While the E3 press conferences are consistently entertaining, every year there’s a plethora of interesting games outside of them that via written pieces, livestreams, and a huge host of other content from the hard-working people at sites like Giant Bomb and Gamespot, we get a glimpse of. Here are some of the E3 2013 games outside the press conferences that were most noteworthy to me.

The Crew

I just wanted to get this one out of the way upfront because of the rather disappointing way it’s demoed. Many of the gameplay systems in The Crew still look great, but it was a bummer to see and hear that the controls in the game feel loose and the road surfaces slippery.

Fantasia: Music Evolved

A lot of people were angered by the initial trailer for Fantasia: Music Evolved, and the way that it depicted little to do with the Disney film the game claims to reimagine. In practise however, the game actually looks surprisingly good, blending rhythm-based motion control swiping with simple but vibrant visuals. The use of particle effects is actually quite beautiful, and the way you can pick your path to different music styles as the songs progress is a nice touch. The game still doesn’t seem to have much to do with that old Disney classic, but the lesson here seems to be never doubt the quality of a rhythm game made by Harmonix.

Sonic Lost World

Sometimes it’s hard to tell how much of the trouble with the current Sonic games is to do with the specific design direction they’ve been taken in, and how much is to do with it just being rather difficult to blend precision platforming with high-speed movement, especially in 3D. Sonic Lost World seems like it at least has something going for it though. The level designs appear unconventional but inspired, with the demo featuring a cylindrical Green Hill Zone-type world that wrapped round on itself, followed up by an odd candy world where the ground was made of Twizzlers, and doughnuts drifted by psychedelically in the background.

Gameplay-wise I’m not entirely sure how to feel about Lost World. You can now apparently change your movement speed so you can slow down and walk through careful platforming sections, but speed up for the simpler more deliberately speedy areas. There’s a camp that says slowing down is the last thing you want to do in a Sonic game, and another less represented camp which says the speed is just the reward. I don’t entirely know which one I sit in, and while I seriously doubt this will be the Sonic series’ return to form or anything, there might be something cool here.

Bayonetta 2

Considering Nintendo are so invested in their family-friendly image, it’s pretty ballsy of them to publish that gory game with the sex-powered stripper witch, but looking at how unashamedly insane the last game got by the end, it’s hard to see how Bayonetta’s fight against the forces of heaven could take place on a larger scale, or how the game could get any more outlandish. Fighting horse creatures on the back of a burning jet plane as it flies through the city is a good start though. The fast-paced hack-and-slash gameplay also looks fun, even if it doesn’t look to break that far from the combat of the original game. There seems to be a certain degree of backlash over Bayonetta’s new hairstyle of all things, but I think it’s respectable that the game’s artists redesigned the character in a way that isn’t going to be considered conventionally “sexy” by many.

Eyes on the Solar System

This one isn’t a game, but it’s partially relevant, and I thought it was interesting. There was actually a man from NASA’s jet propulsion lab at E3, showing off some software developed by the organisation. The program in question is a simulation of the solar system running in the Unity engine that lets you see the movement of planets, satellites, and other celestial objects in real or non-real-time from the year 1950 to the year 2050. The program has also allowed people to follow along with certain NASA-related events, and included a live simulation of the Mars Curiosity Rover landing. You can use in-browser or download it over here, and it looks fascinating.

Super Smash Bros.

It was pretty cool to see that Mega Man and The Villager are coming to Super Smash Bros. during the Nintendo Direct presentation, but I’ve become a little obsessed over Nintendo’s later announcement of the Wii Fit Trainer as a playable character. I didn’t see it coming, and while it seems really dumb (in a good way), it completely works at the same time. Outside of Saint’s Row and Bayonetta this may be the craziest thing I saw at E3.

The Evil Within

I’m not a fan of the survival horror genre, so after hearing that Shinji Mikami was planning a game that would return survival horror to its roots, the premise didn’t exactly grab me. That being said, the opening of the game intrigued me. With its minimal UI and at least initial focus on strong disempowerment of the player, this one could turn out to be a bit of a gem of the horror world. I’m surprised it hasn’t got more attention.

Saint’s Row IV

I loved Saint’s Row the Third, or at least the main story missions of that game, but I’ve been worried about Saint’s Row IV for a couple of reasons. It looked at one time like it could end up being a slightly altered Saint’s Row 3, and as with Bayonetta, I was concerned that the developers wouldn’t be able to top the abject madness of the previous game. However, if the demo they showed was representative of the full game, there are few reasons to worry about any of that.

The superpowers, which are reminiscent of Prototype’s gameplay look like great fun, letting you sprint your way into oncoming cars sending them flying, jump ridiculously high, run vertically up the side of buildings, fly through the air, and pick up and throw things telekinetically. And that’s all before we’ve talked about the Dubstep Gun. I’m sure the set-up of each character being dragged into a Matrix-like virtual prison where they have to face their own personal nightmare will provide plenty of laughs, then there was my favourite bit; a point near the start of that game where as President you are literally asked to press LT to cure cancer, or RT to end world hunger. Yeah.

Hohokum

This game seems worth mentioning less because I thought it looked outright good and more because it was unconventional. In the game, if it can be called a game, you take control of a colourful, thin, and one-eyed serpent-like creature. The beast constantly moves in whatever direction it’s facing, but you can manoeuvre it through the game world, exploring surreal and artistic environments. Hohokum isn’t about completing explicitly laid-out goals to progress, but is instead about discovering the small parts of the world you can interact with and the puzzles scattered around it. I’m worried it might feel like there isn’t enough substance here, but the game has an original look and sound to it, and could be quite relaxing.

Batman: Arkham Origins

I think it speaks to how many big games there were in the press conferences this year that gameplay of Arkham Origins was show floor-only content. As you’d expect the game seems to be playing it fairly close to the acclaimed formula of Arkham City, while building some interesting new things on top of it. Fighting your way through the prison city of the previous game was exhilarating, but there’s something fun in a different way about being able to start clearing up a city where people actually live, especially when the new “Crime in Progress” events mean that you can hear about criminal activity as it happens, and show up to foil it on the fly.

The ability to go to crime scenes, pause and rewind a reconstruction of the event, and collect more evidence to work out what happened, may also help flesh out the gameplay for the detective work a bit better than the “Scan the thing” or “Follow the trail” goals of previous games. While the combat of course looked fantastic in the previous instalments of the series, it may look even better in this one. Animations in the fights seem more detailed and flow faster, and the game plays around with slow motion in the combat slightly different than Asylum or City did. Warner Bros. also showed off some of the new combat mechanics and weapons, such as enemies being able to counter player attacks, but the player being able to counter those in turn, and a slick “Remote Claw” tool which can be fired at an enemy or object, and will then latch onto another enemy or object to create a line between the two or pull them together. That stuff looks really exciting.

Duder, It’s Over

E3 this year was amazing. It’s a bit of a bummer to see Microsoft doing what they’re doing, Nintendo have down-scaled their E3 presence, and the gaming industry still faces a lot of the problems it always has, but there were a selection of varied and spectacular games this year, not just making good use of new graphics tech, but pushing out the boat in many other ways. Here’s hoping things will be as good next year. Thanks for reading.