If you looked at the line-up with no knowledge of what came before, you wouldn't guess that the world was making sarcastic comments about how hard women are to animate less than a year ago. While it's still sadly common to see a press conference's worth of games headlined by a single gender, this E3 saw a slew of titles where women are taking center stage, either as integral and active participants or as protagonists in their own right. We may have expected Lara and a possible female addition to the Gears clan, but this year's showing blew right past that goal post and gave us a cheeky wave on the way out.

Gotta say, we like that style, and want to highlight those ladies that stand as the face of their games and the companies that created them. To that end, we've compiled a list of the most prominent female characters of E3 2015 for their adulation and your perusal. Who knows - maybe you'll find a leading lady whose story you'll want to follow.

It doesn't take long to figure out that "the old ones" Aloy speaks of in the opening moments of Horizon's reveal trailer refers to us, and we see soon thereafter how far mankind has fallen from grace: humans exist in tribes, vulnerable to mechanical beasts that roam the land. It's an imposing, intimidating future, and yet Aloy handles it like a pro as she hunts grass-grazing automatons and fends off a robot dinosaur. When the end of the world comes, Aloy is someone you want on your side.

Once a precocious little girl whose drawings could get very dark if you weren't careful about raising her up right, Emily is all grown up in Dishonored 2 and taking down targets of her own with magical and tech-assisted abandon. She strikes an imposing figure while tearing through mechanized warriors and turning into a shadow creature, breaking down every defense thrown in front of her. Plus, she does it all with elegance and poise. Her parents would be so proud.

We know almost nothing about the girl from Microsoft's new IP, Recore. Not her name, where she comes from, or what she's doing out in a desert wasteland filled with aggressive constructs. Still, in the game's debut trailer, we see her tenacity and the loyalty she inspires in her robo-dog companion, and that's enough to make us want to learn more.

You've been able to play as a post-apocalyptic guy or gal ever since Fallout 2, but some persistent rumors indicated that might be not be the case in . Bethesda showed off Fallout 4's new-and-improved third-person perspective with a bog standard white dude protagonist, but only after casually brushing aside said concerns with a great "step aside, honey, I got this" moment in the bathroom mirror character editor. Turns out the dude's wife isn't just an NPC - she's another blank canvas for you to customize and play as.

Beyond Eyes' ten-year-old protagonist isn't like the other super-powered, butt-kicking, free-running characters on this list. She has no preternatural abilities, no apocalyptic future to prevent. Instead, she's young girl without sight, on a personal journey to find her lost cat, Nani. But even without the use of her eyes, Rae's other senses let the world blossom around her like a droplet of paint bleeding across paper fibers. She sees things through the lens of her own imagination, which amplifies the beauty of the mundane - and the fear of the unknown.

Faith Connors was a female protagonist before it was cool, man. Back in ye olden days of 2008 when the original Mirror's Edge was released, we followed her on a quest to clear her sister's name from a murder she didn't commit. It looks like Faith will have bigger prey to tackle in the Mirror's Edge Catalyst reboot, but her unparalleled skills in parkour and hand-to-hand combat mean we're not worried one bit about her ability to succeed. Faith inspires … well, faith in us.

We've known about Evie's existence in the upcoming . Potentially more ruthless than her gang-leading brother, Evie gives any standing in the Assassin's way reason to be very, very afraid. As the second female assassin on our list, it makes us wonder who would win in a fight: Emily or Evie?

To Lara Croft, surviving catastrophic adventures is like eating a bag of potato chips: she can't stop after she's started, even if the results are highly unpleasant. After nearly falling to her death from a mountain cliff, she frantically outruns a blizzard as it rips the ground out from under her feet, right before she's buried in several feet of snow. Even when she emerges less than gracefully, coughing powder out of her lungs and stuck in the cold without any supplies or shelter, she still looks like one hell of a survivor. Good thing, too - something tells us that this game won't be any kinder to her than the last one.

It was hard to see much of anything in the Gears 4 trailer, since the developers took 'dark and gritty' to its literal conclusion, but we were able to pick out a new new Gears sneaking through the shadows. One of them is a woman named Kait (which we now know from the Gears Twitch stream), and from the clip we saw of her in combat, she seems every bit as snarky and capable as the Gears who've come before her.

Here's one we're not sure what to make of just yet. In an all-too-brief trailer for Xbox One game Ashen, we see a male decked out in adventurer's gear recruit a woman to help him explore a decrepit tomb. As the male character inspects some ancient treasure, he gets swarmed by monsters, and the female character gets separated. At the trailer's close, we see only the female character still alive, kneeling on a hilltop. We're not sure what it all means, but the twist of having the male adventurer seemingly die, then ending on a shot of the female character, is symbolic in its own way.

Fullbright is no stranger to female protagonists, focusing on the story of a girl named Sam as her sister Katie slowly uncovers its details in the stellar Gone Home. The studios' newest game, Tacoma, follows in that same vein, with a new, as-yet unnamed female protagonist who's tasked with exploring the remains of a space station to find out what happened there. She's a lot chattier that Katie, and has to be, because her only companion is a voice on her communicator giving her instructions from back at HQ. Other than that, she's on her own to discover the station's fate, and deal with that she might find (or, well, the other way around).

Much like Tacoma's astronaut, Delilah spends most of her time on one end of a walkie-talkie, only on the opposite one from the player. Delilah is a national park supervisor in Firewatch, and communicates regularly with her man on the ground, Henry (aka you), about the state of the forest and his watch. As one of two characters in the game (three if you count the wilderness itself), Delilah is an important part of Henry's adventure, and interacting with her is almost as important to the game as not falling off of a cliff or getting eaten by anything. Their relationship changes dramatically depending on how Henry responds to her, so it's worth your time to listen to what she has to say.

Rainbow Six Siege might've had us grimacing uncomfortably at E3 2014 when its only female character was a glorified flag you can use as a human shield. It's doing a whole lot better this year though, in no small part due to the introduction of the Rainbow unit's leader, a stern and serious woman named Six. Played by the timeless (and apparently ageless) Angela Bassett, she will be the voice of authority during the team's missions, organizing them and making sure everything goes according to plan. We're not yet sure how much of a role she'll play in the missions themselves, but we're sure to see more of her before Siege lands in September.

The diver from Abzu might seem effectively genderless, given that she spends all of her time in a diving suit, and it has no effect on her ability to ride on the fin of a giant manta ray. But when it's normal to dub an agender character male by default, it's nice to see the script flipped. In Abzu, this unnamed female diver's only goal is to explore the ocean depths, make friends with fish, and discover secrets buried so deep that the surrounding fish have headlamps. Not deterred by the thought of vicious sharks or a nasty case of the bends, this diver will risk life and limb to discover what lies below, all to the sound of a whimsical score.

So, E3 happened and, as expected, Fallout 4 dominated proceedings. In the course of two days, we learned more about Bethesda's post-apocalyptic RPG than we have in the course of several years of desperate hunting. Rumours were confirmed, gossip was waved away and, most excitingly, there were some in store, too.

The biggest of all, of course, was the release date. The game will be out in November, bucking the usual E3 trend of a first reveal coming years in advance. Apart from anything else, that means we got trailers, full feature rundowns and huge chunks of gameplay to watch from the get-go - here's everything we know so far.

Our Vault Dwellers have always been the strong, silent types, seemingly communicating all information via telepathy or morse code spelled out by gunshots. This time - whether you play as a male or female character - your character has a . It's apparently taken four years to write and record the 13,000 lines of dialogue required for each character, but producer Todd Howard wanted us to connect with our characters more, and this is the way to do it.

It helps that we'll be designing them to within an inch of their life, too. Far from the buttons and sliders of most RPG character creation sections, Fallout plonks your character in front of a bathroom mirror and lets you literally play with their face until you have it the way you want it. Design their spouse too and the game auto-generates a baby based on your creations. For its final trick, the voice of your Mr. Handy robot can cope with thousands of the world's most popular surnames, meaning you'll be referred to by name as you go. Immersion is the name of the game, seemingly.

This is the one main rumour that proved to be true - Fallout 4's Massachusetts setting is real if a little twisted. The big hitters are all there - there's a settlement inside Fenway Park, and the series has always made reference to M.I.T, now known only as The Institute - but this is an an alternate history, too. Real-life locations that have since been demolished still remain, like the old city centre, Scollay Square.

It's faithful enough that ex-Boston residents working on the game have said it made them homesick - but its the differences to previous games that has us interested. Fallout 4's Boston is significantly more built-up than the Capital Wasteland or New Vegas, with ramshackle skyscrapers and busy settlements popping up across the game trailers. Does that mean this game is set a fair bit later than either of the last two games?

"I'll be playing the game and run into something and be like, 'Who built this? What is this? It's so big!'" So says Todd Howard, a man supposedly overseeing the game. If he's not seen it all, what chance do we have? The focus clearly seems to be on building a world that offers up the kind of stories we can swap with friends, one of Bethesda's chief talents - and in that respect.

We've not had any official word on exactly how big it is, but screenshots show off far more than simple urban wastes, and lead producer, Jeff Gardiner, summed it up by saying "I've played the game probably 400 hours, and I'm still finding stuff that I haven't seen yet." Get working on some thumb calluses - we're going for a virtual hike.

First up, you start the game pre-war. You know those old trailers for Fallout that showed the '50s techno-Americana bliss before the bombs dropped - you're living it. For a bit. Soon, you're running for the familiar environs of a vault (number 111 in this case) and a mushroom cloud signals the end of taht chapter.

I assumed that that meant you'd end up playing as the auto-generated baby mentioned earlier. Nope. As it turns out, your chosen character survives in their vault for 200 years. No one else does. Presumably, this will be the thrust of the storyline - working out just what Vault-Tec did to keep you from dying (or aging), while your spouse and child didn't make it. Fun!

That's not to say you'll be alone. The entire first trailer made it pretty clear that true series hero, Dogmeat, will be playing a major role. I'm guessing this is a different abandoned Alsatian to the one that glitched out and disappeared in my Fallout 3 save file (although in a game where someone can live for 200 years and come out of it a bit groggy, who knows) - it's certainly a more useful version.

Dogmeat can now take more advanced orders, attacking or distracting enemies, fetching items you can't be bothered to schlep over to and, most importantly, meaning I won't have to stop playing to have a bit of a cry at any point.

Fallout 3 ran on the Gamebryo engine. That was modified and re-released as the Creation engine for the release of Skyrim. Fallout 4, which has apparently been in development since 2009, runs on its own version of Creation. Bethesda, it seems, does not like change.

That's not to say that it'll feel like an old game. It's clear enough from the trailers that significant work has gone into the lighting and animation style, while the face-to-face, zombie-like conversations of old are out completely. Facial expressions are far more complex, and the conversation system is dynamic, not only letting you see the scene in third-person, but even break off to run away or attack your unsuspecting talking partner.

Fallout always did a (slightly) better job than its fantasy equivalents at using junk items in meaningful ways - and yes, the Rock-It Launcher returns, thankfully - but Bethesda's collection of inventory ephemera gains new purpose with the addition of a huge new crafting system.

Every weapon and armour set can be added to, altered and made to look significantly more badass with the application of a plethora of junk. How toy rockets are being used to create a sturdier rifle stock is never fully explained, but we'll be happy just to trade in a hundred broomsticks for some discernible reason, thank you very much.

Certain plots of land in the game can be used to create full settlements, from scratch. Think of it like the building system of a game like Rust, but with way> fewer penises. Build it, and wasteland inhabitants will come - the more you offer to passers-by, the more they'll want to set up shop (if they're rare items merchants, sometimes literally).

But the bigger you build, the more of a target you become. You'll need to set up defenses (including stringing powerlines around from generators) to, er, dissuade raiders from stealing your stff and killing your new citizens. But it's worth it - build more than one settlement and you can mogul it up by sending trade caravans between your towns.

Fallout's never taken itself too seriously - expect 4 to follow suit. Even without whatever the inevitable Wild Wasteland perk brings with it, we've already spotted the obligatory nuke launcher, rideable Vertibirds, airstrikes, jetpacks, and baseball bats with buzzsaw blades strapped to the end.

Best of all, your Pip-Boy's now an in-game console of its own - you'll be finding, let's say, familiar retro games to play on your green and black display. The original Donkey Kong featuring a Pipboy player-character, the slightly eerie inclusion of Missile Commander and more will be appearing.

The biggest surprise of all was that Fallout's incredible mod community will be getting a much bigger audience this time around. Todd Howard confirmed that will be able to download mods made for the PC version of the game first, with PS4 to follow suit later.

There's no word on exactly how this will be done - I'd guess at a pool of approved mods, but even without the truly outlandish stuff, that's a huge step towards keeping Fallout a going concern on console for years to come.

This year, the real winners of E3 are the players. Yes, yes - this phrase gets trotted out so often, it has become cliche. However, it really does feel like is show that offers something for everyone. Want mega-blockbuster games? Try Fallout 4, Halo 5, Uncharted 4, Ghost Recon Wildlands. Want something more designed? You've got Unravel, Abzu, The Last Guardian. Nostalgia? How about the Final Fantasy 7 remake, Shenmue 3, Rare's back catalogue... It's all here. Games win!

However, for every winner, there's often a loser. We've decided to round up a selection of our personal winners and losers from the show, demonstrating that for every awesome action, there's often a sad or amusing reaction. These aren't really games... more people, events and concepts. And Pele, who is all three.

Want to read about the actual games that won E3? Check the video below...

Square-Enix's announcement of a Final Fantasy 7 remake at was a shock to the system. What was long regarded as nothing more than a fanboy's fantasy is finally becoming a reality, and we couldn't be more thrilled. Since its release in 1997, Final Fantasy 7 has spawned numerous spin-off games, a couple of movies, and its characters have made cameos across the Square-Enix library. Clearly, the game's popularity hasn't wanned in the almost two decades since its release.

Final Fantasy 7 has also already enjoyed numerous re-releases, so if you're itching to play the game in its original form you have plenty of options. With this remake, Square-Enix has the opportunity to make some tweaks and adjustments to the FF7 formula. They're already giving the game a modern-day facelift - but the possibilities don't end there. At the same time, it's important not to go overboard and lose the oddball stuff that made this JRPG great. Here are our picks for what should - and should not - change in this new Final Fantasy 7.

Even the most ardent Final Fantasy 7 fan will admit to you that the game's controls are janky as hell, and there's nowhere that this is more evident than the mini-games. There are a plethora of mini-games strewn throughout Final Fantasy 7, featuring snowboarding, a motorcycle ride through techno-town, a tower defense game, and the wondrous carnival that is Gold Saucer - and they all handle about as well as you'd expect they would coming from a company whose only 3D game prior to this was Tobal No. 1.

Square-Enix will have to go back to the drawing board on a lot of these things, enhancing controls and perhaps increasing the depth to the games - perhaps make chocobo racing a little volved than simply holding a button down and letting it go to replenish stamina. Maybe we'll even get few new ones within Gold Saucer like the ones found in Final Fantasy 14. But perhaps the best part of all? HD Mog House.

Everybody had that one character in Final Fantasy 7 that they wanted - no, needed - to take on a date at the Gold Saucer. Each has their upsides, but there's just something special about the date with Barrett, where two grown men who barely tolerate each other take a romantic gondola ride in dead silence.

I worry this date option might be in danger of being cut, because Square's recent iterations of both characters have been cool and macho (with an extra side dish of broody in Cloud's case), with little room for the level of frivolity that such a date requires. But if Square is committed to keeping the bits of rampant goofiness that balance FF7's more serious parts, this scene needs to stay. I mean, if you don't get to watch Barrett and Cloud complain about watching the fireworks together and argue about girls they'd rather be with, is it really FF7?

Nothing undermines a tense moment between a villain and main character quite like realizing the villain can't spell. That's what happens at the end of the fight against Sephiroth following Aeris' death, where Jenova climactically tells Cloud, "Beacause...you are a puppet." It's enough to get a snicker out or raised eyebrow out of many players at the least appropriate time, and it's definitely something that needs to be fixed for the remake.

