by mento
We're back with another fifty takes on fifty trailers from E3 2021, uploaded to GB courtesy of Marino's scouring of the internet for any video that went up last week with a date at the end. This block starts with games revealed during the Annual Devolver Digital Chaos Hour and ends with the Game Pass Freebie Fest that was this year's Microsoft/Bethesda presser. Look out for Trailer Blazer E3 2021 Parts Three and Four in the near future, hopefully before the end of June by which time everyone will have forgotten about E3 and be deep into their SGDQ speedruns.
Be sure to use the below table to see all the new trailer inclusion rules for Trailer Blazer E3 2021. Check out some of those older ones too to see how hilariously off-base my impressions were.
Showing 1-10 of 50 items
The Game: F2P puzzle game from NOPOPO (Dang! I Got Too Many Dang Gems). The Trailer(s): Devolver's conferences are typically chaotic and violent satire about the state of the gaming industry and the odious marketing speak and corporate platitudes seen in every other conference, and its fictional team of coldhearted executives put together the most microtransaction-laden nightmare possible with Devolver Tumble Time. Except... it's apparently a real game coming soon, so I'm left wondering if the satirical streak continues in-game (maybe the "ads" are equally subversive jokes) or if Devolver just went ahead and made an actual F2P "whaling ship" so they could keep the lights on, hypocrisy be damned. The Response: Nah. Don't have anything to play it on. I'd be curious to find out what it actually is though.
The Game: A vertically-scrolling shoot 'em up from Doinksoft (Devolver Bootleg). The Trailer(s): A Pocky and Rocky meets Wild Guns merger with a permanent CRT filter, Demon Throttle would be unremarkable if not for two things: self-censoring a sexual encounter between a demon and a dude's wife as "kissin'" (this is a Nintendo game parody, after all; I'm guessing they drank a lot of "milk" first to get in the mood) and that the game is never releasing in a digital format - physical carts only. This artificial scarcity is just Devolver being Devolver, but I wonder if any other principled developers follow their lead. (Given the amount of business they'd lose, probably not many.) Also, is that Kaufman doing the soundtrack? It sounds great either way. The Response: Nah. They're going to sell those things at a premium and this looks like a $5 game, which I don't necessarily mean in a derogatory fashion. If I had cash to fritter away on gimmicky game purchases, I'd get a Playdate. Or an Intellivision Amico, yikes.
The Game: A land development simulation game from Free Lives (Genital Jousting). The Trailer(s): A thoughtful and contemplative environmentalist-themed simulation game is exactly what I expected from the Genital Jousting team, given all the clues they left in that game's ending. Glad to see that they didn't disappoint. It has that SimCity isometric look, but the gameplay seems to have the cadence of a puzzle game: what's the most efficient way to restore this biome with the fewest strategically placed sci-fi gizmos? So perhaps it's a balance of ecology and economy. Seems neat anyway, and I'm sure when all the dick monsters emerge from the earth to cause trouble it'll get that much more compelling. The Response: Sure. This is a game to soothe a troubled soul, and I've got a bunch of those thanks to my recent interest in necromancy (gotta have hobbies during the lockdown).
The Game: A 3D platformer from Fabraz (Skellboy). The Trailer(s): Maybe I should've been keeping tallies on certain trends this E3, from the number of co-operative multiplayer shooters to the number of games with vampires in them. Another big trend is games adopting that "2D sprites trapped in a 3D world" look Octopath Traveler helped resurrect after franchises like Doom went fully polygonal. Demon Turf's one of those, with a strong counterculture artstyle and personality that vaguely resembles some long-forgotten Japan-only Dreamcast game, like a Gitaroo Man spin-off that never saw a localization. Hopefully the finished game isn't quite this dark and foggy though. The Response: Sure. I love 3D platformers and the Indie sphere occasionally produces one that deserves a closer look. The traversal options in this seem like they'd be a blast to play around with.
