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The Last Case of Benedict Fox

Like 9 Years of Shadows, I found myself immediately curious about The Last Case of Benedict Fox because it was a Metroidvania doing something a bit different. This game stands much further apart due to being a Cthulu-inspired period piece, of course, and is largely why I remember it more than many of the games I had seen at Microsoft’s showcase.

I must also admit that it feels a bit more fresh for an obviously Lovecraftian narrative. Our protagonist seems to have a voice haunting and guiding him through the adventure, immediately breaking from proper convention by allowing him to communicate with the unknowable. It feels far more interested in the aesthetic of Lovecraft than the actual descent into madness, though obviously it’s too early to tell either way.

Regardless, it looks to be a Metroidvania focused more on narrative and exploration than combat, and every so often those can be refreshing. I do wish I had more to say about the gameplay demonstrated, which looks to be some decently polished platforming over action. In the end, though, I’m afraid it’s the game’s style that wins me over more than the mechanics. I look forward to spinning it up on Game Pass early next year.

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Read previous round-up impressions.

It’s difficult to determine what games to outline as highlights of the show given how many of them were known quantities. Many of the unreleased games living rent free in my mind, such as Crimson Desert, DokeV, and Lies of P, were nowhere to be found. Microsoft’s first-party games in development such as Hellblade: Senua’s Saga and Avowed were also absent from the publisher’s showcase. As a result, most of the games that have stood out are primarily games I already knew about and have been following for some time.

Additionally, I was not capable of following all the showcases as they streamed this year. This left me scrambling to see what they revealed, the majority of which were outside of my wheelhouse. There are plenty of games that certainly look interesting, such as Nivalis, but I have no real interest in playing a cyberpunk-themed slice-of-life. Not outside of VA-11 Hall-A, at least.

It also doesn’t help that I’ve grown more picky as time progresses. While a game like Morbid Metal checks all the right boxes on paper, the lack of enemy flinch or proper feedback gives it a tedious, damage-sponge look. Those that read my Beta impressions of Marvel’s Avengers know that the feel of combat and tactile feedback in an action game are very important to me, and it is the one crucial ingredient this upcoming game seems to be lacking. My impressions are similar for Elsie, a Mega Man styled action platformer whose mechanics look just a tad jankier than Smelter, an indie game I overall enjoyed but found lacking in tightness of control.

This leaves me with a lot of games that caught my interest or had me curious, but aren’t really generating excitement or a desire to add to the wishlist. Nevertheless, I have been able to sift through enough trailers to pick out some highlights of this year’s Game Fest.

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It is the morning of Monday, June 6th, as I begin to cobble together these thoughts and drafts. There is a headline in which Geoff Keighly, host of Summer Games Fest and The Game Awards, warns viewers that the event will focus primarily on announced games. It is an understandable word of caution, with crazy and unfounded rumors flying left and right as eager consumers hope for some slew of colossal surprises.

This has generally been the state of things for several years now, and was something I had picked up on in Sony’s State of Play. Aside from the opening trailer for a Resident Evil 4 remake – long-rumored but never officially addressed by Capcom – every game showcased was a known quantity. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as last year’s Elden Ring reveal was for a previously announced title and yet managed to be the talk of the summer. Sometimes, the best source of marketing available is to answer a question, and for many games this year, that question is simply “what will it be like?”

It is now Monday, June 13th, a week after having written the above two paragraphs. I have deleted a page and a half of text I had written a week ago, abandoned after having been inspired to declare E3 dead. The majority of the Game Fest has concluded. Unlike last year, I’ve missed approximately half of the shows. I have not seen the Guerilla Collective showcase nor have I consciously seen anything aside from the PalWorld trailer from the Future Games Showcase. Capcom’s stream begins in less than two hours, Microsoft has an extension planned for tomorrow, Ubisoft has just scheduled a live stream focused on the Assassin’s Creed franchise, Square Enix and Blizzard aim to have streams focused on Final Fantasy VII and Overwatch 2 on Thursday, respectively, and Focus Entertainment has also just announced today that A Plague Tale: Requiem won’t be getting a release date until their own stream on June 23rd.

E3 is most certainly dead, and Summer Games Fest is no festival of games.

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I am not reacting to the recently reiterated promise by the ESA that E3 shall resume in 2023. I am sure they will be holding an event that bears the name of E3 while Geoff Keighley and so many other companies continue to do their own thing. Last year, I spent many words lamenting the current state of E3, what it has evolved into, and what it has failed to evolve into. I also concluded that it was the Internet that had driven it to change both for better and for worse.

Despite knowing that Keighley’s Summer Game Fest was still going to occur this year and many other presentations would be happening, I had failed to muster the same type of excitement I had last May. Now that we’re approaching, there’s some degree of hype and anticipation. On the whole, however, I’m not really expecting much.

I couldn’t really put my hand on why until YouTube had suddenly recommended me this look back at E3’s 2004 showfloor. I was specifically seeking out one of Valve’s Half-Life 2 presentations when it popped up, and it led me to reliving the highlights of the 2004 press conferences of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. I was suddenly back in my College dorm room, just a couple weeks out from summer break, watching low-resolution videos and clips from the conferences over and over again in excitement.

We’ve theoretically come a long way since the early 2000’s in terms of video streaming and access to information. In fact, if you look at the Summer Game Fest schedule, we’ve never had such access to so many streams and presentations at once. There’s bound to be announcement after announcement after announcement, a veritable media blitz for the gaming consumer to drown in.

So why is it that I long for the days of low-resolution video and requiring three or four separate media players in order to watch a two minute clip that took thirty minutes to download?

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