It isn't just a spare "beacause" or "This guy are sick" that's the problem either. Final Fantasy 7's American localization is full of slapdash translations that are at best worded poorly, and at worst alter the dialogue in a way that makes the intention of some scenes a lot muddier. It's so widespread that one fan spent tuning the script into functional shape. We should expect no less from the remake, especially when it's fully voiced and typos will stand out pretty blatantly against the voice work. Maybe Square can hire that guy as a consultant.

Putting men in dresses has long been a staple of western comedy, and while it may not be as popular as it once was (followers of Ru Paul know that drag is no funny business), I don't think Aeris dressing Cloud up as a girl should appear in the remake just for a cheap joke. Sure, laughs will probably be involved, since we have a hardened soldier sporting an awful pink dress and pigtails to break into a brothel, but the scene also reveals a great deal of important, early characterization.

More than anywhere else, this is where we see Aeris' unconventional thinking come out, as she decides that the absolute best way to rescue Tifa from a bad situation is to dress Cloud up in hastily arranged drag and send him into the fray. It also shows Cloud's determination and affection for Tifa (whether romantic or friendly, please don't hurt me), because would he ever go through with any of that if he didn't care? The scene gives the leads a lot of extra character they might not otherwise get, and... okay, it will also be funny to see a hyper-realistic Cloud wearing the world's ugliest dress with a straight face. He's a daring man.

Mister T was all the rage in the 90's, and while allusions to him might hit all our nostalgia buttons, it's going to feel stale this far into the 21st century. So while old fans will probably still love Barrett's ridiculous and actually-kind-of-racist manner of speaking, new fans drawn to the remake either aren't going to get it, or will find it off-putting. Sometimes it's better to leave the past in the past. That isn't to say that Barrett has to speak like a proper gent or become a mute main character, either - he just needs a voice that sounds like it belongs to a real person and not a joke from the A-team. Square-Enix has managed that balance in Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus, giving him more modern appeal without losing his tough-guy charm. They've done it before, and they can do it again - he'll just have a lot more lines this time.

Cid's adorably colorful swearing was easy to pull off in the days of text-only dialogue: throw a few 's and %'s and *'s together in a long string, and you're done! However, voice acting is just about mandatory these days, and if Square-Enix couldn't get away with typing what he was saying, you're damn sure they aren't going to get away with having him say it out loud. The immediate reaction might be that the swearing has to go, but unlike emulating a dated television icon, swearing (and the need to not broadcast it) is ubiquitous across generations. Cid's curses could totally fly, and get a few laughs along the way.

It wouldn't even be that hard to change his dialogue in a way that's suitable for a voice-focused generation. Just go the cable TV route and, whenever Cid says a string of symbols in the original script, use a long audio bleep to drown it out. It's quick, it's clean, it's a technique that the audience is familiar with, and it maintains the spirit of the original. It's a ^$%* good idea, is all I'm saying.

Ah, the Knights of the Round - or as I like to call it, the Snack Break summon. The longest summon sequence in all of FF7, it can get even longer when doubled with certain materia, and you have to watch it in its entirety every single time you want to call those magical beasts for aid. Most of you probably have it memorized, you've see that sequence so much. But these days that nonsense won't fly, so it’s time to kick the unskippable cutscenes for good.

This one is so simple I'll be bowled over if it isn't already in the cards: simply add a 'skip' button to any main cutscene, give players the option to toggle summon animations in the settings, and voilà, problem solved. Square-Enix's been implementing both features in their games for years starting with Final Fantasy 12, so blessedly, I'll bet this one's a surefire change. I'll have to come up with a different nickname for the Knights, and I couldn't be happier.

It's true that Yuffie and Vincent have firmly embedded themselves in the canon of FF7, to the point that developers at Square-Enix actually wrote a scenario explaining why neither could be found in the original's final cutscene (which acts as the prologue to Dirge of Cerberus, so I get if you missed it). Retrospectively it seems odd for them to be optional, since canonically speaking they were absolutely involved, but this one is worth keeping.

Not just because 'that's how it is in the original', which is often a bad excuse to do anything, but because their status as optional characters is part of what makes them feel special. I know friends who went to great lengths to complete Yuffie and Vincent's sidequests, desperate to invite these mysterious characters onto their team. In the same way BioWare makes some of its biggest characters feel even teresting because their totally missable, Yuffie and Vincent gain an extra level of intrigue because you have to work to get them on your side. Sure, it might be easier to have them from the get-go, but why rob new fans of that feeling of victory and character connection when they finally call you a teammate?

Being suckered by outlandish Final Fantasy 7 rumors was all part of the fun back in 1997. There were so many good ones - recruit Sephiroth, find the Holy materia, learn Super Nova - that it was hard not to be convinced at least one of them was true. But after countless hours spent talking to a friend who heard from his cousin that his older brother knew how to fight Turqoise Weapon, we all realized these rumors were just empty promises. Clearly, such outrageous claims were too good to be true, but with the Final Fantasy 7 remake on the horizon, Square-Enix has the chance to rewrite history.

This remake should include an immensely well-hidden, complex sidequest that finally puts to rest the greatest Final Fantasy 7 rumor of all: reviving Aerith. The sidequest would only appear after you finish the game once, and completing it would earn you an alternate ending. It would be a fun way to celebrate FF7's legacy in a way that recognizes that passionate (and imaginative) fan community that sprung up around this game.

It’s a sticky issue. The essence of FF7’s core mechanics is in its turn-based combat, but on the other hand those very same mechanics are horribly slow and outdated by modern standards. It’s the one change we imagine is giving the developers the biggest headache.

No matter how fondly you remember it through your misty nostalgia glasses, going back to it now it’s the turn-based combat that is really starting to show its age. Fancypants HD Cloud and Tifa won’t be content waiting in a queue to strike. A complete 180 to FF15-style action would feel like a betrayal to those core ideas, but things definitely need a significant update.

For the love of the lifestream, just pick one. Make it official and end the debate once and for all. This argument has gone on .

During every gauntlet of E3 press conferences, there's always one. One moment that stands out above the rest; the kind of experience you look back at fondly, long after the game it was tied to has come and gone. It could be a hilarious line, like "Attack its weakpoint for massive damage" or "one million troops... WOW." Or maybe it's that moment when months of hype pay off with a spectacular reveal, or a seemingly impossible announcement totally blindsides you (in a good way).

Whatever it ends up being, that memorable moment is something to treasure. Now that the press conferences are in the books, it's time to reflect on the moments that wowed, shocked, and delighted us. Stay awhile and reminisce with us about these less-than-a-week-old events, won't you?

Back in the early days of Xbox, then-president of the Interactive Entertainment Business division at Microsoft Don Mattrick likened backwards compatibility to backwards thinking. "If you're backwards compatible, you're really backwards," the Wall Street Journal in a 2013 interview, stating that only five percent of users would utilize the feature anyway.

If only Mattrick could have heard the thunderous approval from the crowd at Microsoft's E3 press conference, when it was announced that that backwards compatibility will arrive on the Xbox One this fall.

Guerilla Games doesn't have much of a reputation to those who haven't played a Killzone game, but their next game on PS4 offers the kind of world that'll command anyone's attention. As with Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, this post-apocalypse isn't a barren desert; it's a lush, overgrown jungle resting atop a collapsed metropolis, and it's absolutely gorgeous. There seems to have been some kind of robot rebellion leading up to this strange future, because wildlife like deer and birds have been replaced by metal simulacrums (that use car alarm noises to call for help).

The trailer gives you just enough time to fall in love with the female protagonist Aloy, who seems as tenacious and capable as Lara Croft. Her arsenal is an interesting mix of old and new: arrows with bullets for heads, spears made from sharpened machine parts. And then BAM - in charge some colossal cyborg dinos, complete with blue lasers and primal screams. Watching Aloy take down one of the beasts with some metal tethers and a stab to its robot heart is enough to make Horizon shoot to the top of your 'most anticipated games' list.

It was pretty great to recognize Angela Bassett as boss Six in the trailer for Rainbow Six: Siege; her likeness was so accurate that it even recreated her distinctive mouth movements perfectly. An actress of her stature joining the game’s cast was announcement enough, but when the woman herself walked out to share the stage with Aisha Tyler to discuss her role, we kind of lost our minds.

Bassett is an Oscar-nominated actress with a 20-year career that’s included turns as Betty Shabazz and Tina Turner, who (unlike so many others) regards her role in a shooty video game with the same craftsmanship that she does any other acting performance. She treated her appearance on Ubisoft’s stage with elegant, effortless grace, giving her digitized role - and the audience that would be enjoying it - respect. Her appearance at Ubisoft’s press conference also put two women of color on the same E3 stage, a sight practically unicorn-like in its rarity. It was a moment of true class in a sea of hype and awkwardness, and we loved it.

I don't know about you, but I spent the first few seconds of Sony's press conference saying, "No, no" with intense disbelief, and the three minutes that followed watching a boy and his giant bird dog explore a temple while trying not to cry. After years and so, so many vaporware jokes, we not only saw The Last Guardian emerge from obscurity, but there was a release date attached to its fuzzy, feathery tail. Does anyone else hear a triumphant music number coming from nowhere?

The trailer itself was fairly calm, showing the unnamed little boy we all remember from 2009 shouting to call his towering Falcor-like guardian. Most of the gameplay involved him moving onto different platforms, manipulating objects to make a new path, and making death-defying leaps of faith with the belief that the guardian would catch him, oh lord please catch him! Yet it was so charming, so beautiful, so lost to us for so long that even that simple bit of gameplay was enough to get us making incomprehensible noises of joy at each other. And then they followed it up with a splash image that simply read 2016, and the tears were unstoppable.

Let me take you on a journey back in time to PlayStation Experience 2014, where Sony and Square Enix pulled one of the greatest bait-and-switch moves in game conference history. In the middle of a long evening of new game announcements and trailers, a trailer was shown filled with the nostalgic images of Final Fantasy 7. 'This is it,' thought literally everyone watching at home. 'This is when that Final Fantasy 7 remake finally gets announced.' The trailer continued: Cloud fighting Shinra's grunts, the Highwind taking flight, and Sephiroth stepping through the fire. Any moment now those visuals were going to change into something new, something modern. A new FF7 was right around the corner.

Except it wasn't. Instead it was a port of the PC version to PS4. We all died a little inside that night. But at E3 2015, Sony and Square Enix redeemed themselves by finally, at long last, announcing the remake Final Fantasy fans have been clamoring for. A new Final Fantasy 7, redone with a fresh visual style, is on the horizon. The internet's reaction can be summed it with one phrase: 'NO WAY!!' followed by 'WAIT, WAIT, NO WAY!!' It was a huge surprise, tempered only by the fact that Sony's press conference was filled with huge surprises.

Nintendo’s been getting pretty good at having some fun with their Directs and Digital Events, but the E3 transformation of Reggie Fils-Aime, Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto into muppets - and then into muppet versions of characters from Star Fox - was their most delightful move yet. Nintendo didn’t take the gimmick too far, but did let the muppet hosts stick around for a while, mostly just to dance. It was pure, unfiltered happiness, which is basically Nintendo’s shtick.

It was a perfect reminder amongst the gore and guns of other press conferences that not everything has to be gritty or mature to be fun. Nothing wrong with a well-placed headshot, of course, but the muppets of Nintendo channelled childlike joy that left us grinning. : “You know and I know the warmth you feel whenever there’s a muppet around.” Everything really is better with muppets.

Sony's press conference was filled with games we had long-suspected of being vaporware, but arguably more surprising was Yu Suzuki taking the stage to reveal Shenmue 3. Okay, so it was to reveal a Kickstarter for Shenmue 3, but still. While The Last Guardian and a Final Fantasy 7 remake were at least churning in the rumor mill, the revival of Shenmue came completely out of left field.

Chills are still running up the arms of Dreamcast diehards and Shenmue supporters the world over, and financial pledges for the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter have poured in at a rate that's shattered records (and looks poised to overtake Bloodstained as the crowdfunding platform's most-funded video game project). Hearing that beautiful orchestral theme again, it's hard to blame fans for getting swept up in the moment.

When Bethesda finally pulled the lead-lined curtain off of Fallout 4, I was satisfied. It looked great, but after years of waiting to hear even the slightest peep about the next game in one of my favorite series, I was ready to keep waiting until next year to actually play it. After all, there was a ten-year wait between Fallout 2 and Fallout 3, right? Waiting ‘til spring or fall 2016 would be nothing next to that.

But Bethesda decided to get the whole thing out of the way at once, announcing a Fallout 4 release date of November 10. It makes sense in retrospect, since Skyrim, Bethesda Game Studios' last big project, shipped three years ago. That's plenty of time for a big, seasoned studio to get another project together, I just… just wasn't ready to get my hopes up for it. Sniffle.

When Nier New Project director Yoko Taro took the stage at Square Enix's press conference, it felt like a fractured dream after hours of restless tossing and turning. Square Enix's press conference was easily the most boring of the lot, long on time and short on announcements that weren't already announced the day before, but then… there was that helmet. And everybody watching who hadn't played Nier - which was a cult hit at best, so a lot of them - had no idea what was happening.

See, the helmet was a replica of Emil's weapon-form head from the original game, but nobody said anything about it. They didn't even acknowledge it was there, letting Taro deliver a standard "please look forward to it" speech as if he didn't have a terrifying Majora's Mask reject sitting on his scarf-wrapped shoulders. Which he did... unless it was just a mass delusion. Actually, it might have been a mass delusion.

Destiny’s elegant construction as game and machine has kept players in a lovely loop of gunplay and character improvement. Its structure has bounds, though, and can eventually start to feel static when hours of Raids and Strikes start blending together. Developer Bungie wants to bring a ghost into Destiny’s machine now, and earn the “expansion” label for its next project, The Taken King.

The Taken King will pull up to Destiny on September 15 like a dump truck and unload a rattling avalanche of new guns and armor. There will be no shortage of MORE, but that’s to be expected. What we want is more different.

Your successful mission to kill Crota in the previous DLC has consequences, beyond the rewards that spill out of him. Bungie essentially casts Crota’s body into the foundation of The Taken King, connecting the premise not to an uncontrollable galactic event, but to something you accomplished yourself. Crota’s god-like father is furious in the aftermath of your deeds, swiping a ghostly hand across the galaxy to wipe you and your regicidal guardian out. Also, his name is Oryx. Has there ever been a nice person with that name?

As Oryx lands his “Taken” armies on the rocky Martian satellite of Phobos (no stranger to demonic invasion in games), your perception of the Cabal changes. They’re hit hard by the corruptive effects of Oryx; their defeat shaking their standing as a strong faction in Destiny and making Bungie’s new villain appear even more threatening. The actors are shifting positions, albeit subtly, in Destiny’s story.

Destiny: The Taken King introduces three new sub-classes as ‘lost Guardian arts,’ with a standout going to the Warlock. Bungie’s knack for on-the-nose naming still thrives with Stormcaller, which lets you summon maelstroms of electric energy and charge forward, blue lightning flowing from your fingertips, just like Emperor Palpatine leaning forward on a Segway. Do we really need to go over the appeal of that?

The Titan gains Sunbreaker, which lets you hurl a big ol’ hammer like a boomerang, while the Hunter obtains a support class in Nightstalker. Summoning a glowing bow from the ether gives the Nightstalker a quick step up in combat, but the utility of the power isn’t as cool as the flashy looks. Between your transformation into an electric wraith as Stormcaller, and the Nightstalker's ethereal magic bow, I feel like Destiny is subtly tilting its sci-fi/fantasy balance, and maybe even making a case for guns not being as cool as instant storms.

The regular enemies in Destiny are so numerous and so effortlessly destroyed after a certain point, they all start blending together. Knights and Phalanxes can’t escape Oryx’s influence, returning in The Taken King as his corrupted thralls.

This is bad news for you, a Guardian, but good news if you’ve long stopped thinking of aliens as anything more than snarling sacks of XP. Their appearance is striking and creepy at the outset, forcing you to face a perversion of the old and familiar.

Destiny’s Crucible matches get a distinct air of intergalactic sports with the Rift game type, which Bungie sees as the long-awaited answer to a capture-the-flag style objective mode. It’s simple: get the spark and dunk it through a space-time rift (video games!), or do a backflip dunk to get extra points.

