By Darren Franich

There were no new consoles at E3 this year, no expensive new peripherals. Nothing, at long last, to distract from the videogames. And what games! The 2014 videogame megaconvention found the three major companies adjusting to a new kind of normal: a kinder-gentler Microsoft, a swaggery Sony, a Nintendo that suddenly realized it was time to throw a Hail Mary on the Wii U. Across the board, there was a sense of experimentation. Major developers iterated old franchises in new directions. Smaller developers made bold splashes with highly independent visions.

E3 lives in a vortex of hype. Most people only get to play a few minutes of games that will ultimately last dozens-if-not-hundreds of hours. So, for my list of the twenty best games I played at E3, I’ve attempted to offer a sobering assessment of everything that might be horribly wrong with them when they finally arrive on store shelves. Consider this a skeptically hopeful list of games that could usher in a new creative era in the interactive medium. Pray for No Man’s Sky.

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