The conferences are about done with for this year, and if you ask me, good flipping riddance. Such a complacent, unexciting showcase this year. Admittedly, there were things I did and did not like about the shows, and E3 still isn't over, but I would be lying if I said that they didn't leave me in a sour mood overall. Let's examine the lot then, I guess.

Microsoft

While this showcase had a lot of dull points in it, I was actually decently surprised at how quickly Microsoft changed their tune this year. Gone were the mentions of FartGlass and that dreaded Kinect thing and in were announcements and trailers for actual bloody games. By no means was their show the best of the lot, or even great, for that matter, but there's some slight fascination stemming from the company skewing their points of interest towards our direction, like a six-year old learning how to properly ride a bicycle without training wheels, except this is a company with hundreds of grown men who should fucking know better.

There was the traditional cliche Call of Duty: Something Warfare title and the obligatory Halo pandering, but there were a couple unique gems such as Sunset Overdrive and the announcement of Crackdown 3 that piqued my interest. Still, most of the conference was games we had already knew about beforehand and the new titles that got showcased looked undeniably bare-bones.

As an extra kick in the teeth, Conker was shown off... and then immediately downgraded to fucking DLC for their next creator game. A proper Conker game would have potentially won E3 for them in my book, but nope, Microshaft decided to balls that up and go "Here, go make your own bloody Conker game," Those twats.

Overall Grade: C-

EA

I honestly skipped over this one. Good thing, too; apart from a new Battlefront, it was billed with sports junk. Possibly the only other thing worth mentioning was the announcement of Mass Effect 4, which God knows I could give less of a piss about. I hope it was as allegedly crappy as the ending to Mass Effect 3.

Overall Grade: N/A (you got lucky this time, you freaks)

Ubisoft

Holy Hitler, this conference was insufferable. The whole seminar was more of an agonizing lecture on the joys of committing self-immolation rather than enjoying virtual media.

Aisha Tyler was the returning guest host, much to my dismay. It's not at all that I don't think she's a good fit for a gaming conference, it's just I don't find her comedic delivery or mannerisms enjoyable in the slightest. There are probably people who do, but her jokes didn't really click for me at all.

Ubisoft also made the crushing mistake of showcasing motion-control shovelware garbage. Just Dunce 2015 made its scathing debut and they still have it on their minds that gamers need fitness with the announcement of Shape Up, a game that tries to make push-ups seem exciting by putting fake heavy objects on your virtual avatar while you are distracted from looking at the screen because you're doing fucking push-ups in real life. If people wanted to get in shape, they'd go to the local YMCA, you shits. You're wasting your ill-fated time.

Not like anything else about the conference was enough to salvage it from damnation. Valiant Hearts, however, was the crown jewel of the conference; the trailer made me tear up, and I rarely ever get teary-eyed. Other than that, same crap we saw at Microsoft's conference and a trailer for a multiplayer Rainbow Six game that was absolutely stuffed with bullshot after bullshot. Oh, and more cars, for the speedophiles out there, I guess. Makes me wish I could have parked my foot up their asses, that's for sure.

Overall Grade: F, and that's being generous

Sony

After witnessing the above-mentioned atrocity to mankind, I was silently hoping Sony would come in and absolve us of all of this E3's sins. It appeared to be the case at first, with new trailers for Destiny and The Order 1886 and the exciting reveal of LittleBigPlanet 3 and Bloodborne, not to mention Dead Island 2 and Suda 51's Let It Die. After the first look of gameplay of No Man's Sky, however, things took a turn for the worse.

The CEO of the company decided it was a good idea to pad out 30 minutes of the presentation by walking onstage and blabbering about statistics and television, which was Microsoft's downfall last year. Then we were given a glimpse at a doohickey called PS TV, which I still don't know what it bloody does. I guess it lets you play handheld games and PS One games on your TV without the console...? I have no fucking clue, but it's only a hundred bucks, so I guess that's not bad. Then someone came up and talked about a television show that would be exclusive to their TV show streaming service. Honestly, who fucking cares? If you wanna talk about superhero TV shows, go to Comic-Con or something. Don't interrupt my game announcements for this crap.