Meanwhile, “Mayhem” mode amps up the silliness by boosting the recharge rates of supers. The resulting fireworks, especially with the flashy new sub-classes in the mix, is meant to be thinly veiled chaos. The mechanical basics of Destiny’s PvP combat are still there, but they feel heightened to an extreme degree in Mayhem - perhaps to the point where more balanced matches seem mundane in comparison.

Oryx’s quest for revenge initially brings you to Phobos, where you’re sent into a crumbling Cabal vestige to investigate. The interior is pockmarked with explosions and strange slices of three-dimensional distortion, with debris weightlessly suspended in the moment of impact. The hmm-what-happened-here setup is eerie and well executed, eventually leading to your first glimpse of Crota’s big bad dad.

Bungie says it wants to drive players into further environmental discovery in The Taken King, later sending them into Oryx’s dreadnaught, a “giant, evil mausoleum.” If the developer follows through, it’ll resurface one of Destiny’s most romantic concepts: the guardian rummaging through mysterious, fantastical places, his or her footsteps bringing otherworldly machinery to life.

During every gauntlet of E3 press conferences, there's always one. One moment that stands out above the rest; the kind of experience you look back at fondly, long after the game it was tied to has come and gone. It could be a hilarious line, like "Attack its weakpoint for massive damage" or "one million troops... WOW." Or maybe it's that moment when months of hype pay off with a spectacular reveal, or a seemingly impossible announcement totally blindsides you (in a good way).

Whatever it ends up being, that memorable moment is something to treasure. Now that the press conferences are in the books, it's time to reflect on the moments that wowed, shocked, and delighted us. Stay awhile and reminisce with us about these less-than-a-week-old events, won't you?

Back in the early days of Xbox, then-president of the Interactive Entertainment Business division at Microsoft Don Mattrick likened backwards compatibility to backwards thinking. "If you're backwards compatible, you're really backwards," the Wall Street Journal in a 2013 interview, stating that only five percent of users would utilize the feature anyway.

If only Mattrick could have heard the thunderous approval from the crowd at Microsoft's E3 press conference, when it was announced that that backwards compatibility will arrive on the Xbox One this fall.

Guerilla Games doesn't have much of a reputation to those who haven't played a Killzone game, but their next game on PS4 offers the kind of world that'll command anyone's attention. As with Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, this post-apocalypse isn't a barren desert; it's a lush, overgrown jungle resting atop a collapsed metropolis, and it's absolutely gorgeous. There seems to have been some kind of robot rebellion leading up to this strange future, because wildlife like deer and birds have been replaced by metal simulacrums (that use car alarm noises to call for help).

The trailer gives you just enough time to fall in love with the female protagonist Aloy, who seems as tenacious and capable as Lara Croft. Her arsenal is an interesting mix of old and new: arrows with bullets for heads, spears made from sharpened machine parts. And then BAM - in charge some colossal cyborg dinos, complete with blue lasers and primal screams. Watching Aloy take down one of the beasts with some metal tethers and a stab to its robot heart is enough to make Horizon shoot to the top of your 'most anticipated games' list.

It was pretty great to recognize Angela Bassett as boss Six in the trailer for Rainbow Six: Siege; her likeness was so accurate that it even recreated her distinctive mouth movements perfectly. An actress of her stature joining the game’s cast was announcement enough, but when the woman herself walked out to share the stage with Aisha Tyler to discuss her role, we kind of lost our minds.

Bassett is an Oscar-nominated actress with a 20-year career that’s included turns as Betty Shabazz and Tina Turner, who (unlike so many others) regards her role in a shooty video game with the same craftsmanship that she does any other acting performance. She treated her appearance on Ubisoft’s stage with elegant, effortless grace, giving her digitized role - and the audience that would be enjoying it - respect. Her appearance at Ubisoft’s press conference also put two women of color on the same E3 stage, a sight practically unicorn-like in its rarity. It was a moment of true class in a sea of hype and awkwardness, and we loved it.

I don't know about you, but I spent the first few seconds of Sony's press conference saying, "No, no" with intense disbelief, and the three minutes that followed watching a boy and his giant bird dog explore a temple while trying not to cry. After years and so, so many vaporware jokes, we not only saw The Last Guardian emerge from obscurity, but there was a release date attached to its fuzzy, feathery tail. Does anyone else hear a triumphant music number coming from nowhere?

The trailer itself was fairly calm, showing the unnamed little boy we all remember from 2009 shouting to call his towering Falcor-like guardian. Most of the gameplay involved him moving onto different platforms, manipulating objects to make a new path, and making death-defying leaps of faith with the belief that the guardian would catch him, oh lord please catch him! Yet it was so charming, so beautiful, so lost to us for so long that even that simple bit of gameplay was enough to get us making incomprehensible noises of joy at each other. And then they followed it up with a splash image that simply read 2016, and the tears were unstoppable.

Let me take you on a journey back in time to PlayStation Experience 2014, where Sony and Square Enix pulled one of the greatest bait-and-switch moves in game conference history. In the middle of a long evening of new game announcements and trailers, a trailer was shown filled with the nostalgic images of Final Fantasy 7. 'This is it,' thought literally everyone watching at home. 'This is when that Final Fantasy 7 remake finally gets announced.' The trailer continued: Cloud fighting Shinra's grunts, the Highwind taking flight, and Sephiroth stepping through the fire. Any moment now those visuals were going to change into something new, something modern. A new FF7 was right around the corner.

Except it wasn't. Instead it was a port of the PC version to PS4. We all died a little inside that night. But at E3 2015, Sony and Square Enix redeemed themselves by finally, at long last, announcing the remake Final Fantasy fans have been clamoring for. A new Final Fantasy 7, redone with a fresh visual style, is on the horizon. The internet's reaction can be summed it with one phrase: 'NO WAY!!' followed by 'WAIT, WAIT, NO WAY!!' It was a huge surprise, tempered only by the fact that Sony's press conference was filled with huge surprises.

Nintendo’s been getting pretty good at having some fun with their Directs and Digital Events, but the E3 transformation of Reggie Fils-Aime, Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto into muppets - and then into muppet versions of characters from Star Fox - was their most delightful move yet. Nintendo didn’t take the gimmick too far, but did let the muppet hosts stick around for a while, mostly just to dance. It was pure, unfiltered happiness, which is basically Nintendo’s shtick.

It was a perfect reminder amongst the gore and guns of other press conferences that not everything has to be gritty or mature to be fun. Nothing wrong with a well-placed headshot, of course, but the muppets of Nintendo channelled childlike joy that left us grinning. : “You know and I know the warmth you feel whenever there’s a muppet around.” Everything really is better with muppets.

Sony's press conference was filled with games we had long-suspected of being vaporware, but arguably more surprising was Yu Suzuki taking the stage to reveal Shenmue 3. Okay, so it was to reveal a Kickstarter for Shenmue 3, but still. While The Last Guardian and a Final Fantasy 7 remake were at least churning in the rumor mill, the revival of Shenmue came completely out of left field.

Chills are still running up the arms of Dreamcast diehards and Shenmue supporters the world over, and financial pledges for the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter have poured in at a rate that's shattered records (and looks poised to overtake Bloodstained as the crowdfunding platform's most-funded video game project). Hearing that beautiful orchestral theme again, it's hard to blame fans for getting swept up in the moment.

When Bethesda finally pulled the lead-lined curtain off of Fallout 4, I was satisfied. It looked great, but after years of waiting to hear even the slightest peep about the next game in one of my favorite series, I was ready to keep waiting until next year to actually play it. After all, there was a ten-year wait between Fallout 2 and Fallout 3, right? Waiting ‘til spring or fall 2016 would be nothing next to that.

But Bethesda decided to get the whole thing out of the way at once, announcing a Fallout 4 release date of November 11. It makes sense in retrospect, since Skyrim, Bethesda Game Studios' last big project, shipped three years ago. That's plenty of time for a big, seasoned studio to get another project together, I just… just wasn't ready to get my hopes up for it. Sniffle.

When Nier New Project director Yoko Taro took the stage at Square Enix's press conference, it felt like a fractured dream after hours of restless tossing and turning. Square Enix's press conference was easily the most boring of the lot, long on time and short on announcements that weren't already announced the day before, but then… there was that helmet. And everybody watching who hadn't played Nier - which was a cult hit at best, so a lot of them - had no idea what was happening.

See, the helmet was a replica of Emil's weapon-form head from the original game, but nobody said anything about it. They didn't even acknowledge it was there, letting Taro deliver a standard "please look forward to it" speech as if he didn't have a terrifying Majora's Mask reject sitting on his scarf-wrapped shoulders. Which he did... unless it was just a mass delusion. Actually, it might have been a mass delusion.

Every year, the E3 press conferences serve as the bombastic kickoff to a festival of big-budget games and indie innovators. This is where all the megaton reveals and announcements will happen; where developers, CEOs, and celebrities alike will take the stage and delight the audience with snappy or slightly awkward banter. And E3 2015 had more press conferences than usual, with a few newcomers joining the fray. But like gladiatorial combat, the real question on people's minds is: who won?

Every press conference had something great to offer, but some simply had more greatness than others. We've gone ahead and ranked all the press conferences, minus the (GR+ is owned by the same parent company, so we'd be contractually obligated to give them first prize). So, which press conference stood triumphant during E3 2015? In our minds, the ordering goes something like this...

The Square Enix press conference had the air of a Japanese investor meeting, which isn't necessarily good or bad. Everyone on stage was polite and calm, moving from one game demo to the next with minimal fanfare - a stark contrast to the whiz-bang theatrics of most other press conferences. There were a few gaffes, like a translator who seemed to be asleep at the wheel and an enthusiastic Kingdom Hearts fan who realized too late that he was cheering for the wrong trailer. But man, Square Enix has it where it counts: the games.

Any mention of the Final Fantasy 7 remake gets our hearts aflutter, the teacup attack in Kingdom Hearts 3 is a winner, and the tweaks to Hitman's assassination sandbox are definitely intriguing. Plus, the cult classic Nier is actually getting a sequel, something we never would've expected in a million years. And we'll never, ever forget the surreal weirdness of a presenter with a skull mask on, and absolutely no one in the room acknowledging it.

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Electronic Arts has a heavy burden: the need to show off a slew of sports games to an audience that, let's face it, is largely apathetic about Madden, FIFA, et al. Not only that: everybody watching had their hearts set on some in-game Star Wars Battlefront footage, and EA knew it. That made it all the more difficult to sit through Pele's absent-minded musings about 'the beautiful game', or a Minions mobile spin-off.

Of course, none of those somewhat dull moments seemed to matter after the glory of the Battlefront footage. Watching soldiers shoot their way through the trenches of Hoth looked incredible, and the shifting perspectives gave a great view into vehicle handling as well. And that ending where Luke and Vader clash... we got chills. Besides getting to see our nerdy lightsaber duel fantasies realized, Unravel looks adorable, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst seems like it'll have glorious amounts of freedom, and Mass Effect: Andromeda showed just enough to get us interested.

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We get the sense that E3 is becoming more and more irrelevant to Nintendo, and you can tell by the fact that its biggest surprises - the unexpected arrival of the unreleased NES EarthBound and Ryu's appearance in Super Smash Bros. - were announced on the Sunday before the big Nintendo Direct. Thanks to Nintendo's unique videos, they can announce whatever they want, when they want, and they don't have to be tied to E3 to do it.

That's not to say there weren't things to get excited about during the Tuesday Direct. We saw the first footage of Star Fox Zero, the reveal of a Paper Mario/Mario Luigi RPG mash-up, and a new multiplayer Zelda game on 3DS, and all of that looks great. There are even going to be Skylanders figurines for Donkey Kong and Bowser that will act as amiibo when you twist the base - a pretty big surprise, especially coming from a company as protective of its characters as Nintendo. Long-awaited titles like Xenoblade Chronicles X and the fantastic-looking Super Mario Maker finally got release dates, too. Nintendo's actual E3 conference may have been a bit lacking, but when you combine it, along with Sunday's announcements and the World Championship, Nintendo's E3 wasn't too shabby. Plus, it had Nintendo Muppets. And that's pretty great.

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Ubisoft didn't pin all its hype to one or two games - it spread the love across a diverse collection, which is great. By now, we know to brace for a few awkward moments when Just Dance hits the stage (this time with some off-key singing courtesy of Jason Derulo, aka Blueshirt McSingguy, aka Mikey '2Tyte' Jeanz), and some stilted recreations of actual conversations during multiplayer sessions. But any Derulo downers were offset by Aisha Tyler's charm, and Ubisoft had something for everyone with its game showcase.

Two surprise announcements stood out in particular: Ghost Recon Wildlands, a drug-busting take on the tactical shooter, and For Honor, a PvP battle between history's deadliest warriors. The tense multiplayer of had us enraptured (even with all the scripted teamchat), with Trackmania, Trials Fusion: Awesome Levels Max, and South Park: Fractured But Whole rounding out the strong showing. We could've done with some more Evie and/or gameplay for Assassin's Creed Syndicate, of course.

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Kinect was a no-show, there was no mention of apps, and there was nary an Usher in sight - Microsoft in 2015 is leaner, meaner, and all about games. There were the expected heavy hitters, of course, and Halo 5 and Gears 4 certainly didn't disappoint, but it was all of the little surprises that added up for Microsoft in a big way.

Backwards compatibility was Microsoft's bombshell announcement of the show. It doesn't seem like much, but when it feels like everyone's essentially written off the concept with this generation and doubled down on re-releases, seeing a big publisher find a way to get older games to work on its current hardware is a pretty fantastic move, and it'll be a great way to get more people to leave their 360s behind. Speaking of re-releases, Rare Replay shows the right way to go about it, packing in 30 classic and contemporary Rare games in one package for $30. Rare's even making a brand new game, and it's all about pirates! Microsoft also unveiled a unique spin on early access, letting potential buyers actually try a demo before they spend money on an unfinished game (what a concept!). And last but surprisingly not least, Microsoft HoloLens made an impressive showing with Minecraft (of all games). A solid show from Microsoft.

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This E3 marked the first time Bethesda has ever hosted a press conference, but you wouldn't be able to tell by watching it, as the publisher took the stage with a confidence and presence like they'd been doing this for years. Bethesda's conference boasted no frills, no nonsense, and no gimmicks - just a solid 90-minute block of fantastic-looking games.

Doom is shaping up to be a wonderful blend of old-school and modern game design, with fast-paced, fluid gunplay, ridiculous hellbeasts, and the newly-announced Snapmap allows for players to make and share their own levels and games. Dishonored 2 is coming next year, and bringing along a surprising new protagonist with Emily Kaldwin. But the big surprise here came from Fallout 4 and its November 10, 2015 release date. Bethesda kicked off E3 in spectacular fashion.

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Sony doesn't have a huge first-party lineup slated for 2015, instead relying on Batman, Destiny, and a slew of indie games to satiate PlayStation Nation’s hunger for games. And no, Sony didn't do much to tell us differently at its E3 conference. What it did do, however, is announce the arrival of three particular games - games that have long stoked the dreams of many a PlayStation fan.

Sony opened its show with The Last Guardian, reintroducing Team Ico's lost game to the masses, and revealed a 2016 release date to go along with it. Fans have also been clamoring for a Final Fantasy 7 remake, and have repeatedly been told no - until Sony unveiled a trailer confirming its existence. Then they gave the stage to Yu Suzuki, creator of the cult-favorite Shenmue series, and announced a plan to crowd-fund the closure that fans have been craving for years. Oh yeah, Sony's also the new home for Call of Duty, yoinking it away from Microsoft in dramatic fashion. An impressive gameplay demo for Uncharted 4 closed one of Sony's best conferences in years - , this is one for the history books.

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For the first time, Bethesda is putting on its own E3 press conference. With all of the buildup of having a making an appearance, Bethesda really set out to build anticipation for its presentation and make a huge impression. Now that the show is over, it's time to review what we just saw. With that, welcome to our recap.

If you missed out on the announcements, worry not. We watched the entire thing, wrote a bunch of news articles about it, and summed up everything in one place. All you need to do to catch up is scroll through this gallery. So go ahead, get all of the most important information from the Bethesda press conference on the following slides.

