In all honesty, I didn’t have the highest expectations for E3 this year. I suspected that we’d see some real gems on show, but with ever-rising budgets for AAA games urging companies to play it in safe in what they create (a problem that’s likely to be made worse by more advanced sets of hardware), I was worried that we’d see too many games that looked like they were scared to do something new.

The run-ups to new console releases have traditionally been a time for publishers and developers to present original and enticing games for a fresh generation of systems, but I was concerned that it was all too easy for this E3 to be a repeat of last year’s conference which showed off some real winners, but also drew criticism for its copious offerings of predictable shooters, boring motion control titles, and iteratively designed sports games. For this reason I was pleasantly surprised this year to see press conferences with plenty of games treading new territory, and companies interested in offering up something new and imaginative. Let’s take a look at those conferences.

Microsoft

It’s interesting how Microsoft’s job at E3 moved from just being about making exciting new announcements to also being about trying to win back fans from the Xbox One reveal fallout. Still, there’s nothing to turn gamers back around like just getting up there and showing quality games, and that’s what Microsoft did.

While I’m not on board with everything their game is doing, one of the developers that really stepped outside their traditional wheelhouse was Crytek, who instead of presenting us with another modern shooter game, went for a slightly unconventional melee combat title set in ancient Rome. There’s such a wide variety of potential settings for games, it’s a shame that so many go for “The post-apocalypse”, “A modern war”, “A LoTR-style fantasy setting”, or any other frequently used template. Ryse is a AAA game that is using an exciting and underutilised time in history for its backdrop, and might well be doing it with some real style. Hopefully they’ll go easy on those quick-time events.

I still maintain that Sunset Overdrive looks like a cross between Mirror’s Edge and a Tango advert, and I’m not sold on the character design, but the vibrant and playful world has me keeping an eye on it. The new Forza looked beautiful, and the idea of an AI driver who copies your playstyle and races against other players in the game really appeals to me. Remedy’s Quantum Break has an idea behind it that could be ground-breaking if they can pull it off right; having your actions in a game influence a TV show, but I’m a little sceptical of ventures like this one, they do have quite a big potential to go wrong.

Project Spark however, is a game that looked like it had a tight grasp on what it wants to do. It possesses a charming art style, and I’ve just never seen anything for consoles that lets you build gameplay scenarios like this. Not only does it look like it would be fun to dive into those creative tools, but with the potential flexibility of what they showed, I’m sure people will create some crazy user content for that game. Obviously it can’t provide the kind of creative freedom that something like Game Maker does, but when you can start allowing users to make logic routines for their gameplay scenarios that function similar to program code, it opens up a lot of fun possibilities.

Killer Instinct didn’t really grab me, I can’t particularly see what it has over any other fighting game out there, but coming after the Project Spark demo it did make me think about how weird some of these developer presentations are. The people running the press conferences go to such lengths to make them polished and professional, then end up trotting out game creators like the ones in these demos whose attempts at casual banter come off as painfully scripted. I’m all for putting the real developers out there to show off their games, even if they’re a little stilted in their speeches, but these extensive and cringeworthy back-and-forths during gameplay are baffling to see at E3 in the year 2013. In fact at one point it got legitimately uncomfortable.

On the more surprising side of things, there was Dead Rising 3 and its new take on the aesthetics of the series. In a way, the more serious look for the game makes sense. They’ve probably reached the pinnacle of how crazy they can make a silly version of Dead Rising, but even with that in mind it’s hard to shake the fatigue for the dark, gritty zombie game. I guess at least you can still strap an electric saw to a sledgehammer and throw it at a dude.

Battlefield 4 might unfortunately have been the least exciting thing I saw at the show. It had some nice setpieces, but it really was the derivative grey shooter of the conferences. I’m sure people that like that series are pumped, but for most of that demo you could have told me I was looking at Battlefield 3 and I would have believed you. On the plus side Titanfall presented a much more exciting take on the modern military shooter. At first glance it looked like a dull amalgamation of CoD, Metal Gear, and a number of other popular action games, but if the parkour-infused, hectic combat they showed is what we’ll be experiencing in the final game, it’s hard not to see Titanfall as something worth following.

Finally, the look of independent rogue-like Below was visually captivating, and it’s always good to see the indies get some stage time. Ultimately, all the good games in the world won’t mean that the new Xbox doesn’t have restrictive online requirements, an objectionable approach to used games and a host of other problems, and the announced price of $499/£429 does rather sting, but if nothing else, Microsoft showed off a pleasing collection of new titles.

EA

One of the greatest things about E3 is just seeing how bizarre it gets sometimes, and that came through loud and clear as what at first looked like a Battlefield trailer then turned into a demo for a Plants vs. Zombies third-person shooter, before a man from Popcap announced Peggle 2, jumped in the air, did a fist pump, and then disappeared backstage. The general attitude to Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare seemed to be cautious acceptance, and it’s one that I share. I’m a bit burned out on tower defence, but it looked like a game that real thought and effort had been put into creating.

Need for Speed: Rivals played well, and I consistently enjoy seeing that one of my favourite games of the current gen, Burnout Paradise, is still influencing a lot of what’s going on in the racing genre. Although, I always become slightly melancholy looking at these games and knowing they’re never quite the Burnout Paradise 2 I want them to be. Still, the car-smashing combat, high speed racing, and points-based rewards of Rivals looks exciting. They may have even worked out how to get the series’ cops vs. street racers concept working better than ever.

Unfortunately the conference’s main payload was more or less the predictable; a length and dreary look at the upcoming EA Sports line-up. Not only are EA playing a game here where features like “The ball bounces up and down more realistically” are meant to be great innovations, but the presentations felt more like marketing spin than enthusiastic studios showing off their work. When it came to FIFA, the speaker began spouting off a series of buzz terms that didn’t really mean anything like “Stadiums full of emotion” and “The artistry of football”, and it wasn’t exactly endearing seeing a UFC fighter tell a room full of the gaming press how they must love other human beings kicking the shit out of each other. This stuff doesn’t do much to help EA’s image of a bunch of men in suits more concerned with marketing and sales than anything else, but they must be well aware of this image by this point, and basically don’t care to change it.

The conference plodded onwards with another foray into Battlefield 4 and I know I wasn’t the only one who’d tuned out by this point, but then came the closer. Mirror’s Edge 2 is one of those games that you really want to get excited about seeing at an E3, but know that if you did, you’d most likely be setting yourself up for disappointment. Yet, there it was. It’s not as if the original game was some flawless masterpiece that we want to see more of, it had its problems, but the striking visual design and unique gameplay made it a game that a lot of us aren’t going to forget any time soon. I’m happy that even under what is usually a cut-throat corporate entity like EA, a Mirror’s Edge 2 can exist.