Forget trailers: The best upcoming games we played at this year’s E3

Enlarge / In another year, these weird games wouldn't necessarily rise to the top of our "best of E3" list. But when the biggest gaming companies focus almost exclusively on non-playable trailers, our picks have to go to the games we can personally test. (credit: Chris Klimowski / Gamious / rose-engine)

As the dust begins to settle from another hype-filled series of gaming announcements, timed for what used to be known as "E3," one thing stands out: folks in the press, like myself, have fewer ways to go hands-on with the biggest publishers' wares and tell you what stands out. Carefully staging bluster is easy; getting Ars Technica staffers to agree that the games in question are fun or interesting to play is not.

While a post-pandemic landscape has led more gamemakers to begin to offer remote game demos, none of the industry's current "triple-A" titans offered me a way to play their most-hyped titles, the ones typically slated to launch a few months after a big June showcase. Sorry, Metroid Dread and Age of Empires 4.

Even so, plenty of other gamemakers were happy to offer me 30-minute slices of their cherished games-to-be, whether via direct downloads or cloud-streamed demos on services like Parsec. No, these are not blockbusters by any stretch, but guess what, games companies? You had your chance. And the indies took it.

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