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The best games of E3 2021The bestest best in show
The bestest best in show
E3 is finally over for another year, and golly there were a lot of new games announced, weren’t there? Having waded deep through the flood of streams from practically every publisher under the sun, we’ve emerged with our filleted highlights of the best games ofE3 2021. With this year’s show taking place soley online, we haven’t played as many of these as we’d normally do during E3, but these are the games that excited us the most and whose trailers we’ve had on repeat ever since we clapped eyes on them.
E3 2021 Reaction, Recap & Review | Elden Ring, Starfield & The Biggest E3 Trailers and RevealsWatch on YouTube
E3 2021 Reaction, Recap & Review | Elden Ring, Starfield & The Biggest E3 Trailers and Reveals
There’s a lot to take in, but enough of all that recapping. Here are our best games of E3 2021, in no particular order.
Elden Ring
Winner of the Best Inanimate Objects That Are Now Animate With Limbs And Dangly Bits Award
Ed:Did you see Geoff Keighley when he unveiledElden Ringgameplay at the Summer Geoff Fest? I’d never seen him so animated before and it was quite frightening, actually. Like I imagine it will be when you roll into pots and vases expecting them to splinter in that oh-so-satisfying way, but then thumping into a solid vaseboy who’ll twist your nuts with their big arms. I do look forward tocapturing them, though, and using them as bargain-bucket Geodudes against towering bosses.
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora
Winner of the Guy Fieri Memorial Prize For Unexpected Hype Award
Replaced
Winner of the Loveliest, Moodiest Pixels Award
Katharine:In a showcase rammed with big, flashy blockbusters, it says a lot that it was Sad Cat Studio’s debut 2.5D pixel platformer Replaced thatreally caught my attention. This was the big, genuine surprise for me this E3. I will no doubt play the heck out of all the other big games announced during Microsoft’s Xbox and Bethesda Games showcase (if only because I’ve technically already bought them due to the sheer number of them coming day one to Game Pass), but it was Replaced that actually made me sit up and take notice. I just can’t get over how stunning it looks, from the way it moves to the jaw-dropping lighting effects reflecting off the rain-washed streets. It is extremely my jam. Its premise of an AI stuffed unwillingly into a human body in a grim, post-apocalypse has me hooked, too, and I’m intrigued to see how it will tie in to your main other objective of uncovering the secrets of Phoenix City. It’s not out until 2022, but consider me well and truly hyped.
Redfall
Winner of the Successfully Made Me Side Against Vampires Award
Alice Bee:Arkane’s new team co-op vampire-buster Redfall only has a cinematic trailer, and it isn’t out until 2022. And yet I am more excited about this than anything in my entire life. At least for this week, anyway. I’m mostly a vampire defender, and I have the self-awareness to know that in a real life Redfall situation I’d end up as one of the cultists who support the vamps, acting as secondary baddies to watch out for in the game. But Redfall itself just makes its player characters look too damn cool. Throw together a techy paranormal investigator, a telekinetic witch, a magical loner sniper and a combat engineer with pet robots, give ‘em a bunch of guns, and add some super-advanced vampires to shoot at? That’s me sorted for every foreseeable weekend. Cheers.
Ollie:I’d just like to add that said techy paranormal investigator is a good 350% hotter than almost any other techy paranormal investigator I can recall. I could listen to him talk about dramatically elongated maxillary cuspids all day.
Forza Horizon 5
Winner of the Best-looking Car Game For People Who Don’t Care About Cars Award
Colm:Just tell me which button makes it go fast and award me with XP for driving through fences and murdering piñatas.Forza Horizon 4was fantastic at constantly rewarding players for the smallest of things, making you feel like the greatest driver on the planet. I’m looking forward to being told I’m a good boy while doing doughnuts around a Mexican volcano this November.
