geoff comes but twice a year and usually i get pretty excited for it, i'm not even fully sure why because these shows always end up being very dissapointing to me, a parade of the worst that this industry has to offer with a few funny moments and genuinely good announcements thrown in. this years summer games fest may honestly be the worst of these though, there was no real funny moments (unless you count the incredably awkward and out of place celebrity phone game commercial that was 1000% shilling to the wrong audiance here) the announcements ranged from bland to "yeah thats neat i guess" with no real show stealers beyond one big one for me personally and it lacked any of the charm or chaos that a TGA would have, it felt the most corporate this industry has ever felt and that should say something because it was up against a microsoft event.

okay but to be fair to it, there was some good stuff here. sam lake coming on stage to proudly announce a physical copy of alan wake 2, not even leaving it for an after announcement after showing the dlc, it was front and centre before the dlc, this is a great sign for physical games and a total win since AW2 was one of the biggest games missing a physical release, this made me super happy and i threw down a preorder on it like i said i would if it ever happened and to top it off the dlc looks great!. some games like re:fantasio, phantom blade zero, kunitsu-gami and garou continue to look amazing (b janet mains stay winning! ) but it's difficult to get really hype when we've seen so much of them already, i know i want to play them, civ 7 could be super fun, though admittedly the only civ game i have played has been civ rev for ps3 and a little of the vita one. lego horizon looks pretty neat, i like horizon a lot and the fact it's on switch is rly cool! elena in street fighter 6 is neat, but it's still missing too many of my mains (like poison, karin or any of the shadoloo dolls) for me to be fully sold on the game yet, all the blumhouse stuff is very neat and i'm excited to see more, valorant on consoles is really cool and i'm interested in giving that game another try, that tea farming game could be cool but i'll need to see a little more of it, tears of metal had me sold up until it said roguelike but i'm still a little interested in a scottish musou and slitterhead was probably my game of the show.... or it would be if it didn't leak like 12 hours early, game looks super cool though, reminds me of that ps4 tokyo ghoul game fully non-derogatorily, super hype for it.

now of course, there's the bad, and i mean the real bad, not just the bland. the one-two-three punch of harry potter, black myth wukong and kingdom come was just downright gross and it really shows how little the feux progressivism that they always talk about at these events really mean because of they really gave even the most minor of care to these matters, none of these games would be here, it comes across as so disingenuine. black myth wukong has a littany of misogynist comments and indicents behind it from its downright scummy developer team which you can read about in this IGN article + here
(and as an antithesis to the alan wake announcement it announced it was going to be one of the first major AAA ps5 games to have a code in a box, this game really trailblazes new ways of being awful every time i see it!) and geoff just keeps showing it off at these shows, kingdom come is made by a very open and vocal gamergater so fuck that and fuck him and HP is enough of a tainted IP that i don't really even need to comment (though i won't shame people for being hype for this one, it's divorced enough from the creator that you can make an arguement that its fine), geoff showing off an ai art game as one of the "best selling games of the year" as if this should be celebrated as downright disgusting (and not the only one as he showed off the finals also) and i'm shocked anyone let that in and you follow all that up with a trailer that may or may not have had a SA joke, yeah this showcase felt outright gross to watch at times, it smacked of a lack of care for anyone bar the most gamery of gamers, the most boring type of person, which i guess fits with how bland the rest of the showcase was.

