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Microsoft’s E3 showcase might have been a lot about the new hardware the firm is rolling out this year and next, but the games line-up that will support it contains some gems.
We paid a visit to the Xbox booth to get our hands on some of the things that had caught our eye during Microsoft’s showcase – pirate adventure Sea of Thieves, work of vehicular art Forza Horizon 3 and the first ever open world Tom Clancy game – Ghost Recon Wildlands. This is what we found out.
This tale of the high seas from British developer Rare will go down as one of the highlights of E3 for anyone who plays it. Beautifully animated to strike a great balance between cartoon-like animation and gorgeous realism (the light bouncing off the waves for example), Sea of Thieves is everything a great multiplayer should be in that it’s easy to pick up, intuitive to play and just brilliant fun.
You and a crew of friends take control of a ship and are tasked with firstly getting it out to sea – which involves raising the anchor, lowering the sails and then steering and navigating. Burt once you’re away the seas are yours to roam.
In the version we saw, it was a straight triple threat match with two other ships: the aim being to try and sink the other two. As your ship takes damage it’s up to you to dash below deck and carry out the repairs. Cannon fire is great fun, and cycling through your inventory reveals you’ve constantly got a cup of grog with you. Don’t drink too much though, or you might fall out of the crow’s nest – something that did happen to one player during our demo.
The final game will be a shared, open world experience where it’s up to you and the rest of your crew to decide how you want to play. That can be sailing to the furthest island on the map, hunting treasure or chasing down other crews. The point is, regardless of how you choose to play, this might be one of the most fun games we’ve played in some time.
Forza has always been as much about the looks as it is the gameplay, and that is abundantly clear in Horizon 3.
The premise this time is the open world game is handing control to you – you’re building the Horizon festival, right down to the music that you hear. There’s more than 350 cars and the Australian setting, which included meticulous capturing of the Australian skies to ensure Forza got the clouds right (yes, really).
A new feature called Horizon Blueprint also enables players to customise every event and race type in the game to exactly their specification, which can then be shared with friends.
Then, at the base of it all is a very straightforward driving experience – quick to understand but difficult to master thanks to smart handling characteristics that are constantly changing because of the car you’re driving and the surface it’s on.
A very interesting concept from Ubisoft, which looks as though they’ve taken their map and scenery inspiration from Far Cry – another Ubisoft game – and dropped it onto the Tom Clancy shooter set-up that any gamer will be familiar with.
There’s high levels of co-op naturally, as you form part of a team of four, moving through the impressively huge map, taking up contracts and taking out bad guys. For some extra context on that map – during our roughly 20 minute demo we were on foot, in a jump and took a two or three minute helicopter ride yet explored only around 10% of the whole space within the game.
There’s a big focus on stealth and teamwork here too – players can each use drones to scout enemy strongholds and mark up enemies, intel and civilians to give you an overview of the landscape. Breaking stealth often saw major reinforcements turn up too so in order to preserve your ammo and health you’re going to need cunning and teamwork.
That could perhaps be an issue at times when you’re not playing with a group of dedicated friends. Anyone who has ever hit the random match-up button when playing online will know that there’s no guarantee of being paired up with compatible teammates, and in Wildlands that feels from our first impression that that could be an issue.