The Game: A top-down action-adventure game from Third Spirit (new studio). The Trailer(s): As long as Indie games exist there will be Legend of Zelda homages, so it was ever thus. The Arietta of Spirits trailer gives you a statement of intent about saving ghosts and a few fights and puzzles, and I can imagine the rest of the game will progress in a similar manner. I like the game's solid clean pixel look; something about its portraits and dialogue boxes resembles Stardew Valley, which I don't find disagreeable. The Response: Sure. 2D Zelda homages are like explormers - they have a much lower bar to pass before they'll capture my intrigue, such is my love for them, and from what I've seen here Arietta has enough craft behind it to warrant a closer look when it comes out soon.
The Game: A tactical espionage action game from UnEpic Fran (UnEpic). The Trailer(s): I've encountered this Fran jokester before - UnEpic was a promising explormer undermined by a terrible end-game and a whole lot of uncomfortable jokes about a young man who suddenly finds himself in a fantasy world full of horny orcs and whatnot. It looks like the jokes are slightly better here, though I wonder if we need another Metal Gear satire so soon after Never Stop Sneakin' (then again, that did come out four years ago...). The Response: Maybe. I'll slam UnEpic but it was the guy's first game and Mini Ghost (a "demake" prologue to Ghost 1.0) showed some marked gameplay improvement, so there's a good chance UnMetal will end up being half decent. I'd like a better idea of the humor quality first, if possible.
The Game: A mecha combat game from Ota Imon Studios (new studio). The Trailer(s): Daaaang, this game's got a look, huh? Like something Madhouse might've thrown together in the late '90s. It looks like the game will juggle a few modes with the need for side hustles to fund the main article (the giant mecha fights) which rings sorta like a No More Heroes structure. Also, monochrome is a bold choice; I'm not sure it totally fits the aesthetic but a game can't have too many stylistic choices. Man, though, Knife Leopard. What is that dude's deal? The Response: Maybe. I'm not a mecha guy, and I don't care for the endless customization of parts or have that gearhead adoration for big machines, but I'd like to subscribe to this thing's newsletter regardless.
The Game: An acrobatic cyberpunk FPS from Greylock (new studio). The Trailer(s): The thing I love about this trailer, besides it just being a rad-looking game that resembles Receiver 2 with more Mirror's Edge parkour and destructible environments, is that the developer is walking you through the gameplay and regularly stops to highlight some new technique that the testers recently discovered by accident. The idea that a design team can create a world with its own set of mechanics and physics and not be fully cognizant of its absolute parameters is delightful to me, and speaks more highly of them than it sounds like it should. The Response: Sure. I might give this a shot when it comes to consoles, provided I can keep up with it.
The Game: An action-adventure game from Shedworks (new studio). The Trailer(s): It's a striking game, taking on that French comics dude (Moebius, I think? He's also credited as the inspiration for Gravity Rush's art direction too) with this cel-shaded, thin outlines style and what appears to be hand-drawn frames for character animations like walk cycles. I'm not really an art expert (gee, can you tell?) but I suppose I can still marvel at the aesthetic as much as anyone. Hope the game around it is just as compelling; looks a bit Recore-ish, but I liked that floaty ball move as a means of getting around from high places. The Response: Sure. I'm big on exploration games and pretty games alike. People who've played the demo seem to be going gaga over this game too, so that bodes well.
The Game: A 2D hack n' slash shooter from Ritual Games (Cybarian: The Time Travelling Warrior). The Trailer(s): The bloodsuckers are back again, though if this is a Vampire: The Masquerade game going incognito it is deep, deep undercover. It looks like Elevator Action if the elevator in question was the one from The Shining, since it's cheerfully going all out on the blood and guts. It'd almost have a trashy BloodRayne B-movie quality to it if it had more TnA, though I don't think it needs to go that far for its grindhouse bona fides. The Response: Maybe. I'm not going A) Positive or B) Negative about this game until I see more of it in action.