Doom has never looked this fast or fluid before. An extended gameplay demo showed off what looks to be some kind of space base or factory over-run with hellspawn. The biggest thing to take away is the fluidity - it almost turns into a ballet of blood and bullets as the layer deftly maneuvers around the the corridors, clambering onto platforms, and exploding enemies into so many ludicrous gibs. And the game never seems to skip a beat, maintaining an almost hyper-realistic level of smoothness - even when time slows down when you select a gun from the weapon wheel. There's also incredible levels of detail, whether you're looking at a high-res monitor or the etchings on a new shotgun. Classic weapons return, like the plasma rifle, and the chainsaw - and yeah, it's as gory as you think it is, with demons splitting in half like a knife through butter. And you've even got finishing moves that let you rip an enemy's face apart.

It's Doom, so it's gonna get multiplayer, but you're also not limited to what multiplayer modes and maps that Id has cooked up. Doom Snapmap lets you create own competitive and co-operative multiplayer game types, and it looks like there's going to be a ridiculous amount of variety for you to dig into. You can start from predefined modes or make full custom games by editing the map layouts, the item placement, and even the game logic to make your own game-within-a-game.

It'll be hitting Xbox One, PS4, and PC some time early next year, and it's bringing back the classic weapons and shooting you love, with a few modern twists. We're talking, of course, about the giant green plasma shots of the unmistakable BFG.

On the Media's is a frank, concise set of guidelines to remember whenever you're trying to parse developing events from the modern diaspora of information sources. Of course, confusing, conflicting sources aren't nearly as common in video games, where much of the story proceeds in an orderly fashion based on whatever information game companies decide to dole out.

But that doesn't mean you should take everything you see at face value. Inspired by OTM, I’ve decided to offer some tips to help you rise above the hype cycle, starting with its dubstep-throbbing heart: trailers. By the time you're done with this guide, you'll be ready to enjoy E3 - which is like Christmas, New Year's Eve, and a stock market opening ceremony rolled into one for hype - with high hopes and pragmatic expectations.

Pre-rendered trailers have been a fixture of video game marketing for decades, but up until recent years they've been more of a proof-of-concept than a potential source of confusion. Unfortunately, as gaming visuals creep closer and closer toward photo-realism, it's become easier to mix them up with actual scenes of gameplay, or at least to conclude that they're real parts of the game with an extra layer of post-production polish.

That's not a safe assumption, and trying to draw any conclusions about a game beyond basic stuff like "this is what the protagonist looks like" and "she fights with a gun / sword" from a trailer produced by people otherwise uninvolved with the game is a bad idea. Watch this to get a better feel for what state-of-the-art CGI trailers can look like.

Even if you're certain that you're seeing a game in motion, don't assume it's the game you'll actually get to play. Much can change between an impressive reveal video and release, as was infamously demonstrated by Watch Dogs: the actual game, which released in May 2014, was notably than the live demonstration Ubisoft gave two years earlier.

It's unlikely that Ubisoft was actually trying to deceive anyone with that first gameplay demonstration. But the subtle elements that make those kinds of visuals so impressive, like soft, ambient lighting, are also the first to fall when developers need to wring more performance out of uncooperative hardware (Watch Dogs' gameplay debuted before new-gen hardware was even locked down). Those little touches can make a big difference to your gut reaction, but try to focus on the bigger concepts for a more accurate - and less potentially disappointing - impression of the final product.

Marketers love to frontload trailers with scene-setting material: expository voiceovers, extreme close-ups on impressively rendered woodland creatures, slow panning shots of the hero's new and improved equipment. That's all fine if you're already invested in the game and are eager to see every little detail, but for everybody else, it means a lot of sitting around and hoping the interesting part will start soon.

Don't just wait for it to come to you! Instead, take hold of the scrub bar and skip to the last minute - that's where the actual game is likely to be hiding. At that point most trailers have gotten all their stylistic exposition out of their systems and are getting to what's actually going to be in the box. The last minute is also where you'll find pertinent details like a release date or console exclusivity (or pre-order bonuses).

It might feel like every big game of this generation has missed its release date by at least a month, but that isn't the case. Series like Call of Duty, Madden, and Assassin's Creed have a strict yearly schedule to adhere to, and while they might shift a few weeks from time to time, you can usually count on them to release like clockwork - relatively speaking. But if the game in question isn't part of an annualized franchise, then, well, don't go planning important life events around its release date.

Many factors dictate whether a game will be delayed and how long it may be pushed back. But a delay of six months is a good, cautious estimate to keep in mind: it's long enough for the developer to apply plenty of polish, and for games that were meant to hit the holiday rush to ship in the increasingly competitive spring months, or vice versa. If no date is mentioned at all, don't anticipate a release within the year.

Trailers will often throw out a few dozen quotes with positive-sounding phrases like 'breathtaking' or 'a must-play' in rapid succession, trying to give you the impression that the game has received unanimous praise from critics. But it's a good idea to apply some skepticism to whatever marketers tell you about their product, even when they quote a publication or person you trust to make their point.

Thankfully, you can still learn a lot from the 'acclaim', even if it's not quite what the marketers intended. Are the quotes mostly one or two words, or do they use a lot of ellipses? If so, the source of that quotation probably doesn't sound quite as congratulatory when read in full. On the other hand, if you don't recognize any of the sources - or perhaps you do, but not for their game coverage - you can conclude that the people cutting the trailer had to widen their search a bit to find positive snippets.

Rather than setting up important characters or events, some trailers are intended more to establish a certain tone. Dead Island's famed did little more than tell you that this is a game on an island with zombies in it, but its shocking imagery and reverse-spliced chronology did a phenomenal job portraying a bleak, hopeless atmosphere. Unfortunately, Dead Island's zombie-slaying loot-em-up action did little to follow through on that tone. That's an extreme example, but many other games have had their thematic ambition (or lack thereof) shown up by their own trailers.

On the other hand, if you find the video's tone immediately off-putting, you can go ahead and take it as a red flag. For instance, this , which (when it's not awkwardly cackling) talks about mixing hot sauce and testicles, was fairly faithful to the feel of the game itself. That is to say, pointlessly vulgar and lewd.

remains one of the most surprisingly impactful trailers ever made. It's attracted plenty of imitators since it first aired in 2006, many of whom took cues from how it introduced Marcus Fenix as both vulnerable and an ass-kicker, and the world of Sera as a place of broken beauty. Unfortunately, not every unlikely game-and-music pairing works equally well.

The good news is that, if a trailer's doesn't suit your musical tastes, you can pretty safely hit the mute button. Music video-styled trailers almost never include significant dialogue or sound effects, and when they do, it's easy to tell from the on-screen action, giving you plenty of time to unmute it.

You can only watch so many gun-wielding characters wage a desperate war against a seemingly insurmountable enemy before they all start to blend together. No matter how well-made they are, trailers released in and around E3 all have a difficult task in holding on to your attention. Rather than distinguishing their games solely through unique gameplay snippets or impressive visuals, some companies choose to add a little something extra around the edges of their presentations.

That's why EA prefaced its introduction of NBA Live 14 with a , a US government study that explored if and how society would break down in the event of a biological weapon attack. These attention-grabbing stunts are usually only tangentially related to the game itself, so feel free to grab a snack or check Twitter while you wait for the relevant part to begin.

By their nature, work on big, fancy trailers has to begin many months before their planned debut. But since huge changes often come about in the span of weeks in game development, that means promotional materials may end up not being completely accurate to the current state of production. Unfortunately, you can't push back the release of an E3 trailer the same way you can push back the actual game (or else it wouldn't be much of an E3 trailer).

Thus, placeholder assets or other outdated material will frequently appear in promotional videos. That was likely at least part of the reason why Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor's Black Hand of Sauron was depicted as a tall, bald guy with a pointy face and a vaguely English accent in . But when the game launched in September, just a few months later, his nose and chin had receded a few inches, and he'd traded the orc-ney accent for the familiar voice of Nathan Drake, Desmond Miles, and The Penguin - Nolan North.

It feels like Christmas in June around the GR+ offices as each editor eagerly awaits . Our stockings are hung by the chimney with care, in the hopes that President and CEO of Nintendo Co., Ltd., Satoru Iwata, or Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft's Xbox division and Microsoft Studios, soon would be there. Our heads swim with visions of game announcements and release dates; of Master Chief waking from his slumber and Nathan Drake ducking behind some crates.

We're ready for E3, and we hope you are too because this year's show is going to be massive. There are a ton of new games on the horizon - from Kingdom Hearts 3 to Fallout 4; Halo 5 to Forza 6. To help make sense of it all, each editor has selected the one they're most excited to see at the show. Let us know which one you're most excited to see, and join us back here on Sunday (06/11) when the E3 excitement kicks off at the .

Now, I like to think I'm a pretty sensible person when it comes to E3 expectations. I take gameplay footage and previews with a grain of salt, trying to keep my own hype levels in check as much as possible. But I will be filled with all of the joy in the world if I get to see playable at E3 this year.

The Elder Scrolls series has never really struck a chord with me, though I really appreciate the wonder of simply wandering around an expertly-crafted world and getting into as much mischief as possible. That's why I love Fallout - the sardonic spin on 1950s Nuclear Age Americana combined with familiar landmarks and retro-future aesthetics speaks to me in a way fantasy environments like Skyrim just don't. Now, take all of that, the glorious open-world choose-your-own-adventure gameplay Bethesda is known for, tweak the gunplay to make it a bit more fluid, and throw it on new-gen consoles. Yeah. Gimme all of that.

Not only is this certain to be at E3, it’s also guaranteed to provoke a reaction. When the game was properly revealed back in April, many moaned about the lack of drivable AT-ATs, the OP hero characters, and the scarcity of prequel content. My reaction was “Holy shit that looks incredible. Give me this game NOW!” accompanied by a lot of Kermit The Frog-style manic arm-waving.

Why? Aside from the fact it’s freaking Star Wars, and you get to pilot freaking X-Wings or zoom through freaking Endor on a freaking Speeder Bike while lasering holes through freaking Ewoks, it’s made by DICE. Those guys know exactly what they’re doing, having finely honed their multiplayer craft over more than a decade of Battlefield games. For me, its the dream combination of developer and subject matter. And I’m not naive - I know that reveal trailer was all prettied up - but if it’s a fraction as handsome as that, it’ll be a proper new-gen showpiece. Let’s, er, just hope there are no Battlefield-style launch issues, eh…

It’s really happening! Studio Head Rod Fergusson recently announced a name change for Black Tusk Studios to The Coalition, to better represent the team and what they’re working on--. And there will be fo at E3. Last year all we got was a brief flash of a Gears cog, likely to remind us that Microsoft hasn’t forgotten about the franchise. With all this excitement swirling around Halo and Rise of the Tomb Raider, Gears will fit in nicely with the rest of Xbox’s lineup.

Now where will they take the series? Phil Spencer has said the new Gears will return to the darker, grittier tone of the earlier games, which I’m sure anyone who has played Judgement will not complain about. I’m secretly hoping that the new Gears will be about Carmine brothers’ backstory. Who was Carmine’s mom? Maybe the brothers are on a quest to find their father and along the way they find out they have a half-sister. And it’s a point-and-click adventure game! Just kidding. Pass me a lancer, please.

We’re well into the Xbox One’s second year on the planet, and who better than to exploit the power of the console than a first party dev? And, especially one that only does racing games - that specialisation might serve a niche but by the gods of silicon, it’s my favourite niche.

Despite its limitations and nauseating microtransactions, Forza 5 was beautiful, a great technical example of what’s possible. It was also an early step, a very polished proof of concept. Consider the time Turn 10 has had, the lessons the team has learned based not only on its own successes and mistakes, but those made by Forza Horizon 2 developer Playground Games - should be spectacular. It’s no secret the two teams have a pipeline between the two studios. They share data, insights and - here’s where I’m crossing everything - the know-how for a dynamic weather system at full HD and at 60 frames. Ladies and gentlemen, start your drooling.

Want to know how excited I am about ? I just bought an Xbox One specifically so that I can play the best version of it as soon as it comes out. Yes, it is that big a deal and you should be equally excited. In fact, 'big deal' is an understatement when it comes to Microsoft's exclusivity contract with Square Enix for the game. That's a megaton. And I don't think I'll be alone in buying a console specifically to play it. I had started to think the days of buying a console just for one game were over (Titanfall wasn't quite that good), but I'm very happy to be proven wrong.

It does concern me a little that the game will also be available on Xbox 360, as that does suggest the Xbox One version may have been scaled back in order for the game to run on the old hardware. But having said that, there was never any sense that the previous game's scope and content had been reduced to fit on last-gen tech. 2013's Tomb Raider is clearly one of the best games ever made. And the thought of Crystal Dynamics taking everything they've learned from that experience and channeling it into a new-gen focused (if not new-gen-exclusive) experience fills me with excitement. Man, I can't wait.

Let's be honest with ourselves: when Kingdom Hearts 3 finally gets released it's going to be a real hot mess - and I couldn't be happier. It may buckle under the weight of a backstory , but that will only heighten the game's strongest asset: its strangeness. Seeing all the weird interactions that come from mashing together all these disparate styles and characters is what I treasure in Kingdom Hearts.

This might all sound like I harbor some ironic, detached love for the series; that I don't really like Kingdom Hearts, I just like laughing at it. This is not the case. For all their absurdities, the Kingdom Hearts games do an excellent job at nailing the thousands of tiny details that make a good game feel great. I'm talking about the different jingles the keyblades make as they strike an enemy, or the visual flash of Sora's Explosion ability. Are these cheap thrills? Sure, but when you're game has pirate Johnny Depp fighting shadow monsters alongside Donald Duck and an anime character, cheap thrills are A-OK.

I’m going to catch some flak for this - I know I will. But when it comes to cohesion of creative vision and storytelling, I don’t think 343 Industries merely followed in Bungie’s footsteps, I believe they eclipsed them. Halo 4 could have been a disaster, and yet it’s my favorite single-player Halo campaign thus far (just barely edging out Halo: Reach), with a quality multiplayer component as well that … okay, yes, was a stretch too far away from what made Halo multiplayer great, but if the beta is any indication, 343 has learned from those mistakes.

I’m a lore guy. Growing up, I loved to read, and the more fantastic the tale, the better. Halo has a wonderful universe to play around in; one that simultaneously feels epic and impossible, yet grounded and human. I have no fears whatsoever about the quality of Halo 5’s gameplay, and despite the addition of aim-down sights (something I once proclaimed would, if added to the series, make me quit) I quite enjoyed my time with the reworked multiplayer. In the end though, I’m in it for the story, and I can’t wait to see where Chief’s journey goes next.

PlatinumGames is a developer as focused and nimble as its own combat systems. The second-party-dev-for-hire has teamed up with Sega, Nintendo, Konami and Activision, making fast-paced, nonsense-packed action games with a near-perfect hit rate. Now it’s in cahoots with Microsoft, making an Xbox One exclusive about rad young dudes toting swords and Beats by Dre knock-offs while riding dragons. If there’s a better elevator pitch going, I will run to the nearest tall building immediately to hear it.

But, as we Scalebound isn’t at E3. As if in ultra-cool protest, Platinum’s just revealing another brand new game instead. We have no idea what it is. Some are pointing to Vanquish 2, others Metal Gear Rising 2. Whether it’ll be another Microsoft exclusive is in question. Frankly, it doesn’t matter to me - this is a studio that’s casually knocked out some of the best games of my lifetime, no matter who it’s nominally working for. Whatever the game turns out to be, it’s likely to be my favourite game at E3. Because Platinum.

A few months ago, I got a glimpse at the enigmatic , a game that falls into the same exploring-empty-environments category as Gone Home and Dear Esther. While it may look like Rapture is treading ground that should probably be paved by now, there's something special about it that won't leave my mind, and I'm excited for the possibility of it showing up at E3.

Without giving away too much, it's clear that Rapture's charming country setting is covering up some terrible past mishap that didn't leave much of a mark. One spirit tells another that her husband went upstairs an hour ago and hasn't come down, but all you find on the next landing are some bloody tissues. You find a man praying in a church before something happens to him; though you don't know for sure what you've seen, there are enough hints to give you an idea, and it's horrifying. Every moment in the town a mix between peace, uncertainty, and sinking realization, and it has a way of making you feel alone in knowing the truth. I want to see even more of that strange town at E3, but I also want to see other people witness it for the first time. Then we can all be alone together.

