E3 is over, and I’ve never felt more distraught about NOT being able to play those games right fucking now. I’m so upset that we have to wait literally a lifetime, or several months, to start playing these games. Nothing is coming out until September, and most of the games on display this week are 2019 or later. What the hell gaming industry? You used to release demos and betas and downloads on the same day after an announcement, and the future should have been “play our shit in your home right now!” and instead I just have to imagine what Cyberpunk 2077 looks like. What is this, 2002, what kind of bullshit is that? Anyways, I graded the shows, just like I have for a decade (fuck I’m old,) so compare my report card to the one you wrote for your own blog — because if there’s one thing gamers love beyond writing their own commentaries is harassing others about theirs! Fuck having opinions, let’s get to some grades!

Electronic Arts: D-

Fucking useless. Next!

How is this not a meme yet, can we start that everyone, this is too good to waste pic.twitter.com/lmB7DdyLHS

— Jared Russo (@jaredrusso) June 10, 2018

Alright I’ll say more. I love Vince Zampella and his coy trolling of the audience and the corporation who signs his checks while actually giving us the one genuine surprise of the show. I love Andrea Rene, I met her at a Comic-Con once and she is the nicest person ever, and she needs to host more things forever. But Anthem is the only thing worth talking about, I’m cautiously optimistic about that game and really shocked it’s coming out in the death month that is February 2019. I just don’t see how that game comes out and is perfect right out of the box without controversy, right? They should have showed way more of it without the Casey Hudson interview. Interview Juju Smith-Schuster about Anthem, that would be more worth our time. And give us a little tease of any PopCap game, PvZ Garden Warfare 3, something, anything. This show was fucking stupid otherwise, and they need to stop doing this trash because it has never sold a single extra copy of Madden, FIFA, or Battlefield. Spare me.

Microsoft: A (and winner of best showing at E3!)

How the fuck did they manage to pull this shit off? Congrats Phil Spencer! You did it. By process of elimination you had the actual best proper press conference of the entire week, and it was paced well, had no bullshit or downtime, featured genuinely interesting games throughout the entire presentation, had lots of surprises and a good range of recent and faraway releases. Their Games Pass is a legit beast now, they’re actually investing in their future, they seemed honest about the next generation and their game-plan going forward, and we got motherfucking Cuphead DLC. That’s all I need baby: fucking Cuphead, I drink that shit up all day. Not literally, because that would be murder; they are cup people and I’m sure drinking their blood is lethal.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is also the heroin I need, just inject it into my blood stream. This is the good stuff you need to start generating hype and building a narrative to springboard off of once you get going next year into the final hoorah for the Xbox One, and into the next console generation.

Now it’s one thing to judge a presser on the breadth of announcements and quality and quantity of their trailers, and it’s another to hold it against all the major publishers for featuring third party games to draw ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’. Microsoft does not get to champion around Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice as an exclusive, and Sony doesn’t get to do the same for the Resident Evil 2 remake. The magical year Sony had with Kingdom Hearts 3 and Shenmue 3 and Final Fantasy VII Remake, those are all coming to Xbox and PC so you have to take it all with grains of salt. But the actual physical act of watching the Xbox show did not make my eyes bleed, and it made me smile and cheer, so they win E3 by sticking to a great formula and making Gears 5 and Halo: Infinite and Forza Horizon 4 and Crackdown 3 look interesting, while pulling baller ass moves like purchasing Ninja Theory with cash money, straight up. Good on you Phil Spencer — now get to work on the Xbox Scarlet, since you brought it up.

Bethesda: B

A B for Bethesda, ha. The first 75% of this show was expected. That’s fine. That’s okay to get updates on the Elder Scrolls MMO and card game, and Quake, and yadda yadda. It’s totally expected and that gets a flat B-, so right off the bat Pete Hines and co. aren’t aiming for the moon. I respect all jokes made at this thing because they landed brilliantly, so that made me think about bringing the grade up to a B+. Then they trotted out Andrew W.K. for no reason to do a song to kill time, to mask Rage 2. Which looks kind of cool! But that dropped the grade again. Wolfenstein sequel with co-op is terrific, Doom Eternal is fantastic, Fallout 76 is intriguing, and Todd Howard is my dream husband if I needed to marry somebody. He crushed it, and I wish I could just personally pay him to come out and do the rest of the E3 briefings from now on, for all other companies besides Bethesda. They didn’t feel like beating around the bush with all the Kotaku leaks and Jason Schreier (fellow Jets fan) ruining their plans with solid reporting. Don’t blackball him for catching your trademarks Zenimax, that’s just petty. So I respect the honesty and upfront trailers for Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6! That’s bringing your A game to E3. And for that, you get a B. Don’t bring musical acts to a press conference about video games, that’s fucking poison, are you that naive, if it’s not broke don’t fix it. Simple!

Give me Elder Scrolls: Blades on my phone now please thank you.

Square Enix: F

Ubisoft: D+

Every camera operator and producer and director who works at E3 shooting livestreams needs to be fired immediately for constantly zooming out during every press conference for the last 15 years collectively

— Jared Russo (@jaredrusso) June 11, 2018

This was sent immediately after we all couldn’t see the Beyond Good & Evil 2 pre-alpha gameplay because the camera pulled out and we missed it. Everything else that happened was either leaked or rumored or just had to be there like clockwork. Just Dance ✔ Trials ✔ Rainbow Six: Siege ✔ Skull and Bones ✔ For Honor ✔ Nintendo crossover and some DLC for Rabbids ✔Beyond Good & Evil not finished yet ✔ The Division 2 ✔new Assasin’s Creed ✔wow look I just filled out the checklist for being a Ubisoft executive, do I get some shares of stock now? There was no new IP to close the show, no Rayman, and no Prince of Persia.

AND NO SPLINTER CELL REBOOT. FUCK OFF UBISOFT, DON’T DO A SHOW IF YOU HAVE NO REAL REASON TO, OR NO SAM FISCHER.

Sony: C+

What in the fuck was that? Honestly, Sony, what were you thinking, honestly? Like, you really don’t have to try, but don’t make it look like you’re not trying at all. Remember the orchestra and God of War and Crash Bandicoot shadow thing and having a cohesive show that made sense? One designed for both the live audience AND the millions viewing at home? Somehow you managed to piss BOTH groups off with a head-scratching structure, start and stop opening and closing segments, pointless interviews with lackeys, awkward pauses, delays, horrible production quality, and piss poor video and audio. The issues that occurred while watching this live stream were literally and figuratively terrible, and the equivalent of a train wreck.

That being said, the games were stellar, the number of things to focus on were low, and you spent the time to dive into long gameplay demos. That was smart, but no release dates anywhere wasn’t, and neither was burying flops-to-be Days Gone and Dreams. You know that we know these are going to sell like duds, so why pretend they don’t exist? Really this all doesn’t matter because Red Dead Redemption 2 is going to outsell all other games combined, and Fallout 76 will clean up the rest of holiday sales. You won this generation and have more PS4s to sell somehow because everyone is buying them. Like, is it mandated that all citizens in all countries purchase one per day? Like a message was sent to all the villages and towns that if they don’t buy a PlayStation 4 the first born son of all families will die?

There is no denying though the sheer strength of Sony’s line-up. Death Stranding is a troll delivery game, Marvel’s Spider-Man looks unbelievable, The Last of Us Part II is an automatic write-in candidate for a 100 on Metacritic, and Nioh 2 was a trillion times more hype than whatever Ghost of Tsushima is.

Nintendo: Incomplete

When does their Direct actually start, because they showed Smash Bros. but like where is all the other stuff, for real? Did I miss the day, or get the time wrong, or