Rapid-fire E3 reactions: Nintendo saves a dreadful show

E3 2021 was underwhelming in general, which is not a big surprise. Events like the pandemic tend to have a ripple effect on the gaming industry, and we are still feeling deflated as a result.

But then, Nintendo made all my dreams come true. They announced Metroid: Dread. And it's coming this October.

I haven't been this hyped in a long time.

More footage from the next Zelda game, Advance Wars 1+2 remake, Mario Party Superstars, a new WarioWare game, and so much more easily led to an E3 victory for Nintendo in my book. What a show.

The other big hitter of the show - Microsoft (Sony stubbornly refused to join E3 once again) - helped carry the show and got me excited enough, though nothing mind-blowingly new was announced (more just stuff that we already knew about). I'm still on the fence about going with a PS5 or a Series X. I was hoping Microsoft would blow me away this weekend, and though that didn't happen, they got close. I'm really excited for the exclusivity of Starfield (which is being touted as Skyrim in space), and who knows, Halo: Infinite could be the multiplayer shooter that grabs me. Heck, maybe the Battlefield 2042 will get me to play more online multiplayer games. The Jack Sparrow/Pirates of the Caribbean expansion to Sea of Thieves looked amazing, and I would play that game to test out that pack, for sure. Psychonauts 2 is a no-brainer. Flight Simulator with a Top Gun expansion looks amazing! Other games like Outer Worlds 2, The Ascent, Redfall and plenty of other titles filled out an incredible lineup full of exclusives. Then, of course, they revealed a heavy hitter in Forza Horizon 5, which looks incredibly gorgeous.

But Nintendo always has that special gaming place in my heart, and I was most excited about they had to show. Metroid: Dread is a concept almost two decades in the making. It was teased in Metroid Prime 3, but it seemed like it was more myth than fact. But they BLEW ME AWAY with an incredible trailer that showed the main new enemy, the cool artwork, some new moves and upgrades (that camouflage trick looked cool), and so much more. They even called it Metroid 5, which means it's a direct sequel to the mainline Metroid game. Metroid Fusion was the last game in the series, so I'm hoping it continues from that story. They showed extensive gameplay in the Treehouse live, but I really didn't want to watch it all that much. Gotta stay fresh for when it releases.

The newest character announcement for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is Kazuya, from the Tekken series, which is another nice third-party character addition. I'm glad they're including another character from an actual fighting series, and he plays like he would in a 2D fighter, which is nice.

They announced a couple of cool retro collections. The Super Monkey Ball set and the Advance Wars set both looked fantastic. The Mario Party Superstars collection is an idea that's long overdue. A collection of 100 minigames - hopefully a greatest hits, so to speak - with classic boards and online play make me incredibly happy. Not only that, but a WarioWare game, which is another collection of minigames, was announced for this year. I loved the Smooth Moves entry on Wii, and this new one looks similar to that (it even adds co-op mode of some kind).

One other Nintendo game was shown during Ubisoft's showcase, and I couldn't be more excited. Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope looks like the original game wrapped with a space theme. That opens the door for plenty of incredibly cool weapons that can do wild stuff. They could mess with gravity, we could use spaceships to move around, who knows. So many possibilities.

Capcom also had a decent show. They announced DLC content for Resident Evil: Village, which I really want to play, and they announced some sort of multiverse multiplayer game within the RE franchise.

All in all, not the greatest E3 by any stretch, but one of the better E3s for my personal taste in a while.