SUMMER GAME FEST is back — for the fourth time — now with a live audience. The first Summer Game Fest took place in Geoff Keighley’s spare bedroom and across different game developers’ homes via Zoom in May of 2020. It was a new way of creating a “live” games showcase during the pandemic.
The second and third Summer Game Fests took place in June 2021 and 2022 on a state of the art stage with no audience and a few in-person guests (standing a safe six feet apart from Geoff). The no audience video wall stage idea was also used for some other showcases around that time, including EA Play 2021 (hosted by WWE Superstar Xavier Woods aka Austin Creed).
Yesterday, Geoff Keighley held the first ever Summer Game Fest with a live audience at the YouTube Theater in California. The room was full of games media guests, and although E3 was canceled this year there will still be some in-person events taking place this week thanks to Summer Game Fest.
While I love watching my platform specific (Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation) showcases, Summer Game Fest is great because it features games for all gamers coming to different platforms. We also get to see games set in different genres: horror, action, adventure, shooters, looters, indies, cozy, cute and everything in between.
A big, in-person event vs the new digital (no audience) showcases we are so used to is refreshing, because the people watching at home get to experience the presentation with the live audience — along with their live reactions. I find myself lost in some game trailers until the title reveal at the very end. The live audience always does a good job of “sussing out” those small clues that reveal the game early on.
In two hours, we got to see over forty upcoming titles. Instead of doing one TOP FIVE games list, I broke it up into a few different TOP FIVE lists this time, but let’s start with the TOP FIVE games:
Yesterday’s Showcases
Here is the full four-hour presentation of Summer Game Fest followed by Day of the Devs and the Devolver Digital Showcase: The Return of Volvy.
TOP FIVE GAMES
1 | Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
For two years, fans have been waiting for more news on the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time Remake. Now it seems that Ubisoft has put that project on hold to focus on a brand new title in the Prince of Persia series, Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. While the remake trailer looked great, I’m digging this new art style for the prince. Remakes are cool and all, but I’m almost always more excited to see a brand new take on a series.
Expect to see more of this game this coming Monday, June 12th, 2023 at the upcoming Ubisoft Forward event. For now, we know that Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is expected to release on January 18th, 2024 on PC and all consoles.
2 | Sonic Superstars
I have still yet to play Sonic Frontiers, but I did spend many hours with Sonic Mania on my Nintendo Switch.
I grew up a Nintendo kid, playing Mario games on my NES and SNES, but I also owned a Sega GameGear where I played tons of Sonic. I’ve never been great at the fast-paced, side-scrolling Sonic games, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love them.
Sonic Mania featured all-new levels with the classic Sonic look and design. It’s nice to see them trying something new by mixing that old school, fast-paced, side-scrolling Sonic gameplay with the visuals of today. Sonic Superstars is coming to PC and consoles this Fall.
3 | Lies of P
The 2020s will go down in history as the decade of re-telling Pinocchio’s story. We recently got two new Pinocchio movies (Disney & Netflix), and now we’re getting this totally different take on the story in Lies of P. This trailer made me think of two things: the world of Bioshock and Johnny Depp (as Edward Scissorhands and Sweeney Todd).
There’s just something very intriguing about this game. Perhaps it is the re-telling of a children’s story in a much darker setting. Lies of P is coming to PC and PlayStation and Xbox consoles on September 19th, 2023. A demo also went live on those platforms yesterday.
4 | Lysfangha: The Time Shift Warrior
We saw a few enticing indie titles during the showcase, but this one really caught my attention due to the interesting mechanics of time shifting and multiplying the main character. It looks to play a bit like Hades, with some added abilities and Doctor Strange-like magic aesthetics.
Lysfangha is coming to PC (via Steam and Epic Games Store) in 2023. I hope to see it on consoles at some point after that.
5 | Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
The Chocobos have arrived!
I guess this means it is time to finish Final Fantasy VII Remake. My history with the Final Fantasy series goes a bit like this, I love the music, but didn’t know much about the games up until recently. In the past few years, I have played a bit of the original Final Fantasy VII (ported to Nintendo Switch), I played a quarter to half of the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I attended the piano concert, and I played some Final Fantasy XV.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is set to release as a PlayStation 5 exclusive in Early 2024. This gives me a few months to make it through the rest of Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Honorable Mention Games
The games above are the TOP FIVE most interesting game trailers to me. However, there were many others games shown. Let’s go over some that got my attention, but I’m not completely sure if they are for me yet.
The first game is The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. After the recent poor release of the once highly-anticipated Gollum game, I will wait to see more from this game. When it comes to the world of The Lord of the Rings, the dwarves are my favorite creatures.
John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando looks like another Back 4 Blood-type game. Having the master of horror, John Carpenter’s name, attached to the project makes me wonder how much influence he had on this game. Seeing Saber Interactive and Focus Entertainment involved made me think this would be a game based on a John Carpenter movie — like The Thing.
Just the other day I was talking to my friend about the world of Warhammer 40,000 and lore that spans between the tabletop miniatures game, video games, and books. Last year, I played three or four different games from the world of Warhammer 40,000, and although most of them didn’t really stick with me they were all completely different games. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 looks to be nothing like those other games I’ve recently tried.
