Summer Game Fest 2024: A Lukewarm Start

A long time ago, in the state of California, started a showcase of upcoming videogames called the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 for short, in which once a year for a whole week, the big 3 companies of Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, plus their various third-party partners, come together to share the thing they all have in common: their love of videogames, and what's yet to come. Unfortunately, the world halting pandemic of COVID-19 shut down E3 in 2020, and every year since they’ve been on and off, until finally this year, 2024, E3 closed its doors for good.

Fortunately, one man planned this and arranged for a successor to be made in the form of Summer Game’s Fest, hosted by TGA host Geoff Keighley. While E3 was a cluster of presentations of the big 3 plus some third parties, Geoff’s Summer Games Fest was more or less a potluck of announcements from all over the industry slapdashed together. And this year was no different.

What earned this reviewer’s respect is the fact that Geoff started this year’s Summer Games Fest by acknowledging the layoffs in the industry, which has caused alot of fan uproar because certain game studios were shut down by callous people for greedy reasons, like Microsoft shutting down Tango Gameworks, which created last year’s incredible Hi-Fi Rush. After that, the show began and showcased some surprise games and DLC announcements, like a weird Lego Horizon game coming to PS5, Switch, and PC, which was a neat little surprise.

Then we get to the main stuff, and for fans of fighting games, this was a stream you loved, like Street Fighter 6’s year 2 characters, which includes the return of M. Bison and Elena, while showcasing Street Fighter’s first-ever guest characters Terry and Mai from SNK’s Fatal Fury franchise. This shocked many people as the final DLC character of Year 1, Akuma, was just released to the public, and the fans did not expect to showcase anyone else until at least EVO in July. We also received more information on the highly anticipated Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero fighter with our first taste of its release day, October 11th of this year. And finally, we got another trailer of Fatal Fury: City of Wolves, which now has a release window of 2025.

Besides fighters, we also got looks at a VR Batman game titled Batman: Arkham Shadows, which honestly should have been a full console release. But if it means getting the awful taste of Suicide Squad out of our mouths, then I say go for it. After that, we got a slew of other new titles, like Battle Crush, Mecha Break, and Deer and Boy.

And, to both everyone's and no one's surprise, We received a trailer for an upcoming Among Us animated series, based on the award-winning 2018 game based on the little suspicious bean people. Although no dialogue was spoken in the trailer, this show has some heavy-hitting voice actors starring in it, including Dan Stevens (Downton Abby) as Blue, Patton Oswalt (Ratoutuie) as White, Kimiko Glenn (Kiff) as Cyan, Randal Park (The interview) as Red, and Elija Wood (Lord of the Rings) as Green, and directed by Matt Owens (Infinity Train)

These games that were showcased, plus many more, made up the 2024 opening night of the Summer Games Fest, and it helped us wash away the awful taste of the recent State of Play from our mouths. This was just the beginning of a summer of gaming and showcased something for everyone to look forward to.