With the dust of E3 having settled and all the news broken about new games, I’ve got to say that this year’s conference hasn’t really got me excited for the next 12 months of gaming. Don’t get me wrong, I’m looking forward to some games like No Man’s Sky, Mortal Kombat X and Code Name S.T.E.A.M but I haven’t come out of it with the same giddy hype I have when compared to previous years. I thought I’d outline my reasoning why this year’s E3 was a bit anti-climactic:

1 – Leaks and early reveals galore

One major factor which lessened much of the hype for this year’s E3 was the sheer number of games we knew about before the conference even started. Either through leaks or early reveals, so many games were shown off so their sudden showing on the E3 stage or show floor really took away from the hype. I mean we knew about Bloodborne, Uncharted 4, Farcry 4, The Master Chief Collection, Xenoblade Chronicles X and many more, even before the show doors opened. The real lack of surprise on the part of many companies really killed my excitement going into the show, as I knew that rather than getting loads of brand new announcements, I’d get a little bit more information on a game which we already knew about.

2- The vague ‘2015’ release date

This links into the previous point, as if we did get information on a new game or one that had already been revealed, one vital piece of information that we didn’t get was the release date. So many of the games shown off at E3 were given the vague release date of 2015, which kills hype almost immediately. Most of the time, we weren’t even given a season in which to look for the game, just sometime in 2015. It could come out the 1st of January or the 31st of December, who knows? It’s nice to know that games are coming but the vagueness of the release dates given by companies, give you very little to look forward to. Even saying something like the first half of 2015 is more promising than just the year. Give us something to mark on our calendars, come on.

Zelda 2015This date from the Zelda trailer may as well say, it’ll probably be delayed in 2015 to 2016.

3- Too many cutscenes, not enough gameplay

Even if the game wasn’t leaked and we got some semblance of a release date, you can bet that we didn’t get any gameplay. The sheer lack of gameplay shown off by companies during reveals or over the course of press conferences was mind boggling. Again, it’s understandable if the game is a while off but when the overwhelming majority of your games that you are unveiling have no gameplay to go with them, it does not do you any favours and it does not get us excited. In this day and age when almost anything can be created via CGI, pre-generated reveals are not impressive. I don’t care how flashy your pre-rendered trailer is, I want to see how your game looks in action as that’s the thing I’m going to be playing. For me, a pre-rendered trailer may give me some excitement for a few days but after that, it will be forgotten in the mists of the E3 trailer storm. Give me a good gameplay demo however, and I’ll remember it for ages.

4- 2013 was a tough act to follow

I think this is the reason why this year’s E3 was so underwhelming. Last year was an absolute belter of a conference. We had the massive war going on between Sony and Microsoft, we had a new console generation brewing with all the new games to look forward to on these new systems as well as more information on some of the best games of the last generation like the Last of Us. Last year’s conference got many gamers at maximum levels of hype and to be honest, this year paled in comparison.

Hopefully, next year will be better and that many of the games we have heard about at E3 will have more information revealed at future conferences like EGX London, Gamescom, Tokyo Games Show and so on but as for this year’s E3, it honestly hasn’t got me super excited for the year ahead. Must try harder, C +.