Well, the official fully announced Not-E3 has come and gone, and with that comes a new slew of video game announcements, trailers, demos, and second-degree embarrassment in the case of the actual Summer Game Fest. So today, I thought I’d go through the three major showcases (PlayStation, Summer Game Fest, Xbox) and talk about what I liked, what I didn’t like, and so on and so forth.

Let’s get into this.

Sony PlayStation State of Play

Marvel’s Wolverine

Bloody violent way to start the show! I enjoy myself some X-Men occasionally, with most of my knowledge coming from David Hayter’s X-Men (2000) film and subsequent series. I also enjoyed Insomniac’s prior Marvel games with Spider-Man. However, from what is shown here, it is not all that impressive from a gameplay perspective. Yes, this might be the goriest first-party game ever made, but if you remove the blood, screaming, and violence, you’re left with a linear-looking melee combat game à la Arkham Asylum. Granted, this was a combat-focused showing—maybe there are more varied gameplay mechanics like stealth or something. While a lot of people would enjoy a blood-filled rampage slicing up dudes and freaks, I personally need a little bit more to get me on board. Definitely a wait-and-see.

Silent Hill Townfall

Townfall looks like they’re trying to make a Silent Hill game styled after Resident Evil 7, which is a delightful twist considering Resident Evil 7 was trying to make a Resident Evil game styled after Silent Hill (or technically P.T.). To me, horror is at its best in first person, and while I thought the Silent Hill 2 remake was effectively spooky, it didn’t scare the shit out of me like Resident Evil 7 did. So having a first-person Silent Hill game is something I am way more into than something like Silent Hill f. I like the vibes, I like the characters, and I like the slightly retro aesthetic.

Stuntman Hollywood

By several thousand miles, the game that I am most excited about from this State of Play is Stuntman. I just love the idea of reliving some of the most famous car chases and stunts in movies. They picked some real winners as well, from Knight Rider to Fast and Furious to Mad Max. Even though I have some gripes with the Back to the Future section they showed briefly (why is a drivable DeLorean racing after the train?!?), I am over the moon excited to get my hands on this. All I hope for is a great selection of movies and scenes, with a good leaderboard system.

The Lost Wild

If they have to go an extremely roundabout way to give me a Trespasser remake, I say take it. We don’t get enough dinosaurs-as-the-enemy games. It’s always soldiers or monsters or aliens. Give me something tangible, like a T-Rex. They didn’t show much, but they showed enough to get me to keep an eye out for more.

Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest

Resident Evil Veronica

Capcom, on their once-in-a-lifetime roll of banger after banger, appear to not be slowing down at all because not even half a year after Requiem, they’re putting out another excellent-looking Resident Evil in Veronica. I never played Code Veronica, but I know a lot of my Resident Evil-loving friends swear by it, so I am glad I get to see a remade version of it. Resident Evil 2 Remake is my favourite Resident Evil game, so it will be good to play as Claire Redfield again.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer

I was talking to a friend about this the other day, and I generally cannot think of another entry in the Star Wars franchise that’s just about normal people in the galaxy. This might be the first time a Star Wars thing has not been about either Jedi, Sith, or the war between the Rebels and the Empire. You just get to be a racer racing cool-looking vehicles. Ignoring that for a second, I wasn’t really that into the original reveal, but the more I watched, the more I realised this looked a lot like Burnout, and if they made a Star Wars-themed Burnout game, I am totally in.

Star Wars: Zero Company

I’m starting to sense a pattern here: Star Wars + formula from a game I like = I wanna play that. In this case, it’s Star Wars crossed with XCOM, which is an idea so obvious it baffles me that no one has tried it before. It’s been a while since XCOM 2, and I have been itching to play a new one, but Chimera Squad and whatever that Marvel thing was didn’t stick with me. But if they just slap a Star Wars sticker over XCOM, I will be down. Wanting to play multiple Star Wars games—what has happened to me?!?