Aside from being a secret Sonic the Hedgehog game (shhh, don’t think about it too much), Mirror’s Edge is my favorite kind of AAA production: flashy, bold and uninfluenced by conventional wisdom. This means plenty of pitfalls en route to the ending, but a refreshing and stubborn adherence to ideas that might not ‘play well to the audience.’

I hope DICE can strike a better balance in its return to Mirror’s Edge, now dubbed “Catalyst.” I want them to stick to their guns - which is to say, not have ANY guns - and elaborate on the best thing about Mirror’s Edge: the sense of inhabiting a fleet-footed body, and to know where all your limbs are in a beautiful 3D city. The game is about holding your breath before the next vertiginous vault - a moment that deserves to be explored more fully alongside Faith, an interesting heroine who never really got the origin story to match her bounding mystique.

If I don't see at least one Cacodemon during E3, I'll be devastated. Those horned, grinning, cyclopean monstrosities are what evoke my fondest memories of blasting my way through E1M1 on my dad's office computer, or going on shotgun sprees in Doom 2 with just a keyboard (no mouse-look required). The Revenant from the recent looks nice, but what I'm really amped up to see is a floating red orb of demonic death barfing out giant fireballs in 1080p.

And there might be an added bonus to Doom's spotlight during , depending on whether or not id's John Carmack is invited to speak onstage. I've heard tell of Carmack's uncanny ability to spout a continuous torrent of unscripted, uber-intelligent commentary, but I've never witnessed his robot-like streams of genius consciousness for myself. It may not be quite as riveting as gameplay footage of Doomguy demolishing an Imp's innards with a rocket launcher, but I'd still be pretty stoked.

It's no secret that I'm totally obsessed with everything Destiny. I've played the game just about every day since launch and plowed through every raid, strike, and mission. With the release of the House of Wolves expansion, there are even more reasons for me to return to our futuristic solar system to stamp out the Darkness and defend the Light. So, when there are rumors swirling that Bungie is going to announce the details for a new, massive expansion at E3, you know I'm about to get hyped.

Some of the details on the . The next expansion is coming on September 15, there's going to be a new Raid, and all of the classes will be getting a new subclass. All very exciting information. And if it all ends up being legit, E3 is going to be quite a treat. I just need to get a glimpse of the new Void bow ability for the Hunter class and I'll be happy.

Before I got a 3DS, my interest in Fire Emblem began and ended with the Smash Bros. roster. I'm not much for tactics - observe how shamefully I saved and reloaded through XCOM, abandoning the campaign once seeing into the future was no longer enough to keep my troops alive - and I usually don't have the patience to play through sprawling JRPGs. But I gave Awakening a shot just to have something in my cartridge slot aside from Super Mario 3D Land, and I found one of my favorite games in years.

Nintendo hasn't told us Westerners too much about Fire Emblem If (or even confirmed whether that will be the title outside of Japan), but it seems to make some pretty big changes to series fundamentals: a new set of weapons added to the rock-paper-scissors style vulnerability system, throwing out weapon durability, letting you build your own castle - not to mention introducing two distinct armies and storylines to choose between. Maybe if I wasn't such a recent Fire Emblem convert I'd be more disturbed by all of If's changes, but I can't wait to see how they all play out.

Look, I know that it’s really unlikely that we’ll get more than a brief glimpse at during the show. The Persona of the moment is Dancing All Night, which I’m also super stoked to play, but I’ll take any shred of information about the next vehicle for fusion, dungeons and steak croquettes. A 30-second video. A character name. A costume. I’ll lap up any crumb of information I can get and consider it a feast.

What Persona 3 did well, Persona 4 perfected. A seamless blend of the fantastic and the mundane, both games pushed expectations for characterization and gameplay for JRPGs, with stylish characters and catchy tunes. Both games swap the typical world-saving teens that typically populate JRPGs for more relatable heroes, as concerned with defeating enemies as they are with passing history class. They also touch on serious issues like loss and identity in immensely personal ways, avoiding the temptation to wallow in melodrama. They’re two of my most-played and most-beloved games, so I’m eager to see what new ideas Persona 5 presents. And no, having Jack Frost in it doesn’t count.

Okay, I was already very, very excited about . And now I’m eveb more excited. Because while I’m months and years off really getting deep into the game, I already have a sense of the kind of Street Fighter it’s going to be. And ye gods, is it enticing.

Street Fighter 5 blows the doors off the series overarching fighting philosophy. Gone is the focus on, er, Focus Attacks and Ultras, which opened up high-level play in SF4 while also funnelling it in a specific set of directions. Replacing it is a madly eclectic approach to even stalwart characters, iconic moves remixed or removed entirely, fighting styles switched up completely, and crucially, everyone now has an utterly unique technique, many of which would support an entire fighting game on their own, making for insanely asymmetric, but so far utterly balanced, freewheeling, anything-can happen fights. A Ryu who can parry anything vs. a torpedo-less Bison who can catch fireballs and throw them straight back? It might look like business as usual, but it plays like nothing you’ve ever seen before. More. I need more, now.

It's astounding just how much Street Fighter 2 got right. The controls are tight, the graphics are crisp (even now, provided you appreciate pixels), and the music is interminably catchy. But perhaps its biggest triumph is its roster, which started out at a mere eight fighters. For a fighting game to thrive, players need to feel truly invested in their chosen character, establishing the kind of deep connection that can carry across multiple games and even decades. SF2 put forth the kind of designs that are still iconic and appealing almost 30 years later.

Take a trip with us down memory lane as we examine how the original World Warriors stayed the same, even as game platforms and graphics were changing. Be sure to maximize each image (by clicking the little 'expand' icon in the upper right) for the full effect, because it's incredible to see these subtle evolutions up close. With on the horizon, let's take a look back at the legendary fighters who got us here.

Special thanks to for the backgrounds.

Ryu is a paradox, given that he's a nondescript leading man who's somehow unforgettable. It's got to be his plain-yet-immediately-recognizable outfit, which (like the design of so many national flags) consists of only three bold colors. This makes him about as visually interesting as a crash test dummy - especially next to some of Street Fighter's oddballs like Necro or Sodom - but his modest appearance matches his nomadic lifestyle and detachment from notions like glory or fame. Ryu is a World Warrior in every sense, traveling the globe with a singular focus: become stronger.

Despite the fact that Honda's always hundred-hand slapping opponents or torpedoing his entire body at them headfirst, he's actually a pretty nice guy. Sumo wrestling is as much about tradition (like the real-world practice of tossing salt before a match) and prestige as it is two large dudes slamming into each other, and ol' Edmond fights for the honor of his beloved sport rather than any directly self-serving means. His gigantic eyebrows and red, kabuki-style facepaint make him look intimidating, but Honda's all smiles outside of the ring. He's also absurdly muscular for a sumo wrestler - or any human being, really - which looks even more exaggerated given his hunched, low-to-the-ground fighting stance.

It's a fact: kids love Blanka. Don't believe me? Just take a look back at some of the old Street Fighter products and advertisements and you'll see a recurring trend: . A cross between a gorilla and the Jolly Green Giant, this Brazilian beast is the ultimate Street Fighter wild card. Ryu? Chun-Li? Guile? They could almost pass for everyday people. Not Blanka; he's one-of-a-kind, and that made him the de facto poster boy (poster beast?) for Street Fighter 2. If you knew anything about video games in the '90s, and you saw this guy's smiling face rolling your way, you knew exactly what game was being advertised.

It all starts with the hair. Guile's pristinely trimmed, impossibly large flat top is his most notable trademark, besides his stalwart patriotism and passion for being a family man. He seems to suffer from 'Resting Soldier's Frown Face' (or RSFF as it's known in the medical community), though it's hard to blame the guy: he lost his Air Force buddy Charlie Nash to the evil machinations of M. Bison's Shadaloo. Now he travels the world searching for any clue related to Charlie's supposed death, taking the time to hurl Sonic Booms, comb his blonde mane, and whip on a pair of sunglasses mid-fistfight wherever he goes.

Ken Masters is that cool older cousin or fun uncle you had growing up. He's got a sweet sports car, a smokin' hot stable-and-monogamous relationship with his wife, and that blistering red gi which he probably dyed himself. While Ryu has always been the Street Fighter straightman, Ken isn't afraid to let his hair down and bring some style to the fight. Or at the very least crack a smile. However, his easygoing demeanor belies a forceful and finely-tuned fighter who is every bit Ryu's equal - as seen in the two black belts they share.

If all law enforcers took as much pride in a sense of justice as Chun-Li, the world would be a better place. She may not dress like your typical Interpol agent - what with those spiked bracelets and Princess Leia-esque hair buns - but she takes her job to serve and protect seriously as she searches for her father's killers. And if you're in need of motivation when doing leg presses at the gym, just imagine how grand life would be if you had the same kind of sturdy, tremendous thigh muscles as Chun-Li. If you want to high-kick hundreds of times in the blink of an eye, you're going to need some serious lower body strength.

Zangief's character design tells a story, one of struggle and triumph in the Russian wilderness. The pronounced scars on his legs, arms, and back are a testament his grueling bear-wrestling training regimen that has molded him into such a destructive warrior. His inhumanly large muscles display his resolve and dedication to becoming a grappler without equal. And finally, that mohawk and beard reveal that the big guy is not without a sense of humor - or, at the very least, was a fan of The A-Team growing up. Just don't say anything negative about his glorious homeland of Mother Russia, unless you want to go for a ride in a Spinning Piledriver.

One of the most striking aspects of Dhalsim's design is also one of the most contradictory. Dhalsim is himself a yoga master and a pacifist, though he routinely goes against that belief to help raise money for his village in underground fighting tournaments. So if fire-spitting Stretch Armstrong is such an enlightened warrior, why does he wear a necklace of human skulls!? Nothing says 'Zen' like three dead people hanging around your neck. Maybe it's for the intimidation factor - I mean, the poor guy does fight a Russian bear-wrestler and a Brazilian monster-man. Whatever the case, it has endured as a bold fashion accessory to this day.

. The focal point of the year for All Of Games. The lunatic party-festival that shapes the climate and the excitement for all of us, wherever we are, for years to come. It gets bigger every year, it gets better every year, and with this new generation really starting to hit its stride, surely this year’s has the potential to be the best yet, right?

Well of course it does. But there are some things it almost certainly won’t have. Some things that, when you’ve been through enough E3s – whether present or not – you start to miss. Things E3 used to do, and used to represent, that either don’t exist now, or have been moulded into rather different, modern formulations. We’re not just talking about the fact that we were younger and more springy back then, because that’s just stupid nostalgia. And we’re certainly not talking about the higher ratio of booth-babes in the old days, either, because that’s just stupid. No, these are the things, silly and important, concrete and abstract, that used to really define old E3s. 2015 will be a great show, but we can’t help wishing that they’d just bring back…

Okay, this one is probably partly informed by us just plain missing the pre-Wii Nintendo that was, but goddamnit if Ninty’s real, on-stage E3 appearances didn’t feed directly into the company’s greatness back then. As brilliantly endearing as Iwata’s performances are in the modern Direct broadcasts (and seriously, they are; anyone who’s never felt the compulsion to do one of his little hand gestures while saying the d-word in everyday conversation categorically has no soul), the videos’ edited, contained nature just can’t compete with a bona fide Nintendo press conference.

Nintendo fans, for better or worse, are rabid like no other. When you cram a thousand of them into one room, for an audience with the Great Ones, you get a giddy, deliriously goofy atmosphere you just will not find in any other conference. And Nintendo knew exactly how to play up to that. Reggie’s comic, on-screen persona these days is great, but the loveably meatheaded, natural badassery that led to the caricature was even better. And let’s not forget that whatever games were announced, the highlight was always the perfectly-teased appearance of a live Miyamoto, just as giddily goofy himself, and entirely unafraid to brandish a Hylian Shield without a hint of irony. A crowning moment of awesome each and every year.

‘Last days of Rome’. That’s the best way to sum up Activision’s brief run of ludicrous ‘Just because we can’ parties at E3. Ludicrously decadent, immensely more lavish and star-studded than they ever had any need – or justification – to be, those gigantic nightclub-cum-concert-cum-circus affairs would have been offensively grandiose if they hadn’t been so grandiose as to be delightfully stupid.

The peak arguably came in 2010, when Activision’s ‘conference’ hosted the likes of Eminem, Usher, Rhianna, Deadmaus, Pharrel Williams and Soundgarden. The epoch-making line-up of games that warranted such a show? Tony Hawk: Shred, Guitar Hero: Megadeth, and True Crime: Hong Kong. The last of which you might remember was eventually released by Square-Enix, as Sleeping Dogs. A party worth every nonsensical penny, then.

E3 is a fantastic spectacle these days, and a great reason to be smug about being into games. For a week, the entire press, mainstream and otherwise, has its eyes on us. We are championed. We are reported on feverishly. We are exciting and we are massive. But that global, blanket attention has a flip-side. In having to cater for such a huge spread of reporters with such eclectic audiences and angles, the big companies have got a bit safer about things.

There was a time back in the day when console reveal stage-demos were performed not by developers, or well-choreographed party-bots, or pre-canned footage, but by on its booth, and handed out beer mugs and condoms, because why the hell not? There was time when the biggest party in the games industry felt more like a big-budget nerd-fest than a slick, business tentpole run by polished, perfectly coiffed men in suits. Obviously E3 is better now, in many ways. And obviously its current set-up is better for the industry. But damn, it was fun when it was a bit scruffier, too.

These days, you tend to go in knowing the rough shape of the big three's announcements. Nintendo will play around with an old franchise or two, to varying degrees of effectiveness, announce a few cool-but-nebulous things that are ages off release, and then talk about cool-but-obscure Japanese games and 3DS faceplates. Sony will showcase a mixture of visually stunning AAA, emotive narrative, and indie invention. Microsoft will bring the explosions, the Call of Duty demos, a couple of token attempts at eclecticism, and otherwise perform a slick iteration on its 360 glory days, with additional garnish. That’s great. Everyone has their identity locked in, and the big three are catering to very specific audiences who love their stuff.

But check out Ashley’s highly completist, highly eclectic of the games of E3 ’95. Nintendo brought gory fighting games, platformers, the Virtual Boy, Earthbound, and goddamn Doom. Sega dropped the Saturn, and showed it off with Panzer Dragoon, of all things. Sony had Wipeout and Tekken sitting right next to the original Legacy of Kain. Yeah, the 2D one. Old E3 was fricking nuts, and you never knew what you were going to get. Hell, let’s not forget that the Saturn was announced as available to buy that day during Sega’s conference in ‘95. Okay, it turned out to be a terrible idea, but still. Surprises! And speaking of which…

This might be rose-tinted bullshit talking (hey, it’s fertile ground, they’d grow well), but old E3 used to feel more surprising even beyond the eclectic weirdness on show. You see there was also the delightful way that the internet used to not go out of its way to try to spoil every announcement weeks in advance, like a big excitable puppy who is also a gobshite.

I remember back in the solely print and page days, the E3 issue of any good games mag was like opening up a paper Christmas from a mad sci-fi future. Even with access to faster reporting later on, the conferences maintained their status as megaton surprise-bombs for quite the while. Until, that is, the internet decided that nebulous insider sources and slow, dribbling leaks were more fun than having several solid hours of unexpected amazement thrown in its face. Even when leaks turn out not to be true, they deflate things. Even the most clearly deceitful extravagance adds a special kind of mad hope, making the ultimate truth of a conference disappointing, however great it is. , but if Alex isn’t announced at E3, that’s all anyone’s going to be talking about.

This is the big one. In fact, in spirit, it probably encompasses pretty much all of the prebious. The source of old-school E3, if you will. The natural spring, blurting forth that particular kind of fun in its raw, unsullied form. I’m talking about pure, unrefined, ‘90s rad. You know instinctively what I’m talking about. It’s appearing in your mind right now, not as cogent, specific thoughts, but as an electrifying blur of colours, sounds and feelings.

