E3 PC Gaming Show Recap: Gears Ultimate, Killer Instinct, No Man’s Sky, ARMA III & DayZ

2015 marked the first year at E3 for a comprehensive show dedicated to PC gaming, and although it went a little long and had a tad too much hardware promotion thrown in, it turned out to be a pretty good showing for fans of PC. Below is a recap of all the high-points in the show in one handy place.

Not long into the show, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer took the stage for one of the bigger announcements of the evening. Phil (and later Rod Furgesson) announced that Killer Instinct and Gears of War: Ultimate Edition are both headed to PC, with the former having cross-platform multiplayer with Xbox One. As for Gears, Furgesson hinted that he might have more Gears of War related PC news soon, which I assume is a possible hint regarding Gears of War 4.


Killing Floor 2 is currently on Steam’s early access, and its developers took the stage at the beginning of the show to announce a new weapons pack, and show off a gory new trailer.

https://youtu.be/Xr_lNCLlzZw


Just after showing off Killing Floor, Tripwire Interactive took the time to reveal something completely new, Rising Storm 2: Vietnam. It looks to be an expansion to Heroes of Stalingrad, and you can check out the reveal trailer here.


We’ve known about Total War: Warhammer for a little while now, but its developers made an appearance at the show to flaunt a hair-raising new teaser that ends with a reminder of its impending release in July.

https://youtu.be/pGkg_Izkod8


Obsidian was another of the many developers on hand, and they revealed the first Pillars of Eternity expansion, The White March.


It seems the folks behind Elite Dangerous haven’t just been working on space ships, as they announced a new theme park sim titled Planet Coaster. Frontier Developments are the same people that just made Screamride and the old Roller Coaster Tycoon games, which makes Planet Coaster seem all the more promising.


Guild Wars 2 will be getting a new expansion named Heart of Thornes in the near future, and ArenaNet were on hand talk about one of the new features, Guild Halls. Guilds in the main game can create these halls after capturing an appropriate area on the map, and upon doing so can customise this area to their liking, creating new buildings and essentially turn it into their home base. Heart of Thornes was made available for preorder just after this trailer was released.


Bohemia Interactive arrived at the show in a big way, starting with the annoucement of a new ARMA III Expansion, Tanoa. This marks the first pacific setting we’ve seen in ARMA III, and it shoud be launching in the first half of 2016. Oh, and they also announced that they’re working on DirectX 12 support.

But they weren’t done there. They also announced that the feature-complete beta for DayZ is hitting this fall, and that it’s coming with custom server support, and a brand spanking new single player option.


 

Splash Damage have worked on many games in the past, but they were on hand during the conference to discuss the first IP that they’ve actually owned, Dirty Bomb. They didn’t come empty handed, either. Check out the E3 trailer for Dirty Bomb right here.


Just in case you haven’t put on a clean pair of pants recently, Soma was at the show to remind you to keep them handy. Not only that, but the devs brought a new trailer, and reminded everyone that the game is out on PC and PS4 starting September 22nd.

https://youtu.be/yW03PZDmIwc


After appearing the first time and talking about two different games, Bohemia came back again to discuss another title they’re working on, Take On Mars. It’s in early access right now and an official beta is coming this summer.


Cliff Bleszinski took the stage for a few minutes to talk about his new game, currently code named Project Blue Streak, but he didn’t have anything to show just yet. Instead, he spent some time talking about the game’s influences (he said  CounterStrike is still the best shooter he’s ever played) and why he’s focusing on PC gaming. He said he loves the agility of PC as a gaming platform, as it’s quicker and easier to get the game out into the hands of gamers for immediate feedback. As for console-only owners, fret not, as he said his game could eventually make it to other platforms.


You’ve probably heard of Enter the Gungeon before now, as it’s also coming to PS4, but developer Dodge Roll were on hand to showcase co-op gameplay for the first time.

https://youtu.be/4BViHVoMcgg


It wouldn’t be a PC gaming show without Blizzard, right? They talked about the Diablo-themed Heroes of the Storm expansion, Eternal Conflict, which will be out June 30th.

They also had a quick chat about StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, which will finally bring StarCraft II’s campaign to an end.  Though still in beta, you have three prologue missions titled Whispers of Oblivion coming next month to whet your appetite with.


Finally, a very familiar face to PlayStation gamers took the stage to make a pretty big announcement for PC gamers. Sean Murray from Hello Games announced that not only is No Man’s Sky officially coming to PC, but it will launch there on the same date it launches on PS4. We already pretty much knew that it was headed to that platform based on previous comments, but the confirmation alongside news that PC gamers won’t have to wait until after the console release should make them pretty happy.

And that was about it. Overall, not a terrible showing for something completely new but they could definitely stand to tighten things up next year and maybe dial back the overall length of the show. Head to the comments and let us know if anything here excites you.

6 Comments

  1. Also they are almost all war games. Variety would have been nice so glad I fell asleep waiting for it!

  2. out of those, Take On Mars is the most interesting to me.

  3. Dirty Bomb’s trailer was crap. Really, really crap. Clichéd, generic looking, too much like Team Fortress in a few ways. Just… pure PC fodder.

    If the game, itself, is great fun it deserved a better trailer than that.

    • Tell us how you really feel, Mike.

  4. Not a bad conference overall. As others have said, it ran on for far too long, but there was some good stuff in there. Really pleased about the Gears of War release – getting your hands on the “Games for Windows” version is a pain these days

    • Yes it is! I tried to find it a few months back and struck out.

Comments are now closed for this post.