What a wild week it was. It started early Monday morning and ended with a ton of surprises by Thursday evening. Along the way we had hardware announcements, game reveals, and breaking news. The SideQuesting team saw many many many (many) games last week, and we’ve had long discussions and funny gifs trying to figure out which were our Editor’s choices for best of show.

Well, after a week of letting it marinate, we’ve come down to our Elite Eight games, the games of 2013 and 2014 that this E3 had us fall in love with. These are all amazing experiences, and we look forward to having up close and personal time with them when they release.

Congratulations to all of our choices. They definitely deserved it for being the most outstanding video game experiences at this year’s expo.

 SAINTS ROW IV

“Saints Row IV seems like an improvement on its predecessor in just about every way. The emotional resonance! The bombastic audacity! The humor! It’s all here just the way you want it, and at no point does it ever feel like the game acknowledges it. It’s just another day at the oval office, and that’s exactly what it needed to be.” – Steven Strom on Saints Row IV

TINY BRAINS

“Tiny Brains has the potential to really become a special social experience. It’s smart, it has great puzzles, and it allows us to turn to the people next to us and smile. I haven’t seen many recent multiplayer games do that this well. It’s not about competition or cooperation, it’s about friendship.” – Dali Dimovski on Tiny Brains

THE WITCHER 3

“The series’ hallmark of morally ambiguous political/philosophical/religious/romantic action and reaction, spiderwebbing across events and stories all over the world, looked even more interesting than the newly robust environments. That is what keeps my interest in the Witcher games, not to mention what put The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings at the top of my Game of the Year 2011 picks. Thankfully, the rhythm of those choices appears in full force here, and more complex then ever.” – Steven Strom on The Witcher 3

CONTRAST

“Contrast has the ability to not only bring a fresh concept to gaming, but also an incredibly personal story told through all of the game’s mechanisms. It’s fascinating, and the demo was often touching and heartbreaking. It’ll be the kind of game that hits some people incredibly deeply, while others purely enjoy the 2D/3D shift.” – Dali Dimovski on Contrast

DESTINY

“The developer which pioneered co-op play on consoles might have found a way to slake my cooperative thirst in a genre I thought myself permanently sworn off. Bungie’s Destinydoesn’t seem like an MMO, but it does look to implement much of what makes them appealing.” – Steven Strom on Destiny

INFAMOUS

“Sucker Punch has already proven they can pull spirit of comic book characters, plot, and powers. If they can bring that same personality to the environment players will protect or destroy — with a whole new cast, to boot — Infamous: Second Son stands a chance of being the best superhero game ever.” – Steven Strom on inFamous

TRANSISTOR

“Transistor, like most great science fiction, has the advantage of being mundane. We see many more edges of our own world in Cloudbank City, and its inhabitants cut down by The Process. The environment is littered with advertisements, traffic infrastructure, conventional vehicles, and at least a single street poster leading to one of many moments which sent a chill down my spine during the hands-on demo.” – Steven Strom on Transistor

EVE-VR

“It’s going to be quite a feat for any virtual reality projects to top my first experience. EVE-VR, the virtual reality space-combat sim from EVE Online/Dust 514 developer CCP, is something that really needs to be felt to appreciate.” – Steven Strom on EVE-VR