Most of those colours are variants on neon pink and green. Most of those sounds are triumphant yells of ‘Awesome!’ while things explode, blue electricity crackle, and all manner of vibrant goop squelches around in the background. And the feeling? Nothing but the most strident, exciting, summertime 'Hell yeah'. Games were back in the day. And games marketing really was. And so E3 really, really was. Screw it, if we’re getting back The X-Files, and Twin Peaks, and Power Rangers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Doom, I’m starting the campaign to Bring Back Rad right here and right now. If anyone needs me, I’ll be digging out my old Hypercolor t-shirts with an immense sense of righteous vindication.

Clothes maketh the man, or in video game parlance, clothes maketh opportunities for hidden slaughter. From Hitman to Metal Gear, a convincing disguise is key to skulking around unseen to commit any 'business' you might have. So here we've gathered the very best of what PlayStation has to offer when it comes to devious disguises...

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The people of this PS4 indie title ain’t the most perceptive lot. Are you a self-conscious invertebrate who wants to raise a family without the judgemental eye of society bearing down on you? Then just slip into an off-the-rack navy suit. somehow turns cheap office wear into stealth camo. Kudos.

Why lather your skin in camouflage when you can hide yourself in the ultimate fortress of solitude? Snake channels his inner six-year-old with the greatest disguise in all of games: a cardboard box. So the lesson is: next time you want to hide from someone, just stick a Cornflakes packet on your head.

You feel that in the air? The constant buzzing of press releases and hype trailers? It's E3 season, and that means it's time to get excited once again about the future of video games. Usually, the E3 lifecycle works like this: watch a trailer and some gameplay footage for a hot new game at E3, get really excited about it, wait about a year or two, then finally walk to your local store and pick up a copy of the game.

Sometimes, though, games get stuck at the 'waiting' step and never find a way to get out. Time continues to march on, E3s come and go, and these games either disappear into the aether, or get cancelled outright, leaving behind a video or two and brief demo a handful of people actually got to try. So let's gather ‘round, reminisce on promises left unfulfilled, and pour one out for these E3 vaporware games.

When the Wii was originally unveiled at E3 2006, Nintendo also showcased an array of games that would make a case for its then-unheard-of motion controls. Look at all these beautiful people flailing the Wii Remote around as they wield a virtual sword, baseball bat, or hammer! And while demoed games like Red Steel, Wii Sports, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess saw the light of day, it was Project H.A.M.M.E.R. that was doomed to get the axe.

In Project H.A.M.M.E.R., you would play as a burly dude covered in power armor, and your objective was to swing around a massive sledgehammer, obliterating every enemy and object in sight. That seems to be about as far as the dev team got, as the game was considered "paused" as of E3 2007. While not officially cancelled by Nintendo, it's been nearly nine years since its initial unveiling, so make of that what you will.

Some console names are a bit strange (seriously Nintendo, the Wii?), while others are a bit more obvious, perfectly encapsulating what the machine is and does (like the PlayStation). But no name is more perfect than The Phantom, a console developed by Infinium labs that, other than brief showing at E3 2004, never saw the light of day.

The Phantom was a console developed by Infinium Labs (rebranded as Phantom Entertainment in 2006). Revealed in 2003 then arriving at E3 in 2004, the idea behind it was, at the very least, ambitious. For under $399, The Phantom was to be a PC that hooked up to your TV like a console, letting you download and install games directly to the device via the internet. It was essentially a Steam Machine before Steam was even a thing, but release dates came and went as the machine's release ended up pushed beyond 2005, finally removed from Phantom Entertainment's website in 2006. Perhaps the world just wasn't quite ready for a living room PC solution, but at least there's a silver lining to this story: Phantom Entertainment still exists, and - a couch-based keyboard originally designed for the The Phantom console.

Exclusives are important for any console manufacturer. Each box essentially does the same thing, so you have to give people a reason to buy your machine over the competition's. So when Sony announced in 2007 that a game from the studio behind Grand Theft Auto was coming exclusively to PlayStation, it was perceived as a big get for the company that sat firmly in second place.

It's unfortunate, then, that the only official image we've seen of the game since its E3 unveiling was the logo. A few screenshots have leaked out since then, and publisher Take-Two still claims that the game is in development. Rockstar Games is known for taking its sweet time developing games, but eight years on a single game is a bit much.

The 21st century hasn't exactly been kind to LucasArts. For every Knights of the Old Republic, there was a Star Wars Kinect; for every Mercenaries, there was a Fracture. It wasn't exactly a surprise when LucasArts effectively ceased operations in 2013 following Disney's acquisition of basically everything George Lucas owned. But it was still a shame - especially because it meant cancelling the one project that could have put LucasArts back on the map: Star Wars 1313.

Starring a young Boba Fett, Star Wars 1313 would have followed the bounty hunter's first adventures, and made it out to be a third-person shooter filled with heavily-scripted set-pieces, similar to Uncharted. Except, y'know, it's Star Wars. While the demo looked promising, 1313 was officially canned a year later, as LucasArts laid off the majority of its staff.

Some games are lucky enough to escape their vaporware fate, and there's probably no greater turnaround story than Prey, that somehow actually turned out alright considering the circumstances. Unfortunately, its sequel didn't end up so lucky.

While a sequel was reportedly in development shortly after the first game's release in 2006, it wasn't officially unveiled until 2011. Taking place after the events of the first game, Prey 2 would have followed the adventures of US Marshal Killian Samuels, a single human living among an array of alien races, hunting bounties and earning cash to survive. Prey 2 made a showing at E3 that year, but shortly after, rumors began to swirl about its cancellation. Bethesda continued to deny rumors until 2014, when Bethesda VP Pete Hines confirmed that development on the title had ceased.

So Nintendo struck paydirt with the Wii, and games like Wii Fit and Wii Sports flourished with an audience who would have never thought to pick up a gaming console in their lives. In an effort to keep that gravy train rolling, Nintendo wanted to create a controller that everyone could use, a controller so simple, all you have to do is put your finger in it and sit there. Enter the Vitality Sensor.

In an ideal world, the Vitality Sensor would have gathered the player's biometric data (namely, their pulse) and the game would then take that data and react accordingly. But despite an initial announcement by Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata at E3 2009, the device essentially disappeared without a trace. It wasn't until 2013 that Iwata confirmed why this strange peripheral never got released: turns out, it only worked for . It doesn't sound like that big of a gap, but when ten percent of the people who buy your product are returning it because they think it doesn't work, it's probably best to shelve it.

Peter Molyneux is basically the Willy Wonka of game design - except Molyneux's Fizzy Lifting Drinks don't do much more than taste like an off-brand Sprite and give you a slight caffeine buzz. Not that he makes bad games; it's just that they end up kind of pedestrian in comparison to the pie-in-the-sky promises that he makes leading up to their release. And there's perhaps no greater example than Molyneux's ability to over-promise and under-deliver than Project Milo.

The idea (as these things tend to go) looked promising, as you interacted with a virtual young boy with voice and hand gestures via Kinect, and the boy would react to your statements and change over time. It all sounded a bit too good to be true, especially considering , despite Molyneux's insistence to the contrary. Considering Molyneux's departure from Microsoft in 2012, it's doubtful this project will be completed.

You'd be forgiven if you don't remember the original Phantom Dust on the Xbox. Even though it was developed by Microsoft Japan, it's still pretty niche, combining third-person action, card-collecting, and multiplayer arena battles. Microsoft's been on a rebooting kick lately, taking old properties that the publisher owns and getting other studios to remake them for Xbox One. Phantom Dust was the latest to supposedly get the treatment, complete with an E3 2014 trailer.

But within a year of its announcement, the studio behind the remake , leaving the ultimate future of Phantom Dust in question. Microsoft has stated that they are committed to the title and that development still continues, but it's probably going to be another couple of years before we ever see anything about this strange hybrid again. I suppose getting shut down quickly is better than getting strung along for years, but still - that was fast.

Las Vegas, that strip of hedonism and hubris out in the middle of the desert, has never really been immortalized in video games (though Fallout: New Vegas gets it pretty close). There are casino games, sure, but there's never been been a game that fully encapsulates the celebrity DJ/bottle service/$7.99 all-you-can-eat buffet experience that Las Vegas is really known for. And thanks to the cancellation of This Is Vegas, we're going to have to wait even longer.

First hinted at in 2006, the splendor of This Is Vegas wasn't fully revealed until 2008, and was scheduled for release later that year. Unfortunately, thanks to publisher Midway's own personal financial woes (many of them likely brought on by This Is Vegas' ballooning costs, as the publisher reportedly spent Keep the Vegas dream alive.

Here it is: the White Whale of vaporware. Blizzard is known for only releasing games when they're "done", which of course means they take years longer to make than most, and the studio isn't afraid to shelve something if they don't think it's worth continuing - even if that means cancelling a game after years of development. StarCraft: Ghost would have put players in the role of the titular sniper as she sneaks her way through various sci-fi environments, completing objectives, and shooting Zerg in the face.

Unfortunately, development didn't go as smoothly as you'd expect. Originally planned for a 2003 release, Ghost underwent numerous delays, and even changed hands from developer Nihilistic to Swingin' Ape Studios. It was then relaunched at E3 2005 and slated for a release in 2006 - which came and went, and Ghost was still a no-show. Around that time, a little game you've probably never heard of called World of Warcraft released, and Blizzard decided to pour resources into its new MMO rather than continue working on a stealth-based PS2/Xbox game, so it put Ghost on indefinite hold. If you're still holding out hope, don't: Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime finally put a bullet in this one, confirming its cancellation in 2014.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

showed us just how important Mother Base is to The Phantom Pain. After the events of Ground Zeroes, Big Boss and friends aim to rebuild their off-shore military fortress bigger and better than ever, and this fully explorable facility is massive.

As you Fulton soldiers to recruit them into your army, you can assign them to different departments, like RD, Medical, and Intel. Assigning them to the right department will determine the kind of upgrades you're able to research - so if you feel like snagging that rocket launcher sooner rather than later, perhaps it's best to shift your employees around to make it happen. Plus, there are specialists out on the field, capable of unlocking unique gear and special features within Mother Base. The Phantom Pain even has its own version of Dragon Age: Inquisition's War Table, allowing you to send combat troops out on timed missions to earn items and make Big Boss' life in the field a little easier. Many of these missions can take hours, though, so while you're off doing important life stuff (like sleeping), make sure your soldiers are working hard before you sign off. When you log back in, you'll find the results of their excursions waiting for you.

While the shift to open-world stealth gameplay means blowing out certain aspects of Metal Gear Solid’s design, it also means scaling back on others, and in The Phantom Pain's case, that means dialing down the cutscenes. Not that there won't be any long-winded monologues, but the first 16 hours or so of the game puts a much larger emphasis on the gameplay, and you won't have to twiddle your thumbs waiting for the action to get going.

For a nice change of pace, The Phantom Pain puts a lot of its secondary information on cassette tapes, rather than dumping everything on you via hours of static codec conversations. Want to know more about the political landscape of the early 1980s or what happened to your comrades after the events of Peace Walker? Pop in a tape while you're travelling across Afghanistan or exploring Mother Base.

Unlike other Metal Gear games, Big Boss won't be funnelled down a linear path from the beginning of the story to its end. Instead, you'll choose from a variety of missions from a menu, similar to the PSP entry, Peace Walker.

You get a series of story-based mission that will further The Phantom Pain's narrative, but you also have a huge variety of Extra Ops to choose from, ranging from assassination missions, to recruiting specific soldiers, or even hunting down old members of your squad. Completing these missions will reward you with additional resources, which you can then use to build extra weapons and gear. If you're stuck on a particularly difficult story mission, take on a few side quests, research a rocket launcher, and blow up your problems with ease.

While we know the, ahem, clothing-deprived Quiet and Big Boss' horse can help out in the field, two other buddies can accompany Big Boss in his stealthy endeavors. If you're observant, you'll be able to find and recruit your own wolf pup, who can then be used to either distract guards or attack them on cue. Taking any of these buddies with you on missions will make them more loyal to you, and the higher their loyalty level, the more responsive they are to your commands.

The other buddy is a bit less… organic than the others. After a certain point in the story, Big Boss will get his hands on what looks like a mini-Metal Gear - a bipedal battle tank with a built in tranquilizer. Despite its default lumbering gait, it's surprisingly versatile, allowing you to speed across vast distances with its boosters, or to sneak across the battlefield by activating its 'silent running' option.

The latest feature revealed for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain will make Snake a nigh-undetectable master of stealth and subterfuge… and will also make him look completely ridiculous. Konami recently revealed the glorious chicken hat, a piece of equipment which players will be offered if they get killed or otherwise fail in Snake's quest for vengeance too many times.

You're free to pass on the hat, but you'd be giving up one of the most versatile tools in tactical espionage action that isn't made from corrugated paper. Guards don't tend to get out of sorts when they see Snake wearing it (unless he sticks around too long or starts shooting at them), because they think he's just a harmless chicken. Just a harmless, man-sized chicken with an eyepatch and a robot arm. Apparently there's no penalty for wearing the hat other than occasionally catching its weary stare as you try to follow otherwise serious cut scenes.

Looking for formation on Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain? Click on for everything we know about the game.

At The Game Awards 2014, a new trailer for Metal Gear Online - the multiplayer companion to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - was shown. Right off the bat, it looks like you can have eight players on a team - if the above image is any indication. The developers did confirm that the Metal Gear Solid characters themselves will be playable, so you won't be running around as a bunch of generic-military-shooter-men (though there are still plenty of those).

In the ensuing firefight, a variety of traps and tools were shown. Early on Snake hijacked what very much looked like a tiny Metal Gear built for one, and rode it around the battlefield wreaking havoc. Not necessarily the stealthiest way to go about it, but it sure looked like fun. As for traps, the opposing team deployed a balloon mine that, when triggered, hoisted an unsuspecting player up into the air for easy shooting. They also had a… um… stuffed dog toy that they just dropped on the ground. This seemed to function much like the dirty magazines of yore, leaving its victim hopelessly infatuated (and ready to get shot down).

Looking for formation on Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Just click on to the following slides for everything we know about the game.

There's a fresh gameplay demo of Metal Gear Solid 5, and it's stuffed full of new features. You can watch the video underneath this article, but here are some of the highlights... It shows a typical mission in one of Phantom Pain's open-mission areas. Snake is sent in to extract a hostage, and he takes new female companion Quiet with him. She has the ability to evaporate into a cloud of smoke, and reappear at set locations on the map. So, as Snake progresses through the woodlands in this demo, Quiet moves around the level to cover him with sniper fire.

While Snake can take out most enemies himself, Quiet is used as a back-up or for removing multiple threats at once. The hostage, for example, has two guards. Snake coordinates with Quiet, picking a target each to eliminate them at the same time. Apparently, there will be other allies that can be used as support characters throughout the Phantom Pain. Before you ask: it's unlikely they'll be human-controlled characters.

The demo shows off several interesting gadgets and moves too. We see the Phantom Cigar in action, which Snake can smoke to pass the time. This will allow you to change the conditions for each mission. In the demo, it's a dank, rainy day to start with but, as Snake puffs on his stogie, time passes. Night comes and goes, and the next day is much more clement. It's understandable that you'd want to tackle some missions at night, but it's unclear if the weather or time of day will have much impact on the gameplay.

Another nifty gadget is the Active Decoy. In the demo, Snake uses it in two ways. The first, rather amusing use, sees him bump a guard off a cliff-edge with the decoy. It then inflates in the shape of a person, drawing the attention of another near-by enemy. Snake then zaps this distracted fool with a power-glove. Later in the demo, Snake deploys three decoys while he's being chased by a group of militia. While they shoot up the inflatables, causing them to wither in a comedy fashion, Snake flanks his opponents and shoots them dead.

Even Metal Gear fans will admit the series history is really hard to nail down, so let's make it clear right now: The Phantom Pain's Snake is Big Boss, aka Naked Snake in Metal Gear Solid 3, the star of Peace Walker, father to Solid Snake, and the villain of the original Metal Gear game. It's set in 1984, 11 years before Solid's first battle with Big Boss. In The Phantom Pain, Snake is just trying to rebuild.

