An armchair view of E3 2012: Sony

Sony Conference: June 5^th 2:00am GMT

 

Sony wouldn’t have to do a lot to take first place as far as conferences go. I just hope they don’t force Vita down our throats again and perhaps concentrate more on some new IPs.

• The show begins with a gameplay montage across a lot of little screens.

• A half gameplay half advert for Playstation Plus then desperately plays though it does then include footage of what looks like a lot of games that they’ll be showing off at this conference.

• Things start properly as Jack Tretton enters centre stage with a single button done up on his jacket that’s at least one size too small for him.

• “We have some of the most passionate consumers in the world.” And sarcastic, too.

• “People will talk about who won E3.” Well at least Sony seems to understand how it works.

• I forgot what I always hate about the Sony conference though and it’s the irritating whooping, cheering fans and/or ringers they have planted in the theatre.

• After a long thank you to the fans something finally happened.

• Jack mentions someone in the audience. It’s the president of Sony, Kaz Crazy-prices. He stands to take a bow then sits back down again.

• 10 minutes in and the first game is coming. A brand new IP from the people who created Heavy Rain.

• David Cage from Quadratic Dream takes to the stage to some sombre Heavy Rain music. He chats a bit about emotional games and what not then mentions his next PS3 project called Beyond: Two Souls.

• “Death is the biggest mystery of mankind.” And male nipples.

• Sounds like you play as a woman who can communicate with ghosts. This sounds a lot like a series of indie games I’ve played called Blackwell Legacy.

• He’s going to reveal the name of the actress who plays the lead role – because these things are important to gamers. Ellen Page will be the voice. I don’t know who that is.

• A gameplay demo from the start of the game begins and he states everything is in real time. The main character is talking with a police officer.

• The facial animations are very impressive as is the graphics in general.

• The police officer asks questions like if she was attacked as he found her alone in the road. She stays silent for a while so it really paid to get some famous actress to voice her.

• A cup shakes a little on the tablet then flies off into the wall as he sees a scar on the back of her head.

• “I’ll be right back.” Don’t you know never to say that?

• She finally speaks to herself saying that she knows ‘they’ are coming. SWAT break into the police station at the same time presumably looking for her.

• This is probably building up to an Akira type moment.

• But just as the tension reaches its peak it switches to a gameplay montage showing possession, dramatic chases, bullet shields and other mysterious powers. She speaks to someone else at one point that isn’t visible.

• Refreshing to open a show with a new IP, they score points for that. It looked interesting and a very close mix between Heavy Rain and Fahrenheit.

• Jack’s back again now doing that thing he does every year with his hands that always bugs me after I notice. It’s like he was trying to do a finger pyramid of evil but missed.

• Some boasting later I’m sure we’ll move onto another game.

• Looks like the Smash Bros. rip off is next and a trailer for it plays.

• With such well known characters as helghast solider and alien from Resistance.

• Six people take to the stage most likely to play it or to ask who Fat Princess is.

• All-Stars Battle Royal will be cross compatible with PSV.

• Two PS3 players and two on PSV playing a match together.

• No need to explain the game to us friend, we’ve all seen the Nintendo version you stole from.

• Typical gameplay just with less well known characters so far. There’s walls on each side though so it isn’t about hitting people off just beating them up to score points.

• The player as Kratos got stuck for a little while there running into the side wall constantly.

• As the match ends I’m not sure who won that. Oh, it was Fat Princess for some reason. Bit hard to follow without points showing during the match.

• They unveil two new characters as they leave which will be playable on the floor. Unsurprisingly the first is Nathan Drake. The second sounds like a Big Daddy from Bioshock.

• Jack is back (I never get tired of typing that each year). More blathering on about playing wherever and whenever you chose. Goes on about the cross play between PS3 and Vita some more.

• Later this year a cross controller DLC for Little Big Planet 2 will be released that includes new story levels and level building materials.

• He’s onto chatting about PSN now and how 80% of PS3s and Vitas are online. Chats a bit about indie games on PSN but not the lack of Minecraft.

• Stop going on about Playstation Plus and the fools who subscribe to it.

• Everyone in the audience gets a one year free membership to Plus.

• PS1 classics will be coming to PSV starting this summer.

• Confirms You Tube is coming to Vita and Hulu Plus and Crackle. Whatever those other two are.

• Get back to games, please!

• Here we go, talking about developers and exclusive PS3 games. Specifically Activision and Call of Duty on PSV. Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified out this year.

• A new Vita title now. Looks like Assassin’s Creed 3 to me.

• Ubisoft on screen so it must be. A gameplay trailer plays. Typical Creed gameplay and decent enough visuals also. It’s called Liberation and it’s out October this year.

• “The first ever female assassin.” I think he means female assassin protagonist since there’s been plenty of female ones.

• It unlocks a bunch of useless stuff in the full AC3 game. There’s also a crystal white Vita bundle with AC3 Liberation.

