This week is the week of Summer Game Fest and its entourage of accompanying showcases. As such, the feeling right now is of preparing for an avalanche. Join me as I play out the next few days in my head.
- All is calm beneath the Treehouse, and yet, there is something in the air. I look up from my game of dark fantasy creature collector Voidsayer and watch a single leaf cartwheeling along the forest floor. I frown and turn my attention to budding Beyond Good & Evilalike, Zefyr: A Thief’s Melody.
- A few more leaves flitter down from the canopy. The ground seems blurry and something peculiar is going on in my lower intestine, but it’s not enough to distract me from 80s business builder Rise Of Industry 2.
- Across the clearing, Brendy breaks off from his tentative nosing of Deltarune Chapters 1-4. He sits on his hindlegs, lifts his muzzle to the sky and begins to howl.
- There is no time to consider Rune Factory: Guardians Of Azuma, as Nic and Oisin burst from the undergrowth in a circus of blindfire and swearing. Nic has taken a boulder to the knee, so Oisin is carrying him over one shoulder while he unloads a sawed-off into the vibrating shrubbery. How many times must we tell you, Nic, that you can’t defeat natural disasters with shotguns?
- All of a sudden the daylight vanishes as no less than three video game showcases rear above the canopy in furiously mechanical succession. First, the Access-Ability Summer Showcase at 8am PDT, 11am EDT and 4pm BST. Then, Summer Game Fest Live at 2pm PDT, 5pm EDT and 10pm BST. Then, Day of the Devs SGF Edition at 4pm PDT, 7pm EDT and 12am BST. The individual fragments of rock and ice all sport the sleepily smiling face of Geoff Keighley. I see Graham on a surfboard high above the trees, carving the froth of advertising.
- The weekend offers no reprieve from the tumult! Ollie and I have made it back into the Treehouse with bloody elbows and a few broken ribs. The tree itself bends sickeningly but does not break: the Founders chose their primeval refuge well. Three more showcases – Wholesome Direct (9am PDT, 12pm EDT, 5pm BST), Future Games Show (1pm PDT, 4pm EDT, 9pm BST) and Green Games Showcase (1pm PDT, 4pm EDT, 9pm BST) – sweep through the woods like dervishes.
- Hell is empty, and all the marketing VPs are here. The Xbox Games Showcase (10am PDT, 1pm EDT, 6pm BST) and PC Gaming Show (12pm PDT, 3pm EDT, 8pm BST) obliterate all the lesser trunks that remain. Ollie and I let off signal flares. Where is Jeremy? Is that his fist emerging from the fusillade of Keighley particulates, forming one last defiant thumbs-up? Oh look, here’s James in a helicopter. He brings word of a secondary calamity: the other side of the mountain has been annihilated by Ian Games Network Live.
What are you up to this week? If you plan to steer clear of all of the above, my hearty congratulations to you.