According to early sources, his nickname for MGS5 appears to be Venom Snake, likely because he's filled with venomous rage in a quest for revenge on the people that killed and tortured those closest to him. He plans to do a lot of damage, but he's got to do a lot of rebuilding first. In fact, Snake himself has been rebuilt this time, including a newly acquired cybernetic arm and some very different gameplay.

The Phantom Pain appears to begin with Big Boss/Snake dead on a stretcher. He's eventually revived and but is in a coma for the next nine years. When he awakes, he's missing an arm and has to quickly relearn his motor skills, because the hospital he's staying in is under attack. After escaping, Snake is set on revenge on the mercenaries that did this to him, so he starts to rebuild his army, this time under the David Bowie-esque moniker Diamond Dogs.

The Phantom Pain seems to be a lengthy tale of revenge on the part of Snake, as he slowly builds up the private military group that will presumably become Outer Heaven. As he rebuilds his reputation on the battlefield, Snake will meet friends old and new, as well as taking out armed guards with tranquilizers and CQCs. But will he find the mysterious XOF team that seems to be responsible for all his pain?

Classic Metal Gear games are known for sneaking in tight corridors and quiet hallways, though the series opened up more and more with each sequel. The Phantom Pain makes the world bigger than ever by adopting a truly open world gameplay. Snake gets dropped into a base and can explore it however he likes, planning his approach however he chooses, using new tools like the iDroid to mark waypoints along the way.

The changes feel natural for the franchise because the combat is still there, you just have way more places to hide. MGS has always been about giving players room to experiment, and Phantom Pain's map is apparently bigger than every previous Metal Gear combined. That's a lot of space to drag around bodies.

It took years before MGS creator Hideo Kojima announced The Phantom Pain, but he was talking up the game's technology long before we ever saw Snake's new arm. Kojima built the Fox Engine to be a flexible set of tools for making games for both 360/PS3 and Xbox One/PS4, able to create natural looking environments and realistic fabrics with ease. Now that we've seen the fifth Metal Gear Solid in action, we have to admit that the Fox Engine looks like a success.

MGS5's prologue, looked incredible--even the rocks were worth gawking at. Facial animations were marvelous, as were the weather systems and shifting time of day. Early footage of Phantom Pain seems to only build on Ground Zeroes visuals, looking better with each new trailer and screen. The series has always looked great and MGS5 doesn't look to ruin that reputation.

MGS5 has some insanely huge maps, so it's a good thing that Kojima isn't forcing Big Boss to crawl around the miles of open world. For the first time in series history, MGS5 adds in drivable vehicles, putting Big Boss behind the wheel of jeeps and tanks. He can even ride a horse around the world, as we've seen in an early Afghanistan level, and the horse defecates in real time--seriously, new-gen horse poop.

Snake can also take to the air via helicopter. Though Snake is alone on his tactical espionage missions, he can call for help from his team, including airstrikes via copters that he can ride along in. How will all these transportation options change the gameplay? And what other planes, trains, and automobiles will be available in the final game?

Snake already had to deal with losing an eye, but when he wakes up in his hospital bed he has to come to terms with losing his left arm and having chunks of shrapnel embedded in his skull. His prosthetic is pretty advanced for 1984, with all the maneuverability of a normal arm, but with special abilities. Do you recall how Snake normally taps on a wall to call over a curious guard? Well, that arm can now make that arm wherever, no wall needed. How's that for advanced?

Snake's cybernetic enhancement fits with a series full of augmented characters like Gray Fox, Raiden, and Revolver Ocelot, and the tech advancements don't stop there. Snake's iDroid is a great asset for planning out missions, summoning weapons, or listening to emotionally draining conversations. And to help time pass in game, Big Boss now has an e-cigar that he smokes while the in-game clock quickly advances.

The whole of MGS 5’s narrative is split and seems to be pre- and post-coma. Before Snake heads off to dreamland, he’s seen assisting a familiar face in the accompanying hospital bed. Master Miller (a.k.a. Kazuhira Miller) had teamed up with Big Boss prior to the Peace Walker incident to form Militaires Sans Frontières. When Boss awakes, Miller has been kidnapped and Snake has save his old friend from being tortured to death. And Snake gets help from his classic frenemy, Revolver Ocelot.

With Ocelot, Miller, and other familiar faces hanging around, the game still finds room for new characters. There's The Quiet, a controversial femme fatale that seems to have a complicated past. There's also a character that looks a bit like Psycho Mantis, as well as some other potential bosses with wacky names, such as Skull Face, Code Talker, and Eli. We look forward to hearing their life stories in separate 40 minute cutscenes.

Many Metal Gear fans skipped over the PSP entries in the series, which is too bad, and not just because they were fun. Peace Walker appears to be very important to the plot of The Phantom Pain, and MGS5 is even adopting some of the portable entry's most ambitious ideas. Namely, MGS5 has the return of the Mother Base and Recruitment systems.

As before, Snake and his team operate of Mother Base, and the giant tanker has been rebuilt using resources Snake finds in the field. Big Boss can acquire new soldiers and items via the returning Fulton system, which basically means you can attach a balloon to anything and it'll fly to Mother Base. It works on people, cars, anti-aircraft guns, even goats. Yes, goats can become members of Diamond Dogs.

The first publicly available taste of MGS5 is already available and... so far so good. As detailed in our , Snake plays better than he's ever played before, with everything from combat animations to moment-to-moment movement feeling more realistic when exploring Camp Omega. The game also delivers on its promise of taking the previously linear Metal Gear series and transitioning it into a more open-world, player-decision driven progression path. And though there isn't much by way of story here, Ground Zeroes' narrative treads the same thought-provoking ground you'd expect from a Kojima game.

Plus the game sets up a ton of plot points that Phantom Pain will no doubt explore. You learn the fates of Peace Walker characters Paz and Chico, you meet the despicable villain Skull Face, and you witness the attack on Mother Base that puts Snake in his lengthy coma. This is all essential info for Phantom Pain, plus it gives you ample time to adapt to the new controls.

When the star of 24 was confirmed to be the new lead in MGS, director Hideo Kojima had this to say about Kiefer Sutherland as Big Boss: "I wanted Snake to have a more subdued performance expressed through facial movements and tone of voice rather than words," Kojima said. "The game takes place in 1984, when Snake is 49 years old; therefore, we needed someone who could genuinely convey both the facial and vocal qualities of a man in his late 40s."

Sutherland will not only lend his vocal talents to our favorite spy, but also his movements as well--Snake's animations will be modeled after motion captured data. "It's an honor to be able to play this character," Sutherland said. "This character has an unbelievable legacy, but there's a real personal quality to this character that I've connected to. I'm not a gamer and I even knew about this game. I was certainly keenly aware of the legacy of these games." For fans of David Hayter's portrayal, you can hold out hope that Hayter still technically remains the voice of Solid Snake.

Yeah, we've heard this before. Hideo Kojima is claiming that Metal Gear Solid V is his last Metal Gear game, and that he'll pass the franchise off to his staff after this one. Before you get too worried, you should remember that he said literally the same thing when Metal Gear Solid 4 was announced. Kojima saying he's making his last MGS game is like The Rolling Stones saying they're on their last tour.

Kojima claimed that the reason he's making it at all is because he wants to reinvent the series before he leaves. That's why it's Metal Gear Solid V instead of 5 (V is for "Victory," in his mind), and that's why he's leaving David Hayter in the past. But will he really go to all the work of redefining Snake only to abandon him?

We still don't know everything, though. Can you... ever know everything about Metal Gear? What do you think? Let us know in the comments what you think about Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain.

And if you're looking for more, check out .

It’s hard to overstate the popularity of Minecraft on YouTube. The video-sharing platform is a home to tens of thousands of gamers who upload their escapades to be enjoyed by a wider community. Around the middle of 2014, those videos had been viewed a grand total of 31 billion times. Wowsers. As with any community, there are superstars who’ve gathered a huge audience. They have hundreds of thousands of fans, and with the money they earn from their channel, a lucky few are even able to quit their jobs and play Minecraft for a living.

If you want to join those hallowed ranks, we’ve gathered together some advice for you from the very best in . You’ll learn from Minecraft superstars about the technical and artistic principles necessary to create a brilliant Minecraft YouTube channel. Just don’t forget us when you’re raking in the cash and adulation of your legions of fans, yeah?

As a sneak peak here's our chat with Redstone expert and rising YouTube star . Join us as he natters about Minecraft in schools, the fundamentals of circuitry and how YouTube made Mojang’s finest what it is today...

Going back, can you remember your first experience of Minecraft, and can you tell us what it was like? I remember it because some people at my school were talking about Minecraft and they were chatting about this game and saying it looks like Lego. You know what: I quite like Lego! So I hopped onto the computer. I asked my mum’s permission to buy it, because I was a little bit younger at the time. I got it and I was up till about 4am working on my first hut. It was made entirely out of dirt. It had holes in the roof for the torches and I remember on the first night I tried to sleep and just immediately got blown up. That was one of my first experiences of Minecraft. I’m glad I kept it up, but that could have been the end, almost!

Did you have any idea then how big the game would eventually become? Oh, no, definitely not. I got it in the Alpha stage. Back then you’d tell people: ‘I play Minecraft’ and they’d be confused. They’d be like: ‘the graphics are awful!’ They’d talk about how terrible it looked compared to all the other games…

What makes Minecraft such an enticing prospect for you? It’s just raw creativity. You make the fun in the game. It’s not like Call Of Duty or something like that. You have a very defined role in Call Of Duty where you have to go along and kill the other team. It’s great fun, but as far as Minecraft is concerned, there are no real instructions. There’s no real goal or motive. I mean technically you don’t have to do anything in the game. You can just walk around and punch trees! But you make your own little journey. It’s great fun messing around with what’s possible in this world, like I do with redstone, to see what I can do there.There are plenty of possibilities, for example, in building and things. You can build a giant castle. Nobody needs to build a giant castle! It’s not one of the aims of the game at all, but it’s just one of those things you can do if you want to.

The castle is pretty much the go to for everyone, right? Funny that! Yeah!

Do you think Minecraft should be held up as an educational resource for younger kids? I guess so yes. It requires quite a lot of logical thought and it forces you to be a lot more creative than other things in the market. If people are getting into redstone, it teaches you some of the fundamental things about Boolean logic, which is to say the fundamentals of computing. That’s a pretty big deal. Outside of that, it forces you to be creative and use your brain and assess what you’re doing and better whatever it is that you’re working on.

And then there’s the community aspect as well. Are you proud to be a member of the wider Minecraft community? It’s one of the more friendly communities I can think of on the internet. It was extremely welcoming. When I started out on YouTube, everyone who’s a similar size to you will help you out. Everyone seems to have a common interest in Minecraft, and obviously you get involved in your own little communities. If you’re all working together, as a team, it allows you to build friendships quite easily. There are plenty of little servers that are people from all over the world working together as a little group on their various projects and things. I’ve experienced that, and it’s something you see right the way throughout the community.

What makes Minecraft perfect for crafting videos around? It comes back to the fact that the person who’s creating the video has full control over the content they’re producing. In other games it relies on being extremely good at one aspect. Here you can just have fun with friends on a server, and that will make a good video because you’re clearly having fun! Other than that there’s the whole tutorial aspect. You can show people various bits, how to do the technical elements, and also you have the full Let’s Play. It’s essentially limitless. there’s not a set achievement structure. Let’s Plays can run on for hundreds of episodes without running out of content. That’s one of the main things that’s kept it going so well in terms of YouTube. Obviously you have the whole modding side, there’s always content available.

How important is YouTube for Minecraft? It’s very important because without it I don’t think Minecraft would be where it is today. That’s my own personal opinion. The reason a lot of my friends found out about Minecraft is because some of the YouTubers that they were watching originally started playing Minecraft. They saw it and they thought… well first they thought it looked rubbish, but when they saw the creative elements and all the things that you could do with it they got into it. It’s one of those games that blew up on YouTube pretty quickly, and suddenly it was in all of everyone’s sub boxes and feeds, and people were looking into it and wondering ‘what on earth is this thing?’ That’s the sort of thing that I don’t think Minecraft could have achieved through traditional advertising. If you showed me an advert on the TV, and it was like: ‘It’s building. With blocks.’ I’d just be like: ‘that doesn’t seem like anything I’d be interested in’. YouTube was a huge element for Minecraft’s success. And I know that’s biased from a YouTuber!

If you had the keys to YouTube is there anything you would change? There’d be a few things in terms of the YouTube side of things. Like if they were a lot better at pushing videos to people that were subscribed to you. That seems to be something that YouTube are phasing out. It seems odd to me. That’s the one thing I’d change. But it works as it is. It probably isn’t perfect, but it does function well. And I’m yet to find myself looking for an alternative. Currently I’m perfectly happy on YouTube. It suits me down to the ground. A few little tiny problems, but other than that it’s running smoothly.

And if you had the keys to Minecraft, what would you change there? I think there would be a few little bits. It wouldn’t be the hardcore elements of the game. They work perfectly fine. But in terms of my own little niche of redstone, there are a few little elements I wouldn’t mind adding. Cogs, pulleys, things like that. That would be really good fun and would add a whole new area of the world. Other than that, it’s probably not perfect. There are plenty of bugs in Minecraft and there are things people like to complain about, but you forget that it’s a game that functions perfectly well. I’ve played Minecraft for five years now. I paid 13 pounds for it, the best 13 pounds I’ve spent in my life. I’m in no position to complain!

What is your favourite build? Aw blimey. This is going to be a tough one. I could take this a couple of routes. I could go for my first ever redstone contraption which was a 2x2 door that was using just wooden doors. That was one of my first ones so you could say it was one of my favourites. Phoar… I’ve… There’s a lot of them. I don’t know why but I’ve got a fond memory of the armour stand jump scare device. It’s funny because it’s so very pointless. It was when flying blocks were first introduced, and we had the ability to launch entities at great speed. So I placed an armour stand behind the door and a flying block behind the armour stand. If you walked past it would just launch out at you, and I’ve always liked that contraption just because it was very silly.

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do with redstone? I’d almost go back to my first redstone project again! Oh, I don’t know. I’ve worked on some things that have never come together, and I’ve worked on them for hours and hours on end. I know I say don’t give up, but, when things go so wrong, you have to know when to stop! Looking back, they’re getting on, but there was an infinitely expandable 5x5 door. Back then it required a lot of piston action, that was getting on two-and-a-half, maybe three years ago. That was my first proper large scale redstone project. That took a lot of work!

Game trailers are an art form in and of themselves. With only 180 seconds or less to impress their audience, they need to tell an immediately arresting story that gives a snapshot of what an hours-long game will make you feel. One way to tie it all together is with a recognizable piece of licensed music, a familiar, melodic thread to guide you to the highlights of this virtual world.

E3 is gaming's trailer season, and you can bet that you'll be seeing plenty of trailers using licensed music to promote the many . With that in mind, we wanted to look back the trailers that were made more distinctive, more memorable, and (most importantly) more effective because they chose to revolve around familiar songs. Hey, all you E3 2015 trailer-smiths: these are the ones to beat.

Not all pulse-pounding rock songs are created equal. While banking on the power of screaming lyrics and throbbing rhythm usually gets a game some attention, about a million other trailers are doing the exact same thing. To be heard over all that noise, a trailer's musical accompaniment has to be distinguishable from generic beats and connected to the game in a way that makes the two feel inseparable. That's what folksy thrasher song 'Beast of America' does for the trailer of the same name.

It's difficult to envision this trailer with any other song, since the game and the tune seem tailor-made for each other. You have rustic humming and drumming at the beginning that drips with Americana. You have the obvious nods to a broken American dystopia that's everywhere in BioShock Infinite. You have vicious vocals and guitar riffs that highlight the violent, angry, and enormous visuals that fill the trailer. And you have a unique sound that stands out in your mind and makes the game do the same. Now you can't think of either the song or game without the other, which is exactly the point.

"What do you want, Michael?" asks a psychiatrist as a drum machine begins marching and keyboard strains slowly lift in the background. Michael is conflicted. He has the dream; the big house, the family, the money. But he also has nothing; his family hates him, and his days are filled with a crushing sense of self-loathing and worthlessness. As Michael begins to question what he really wants, Queen's 'Radio Ga Ga' forms the backdrop for one man's quest for meaning in a town full of fleeting opportunities to find it, and I honestly can't think of a better fit for this spectacular, explosive trailer.

