E3 Special 2026

Welcome to another E3 Special! First up this year was Sony and they opened their show with a new look at Wolverine! I can’t say I was all that interested in Wolverine based on what I’d previously seen of the game and after this show I’m sorry to say that I’m even less interested! I don’t want to rag too hard on a game I’ve not played based on a short little slice like this but nothing I saw looked very exciting to me at all.

It looked, to be brutally honest, like a game primarily designed to appeal to easily impressed game critics with low standards. Third person action. High production value. Cinematic camera. Seamless gameplay to cinematic transitions. Simple, slow, repetitive combat with a focus on ‘press button for cool canned animation’ rather than mechanical depth. It reminded me a lot of God of War 2018 and if you’ve read my review of that game you’ll know I don’t mean that in a good way.

Most of what we saw wasn’t even gameplay. And what little gameplay there was looked dull as f**k to me. Showers of blood might be enough to make the average idiot on YouTube cry ‘sick, bro!’ but to me it just looks silly when there’s no sign of actual decapitation or dismemberment – I think I saw one leg chop but it was a robot leg because the enemies are all conveniently ‘cybernetically enhanced mercenaries’. Groan! I hate sounding so cynical and negative about a game but I’m not going to sugar coat my reaction. I also fully expect it to hit at least 90 on Metacritic and be nominated for GOTY.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls still looks good but I’m more interested in the single player content which I’m hoping won’t be threadbare. Phantom Blade Zero still looks interesting. So does Ace Combat 8 and Ill and Control: Resonant and . . . hold on – is there anything new here? I feel like I talked about all these games last year?

I suppose there was also God of War Laufey but . . . yeah, see my God of War 2018 review again. Most of it was just cinematic with the occasional ‘press button to continue cinematic’ and a little bit of repetitive, simple combat – I’m sensing a pattern here. If this is what I’m going to miss out on if Sony do pull back from PC releases of their ‘prestige’ single player games, then I think I’ll be just fine.

Next up was Summer Game Fest and a few things caught my eye here. There was (yet another) Resident Evil remake in the form of Veronica – they really know how to crank these out, huh? I played Code Veronica on release back in the day but I can’t say I recall much about it aside from that guy that looked like a young Leonardo DiCaprio.

The trailer for Alien Isolation 2 got me a little excited. I loved the first game, so I’m eager to see if they can recapture the magic – and the terror! Gen Atlas looked interesting and a Ninja Turtles games developed by Platinum Games – The Last Ronin – was certainly not on my Bingo card!

End of Abyss looked good – but I think I said that last year too. And The Wolf Among Us 2 was revealed. I liked the original so I’m curious about this one. And finally we have Stellar Blade: Blood Rain which looks pretty cool. I really enjoyed Stellar Blade – let’s hope they do a little better with the story and characters this time, eh?

The X-Box (or XBOX!) Showcase delivered yet again with a fantastic selection. Opening the show was an extended look at Gears of War: E-Day – kind of surprising given the Showcase was followed by a lengthy direct for the game. I didn’t watch that because I’ve seen enough now to know this is a game I want to play. I’m not a massive Gears fan. I liked the first one a lot back in the day, enjoyed 2 but never actually finished 3! This new one looks good though!

Next up was another look at the now delayed Fable which still looks good and this was followed by a look at the Halo ‘Campaign Evolved’ remake which I wasn’t super excited about until I saw this trailer and the classic theme kicked in.

We got a new look at State of Decay 3 which I’m hoping offers an improvement over State of Decay 2. I said in my review last year that ‘like the original, it’s frustratingly close to being great. Maybe in the next one, eh?’ I guess we’ll find out! We also got a new look at Metro 2039, another series I like but don’t love and I feel like I’m waiting for one to really grab me. Maybe this one will!

The next game came as a real surprise but a very welcome one and I’d say is the game I was most excited by in this year’s ‘Not E3’ season – Senua. I really enjoyed Hellblade and absolutely adored the sequel – it was my GOTY in 2024. This new game (a sequel, I presume?) looks like an interesting mix of the more free form and open combat of the original game, but with the graphical fidelity and brilliant animations of the sequel – and that could prove to be a very potent mix indeed.

I’m quite happy with how the sequel ended for Senua, so I do feel a little bad if she’s back in the thick of it again because that girl really needs a break! I’ll be there day one though. Sorry!

You might think it strange how excited I am given how I’ve spoken about other ‘cinematic’ action games in this very post but here’s the thing – Hellblade 2 was a cinematic action game done right. It embraced what it was in the same way a game like Bayonetta 3 (my GOTY in 2022) embraced what it was.

Neither game tried to strike this bland middle ground like say, (potentially – we’ve only seen a small slice) Wolverine, where it doesn’t want to lean too hard into deep, mechanical depth and sacrifice the cinematic focus, but it doesn’t want to commit fully to the cinematic experience either and be accused of being a ‘walking sim’. So we end up with flashy, mashy but ultimately rather dull combat with repetitive canned animations – but critics lap that shit up so what do I know?

The Doom: The Dark Ages DLC looks great so I’ll probably pick that up. I never got around to the DLC for Eternal – it was always on my ‘I’ll get to it eventually list’. I don’t want the same to happen here. And then we had Crazy Taxi! Crazy Taxi is back, baby! I spent way too much time playing that back in the day.

The show closed with Call of Duty stuff – not for me, but I won’t moan about it like so many others. It’s Call of Duty! Of course it’s gonna get a prime slot! Although I do think they could have ended with Clockwork Revolution given the ‘console exclusive’ thing. Open with one, close with another – it just makes sense. As for the game, I feel like I’ve almost seen too much of it now to get very excited.