E3 might best be described as a land of contrasts, and it was Sunday night--just ahead of E3--that illustrated the dichotomy perfectly. The night led off with Microsoft's press conference, showing off the new Xbox One X, an unfortunately-named system that looked to deliver impressive power and make our gaming better for it.

Then, the night ended with Bethesda's press conference, a downright lily-livered outing that featured nothing but sequels and retreads, the sort-of return of paid mods, and absolutely nothing of note from the studio everyone's actually paying attention to: Bethesda Game Studios. Some noted that the conference felt artificially cut off, with marketing director Pete Hines looking downright sick at the catastrophe he was presiding over.

That was how the week went, and we'd have some impressive highs and horrendous lows to consider going forward.

The good news was that there wasn't a lot of low point to this year's show, but when it got bad, it got really bad. Seriously, bad. The major console makers acquitted themselves well this year, with even Nintendo's non-presence delivering quite a bit of hope to the players by proving the notion of combining Mario and the Rabbids wasn't a terrible idea after all. Mario Odyssey, meanwhile, impressed on several fronts, and the reveal of two Metroid games made it clear Nintendo was not dead and mobile-only yet.

Microsoft's showing went well, if a bit lackluster; it showed off the goods--man, did it ever!--with the Xbox One X, and the [email protected] line impressed on several fronts, but the overall game field seemed a mite light from the studio proper. The car reveal, however, struck a sour note throughout.

Sony heard the gamers' cries and brought games aplenty to the big show, a great plenty of new triple-A releases that should make Sony players feel good about their purchases.

The return of Beyond Good & Evil 2 likely hit more than a few gamers where they lived; it's been basically two console generations since a sequel hit for that one. The trailer that subsequently emerged was a thing of beauty; hopefully the gameplay will be as sharp.

While the concepts of "best" and "worst" will be different for everybody, the end result was this was not a bad show. Sure, there were things that could have been better. Bethesda, huge chunks of your fanbase are still annoyed with you and the whole "we have nothing but Skyrim" battle plan. Yet everyone had something worth showing off; even Bethesda showed off an impressive new Wolfenstein outing that had my adrenaline perked up despite the fact that I hadn't even played the first one yet. Or maybe I did. It wasn't exactly a memorable romp either way.

At any rate, E3 2017 didn't come without some exciting new options and some stuff to look forward to. Granted, things seemed a mite light this year, and not a whole lot of really surprising entries that we didn't already know about on at least some level. Still, not a bad showing this year, and hopefully the next few months ahead will deliver the surprises that E3 2017 mostly couldn't.