sept. 2. For the fans of Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft announced a “quality of life” update that will involve cross play between PlayStation and Xbox as well as cross progression play. Another update announced was for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla which is going to have a new siege of Paris mode as well as a Discovery Tour where you can learn the actual history of all the locations used in the game. Just Dance 2022 was announced with a special partnership with musician and artist Todrick Hall and for the first time in a while it will NOT be on the Wii system. Ubisoft showed more cutscenes of the much anticipated Far Cry 6 game as well as a villain DLC where you get to play as previous villains Vaas Montenegro from Far Cry 3, Pagan Min from Far Cry 4, and Joseph Seed from Far Cry 5. Ubisoft also announced that Far Cry 6 will be bringing back the beloved Blood Dragon spinoff in their season pass. One of the surprise drops from this morning was the sequel to Mario + Rabbids, called Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope which looked a bit darker than its predecessor and will be involving the Mario Galaxy favorites like the Lumas and Rosalina in a Rabbids style. Ubisoft closed off their presentation with another surprise drop — Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora based on the movie by James Cameron, which is going to be a first-person action-adventure game coming out in January 2022. 

Devolver Digital made its return to E3 with another satirical swipe at the games industry, subscriptions, games as a service, and NFTs, pretending to be rebranded as Devolver Digital MaxPass Plus. After their opening skit they announced a few upcoming games. The show started with a brief new gameplay trailer for shooter Shadow Warrior 3 that highlighted the game’s violence and frantic gunplay. The next game was Trek to Yomi which is a 2D action side-scroller game that takes place in feudal Japan with influence from the classic black and white samurai movies of the past and is coming in 2022. There was a first-person platforming temple running game called Phantom Abyss which had major Indiana Jones vibes and is coming to early access on Steam June 22. What I can only describe as a Western almost Desert Punk-styled game was the new co-op multiplayer survival game Wizard With A Gun where the player takes on vast hordes of enemies with firearms and magic. Wizard With a Gun is coming to Switch and PC. We had a previously shown game in Death’s Door which comes out for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC on July 20. Death’s Door is a game where you play as a character called The Crow who wields a magical sword while trying to regain his stolen soul. Inscryption is a deck-building game full of horrific characters, launching later this year. Devolver Digital announced their own mobile game, Devolver Tumble Time, which is a free to play (minus the in game transactions) puzzle game for IOS and Android coming this year and featuring Devolver’s vast array of characters. We had one exclusive game that ended the showcase and it wasn’t for PlayStation or Xbox. Coming exclusively for the Nintendo Switch and only in physical copies with no digital release is the bullet hell Demon Throttle, which is only available via Special Reserve Games. 

Our penultimate presentation was the Gearbox Software presentation, which are the makers of the very popular Borderlands franchise. The show started off with a short behind the scenes look at the upcoming Borderlands movie which showed us a prop gun from the game made for the movie. While we did get to see Randy Pitchford, Eli Roth and Kevin Hart, any of the actual set and any actors in costume were blurred out. We did however get to see silhouettes of what each of the actors will look like in the upcoming movie. Hopefully soon we will get to see the makeup and costuming work. Repeatedly throughout the short 30-minute presentation, Gearbox announced that Homeworld 3 was being worked on but had nothing to show other than it was in post-production. They did also announce that a Homeworld remastered collection was also coming soon. Gearbox gave us a more in-depth look at Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands which is coming out in 2022. Wonderlands is a looter shooter that can be played without having played any of the games in the Borderlands series and is its own stand-alone game with new characters in a fantasy setting. Coming to PS4 and Steam was Tribes of Midgard which is going to be a ten player co-op survival game where you team up with friends to grow your own viking village and every night you defend your home. Tribes of Midgard is coming out July 27. The last game announcement we got from Gearbox was an expansion of Godfall. The expansion is called Godfall: Fire and Darkness and will be coming out Aug. 10. Godfall and the expansion will be coming to the PlayStation 4 now as well, making it no longer a PS5 exclusive, and the expansion will support crossplay and have co-op matchmaking.

The last presentation of the day was the Virtual Reality presentation called Upload VR and featured games coming to all VR consoles. There were a good 18 games announced with seemingly a game for every type of VR gamer. The first game was Fracked which is an action-adventure shooter only coming to the PlayStation VR this summer. Another shooter coming this summer was Laurcenauts and the presentation showed us some gameplay featuring the brawler class, named VOD. Waltz of the Wizard: Natural Magic, an update for Waltz of the Wizard, lands on July 6. Waltz of the Wizard is a VR game where you get to see what having spellcasting abilities is like. By the same makers of Waltz of the Wizard is a new survival VR game called Song In the Smoke that is also coming out this summer. A Beat Saber-like VR game that looked a bit like a “film noir meets fantasy werewolf hunter” game was announced called Against and will be coming soon. We also got to see some gameplay for the air guitar VR game called Unplugged and some new modes that will be in it. Pistol Whip announced new modes to play in their rhythm shooter VR game that will make quality of life either easier or harder depending on your preferred playstyle. I Expect You To Die 2, a VR game where everything is out to kill you and you have to prevent it, is coming out this summer. A new Sam and Max game is coming this summer as well entitled Sam and Max: This Time It’s Virtual. A more unique game was Sushi Ben VR, coming in 2022, which is an anime-style game where you play as a Goku look-alike whose favorite sushi place is closing and it’s your job to convince people to eat there in order to save the business. In Da Hoop! is a basketball game reminiscent of the game you can play in arcades and will feature a hand tracking mode only on the Oculus Quest.

We got a rather short look at a game coming June 25th, Sentenced VR, which puts you in the shoes of a medieval executioner and makes you question whether you should just chop off all the heads or maybe consult your conscience. Sweet Surrender is a roguelite shooter in a cell-shaded environment coming late 2021 with an early demo next week. Windlands 2 is an existing VR game where you travel the jungle via vines and get to feel a sense of flying, and is getting a PlayStation VR port late summer. Another game coming to the PSVR is Traffic Jams on Aug. 26 which is already out on the Oculus. Another survival VR game was announced called Green Hell VR that will have more information coming soon but looked very beautiful. A four-player co-op zombie shooter set in a frozen wasteland, After the Fall, is coming out this summer. Two VR games had updates announced back to back, Blaston on June 21, and D&D-like game Demeo on June 28. Sniper Elite VR was also announced to be coming on July 8 to all VR systems and will include the x-ray kill cam it was known for. A surprise drop was an Oculus Quest exclusive competitive multiplayer game coming in 2022, called Nerf: Ultimate Championship where you do indeed virtually play with Nerf guns. The last VR game of the showcase was A Township Tale which is a fantasy game with crafting and building of all types and is coming out on July 15. 

Day 1 of E3 was a packed event and Day 2 will be just as full. We will see presentations from Microsoft/Bethesda, Square Enix, Warner Bros Games, PC Gaming Show and more. Be ready to check back tomorrow and have a wonderful rest of your weekend.