As the event came to a close, Sony announced re-releases of The Last of Us and GTA V for PS4, both of which I could give a tossed salad about at this point, although GTA V did look pretty good in the trailer (though I think they're still bullshitting us when they say the PS4 version will look that good). Then it picked up again with gameplay trailers for Arkham Knight and Mortal Kombat X, both of which look fantastic. MKX even had 3 new characters! Then the show ended with a glimpse of Unsharted 4: Drake's Throbbing Cock. Big whoop.

Compared to the previous shows, Sony did rather well. I was genuinely excited for a few of the games they showcased and LittleBigPlanet 3 warmed my heart when Ubisoft froze it over. Whether they were the Best of Show or not is still up to judgment, but at least they survived with minimal casualties.

Overall Grade: B-

Konami

We already had the amazing trailer for The Phantom Pain at Sony's showing. I'm not a huge MGS fan, so I skipped this one too, since I assumed that was all they did.

Overall Grade: SNAAAAAAAAAAAKE

Nintendo

Probably the other contender for Best of E3, although rather begrudgingly, to be truthful. The Robot Chicken animations were unique and cool, though.

Nintendo did the same thing they do every year at E3: announce a new Zelda game or two, announce a Kirby game, show off the newest Pokemon game, announce two new Mario games, and barely anything else. The Smash Bros announcements kept the stream interesting with the announcements of Palutena and Miis as playable characters, and the reveal of a game centered on Toad from Super Mario Galaxy certainly came out of left field, although it didn't look terribly enthralling to me. There were also Amiibo, a dumb Skylanders-esque gimmick line of mini-DLC statues that serve barely any purpose. Potential Smash Bros DLC characters, I hope, but probably not.

Yoshi's Sewn Escapades, or Woolly World or whatever the bug it's called, was given quite a lot of screen time for a game we not only already saw, but a game that doesn't even look that new. The visual style is cool, but it could have honestly been an artsy, cross-stitched remake of the original, for all I know, since there wasn't really much that was new about the gameplay mechanics at all. Also, there's no Baby Mario, which is a blessing, but this could also mean that it's a game where it's impossible for you to lose like Kirby's Epic Yarn, which is a curse. Either way, this game hasn't really given me a good reason to care for it yet.

Cue the inevitable announcement of a new Zelda for Wii U, and cue the massive fangasm from every orifice of the internet soon after. I will admit that the game's art style and graphics look incredible, and the concept of leaving the player to explore the world instead of railroading him or her excites me a tad bit, but I'll hold my breath until we get some early gameplay footage. Speaking of Zelda, Hyrule Warriors is looking fantastic, and with the addition of more playable characters such as Midna and Impa, I can't wait to see where it heads next. I've never been a particularly huge fan of the Dynasty Warriors games, but I think the Zelda series can make for a pretty amazing crossover.

Then there was Splatoon. What to say about Splatoon... I will definitely go out on a limb and say that the concept looks rather interesting. When the trailer hit, I was hoping for a Mario Sunshine-esque sequel, but instead I got a multiplayer third-person shooter version of the Graffiti game mode from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. With all that said, Splatoon looks like it could be quite a lot of fun. The maps look great to play on and the maneuverability mechanics are something to behold, but I fear it won't have a huge grasp on the multiplayer shooter market and will quickly die off when the next Call of Duty game hits store shelves.

Nintendo actually did quite well in retrospect, although they were definitely predictable as hell again. Still, I was excited on and off throughout the Nintendo Direct, and I'm still swooning over the post-E3 announcement of Pac-Man being in the next Smash Bros. Oh, and Xenoblade Chronicles X and Bayonetta 2 were decent as well.

Overall Grade: B-

Best of E3 2014 - Sony and Nintendo

I couldn't really decide between them. I was excited for titles on both fronts. Microsoft certainly tried a little harder, but they didn't really have the gameplay trailers to back it up, and the other conferences were just abysmal or not worthy of my attention. Despite the lackluster amount of announcements compared to previous E3s, I'm hoping there will be more surprises heading out of June and into the Fall.