Summer Game Fest – Day 1: The Last of Us remake leads the dance, in the absence of Hideo Kojima

Did the first “real” day of the Summer Game Fest live up to what was expected of it? This is the question that has been driving video game enthusiasts since last night. If the tunnel of conferences of this Thursday, June 9 was undeniably extremely dense, its content was on the other hand of a rather uneven quality – and it is moreover not necessarily where we thought that we could find the most exciting announcements of the lot.

A lackluster “main” show, lacking variety

Many of these expectations were obviously placed on the big broadcast hosted by Geoff Keighley (initiator of the Summer Game Fest) himself, which was to bring together the most explosive announcements of the week. But the show ultimately suffered from a relative lack of “big shots”, and above all from a great lack of variety. Relatively generic or already known games followed one another; and if we do not sulk his pleasure to have seen the character of Guile in motion in street fighter 6difficult on the other hand to hide his boredom in front of an interminable sequence of gameplay of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2the length of which only emphasized the depressing classicism.

So we will just remember from the event the announcement of a new game adapted from the saga Alienbaptized Aliens Dark Descentfrom the French publisher Focus Entertainment… and then the announcement of the remake of The Last of Us Part I on PS5 (released September 2, 2022) and on PC, which could and should have been the highlight of the show, if only it hadn’t been inadvertently leaked a few hours too early by the PlayStation Direct online store. Whatever, Neil Druckmann, co-president of the Naughty Dog development studio and creative director on the saga The Last of Us at least used his stage presence to give some news on the upcoming HBO Max-produced series, as well as share an early concept image of the “standalone” multiplayer game his team is working on. No impatience, however, concerning the latter: we have already been warned that we will not hear about it again before next year.

In the midst of all this, it is finally above all an absentee who will have stood out, namely Hideo Kojima, despite the very strong rumors which promised the presentation of the next Kojima Productions title – a horror game answering to the code name Overdose – this week. All hope is not lost, however: it remains entirely possible that it will finally be on the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase stage, scheduled for this Sunday at 7 p.m., that the veil will finally be lifted.

Indie Developers and Devolver Digital to the Rescue

It is therefore ultimately the other conferences of the day that offered us the most beautiful discoveries. We’re certainly not talking about the UploadVR Showcase here, which piled up 45 minutes during an astronomical amount of games that weren’t always very inspired, and from which we unfortunately had a lot of trouble remembering a lot of things – let’s mention all the same for form the formidable partnership between the metalheads rhythm game Ragnarock and the Hellfest, which promises some very nice sessions of headbanging in virtual reality. It was especially during the Day of the Devs broadcast, dedicated to independent developers, that we were able to revel in the finest concentrate of quality, with the narrative platform game at the top of the bill. Planet of Lana whose gameplay images confirm the immense visual and musical qualities, and the puzzle game Time Flies which offers the player to embody… a fly.

Finally, we were able to see some very nice things at the troublemaker Devolver Digital, and in particular the surprising The Plucky Squirea game crafted like an abounding cocktail of different gameplays (puzzle platformer, shoot ’em up, sword or bare-handed combat, etc.), all enveloped in an astonishing visual coating.