Best Shooter: Battlefield: Hardline
Battlefield has always been good at delivering a large-scale shooter experience, and now it’s looking to take on a new challenge. After playing Battlefield: Hardline on the show floor with 31 other people, we can tell the years of experience have paid off.
Related: Battlefield: Hardline Hands-On Preview
Heists, rescue missions, and plenty of shoot outs. Battlefield: Hardline is all about pitting police against criminals and seeing who was more prepared. Frostbite Engine 3 lends itself to an unforgettable experience where collateral damage reshapes the level layout, turning a local bank into a warzone.
If you love the Battlefield series, Hardline is an easy sell. It’s got all the look and feel of the previous two games, but with the inventiveness of a new structure. Taking the vehicles and squad-based design into a smaller, more focused environment feels familiar yet refreshing.
In a nutshell, Battlefield: Hardline was the best shooter we played at E3 2014.
Best Action Game: Sunset Overdrive
Not only did Sunset Overdrive have one of the best trailers of E3 (certainly one of the quirkiest, anyway), it also sported a fascinating developer demo featuring the game’s creative director, Marcus Smith. In a world where E3 demos sometimes involve shepherding journalists into dark rooms like slightly more intelligent cattle, Insomniac’s offering was both a superb one-two punch and a deadly combo.
Related: Sunset Overdrive Preview
Of course, you still need to deliver a good game, and Sunset Overdrive looks both massive and hilariously wacky in ways we aren’t sure we’ve ever seen. With an energy drink turned zombie apocalypse plot line to lean on, the game has players grinding, swinging, and blasting their way to glory against hordes of impressively unique (and colorful) mutant opponents. If you’ve played Ratchet and Clank then you already know the absurd weapon concoctions Insomniac are capable of, and they flex those muscles fervently here as well; catapulting red-hot vinyl records as deadly projectiles is just one example of what’s possible. With dozens of power-ups to use as weapon modifiers, and a colorful open city ripe for exploration, this is a game we simply can’t wait to see more of.
Best Multiplayer Game: Evolve
What do you get when you replace zombies with aliens? Apparently, something absolutely amazing. Sorry, zombies.
Related: Evolve Hands-On Preview
Left 4 Dead and its successor were inarguably two of the best co-op games of the last generation. They were intense, required co-operation, and rewarded those who communicated well. Evolve does an even better job of that.
Evolve‘s five-player setup where one player assumes control of a powerful creature, and the other four as hunters tasked with bringing it down is absolutely fantastic. Crowds formed around the booth where games were going on. It was a spectacle that was as fun for the audience to watch as it was for the players to engage in.
If you need some excitement in your life that you can share with friends, Evolve just might end up being the best game at achieving that this year.
Best Graphics: Tom Clancy’s The Division
Some of E3’s best games this year were quirky, colorful, or all-around new or interesting titles; games like Sunset Overdrive, that challenge what it means to be triple-A. As great as that is, The Division is a game with the rare ability to renew your faith in the gritty team-based shooter. It’s extraordinarily detailed, bitingly crisp, and of course, only available on next-gen consoles. The Division is a game that makes the former holy grail of photorealism seem genuinely exciting again.
In Ubisoft’s demo, the player was shown traversing a snowy, abandoned area of the city; lightposts had been torn down, corpses could be seen in underground passages, and an eerie quiet permeated areas that ought to have been lively. At one point, an abandoned shopping mart was set completely ablaze, and at that moment it became particularly clear — The Division is the real deal. There are still some gameplay questions to be answered, but if you’re simply looking for the thrill of next-gen visual presentation, you’re going to want to ask Battlefield and Call of Duty to step aside.
Best Indie Game: No Man’s Sky
Hello Games’ sci-fi procedurally generated world is one that has us intrigued. In No Man’s Sky you spawn in its world existing in a part of space that no other player has ever seen. You will explore habitats that have never been seen by another set of human eyes, making conquering uncharted lands a gratifying experience.
You’ll be able to engage in space battles against a variety of life forms, but be weary, you’ll die if you aren’t careful.
No Man’s Sky looks like a triumph in game design, which is an incredible accomplishment when you consider its development team is built of only a few people. We can’t wait to play more.