The lyrics are a perfect metaphor for Michael's existential plight - a grasp at nostalgia for days gone by, when listening to the radio was something that mattered, not just 'some background noise'. Michael is a man attempting to regain the feeling of the glory days of his youth, when a big score was around every corner, but finds nothing beyond the regrets that come with mid-life crisis. Even the melody evokes strains of melancholy in its immensely danceable beat, punctuated by scenes showing exactly how Michael's life is falling apart around him. Rockstar is good at a lot of things, but ever since Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, it's been an expert at creating the perfect soundtrack, and Michael's trailer is its ultimate masterwork.

The most memorable trailers can strike a chord with people who have no intention of playing video games in general, let alone the one that's being advertised. And juxtaposing soft, melancholy piano melodies with Marcus Fenix's alleyway encounter against the Locust hordes creates the kind of attention-demanding scene that can enrapture anyone. You've got to appreciate just how big of a gamble it was for Microsoft and Epic to advertise their new red-blooded, M-rated shooter - packed with guns-blazing violence and chainsaw bayonets - by giving a brief, perfectly-scored glimpse into the forlorn desolation of the post-Emergence Day apocalypse. That gamble paid off, big time.

It's all anchored to Gary Jules' somber cover of 'Mad World', which puts the sadness of Tears for Fears' original lyrics into focus. The song was certainly memorable in Donnie Darko, but the Gears of War launch trailer makes it absolutely unforgettable for an entire generation of gamers. I still get chills when Jules croons the chorus just as Marcus is desperately firing on a gargantuan Locust he can't possibly defeat.

Ok, yes, it's dubstep. Go ahead and get all the hate for that particular overused musical style out of your system, because Nero's 'Doomsday' is the perfect backdrop for the delightfully bombastic, cheerfully ridonkulous action of . Really, what other kind of tune are you going to put behind a trailer that tells you to "Get ready to joy puke your face off"? Jazz? Stop.

Borderlands is a game that rejoices in its absurdity, revels in its violence, and reminds us that shooting things is a really, really fun thing to do. Borderlands 2 cranks up the volume in every way possible. The 87 bazillion guns get bazillionder, there are more skills (for the payment of bigger bills), and it’s 1,000 degrees hotter. Mostly, though, it's a colorful departure from typical gritty shooters and it simply wants you to have a good time doing violence on Pandora. The thumping beat of 'Doomsday' accentuates the quick shots of Borderlands 2's gameplay, accelerating your pulse until the volume plummets and Handsome Jack makes his appearance. We're gonna need a lot of guns...and 96.5% more wub wub.

When it comes to Prince of Persia trailers, Ubisoft has a format they like to stick to: footage of the Prince beating up enemies and using time-travel acrobatics, while a Moviefone narrator talks very seriously about destiny. The point is to make the Prince look like a proper action hero, but it pushes a simplistic view of who he really is. That's what makes the E3 trailer for the 2008 Prince of Persia reboot so interesting: it presents the Prince in a more thoughtful light, and the accompanying song - Sigur Ros' dreamy ballad 'Sæglópur' - shows just how different this Prince of Persia is meant to be.

Avoiding the quick transitions between fight scenes that you might expect to see, Sæglópur's gentle rhythm slows the trailer down, honing in on the way the characters move together and the world they're moving through. It also strengthens the mystical nature of their combat, and it feels like the music is given form through the Prince and Elika's colorful explosions of magic. The crescendo of the song comes just as Elika turns their battlefield into a lush, sunlit landscape, showing this is what the game is meant to be about: these two rebuilding the world. This new Prince feels different from his generically impressive former self, because Sæglópur has given him a different tone. One that sticks with you well after the trailer is over.

This trailer is all fire and rage and hate; a descent into madness stretched across five minutes that feel like an eternity. Leading the charge is its title track 'Nuclear' by English prog rocker Mike Oldfield, which I wrongly assumed had been written specifically for the trailer. This song perfectly encapsulates what's going on with Big Boss' character, while also invoking the overall tone of this game. The lines 'I'm nuclear / I'm wild / I'm breaking up inside' sum up the game's protagonist in a nutshell: a broken soldier whose life has been going to hell ever since the events of Metal Gear Solid 3.

Layered on top of these lyrics are images of violence that are extreme even by Metal Gear standards. This creates a striking contrast between and rest of the series. Sure, Snake's exploits have explored torture and other dark themes, but they've always been tempered with the levity of giant robots and people with superpowers. None of that is on display here. Instead it's all stabbing and torture and dismemberment, which together set a powerful (if not grisly) expectation for how this adventure will play out.

A lot of the trailers on this list take a solemn, serious tone, amplified by a poignant piece of music. And when it comes to melancholic drama, there's really no topping the original Dead Island trailer. So I was delighted to see the reveal go in the complete opposite direction, with its bright, light-hearted, and comically chaotic tone. Ignoring the fact that this sequel takes place in California - which, last I checked, is not an island - this trailer perfectly captures the fun side of a sunny zombie apocalypse.

Pigeon John's 'The Bomb' is irresistibly catchy, making you want to clap along to the poppy rhythm which, like a zombie's diet, is organ-centric. And John's jovial, self-congratulatory chorus of "I'm the bomb and I'm 'bout to blow up" perfectly matches the vanity of this tanned, teeth-whitened male model even as he slowly decomposes, as well as the impending explosion of undead pandemonium that's erupting right behind him. Even with the gazillion other trailers shown off during E3 2014, the song - and the accompanying scene of morning cardio gone to hell - kept running through my mind all week long.

If you're a fan of 19th century sea shanties, you've probably heard doesn't match that description at all, and the rendition of 'Drunken Sailor' used in its E3 debut trailer (changed to 'Drunken Whaler' to fit the game's environment better) becomes a whole lot darker to match.

The visuals in this trailer gracefully lay out the basics of Dishonored: where you'll go, who you'll run into, and the violent methods you have to dispose of most of them. However, it's the song that really lodges the whole thing in your brain. The music alternates between unsettling wisps of sound and pounding industrial cacophony; add that to a creepy child singing 'slice his throat with a rusty cleaver', and the music drives home that there's something deeply wrong with this place and everything you're seeing in it. Where the images could easily have been a dull catalog of whos and whats, 'Drunken Whaler' brings Dunwall to disturbing life, and makes you want to experience its horrors for yourself.

E3 starts this Sunday, when Bethesda hosts its inaugural press conference to show off the likes of , Doom, and any other unannounced projects it has tucked away. Dishonored 2 anyone? After that, it's a week of big game announcements, hardware news, and loads of overweight nerds dressing up like Mario and trawling the LA convention centre for free swag.

We're always excited about E3, and to get you in the mood, we've decided to tell you about the games we're most looking forward to at the show. As ever, feel free to let us know what's hottest in your world too. Or if there are any unannounced titles you're desperate to have revealed next week.

Check out for more great comment from the GamesMaster team.

Don't believe everything you read on the internet, kids, but this one seems like a shoo-in to be revealed next week. And even though I've seen nothing official of it yet, I want it almost as much as I want to take my next breath. Unpopular opinion time: I was very slightly disappointed by . It's an utterly brilliant game, of that there's no doubt, but it didn't draw me into its world in the same way that the Souls titles have. The environments weren't as varied or alluring, and the lack of depth in terms of character building and equipment selection left me a tad cold.

I hold the first Dark Souls up to be the finest game ever made, so to have Miyazaki back at the helm, and bringing the series to current-gen for the first time (in a bespoke manner, at least) is about as exciting a gaming proposition as I could imagine. If a new to boot, there's a very real chance that I'll actually explode.

The numbers! The endless stream of numbers! It seems you can't go big at E3 without tacking a digit on the end of something we already know about (or, worse, a subtitle seemingly pulled out of the hat at random). That's why Hello Games' space exploration… thing… is my most wanted game of E3.

Despite chatting with the folk working on it and absorbing every last drip of info that has trickled forth I still have no idea what to expect, beyond colourful dinosaurs and weird fish aliens, once I get my hands on the pad. It seems like an age since that's been the case at E3, and so, barring Team Ico turning up to the party with The Last Guardian (ha!), I'm clinging to the unknown in that vast sea of sequels and reboots. That, and Joel bagsied Dark Souls 3.

So canonically the bad guys won? Fair enough, that's certainly how 90% of my runs went in Enemy Unknown. Nevertheless I remain undeterred – I'm positively itching to take command of my own scrappy band of resistance fighters and bring down the totalitarian forces of The Man (or, rather, The Alien).

Between the stealth, melee combat, airborne HQ, and the more futuristic bent, looks like it'll genuinely shake up the franchise. Given Firaxis' track record, I'm optimistic that it'll be for the better. And as a loyal PC gamer, I can't help but be excited by the possibilities inherent in the studio moving away from consoles – advanced procedural generation and robust, open modding tools, could make this a game with a seriously impressive life-span. I got tingles when the announcement trailer ended with “Welcome back Commander”. I've missed you too, weird, shadowy, Optimus Prime-sounding council man.

RPGs have and will continue to enrich our lives immensely. Because when an RPG fulfils our wildest expectations, we're not just sitting on the sofa, mourning tomorrow's seven am start for the weekly slog. We're commandeering our own ship and crew across the universe. We’re stalking dragons amid ruined castles, on the way to becoming grand ruler of all we survey. We’re utterly invested in fighting for a cause, with the future of an entire, carefully crafted universe dependent on our actions; both good and bad.

However, throughout the course of enjoying epic adventures through hours of innovative open-world gameplay, I have, on occasion, been dragged crashing back to reality. The cause? The odd incoherently lacklustre areas, popping up to take the sheen off even the mightiest of RPG worlds. From the likes of the Mass Effect and Elder Scrolls games, to lesser known but equally brilliant titles, such as Divinity: Original Sin and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, there is one common thread. All of these games are great, but, thanks to one bad-apple location, none of them is perfect. So what’s wrong with them, exactly? How and why do these dull areas detract from our overall RPG experiences? Here are six games that pose the dilemma.

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a great big magnet of character attachment. Falling in love with characters is unavoidable. You can even possess your own castle-come-love-mansion where everyone just adores you and thinks you're great. And the open-world exploration throughout is beautiful, varied, and did I mention beautiful? But as the hours trickle on, a sense of deja vu begins to settle in. It's not that the areas suffer from visual similarity, since BioWare has done an excellent job of moulding diverse landscapes. It's the open world gameplay that feels stuck on repeat.

This is especially apparent in the later stages of the game, in areas such as The Hissing Wastes. As a wasteland, we’re understandably faced with a barren expanse of land to explore, but with set-dressing greatly reduced, the game’s underlying structural issues are accentuated horribly. Repetitive fetch quests, 'blank spaces' that offer no reward for exploration, easy battles, too many rifts to close… It’s all too obvious. Essentially, we’re faced with open-world gameplay experienced as copy-and-paste, and while DA: I saves itself from any grievous damage thanks to a gripping storyline and extremely well crafted characters, this structural stuff potentially hinders any yearning for future replay.

There are many, many great things we can say about Oblivion. Massive and addictive open-world? Check. Gripping storyline? Yep. Diverse character development? Of course. But do you want to go back and close that gate? Nope. Not even a little bit. While not quite as bad as ironing, closing the oblivion gates to keep the baleful Daedra at bay seems to be a universally hated chore. The gate destinations themselves are well crafted, in terms of their vibe, at least, owning a suffocating presence of death and despair that only increases our urgency to close them. However, in terms of structure and design, navigating your way through dead-end passages, caves and identikit rooms, in a realm where everything relentlessly wants to kill you rapidly loses its appeal.

When you eventually do the deed, the return of those verdant, deer-filled fields evokes an overwhelming sense of relief, if only because it’s over. Except that it’s not. More gates open up, in addition to those needed in to increase the haul of sigil stones. Exploring otherworldly new areas has never felt so tedious, rendering the gates of Oblivion places we are desperate to forget, rather than powerful experiences to remember.

I like Final Fantasy 13… don’t look at me like that - I really do! The game’s linearity, while heavily criticised, suits the pace of the storyline in many respects, and the environments explored along the way are magnificently eye-catching, married with tough battles involving plenty of trial and error strategy. Saying that, by the time we enter Gran Pulse, expecting a vast and dangerous plain appropriately feared by the people of Cocoon, we’re more than ready for some addictive open-world exploration.

Gran Pulse is certainly vast and dangerous. But unfortunately, also painfully boring. Sighs could be heard from across the globe, as wandering RPGers first plodded from battle to battle, plain to plain, like lost souls searching for meaningful NPC relationships and butterflies to chase. Instead, after such a long and ominous build-up, the disappointment is overwhelming. Once Final Fantasy games open up, the usually explode with character and content, filled out with bustling towns and cities, fun and urgent side-quests, and many a mystery to investigate along the way. Without this to break up the monotony of random enemy encounters, Final Fantasy 13 becomes, well, just random enemy encounters, really. It suffers heavily, leaving us truly not wanting to come back for more. Not that there is much more to be had in the first place.

From the multi-cultural Citadel and the beloved Normandy, to moons, planets, space stations, asteroids, starships and really scary reaper nest monstrosities, Mass Effect offers vast scope on a munificent sci-fi level. So why is one of the best RPGs ever skulking around on this list? Because of an exploration feature I choose to forget. Or try to. But can’t, because it’s terrible.

As the saviour of multiple universes, it’s your responsibility to harvest precious materials to ensure full competency in the end-game. In the first ME, this means taking your crew for a joyride in the Mako buggy, dropping in on a planet, and scouring the environment using a radar. Despite the awful car handling, this is passable the first time round. The second, third, fourth and fifth times, however, demonstrate three specific things: That alternative, off-track exploration results in sheer nothingness, that getting stuck up mountains due to horribly springy physics (a lot) is furiously dull, and that seeing rocks and then more rocks, over and over again, forever, truly dampens our yearning to explore the majesty of the universe. BioWare misses an opportunity here, and this is a feature I hope to see improved in ME4. It’d be epic to carry out such tasks, and even side quests, on a vibrant and fully realised alien world. Mass Effect is a universe of brilliantly crafted cultures, so can we make it a bit teresting to explore please?

With its bold, chunky production design, shot through with vibrant colours and textures, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning almost feels like the offline version of World of Warcraft, delivering a stunningly spirited world you really want to explore. Its vast array of caves, ruins, magical forests, towns and cities positively burst with life. And like the Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls games, it delivers huge scope, easily containing 50 hours of exploration in addition to the main storyline.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all those hours are exciting. Akin to Dragon Age: Inquisition in this respect, the open-world areas, while diverse, offer exploration that sometimes feels strained. I started to feel this in Klurikon, a region entered after a memorable battle with the hideous (and enormous) Balor. Sadly, a little inadvertent grinding at this point saw the game deem me over-levelled, detracting from the importance of side quests, and making me feel punished for my earlier enthusiasm for exploring its world. Simply, Klurikon just wasn’t designed to accommodate my wandering. Massive nerd tears were shed as this pattern increased in intensity towards the end of the game; the growing tedium emphasised without the strength of a ‘good-enough’ storyline.

As if in answer to our prayers, Larian Studios put major focus on its game's environment, not just in form, but in terms of making the fabric of the world an engaging game mechanic in itself. There are four main regions to explore as you progress through the game, with busy fishing towns, forest villages, and secret-filled dungeons en masse. But in addition to delivering the expected looting, lock-picking, object-moving, lever-pulling and trap-triggering, Divinity: Orginal Sin’s environment is design to be a weapon in its own right.

Whether you’re creating volatile surfaces to trap enemies, or setting off deadly substances for game changing damage, using the environment to your advantage is a table turner, and often the most effective way to win the game’s uncompromising battles. So what do we actually have to complain about? The problem, alas, is the environmental structure around the action. The difficulty of battles and abundance in loot necessitates far too many repeat visits to towns along the way. Quests work similarly, to the point where toing and froing from place to place, repeating conversations with the same vendors and characters, feels like a tedious mess of bureaucratic busywork. Get it all cleared, and then you’ll find that the next area brings all of that again, but it’s tougher. Talk about making a rod for your own back.