The hottest trailers from E3 are here compiled into my own rankings by quality of entertainment, visuals, and whether or not they made me want to play the game. Entertainment comes in the form of a coherent storyline for the duration of the trailer, thus the mere hint of a story doesn’t count. Visuals are not necessarily about good graphics so much as artistic. Battlefield 1 , for example, has a lot of realism going on, but Dishonored 2 makes it’s mark as a moving painting. That said, please keep in mind that all of these rankings are my personal opinion. A few honorable mentions are Horizon Zero Dawn , for showing us yet another takedown of a machine, and Resident Evil 7 VR, for scaring the shit out of all of us.
Forza Horizon 3
Racing games are a guilty pleasure of mine, even though I don’t know that much about cars. I can’t get enough of getting into the Ferrari or Lamborghini and tearing up a countryside road in a good game. This trailer showed a lot of different tracks that were not only beautiful, but actually affected gameplay. Most racing games strive to have backgrounds and tracks that look amazing as you roar past them, so as much as this wasn’t surprising, it was still less city than Need for Speed . Those beaches and jungles seemed like places I actually wanted to be. No story, however, not even a Fast and Furious one. The cars looked okay, with the black Lamborghini Centenario LP 770-4 coming out on top with sleek and smooth lines. All in all, cool – I’d probably play it, but there was nothing unique to stand out with this trailer.
The Last Guardian
Not much new footage, but oh my, a release date! After keeping such close watch on the development of this game, I was quite surprised to recognize most of the initial parts of this trailer. That said, the parts that were new told a thousand words. Clearly this is going to tug at our heartstrings with a deep and sweet relationship between this little boy and his griffin-like companion. The world of The Last Guardian looks confined to some kind of crumbling temple, however, it looks no less beautiful for it. Indeed, that we see nothing other than the boy and at least two other griffins, interests us all the more. The hint, if nothing else, of a greater, more complex story puts this trailer at number nine. It didn’t grab my attention as much as the other trailers.
Spider-Man
Well, everyone already knows the story of Spider-Man, so they had to compile a trailer that focused on gameplay. But it rather fell short, didn’t it? There were no sweeping visuals or intriguing takedowns, it just looked like another Spiderman movie – the shitty one. The trailer showed no vast world, like in God of War , or any unique storyline that would make anyone want to play this game. I mean, when Spider-Man wraps his web around a guy and it yanks him out of the car, it just looks like bad graphics from a decade ago. The voice actor, however, made me hope that maybe this game would adhere to the original comic book Spider-Man, rather than the movie ones. A voice does not hold up a trailer, however, so I’ll need to see more of this game before I’ll consider playing it.
Watch Dogs 2
I like me a good political game, and in this case, DedSec screams “Anonymous.” I also very much enjoy that weapons aren’t nearly as prolific as they are in war-centric games. The Watch Dogs 2 trailer wasn’t so much entertaining as it was intriguing. I could probably tell the story from start to finish, but predictable stories and Ubisoft go hand in hand. The trailer had me wondering exactly how the plot was going to play out with the tools of violence and hacking. Were they really going to squash the government, end the game there, and not at all consider the consequences of running a coup? Especially without any personal experience in governing themselves? These questions made me want to play the game to be sure, and the ability to hack anything and everything is also a cool bonus.
Dead Rising 4
The humor of this trailer makes me laugh every time I watch it. I mean, Frank is scrolling through Facebook and looking at all these .gifs with zombies that are pure gold. As such, this trailer wins a lot of points for being entertaining without telling a story. If the cute Christmas tune or the candy cane crossbow doesn’t get you in the festive mood, setting a Christmas tree made out of zombies on fire definitely will. Visually, Dead Rising 4 is just another zombie game with a much better sense of humor than Days Gone . Nothing truly stands out in this trailer besides the crazy, not totally logical weapons the series is famous for.
Battlefield 1
I don’t like games that are almost too real like this one, but I can admit it looks good. I can tell they looked at a lot of old World War I photos to really get all of these levels and spaces as accurate as possible. The costumes and the people themselves look out of the history books themselves. The weaponry, planes, zeppelins, tanks, canons, all look exactly as I remember from my local museum. Though I don’t approve of glorifying war, especially WWI, the music certainly makes it feel like a great time as you use all the different weapons to defeat your enemies. Not nearly as entertaining as it could be, as it doesn’t tell a story at all, but as I said, the look of this game is pretty good. I do not, however, have any urge to play the game after this trailer.
Prey
A new game from Arkane Studios that honestly looks like they wanted to explain similar abilities from Dishonored as “not magic” and out popped this idea; a beautiful science fiction world with the usual dark side of human experimentation. Nothing, however, is usual about the time loop, or warping of reality. This puts Prey in the top five, but it wasn’t quite entertaining enough to make it higher. Especially since I’m still not sure I want to play the game just from seeing this trailer. I will definitely need to see more of it before I decide, thus putting this trailer squarely in fourth place.
For Honor
Below God of War for not having any actual gameplay, but telling a rather amazing story. Three warriors, destined to never stop fighting because of an evil force that denies peace. Ubisoft made the game sound like quite the mission of destruction and death. I couldn’t decide if it was going to be fun or traumatizing, as this Apollyon appears to one of the best villains Ubisoft has made in awhile. Once again, despite this being a game I wouldn’t normally consider playing, this trailer definitely made me feel pretty pumped to play the game and find out more about each of these warriors and the world itself.
God of War
God of War hits second place for being pretty amazing, but not quite as visually different and unique as Dishonored 2 . I admit my first thought about this trailer was rather sardonic, applauding Kratos for having what appeared to be an emotional investment in another person. But that didn’t stop me from loving every second of the live gameplay. It entertained by telling a story, with a beginning, middle, and end, as all trailers should. Taking down a troll while walking on thin ice was by the far the coolest part to watch, to be sure. In addition, I don’t even like the God of War series and this trailer made me want to at least play this game. As an accumulation of everything that makes a good trailer, God of War certainly succeeded.
Dishonored 2
This trailer is in first place because it was the best in all categories: it entertained, was visually stimulating, and made me all the more excited to play the game.This trailer showed us for the first time what Shadow Walk, Domino, and Mesmerize look like in action, and it was totally awesome. This is one of the few games where gameplay stands out to me a lot more than the story itself. Arkane Studios makes each ability not only visually stimulating, but extremely effective. Shadow Walk is probably the best, though it takes the longest to execute. In one clip, claw-like hands surrounded by wisps of black smoke hang a man upside down before breaking his neck. It just can’t get cooler than that.