E3: Sony Conference Round-Up

Microsoft should probably take note that gamers actually want to play games with their new consoles. We care little for sports partnership deals and voice-activated navigation. Sony seems to know this and, by heck, did their E3 presser get us excited for the future of gaming.

Announcing over 30 games in a two-hour period is something short of a miracle, and with majority of those titles of AAA standard you may as well slap your PS4 pre-order down today. Lets take a look at those up and coming games.

PS Vita

Sony kicked off the show, as per usual, with a Vita overview showing highlight reels of Killzone: Mercenary, Final Fantasy X/X-2, Tearaway and Batman: Arkham Origins.

Jack Tretton, President and CEO of SCEA, was “happy to announce” (a common phrase in this presser) The Walking Dead 400 Days episode from Telltale Games would land on Vita this summer, with a Vita bundle released containing the first season, new episode and other exclusive content.

PS3 titles

Despite PS4 launching this ‘Holiday’, Sony were keen on showing us that there was life left in the old girl yet with trailers of exceptional looking current-gen titles, including Gran Turismo 6, Rain, Puppeteer, Beyond: Two Souls and The Last of Us – out this Friday, check out our review.

Gran Turismo 6 showed off elements of its new engine with new suspension, tyre, rendering and aerodynamic modelling, whilst indie title Rain, provided that arty style that looks like it could be up there with Journey and Ico in terms of design and gameplay.

Quantic Dream took the chance to show off Beyond’s Jodie Holmes (played by Ellen Page) training with the military and being shot at in the desert. If David Cage’s back catalogue is anything to go by, do NOT expect a third-person shooter set in Generistan.

Batman: Arkham Origins looks like everything we want it to be with Bats’ Batarang’in, and Kablam’in his way through Gotham City, and yes the Joker is back, although not voiced by Mark Hamill.

A GTA 5 bundle was unveiled including a limited edition set of GTA 5 Pulse headphones, exclusive to PS3.

PS4 Hardware

Sony finally lifted the lid on what their next box of tricks is to look like. A sleek new design embraces the classic PS2 look with a matted finish and iconic blue bar. It looks as though a stand will be available to plonk the console on its side if you fancy yours looking like a tower PC, albeit the sexiest one you’ll see.

Shuhei Yoshida has also confirmed, via Twitter, that PS4 will be region-free and will have an upgradable HDD should you desire more memory.

For more details, head over to our PS4 announcement guide

PS4 Games

First up was Santa Monica and Ready At Dawn’s new project, The Order: 1996. The developers, responsible for the great God of War PSP titles and Daxter, showed a trailer of their up-coming steampunk, Victorian-era world.

Shuhei Yoshida then came back on stage, smile beaming as usual, to confirm that four previously announced PS4 titles were well on their way.

We were treated to clips from Killzone: Shadow Fall, Infamous: Second Son, DriveClub and Knack, all of which look impressive technically if a little underwhelming in terms of gameplay. All are due at launch, bar Infamous which is scheduled for Q1 2014 release.

Quantic Dream made a second appearance with a tech-demo portraying the power of PS4 in the form of mystical game, The Dark Sorcerer. True to form, as they did with the Heavy Rain tech demo and the audition tape, the ‘Sorcerer’ forgets his lines before it is revealed to us that he is just an actor. Nevertheless, the graphical fidelity looks insane. Emotion looks top-notch as we see every wrinkle, crack and crevice flex as the actor delivers his performance.

Indie games

PS4 wants to be indie-developer-friendly and evidently so as it announced several new partnerships, all PS4 exclusives. Among them SuperGiant Games (Transistor), Klei Entertainment (Don’t Starve), Young Horses (OctoDad: Dadliest Catch), Switchblade Monkeys (Secret Ponchos), Ragtag Studios (Ray’s Dead), Red Barrels (Outlast), 17-Bit Games (Galaxy) and Oddworld inhabitants (Oddworld New N Tasty).

These all look great, but Oddworld Inhabitants most interests us. A remake of Abe’s Oddysee – the mental 1997 platformer – has been HD-ified and fully re-textured and we can’t wait to revisit Oddworld.

Square Enix

Not content with trolling the entire crowd by revealing the Final Fantasy Versus XIII is actually now Final Fantasy XV after an action-packed trailer, director Tetsuya Nomura then went on to give us a glimpse into Kingdom Hearts 3. The brief teaser trailer revealed very little, other than the fact that the game is “Now in development”. The crowd seemed to enjoy this.

Ubisoft

Through some sort of Voodoo magic, Sony managed to convince Ubisoft not to show Assassin’s Creed IV or Watch Dogs gameplay at their own press conference (we suspect blackmail), but delightfully we were treated to some Black Flag gameplay.

Despite being a little laggy and glitchy when demoed, this probably has nothing to do with the console, we saw Edward Kenway assassinate his way through a jungle, fight guards and captain a ship. More of the same here really, but when the ‘same’ is the brilliant ACIII, this should be something special.

The Watch Dogs playthrough was incredible. No lag, no glitches, just exceptional, intuitive gameplay. Just go and watch the video, you will not be disappointed. Interestingly, the multiplayer element was on display as a support was given through an iPad as the other player remotely disabled a helicopter before stopping cops with a roadblocker. Could be gimmicky, but still a nice little feature.

 

Third Party

2K Games gave us a glimpse into LeBron James’ life as he holds a conversation with his virtual-self for NBA 2K14. Doesn’t seem as impressive as EA Sports’ NBA Live 14 primarily because they didn’t have a dramatic rap to open with.

Bethesda Softworks, through the medium of Jack Tretton, announced Elder Scrolls Online for PS4. It’s all your favourite Tamriel goodness with added real friends.

A bizarre one next as Avalanche Studios revealed Mad Max. Some of you might baulk at the idea, however, consider that this is the developer behind the mad Just Cause and the film starred the now-mad Mel Gibson. We are starting to get excited.

Sony rounded off the conference with Destiny’s first gameplay trailer. Like most games these days it has the drop-in, drop-out co-op play, but otherwise looks fairly generic. Loot is picked up from corpses, including crazy weapons – the one in the demo is an LMG that fires lightning bolts – it all sounds a bit like Borderlands, not that it is necessarily a bad thing.

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