TOP FIVE MOMENTS
1 | Ed Boon tells us more about Mortal Kombat 1
I love that Ed Boon came out to the old school Mortal Kombat music. I’m a terrible fighting game player, but I’ve always been better at Mortal Kombat than at Street Fighter games. However, the Mortal Kombat games I have played are 1, 2, X, and 11. There’s a big gap of Mortal Kombat games that I haven’t played (although I know that they didn’t go through all of the numbers).
Now, they are returning to Mortal Kombat 1. The story mode looks to be fun, and I like the addition of the new Kameos (with a K, of course), where you can have a second fighter jump in and help from time to time. We did see some gruesome kombat and fatalities, but what I would like to see is some of those old school “Babalities” (where you would turn your opponent into their infant version).
Everyone loves Ed Boon, but to me he doesn’t look like the kind of dude who would create such a brutal gorefest. If I didn’t know who Ed Boon was, I would picture the creator of Mortal Kombat to look more like John Romero (creator of DOOM).
2 | Nicolas Cage is coming to Dead by Daylight
I first heard the news of Nicolas Cage coming to Dead by Daylight some time last week during an episode of Kinda Funny Games Daily. The funny part is that he’s coming as himself and a survivor, not a killer. With the recent release of Renfield, you’d think he was coming to the game as Dracula.
Dead by Daylight is a 4v1 action survival multiplayer game. We have seen many iconic horror movie villains come to the game (Freddy Kruger, Ghost Face, Michael Myers, Pinhead, the Demogorgon). The Nicolas Cage news is silly because he’s basically playing himself, or as he called it “a heightened version of himself.”
3 | Spider-Man 2 gets an Official Release Date
I’m still a bit bummed that this game is not called Spider-Men.
Even though the PlayStation Showcase took place only two weeks ago, and a big chunk at the end was dedicated to Spider-Man 2 we only got a release window that day. Is Sony going to have beef with Insomniac over saving the release date announcement for Geoff Keighley? Probably not, this was definitely planned so that Spider-Man 2 could also be a part of Summer Game Fest.
Spider-Man 2 is coming to PlayStation 5 on October 20, 2023.
4 | Final Fantasy Taco Bell x Door Dash Prank
Right after this Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis trailer Geoff pulled a prank on the crowd by saying “Now, speaking of Final Fantasy,” which made the crowd start to react before he calmed them down and announced a Door Dash x Taco Bell deal where you can get a free burrito, plus a chance to win a Final Fantasy XVI Collector’s Edition.
Nice one, Geoff! It all paid off during the “one more thing” moment, when we saw the world premiere trailer for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which can be found in the above section.
5 | Marvel Snap‘s Ben Brode
When Marvel Snap first came out I was absolutely obsessed. It didn’t help that my first time playing was a day when I was stuck at the tire shop getting two new tires for my car. I ended up staying there for a couple of hours. I had planned on reading, but instead played Marvel Snap until my phone was almost dead.
I’m not sure if the new game mode coming to Marvel Snap will bring me back, I just love Ben Brode’s energy. He should be a guest on all gaming showcases this weekend. Thank you for being a great big ball of positive energy Ben, and please feel free to send me one of those Marvel Snap jackets.
Honorable Mention Moments
I quickly want to mention two other moments that took place during Summer Game Fest 2023. The first was the Alan Wake 2 interview with Sam Lake. I’ve been slowly playing through the original Alan Wake (not the remake) for a couple of years. Even though this sequel looks quite spooky, it kind of made me want to go back and finish the original game. Maybe I need to start over with the remake.
The next one was Jason Isaacs in Baldur’s Gate 3. I’ve always wanted to get into some sort of Dungeons & Dragons-inspired RPG video game, but I have trouble due to all of the characters, lore, and storytelling. Knowing that Baldur’s Gate is heavily-inspired by D&D makes me want to dive in deep and really go for it. The Jason Isaacs news helps because I met him a few years ago at Supercon here in Florida and had a great conversation with him.
Extra Stuff
I was going to make a third TOP FIVE list of observations, but instead I’ll quickly mention a few of them.
First off, there were no Muppets this year at the Summer Game Fest. I feel like Muppet characters have been present at each one of these events, or at the Game Awards in past years. The Muppets let you be a part of their Haunted Mansion special last year, Geoff!
I was thinking that we would get some new The Witcher game news with the Season 3 trailer for the show. I’m not caught up on The Witcher show on Netflix, but that first season was great. If we’re not getting any new The Witcher game news, you should at least let Henry Cavill announce something gaming related. We all know how much he loves games.
Geoff announced a game called Palworld, which he called, “Pokémon with guns.” After seeing this trailer that was a spot on description, only I thought it was the humans/trainers that had the guns, but no the creatures did.
Porsche is celebrating their 75 year anniversary by giving away 75 limited edition Xbox Series X consoles and controllers, and you can enter to win one right here.
Lately, we’ve seen a lot of new IP fail. We’ve seen a lot of Immortals of Aveum lately, which is about to release next month. I’m hoping that this is one of the first new IP games to really soar. From the gameplay trailers and preveiw coverage it sounds like it has potential.
There you have it. Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest 2023 showcase may be over, but there is still so much to come over the next few days. Make sure to check in here on the site (myVGBC.com) and on our Twitter page (@myVGBC) for more on the rest of these presentations.
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