This is the first year I really paid any sort of attention to E3. Usually I have a vague idea whats slated to come out for the end of the year holiday season and maybe a few titles in between, but I’ve never been able to get hyped for a game years in advance.

I’m also not into sitting down and watching a press conference so I poured over a list of games “revealed” at each conference. I’m not sure how this thing usually goes,I’ve heard this years E3 has been lack luster, but I found a few games I’ll be looking forward to for the next year and a half.

 

Monster Hunter World

I had to reread the list to make sure I was still scrolling down the Sony reveals on this one. I’ve been waiting to play Monster Hunter on something other than a handheld since Monster Hunter Tri for the Wii.

My first experience of a Monster Hunter game was on the PSP with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, and to be honest I hated every minute of it. The camera was awful and you couldn’t lock on to anything. I don’t remember why I decided to give it another chance on the Wii but I fell in love with it. I must have put hundreds of hours into it over a few summer breaks. Then came the 3DS releases which was a system seller for me even before Pokemon.

While the 3DS were great I always wanted the franchise to come back to the big screen. The PS4 has some offerings in the same vein as Monster Hunter, namely God Eater and the Toukiden series. But neither of them quite as exciting as Monster Hunter. Ya I know I could have bought a Wii U for Monster Hunter 3 but there wasn’t anything else for that system that I wanted to play.

Either way the trailer looks slick, the graphics got a much needed update, and if this turns out to be as good as the last few handheld games I can see my friends and I putting in long hours hunting.

 

Marvel’s Spider-Man

My favorite super hero game of all time is Spider-Man 2 which I played on the Gamecube. It was my first open world game, one of the first games I ever beat without a guide. And one of the first games I’ve taken the time to hunt down all the collectibles.

We’ve known for a while that Sony had a Spider-Man game coming out for a while now and I enjoyed the new trailer for it. There are a lot of criticisms about it having so many quick time events but I didn’t think it detracted from the game that much. If anything it added a more cinematic feel to the whole thing.

The one concern I have with it is the stealthy looking game play in the beginning. It looked very much like the Arkham games which I’m in the middle of playing through. While that style of play works for Batman, Spider-Man has never  been a stealthy hero to me. He’s more of a flashy, I’m going to make fun of you while beating you up, kind of hero and I didn’t see a lot of that in the trailer.

Regardless of how it turns out I’ll probably pick it up at some point. The swinging and wall running look to fun to pass up even if its full of quick time events and stealth missions.

 

Anthem

Let me start out by saying this game looks awesome. It’s got sci-fi Iron Man suits, it’s got squad based combat, and it’s apparently got RPG-like progression. It’s Bioware’s Very Pretty Destiny and Oh You Can Have A Jet Pack Too.

But I know how these things go and while all of it looks and sounds great when it’s first announced theres always that thought in the back of my mind that says, how are they going to screw this up. This looks like the poster child for the hype trains next wreck. But I’m hopeful and out of all the games I’ll be following the news on this one closely if only to temper my expectations for how insanely awesome this looks like its going to be.