Stranger Than Heaven

Look, I know a lot of people think the Tupac thing is gross, and I would agree with that. But if you’ve been paying attention to that man’s legacy in the last decade or so, you know that grave has already been dug up. Hologram Tupac was not that long ago, but since then we have had multiple films portraying him in less than flattering ways, and Snoop Dogg even roped in his estate to be featured on his 19 Crimes red wine series. The sanctity of Tupac has been tarnished well before RGG Studios got their hands on him. Besides that, it looks okay. RGG has been more misses than hits lately, so hopefully a new-ish series gives them enough of an outlet to pull them out of this funk.

Final Fantasy VII Revelation

Fool me once, Square Enix. Rebirth wasn’t the worst game I played in 2024, but it was the game I hated the most. I despise that game for being an overly long, padded-out, shallow pile of nonsense. No amount of swimsuits or minigames was going to outweigh the slow, plodding pace of everything in that game. I have little hope that Revelation is going to improve that, but I still have a little bit of hope. I like Remake enough, so I will be interested to see how this lands.

Asha Sharma’s Xbox Games Showcase

Gears of War: E-Day

Looks like a Gears of War game. It doesn’t appear to be doing much with the formula. It’s still stop-and-pop, chainsaws, and active reloads. For whatever strange reason, they put heavy emphasis on that story, which… okay, sure? Gears of War to me has never been a story-focused series—just an excuse to kill aliens with increasingly ridiculous weapons. So having the focus on Marcus and Dom, two characters who haven’t been the focus since Gears of War 3 in 2011, I found to be a bit odd. Still, as long as the action has that Gears flow and the multiplayer isn’t a mess, I’ll be sure to give this a try.

Halo: Campaign Evolved

Okay, this showing sort of kind of got me back on board. Halo: Campaign Evolved had a really bad first impression when they first announced it, looking like one of those “I ported Ocarina of Time to Unreal Engine 5” kinds of videos. But the new stuff looks good. When they said they were going to add new levels to the game, I thought they would be small, horde-based rooms at best, but they appear to be actually trying with this—a new thing for Halo Studios (formerly 343i). They’re even doing new stuff like space battles, which I don’t think is going to be good, but hey—they’re trying something new at least.

Join Us

Cult of the Lamb crossed with State of Decay doesn’t sound like a good idea, but it looked like a good idea with this short little trailer. It’s sort of hard to judge a trailer like this because the game should be very systems-heavy, which you can’t really show off in a short trailer. Still, it’s an interesting take on the management sim idea, and with its goofy tone, it could be something neat.

Crazy Taxi World Tour

All I can say is “Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya.”

Persona 4 Revival

Talk about a glow-up. Last year, Persona 4 Revival’s reveal trailer was so bad-looking that it was a runner-up in last year’s Willies for Most Baffling Decision. It looked like someone hastily threw together some assets and called it a trailer. It even reused the original music. Now, though? Hoo boy, this game looks so good. The colours just pop out of the screen with that trademark Persona style. I’ll have some more to say after that livestream they’ve got planned, but for now, my faith has been restored.

Magicians: The Devil’s Deal

In terms of new games shown, this might be my Game of Show. This appears to be a magician-themed first-person shooter, but not in the sense of problematic woman's wizard nonsense, but your classic Houdini-style stage magician aesthetic. I’ve always had a passing interest in stage magic, so seeing this blown out to this degree was a delight to see. An original idea with high-quality aesthetics? In this industry? Impossible!

Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse

The winner of the “Oh God, Please Be Good” category is the return of Castlevania. I love me some Castlevania in the Symphony of the Night style, and seeing this is the first one of those from actual Konami in what feels like decades is a reason to be hopeful but cautious. Konami doesn’t have the best track record when trying to reboot Castlevania, so I look forward to this, but I’m not expecting the world. Just be good, pleeeeease.

Persona 6

This wasn’t just a game announcement—this was the game announcement. A game that I had been anticipating for nearly a decade. Words cannot describe the feeling I had when I finally saw the words “Persona 6” in a trailer. The trailer itself was nothing special, but it did have a more creepy, horror tone than what I was expecting. I know the character designs leaked a few weeks ago, but I’ve been hearing about rumours and leaks for literal years at this point. I can finally get excited for a new Persona game. Now I just need to wait.

The Not-E3 Round Up of Opinions 2026