Today was Summer Game Fest, Geoff Keighley’s latest salvo in his ongoing war to get the entire video game promotional apparatus under his blandly cheerful control. Broadcast online, the two-hour show was mostly exhausting, and very occasionally exhilarating, as Keighley and his team rolled out commercial after commercial for new or updating games, deluging viewers in CGI story trailers, tiny doses of gameplay, and the rare genuinely exciting moment. It was kind of a lot to to watch, honestly, which is why we’ve gone ahead and filtered the whole thing down for you, cutting out the chaff and instead providing 10 really great trailers to watch from today’s show. (Also, one really weird one that we don’t really know how to make heads or tails of.) So, without further do: Let the good commercials roll.
1. Skate.
If we’re being entirely honest, we couldn’t tell you one goddamn thing about the actual content of EA’s upcoming revival of skateboarding sim Skate., and especially not thanks to this trailer. What we can tell you is that someone in the decision-making chain somewhere is a big enough fan of I Think You Should Leave to basically commission Tim Robinson to star in a decent facsimile of the show’s tone, and that the result was predictably excellent. Trailer of the show, hands down, all video games should be promoted with largely irrelevant ITYSL sketches.
2. Blumhouse Games Showcase
Out of everything on display at SGF, nothing made us say “Whoa, I actually want to play that” like Jason Blum and co.’s slate of upcoming horror games. Our personal tastes run toward the meta presentation of The Simulation, but all of the games here looked cool in their own way, whether indulging in religious horror, or a very screwed-up spin on Stardew Valley.
3. Night Springs
Despite still feeling a tad ambiguous about Remedy’s Alan Wake II, we can’t deny that the idea of seeing what the studio has cooked up for its first big expansion has got us excited—especially since Night Springs is apparently coming out tomorrow. Getting to play as some of the more interesting side characters from AW2 is cool, obviously, but the moment that got a bona fide “Oh shit” out of us comes later in the trailer, with the reveal that the expansion’s third protagonist provides some links to the other part of Remedy’s big, weird interconnected universe of games.
4. Wanderstop
This is one where pedigree does some of the work: Davey Wreden made The Stanley Parable and The Beginners’ Guide, and those add up to a full “We will play your next thing, no matter what” ticket from us. (Adding in Karla Stover, formerly of Gone Home and Tacoma, doesn’t hurt.) Still, Wanderstop looks genuinely cool, sitting as it does at the intersection between Cozy Gaming—you’re helping out at a tea shop, doing chores!—and something a lot darker that seems to be lurking at the edges.
5. Slitterhead
We still have absolutely no idea what Slitterhead, designed by Silent Hill creator Keiichi Toyama, is actually about. But damn if this trailer doesn’t make us want to play it, as it shows what seems to be a player-controlled spirit rapidly hopping between bodies, and possibly mutating into some truly gnarly monster designs in the process. Sure, there’s about a million ways that a game like this could fall apart, but the potential for seeing, and doing, some pretty nasty shit is still strong with this one.
6. Metaphor: ReFantazio
As dedicated fans of RPGs using a “job system” to handle character powers and abilities, we’re way in the bag for this new trailer for Atlus’ latest. The fact that Metaphor: ReFantazio’s 40 or so “archetypes” each carry the look of the Personas from its creators’ previous works of the same name only helps the sales pitch; we went from “confused by the name” to “genuinely excited” on this one pretty damn quick once the footage started to roll.
7. Outersloth Showcase
First off, the basic idea here—of Innersloth, creators of the ridiculously successful Among Us, trying to pay forward that success by serving as a publisher for other indies—is genuinely cool. But also, the games on display in this quick showcase are legitimately neat. We’re especially into the look of Battle Suit Aces—we have the card game sickness, sorry—and the frenetic action of One Bttn Bosses.
8. Cuff Bust
A multi-player, single developer game that appears to be, essentially, “What if a bunch of Stitches went on a prison break?”, this looks genuinely fun, in a chaotic sort of way. As a single-person project, it’s incredibly impressive, with a distinctive art style and a pretty obvious hook. Can the gameplay hold up to the promis of chaos (and apparently destructible environments)? Who can say? But as first impressions go, you could do a lot worse.
9. Dark And Darker
This one just got us on tone, honestly: There’s something about having a bunch of people running around in a nasty, trap-filled dungeon crawl that gets our skeletons itching. “PvPvE” is a growing trend in gaming, and not one that’s always to the medium’s benefit. But the idea of managing loyalties while fending off the undead is pretty neat. (Also, we like the focus on non-combat skills; bards unite!)
10. Neva
Look: Are we a little leery, at this point, of games where you raise a small animal, help it grow stronger, watch it become a helpful companion, and then, almost inevitably, have to stand around and watch it die? Sure. But Neva, the new game from the team behind 2018's lovely Gris, does genuinely look beautiful, and its wolf companion suitably adorable and engaging. (We’re also pretty into the general Princess Mononoke vibes of the whole production, even if it’s almost inevitably setting us up for tragedy.)
And The Weird One: Killer Bean
We ask ourselves: Do the creators of Killer Bean—which, we are now learning, in this very moment, is actually part of a whole long-running transmedia franchise created by a guy named Jeff Lew—know that their character looks a little bit like a dick? We’ll probably never know, but the trailer was certainly eye-catching enough to get us thinking about it, promising some kind of roguelike action experience where you can bend bullets in midair while fighting off hordes of zombie beans. We have literally no idea what level of irony any of this is trying to operate at, but there are a couple of genuinely lively ideas on display, so.... Bring on the dick-bean, we guess?