Ed:I haven’t played a car game in literally a decade or more, but Mexico looks like a stunner. I like that it’s an honest depiction of the country too, and it’ll have you motoring around volcanoes and jungles and seaside towns. Also,Forza Horizongames always have these banging drum and bass radio stations. I’ve listened to them on YouTube, but this might be the first time I actually hear them live while speeding around in a souped up Citroen Saxo.
Toem
Winner of the Most Likely To Make Me Pick Up A Real Life Camera And Make Me Think I Can Actually Do Photography (When I Actually Cannot) Award
Imogen:Toem is a delightful-looking adventure puzzler where you play as a photographer exploring the world and doing quests for its inhabitants (that revolve around taking nice pics). I’m partially drawn to it because of its lovely hand-drawn minimalistic style and quirky characters, but also it genuinely makes me want to get into photography again. Let me live in a world where I can offer a pretty photo of a tree to a bus driver as payment for my journey.
Conway: Disappearance At Dahlia View
Winner of the Nosiest Neighbour Award
Alice0:The studio behindThe Occupationreturn with a new investigation game, starring the very nosiest of characters: a retired copper who suspects his neighbours of something. A young girl’s missing, you see, and our man has a lot of time to sit staring out his window, keep track of everyone’s activities and secrets, and formulate theories. Having personally once suspected a neighbour was a murderer because we snuck into his shed and found a bloodstained freezer, then spending days noting his comings and goings and checking the newspaper for murder reports, I am well up for spying on virtuaneighbours - far less risk of being murdered myself, for one.
Songs Of Conquest
Winner of the “I Have The High Ground!” Award
Tribes Of Midgard
Winner of the Flimsiest Trees Award
Somerville
Winner of the Best Apocalypse Pal Award
Katharine:Playdead’sInsideis one of the best games I’ve played in the last five years, and Somerville, the next game from that studio’s former co-founder, looks to be every bit as haunting and atmospheric. Technically, Somerville is the work of Jumpship, the studio Dino Patti went on to form after he left Playdead in 2016, but from the looks of things it would appear to share a lot the same DNA. You’re still exploring chilling, 2.5D locations and fleeing from terrible, unseen threats, only instead of playing a small, frightened boy, you’re now a man trying to reunite with his stranded family (and very good dog) during an alien apocalypse. Mostly, though, I want to see how Somerville ends, because we all know how Inside went down, and man alive, how do you topthat?
A Little To The Left
Image credit:Secret Mode
Winner of the Most Likely To Make Me Ashamed Of My Desk Award
Stranger In Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin
Winner of the CHAOS Award
Katharine:The reveal trailer for Square Enix and Team Ninja’s newFinal Fantasyspin-off was probably the most ridiculous thing I saw during the whole of E3 this year (CHAOS!), but goodness do I want to see more of it. I mean, how could you not when Tetsuya Nomura’s initial elevator pitch for it was simply “the story of an angry man”, according to thisSquare Enix dev interview. It’s just too perfect.
Riders Republic
Winner of the Best Extreme Sports Game That Hopefully Doesn’t Have A Talking Mountain In It Award
Colm:Steepwas a fine idea, but it took itself way too seriously. Riders Republic looks like the fun cousin that doesn’t have a care in the world. It could turn out to be a little toofunif those panda-headed people pop up loads, but I’m holding out hope the mountain biking and snowboarding will cancel out any of that.
Outer Wilds 2
Winner of the Time Loop Award
Alice0:Typical: just as you close one time loop, along comes another. Probing the mysteries and secrets of theOuter Wildswas such a joy, not just solving a puzzle box but taking it apart to understand the movements from within. Surprising, delightful, often magical.
Hang on, what now? The Outer Worlds 2? Oh no. I’m stuck in that other loop.
Halo Infinite
E3 2021 may be over but our memories live on - see everything on ourE3 hub. Many more big game showcases and streams are still to come this summer, leading up to Gamescom, so see oursummer games stream scheduleto stay up to date.
