Over the road at Microsoft Theatre, I had some hands on time with Minecraft Earth, the new augmented reality version of Mojang's undying hit. What's most impressive here is how the game re-contextualises multiplayer from an online point of view to a real-world physical one. If your friends are close to you, you can play with your friends. If you're home alone, you can build solo. If you're in the park, you can play with random strangers. I had a go at building a little scene with a house, pigs and chickens with some other journalists, and then blowing it up to life size so we could walk around in it. We were using Apple devices on iOS 13, so you could actually have several people in the structure and the AR visuals didn't bug out. We also tried an adventure where the floor fell out to reveal a massive chasm and we were attacked by skeletons and zombies, which all worked identically to standard Minecraft, but was quite a bit more physical.

While at Microsoft I sat down with Anthony Tan, a 20-year-old game developer from Melbourne. His game, Way to the Woods, was featured during Microsoft's pre-E3 briefing, which would be a huge deal for any game-maker. You can read my chat with him here.

Heading down the street to Devolver's car park I was asked to take my shoes off before entering my next appointment, which is a first for me at E3. Fall Guys is an 100-person online elimination game that's sort of like a digital version of Takeshi's Castle or Wipeout, and the team at Mediatonic had kitted out their booth in colourful foam and play equipment for the occasion. The game is hilarious and mad. Each player is a dumpy little guy that can only run, jump and grab, and each event sees the huge pack thinned out until eventually a winner is crowned. For example there's a game where half the characters have tails, and if you don't have one you need to grab someone who does to steal it. It feels like if Fortnite was based on the silly games you played in primary school PE instead of on shooting and building.

Still at Devolver, Krzysztof Chomicki from Phobia showed me Carrion, a dark Alien-style horror concept where you play as the deadly and unstoppable beast rather than the humans. I adored the feeling of playing this game; your creature is a mass of tentacles and the way you propel yourself through caverns and labs is a thing of beauty. But while you're gliding gracefully with the left stick, you can lash out violently with the right to thrash humans and cause horrific, satisfying chaos. From the need to frequently infest new nests to the ability alter your physical size with special (gross) sacs, there's going to be a lot of depth to this one and I can't wait.

Back in the main convention centre I got my hands on one of the most hyped games of the conference: Square's Final Fantasy VII Remake. The demo was almost all combat, and it very much feels like the action-focused systems of Final Fantasy XV have been modified to give them an old-school turn-based flavour. You run around in direct control of spikey-haired dreamboat Cloud, slashing with your sword to build up your gauge, at which point you can pause the action to select your spells, abilities or items. It's certainly a great change for anyone who finds using menus to fight tedious, and it makes for a great cinematic presentation. I'm keen to see how this all works with a full party and a range of different enemies, but it was a lot of fun and looks phenomenal. The updated version of the classic Mako Reactor music was also top notch.

For my penultimate appointment some developers from Finnish indie Frozenbyte showed me Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince. It's certainly a Trine game, meaning it's beautiful in a bloomy storybook kind of way and features some diabolical physics puzzles. You need to use the special abilities of all three characters — a mage, a knight and a thief — to solve them, meaning it should be great for co-operative play. But like previous games in the series, you can also play solo and switch instantly between characters. I really enjoy these games and I'm pleased to see this one falling back to the pure side-scrolling perspective of the first two games, while introducing some smart quality of life improvements.

The final stop of E3 for me this year was with Control. This is the latest from Remedy, which made Max Payne and Alan Wake, and from what I can see so far Control capably lives up to that legacy. You play as the new director of a shady government bureau whose brutalist, shape-shifting headquarters has been invaded by an extra-dimensional enemy called The Hiss. There's an uncomfortable surreal edge to practically everything that happens in the game, from the unconscious floating enemies that suddenly activate and attack you to the janitor you meet who speaks in riddles, but between it all is an incredibly gratifying combat system that gives you access to supernatural powers and a crazy transforming gun. Within minutes I was ripping chunks of the wall out to fling at enemies telekinetically, switching from pistol to shotgun mode as I closed in or delivering Jedi-style melee pushes, and then discovering a hidden carousel horse that gave me the superhuman ability to dash in mid-air. It's brilliant.

The author travelled to Los Angeles as a guest of Microsoft.