E3 2016 - Days Gone / God of War

Keen to reverse the ailing fortunes of their worldwide studios, Sony have hit upon a bold new strategy: they'll turn every game on their slate into The Last of Us. We've already seen it with Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Naughty Dog's climb and shoot game given a dour, dialogue heavy tuning in pursuit of a better Metacritic score. Days Gone, from Syphon Filter devs Bend Studio, proceeds from an obvious point of influence - players are tasked with crafting improvised explosives whilst cascading cadavers threaten what's left of humanity.

Even slash 'em up stalwart God of War isn't immune to this company wide brief. Kratos is no longer locked in a vast dynastic struggle with the Greek pantheon, instead he's a grumpy, emotionally cold father bumbling around in his local woods, poaching some scran with his incompetent son. This revision actually works pretty well for Kratos (a character that's always threatened to be a total fucking bore), it gives him some much needed dimension. Turns out the violent relics of sixth-generation video games can become interesting again if you just lumber them with a gentle child. Who knew?

E3 2014 The Order: 1886 - STINKY BASEMENT

With the Dead Space franchise buried somewhere in EA's back garden it falls to SCE Santa Monica Studio and Ready at Dawn to bring the spooky. Although you wouldn't know it from this bullet spam advert, the gameplay footage of The Order: 1886 shown last night involved a nervous chap snooping around London's gloomy underbelly evoking the early, creepy, passages of BioShock and the aforementioned Dead Space games. Let's hope there's a little more of that and a little less of this.