HiGame

Now that the E3 press events are out of the way, we have a firm idea of what the gaming landscape looks like for the next year or two. The major events were brimming with games of all sizes, and the near future is looking extremely bright. So today, I want to highlight ten of the most impressive games at E3, and help you figure out which titles are worth keeping an eye on.



Rise of the Tomb Raider

Crystal Dynamics’s follow up to 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot is looking gorgeous. It seems that the dev team took all of the criticisms to heart, and this title will focus much more on — ya know — raiding tombs. Unfortunately, Microsoft locked up timed exclusivity, so only Xbox One and Xbox 360 players will get to enjoy Rise of the Tomb Raider this year. Hopefully, the limited number of platforms will allow for more time spent optimizing for performance.



Super Mario Maker

This incredible game lets you make, share, and play Mario levels using tile sets from Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and New Super Mario Bros. Based on everything we’ve seen so far, Nintendo is executing beautifully on a concept that will easily appeal to both the NES generation and the Minecraft generation. More importantly, Nintendo is finally making good on using the tablet controller.



Gears of War 4

We got our first glimpse at the new Gears of War this week, and it’s a real looker. This is the first game being developed in-house at Microsoft, and it’s the first Xbox One installment in the series. This relatively new team has a lot to prove, but the first impression was quite positive. We won’t be playing this game anytime soon, but the potential here is huge. Hell, this might even be enough to close the sales gap.



Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

It was sad to see Uncharted 4 get pushed back into 2016, but this new footage looks truly outstanding. The folks at Naughty Dog are well known for their technical prowess, so I’m confident that they’ll be able to deliver stunning visuals with a (mostly) solid frame rate. 1080p locked at 60fps is most certainly too much to hope for here, but it’s a safe bet that it will graphically outshine all other PS4 releases to date.



The Last Guardian

When people talk about troubled game development, this title inevitably comes up. Originally planned as a PS3 release, The Last Guardian has been in the works for nearly a decade now. Sony finally showed off the game running on the PS4, and it looks great. However, the heavy lifting here is definitely being done by the second-to-none art direction — not the tech. It probably isn’t going to push the PS4 to its limits, but that’s fine by me. I’ll just be happy when (if?) we actually get to play it.

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