Great writeup mate! Putting our approach and score numbers aside, we look to have ordered them very similarly when you remove Ubisoft & Nintendo from the list, which were actually the two I struggled most with placing! lol
Ubisoft were a struggle for me due to BG&E2 and talk of its 'online playground', the confusion we had over Skull & Bones and also not having Aisha Tyler hosting it. BG&E2 alone gets it major plus points as I adored the first game, but whilst I was over the moon to see its reappearance at first (and am again now, post-conference), I came away confused and with thoughts of "
nobody asked for this", which wasn't helped by the fact that no gameplay was shown of it and it's probably several years away (
by the looks of it).
Likewise with Skull & Bones, I went from being interested, to being sold on it and then confused as to whether I actually was interested or not. In both cases it wasn't until after the conference when further clarifications were made that I got back on board with both games, but I completely agree with you on their poor messaging. They really needed to be clearer
during the conference. As such I decided to rate it strictly on the conference itself (putting aside what we later learened) and how I felt coming out of it. Had they been clearer during the show? This would have moved up my list I think, at least to second place.
Aisha was another downer for me, though to a lesser degree of course. Don't get me wrong, their presentation was still top-notch (aside from my complaints above), I just think she added an element of fun to the show which I kinda missed. I know she's not everyones cup of tea though heh.
Nintendo was a weird one too, mainly down to Metroid Prime 4, as I was trying to remain objective rather than try to view it as if I was a Switch owner and a fan of Metroid. It was a strong show (I also agree, it was too short for my liking too) but whilst Sony had the gorgeous looking remake for Shadow of the Colossus, Ubisoft had BG&E2 etc, One of Nintendo's showstoppers was probably the Metroid Prime 4 announcement (Super Mario Odyssey being another). Reading some peoples reactions to it on Twitter etc at the time I know this played a large part in Nintendo 'winning' E3 for them (despite it not showing
any gameplay or even CGI) and I can understand that. If you're a Switch owner and are generally a fan of the type of games that get released on a Nintendo console, I can see people giving that conference a 9 or 10, but for me personally and viewing it as an outsider as it were, couldn't really justify putting it higher. Good show though! I felt a bit bad for prejudging it haha.
Games of show? Hmm!
#1. Shadow of the Colossus
#2. Metro Exodus
#3. Ori and the Will of the Wisps
#4. Beyond Good & Evil 2
#5. Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom
Probably these but I could easily go on & on lol. Lots to look forward to
I already had a few games pre-ordered (South Park, Yakuza & Uncharted) which I've just added CoD:WWII & Battlefront 2 to, though I need to spend some time looking over my 2017 releases list and see what else I need to add to that. Ni no Kuni 2 will be a definite, as will the Life is Strange prequel, Assassin's Creed Origins, The Evil Within 2 & Shadow of War. Need to have a proper look though.
On the subject of what Sony had to show btw:
This excites me. Rather than blow their load at E3 it seems they've deliberately kept some things back, maybe for showing at Gamescom and/or PSX? I was expecting to see Sucker Punch's new IP at E3 as well as whatever's next for FromSoftware and was a little surprised to see that neither showed up, so maybe they were held back for one of their other shows? Guess we'll see! It says a lot about their lineup when they can afford to do this and still put on a bloody good show lol.