there was so much, just, nothing here, soon to be dead GAAS games like new world and the first decendant (its tagline became a copypasta for me, it was so generic), unfunny ads, stuff with very nebulus connection to games like an amoogus tv show and a far too long live action skate commercial, mecha break is an ai art game and thats kind of stinky, palworld continues to suck and steal designs from much better, much less cynically designed games. killer bean was just an asset flip roguelike coasting by on memes alone and there was so many just, like the video game equivelent of like, filler netflix movies, like delta hawk (you probably didn't even realize i got the name wrong), said GAAS games, dark and darkerm unknown9 or enotria (i thought this one *was* new world at first), just very generic games, asgards wrath felt like the final boss of that, which i'll just say is fitting its on a meta platform because it's so generic video game that i wouldn't be shocked if zuck himself worked on it under the misunderstanding of what he thinks humans enjoy in video games. there was also a pretty large indie game presance, which was nice, but i'm just not super into that, i'm sure some like cairn (i loved the developers last game, haven) or deer and boy will be fine, but i'm just not that interested, sorry to say. battle aces also made me feel a little weird? the way he described the streamlining made me wonder what's even left of the game when you remove all that friction, it just gives me bad vibes and it gives off signs of a kind of boring design i really do not enjoy with its whole "removing the clicks" bit, the dad rock dynasty warriors OST was neat though. there was also no more room in hell, a game that's a sequel to a half life mod and yeah, you can tell, it has that "valve style game" stink to it (wholley derogatory this looks like it has no sense of style and it's as boring as these kinds of games come to me) there were also some solid games that just werent for me, the likes of dune, dragonball or power rangers, the latter two do seem like cool games but i'm just not a dragonball fan at all and i'm not super into 2D beatemups either, but both seem like very cool games for their fandoms. overall, not a great show, the good games were really good, but there was so much nothing and worse than nothing games, i just felt kind of empty and disappointed after it.

microsofts was... better? at least a little, for a start the highs were much higher, perfect dark looks fantastic and i hope i have the chance to one day play it since i think zero is the best rare game maybe? and the original is great too. the new life is strange will be great. the new dragon age looks super fun and i'm glad we finally have scout harding as a party member and the more light hearted tone should be a nice change of pace i think, i'm open to where it goes. south of midnight looks super fun even if i'm not big on it's whole stop motion look, the art direction is great though and i think it'll be very fun to play (if microsoft doesn't shut the studio down). clair obscure looks fantastic and i love its whole vibe and music, super interested in seeing more of it. state of decay and flintlock both seem neat enough and i will dive into the state of decay series eventually since it feels like something i'd really enjoy, but flintlock i am a little more hesitant about since i didn't enjoy their last game ashen at all. the fallout 76 map expansion looks great, i've always been a defender of the game and i'm always up for more substantial expansions to it. fragpunk looks shockingly good, almost as the opposite of many of the GAAS games shown off on geoffs show, this one has some real personality and some cool ideas. stalker looks good still, it's not a series i'm massively familiar with but i do have the physical trilogy on preorder so i'll give it a shot one day and AC shadows could be very cool if it wasn't ubisoft, shoutout yasuke though, if i ever check it out, it'll be for his story. wuchang was also a show stealer for me, it has a cool art direction and i just love those kinds of games, in for it if it comes to other consoles.

the rest though? mixed bag, some stuff i'm just indifferent on, the new rebellion game could be cool but it's not for me i don't think, doom i've never cared for and indy i may try but it being first person does dampen a lot of my hype. starfield continues to exist and as much as they may be trying with the much cooler horror theme, it's just got too many fundimental design issues for me to ever care. gears looks fine, i guess, it's also not really for me but the return to the darker vibes is cool, mixtape also could very well be cool but i'm just not interested, same goes for fable and all the blizzard stuff, but fable i could see myself trying one day, avowed also but unlike fable i just don't see myself ever caring enough to try, it just doesn't have anything stand out about it. there was also MGS delta and that's really all i have to say about it, i'm not interested in a remake of the game, i have it on a few consoles and if i did replay it i'd be more interested in going the vita route i think, . the age of mythologies remake has ai art and that's really all that has to be said about it, a slop remake of a cool game ruined by ai garbage, this company can rot honestly for that alone, anti art sentiment like that should be run out of this industry, the trailer for the new flight sim content also had a warning for use of AI, but i'm not sure where it's used, but i don't trust it. COD could have been cool, if it wasn't for it being a stealth cloud exclusive, that's gross! so much for a "commitment to game preservation", how long did that last? 20 mins? microsoft must have some serious comittment issues, hell, they even doubled down on their digital only console by adding a digital series X, it's all a lie, don't believe it. microsoft had the better show, but they also had the far more upsetting show, while geoff showcases the more bland and cynical side of the industry, microsoft shows the more insidious side, the side that luls you in with some solid stuff before hitting you with far worse than anyone else, geoff makes me sad about the art form, but microsoft makes me scared for it.