• Talking about the full AC3 game now which is odd since it’s been at two conferences already. “Here to give you a first look…” does Jack not watch the other conferences? I wonder if the gameplay demo they’re about to give is the same one from earlier…

• It seems not, looks like it might be set at sea. The gameplay begins in the caribbean. Conner looks like a pirate which I’m not sure is great or not. It certainly is a very different feeling to the snowy bluffs in the other gameplay demo.

• It looks like the player is steering the ship.

• A ship against ship battle ensues. All very dramatic and players who get sea sick may not approve of how fierce the waves are as the weather shifts to stormy.

• The battle gets more intense as the audience cheers. Conner’s ship takes some hits but the first enemy galleon goes down. They approach the next and a cutscene plays of them leaping across to fight in close combat. It ends here.

• There is an awkward silence as Jack gets back up onto stage and almost steps on the controller they had been using for the demo. AC3 PS3 hardware bundle including exclusive DLC.

• News about Farcry 3 is next. I wonder if it will involve the breasts from earlier?

• A second Farcry 3 game? Ah – four player co-op. Four people take to the stage to show it off. The on screen visuals actually look a lot worse than the single player stuff from before.

• Horrible, fake team speak as they shoot some people who were probably evil.

• “I’m going to take the guy on the left.” He then aims at the one on the right. Realistic representation of teamwork with randoms online.

• They are placing a bomb on a bridge so presumably the bridge is evil.

• It’s all very hectic but also very generic. The evil bridge eventually explodes and the demo is over. The co-op campaign is a separate mode and there’s also a map editor.

• Jack says there’s an exclusive free DLC on PS3 for the game.

• Now onto Move so anyone needing the toilet go now.

• There’s seriously 250 games for the Move?

• Andrew House takes to the stage and has a man-hug with Jack.

• The money is the reason you do what you do, House. Not the fans.

• Is transformative a word?

• A new product to do with reading or something is next. A video players showing an annoying child actor and a very unrealistic representation of a book ‘coming to life’.

• So beyond all this nonsense I assume this will be Move compatible interactive books of some kind.

• It’s called Wonderbook for PS3. It uses augmented reality technology using Playstation Eye.

• Moonbot Studios is working on Diggs Nightcrawler, a Noir project for Wonderbook. More coming on this later this year.

• There’s mention of JK Rowling working on something for Wonderbook. It’s called Book of Spells and it will be the first title published for it.

• Someone comes onto the stage to demonstrate Book of Spells and how it will work. Dave Ranyard get your hands out your pocket when you’re speaking to an audience.

• “Every wizard needs a wand.” I think I’ve seen that porno.

• A couple of older women on stage struggle a little trying to get Move to do something with a spell book. It uses augmented reality on the surface of a blank book on their laps. What the presenter is saying doesn’t seem to match up to what the people playing are doing.

• A dragon sets the book on fire and the person playing blows it out with their hand. I can see this being very appealing to children but certainly not people of the age they’ve got playing it.

• Doing a demo of learning some kind of fire spell now. Not really sure what’s going on. A disclaimer on the screen says the images are simulated – so basically this is all conceptual and fake currently as far as the on screen feedback goes.

• This feels all very overly complicated so far and cumbersome to do even the most basic thing.

• That end of demo thing said it took 5 hours to do! It felt like that for sure. Out Fall 2012.

• Onto some more marketing gibberish.

• Playstation Suite on smart phones and tablets focusing on android devices I guess. It’s being renamed from Suite to Playstation Mobile. Well, I guess that’s simpler. No idea why the audience applauded that.

• Jack’s back for probably the final time of the evening. There’s some music playing in the background as he talks. He’s talking about God of War.

• A demo begins that shows evil looking goat people attacking Kratos. I’m not to familiar with these games but it looks no different than the others so far.

• A lot of dead goats later and it’s still all looking the same. There’s a big tentacle monster in the ocean which I guess is a krakken or something similar. Then he fights a big elephant thing and kills it by slicing its head open and exposing its brain. Lovely.

• God of War Ascension is out March 12^th 2013.

• The audience is plunged into darkness for some reason and some ambient noise is playing. I get the feeling this will be the new Naughty Dog game again.

• Yup, it is. It looks like a stage demo has started without an introduction showing the male character and his younger female companion exploring a ruined city.

• The carry on into a destroyed hotel and it sounds like they are working their way to a distant bridge. Eventually they stumble on some people.

• The weapon interface looks very like Uncharted. And when a gun fight starts after it feels even more like it, though I would say perhaps slightly more ‘realistic’ in terms of bullet reaction and intensity.

• The final enemy hears that he’s out of ammo but his girl companion throws something at him giving the main character time to melee the evil hobo.

• More enemies sneak into the building and he sets them on fire for good reasons I’m sure. Still has no ammo so he’s trying to be more sneaky with these ones. The main character, I think called Joel, looks ridiculously like Drake at points.

• The Last of Us certainly looks visceral.

• Jack is back again and his microphone isn’t working properly at first. He’s wrapping things up here.

Sony had a fairly average conference but in comparison to Microsoft came out way on top. The Last of Us is interesting and Beyond is one to watch out for.