Good thing I don't work this week. And who needs sleep. Now for the jam packed Sony press conference summary.
Good Stuff
So they started off with Old Man Kratos (Forever his name. I want an Old Man Logan and Old Man Kratos teamup.) and a God of War live gameplay. This looked MUCH different from the God of War I am use to. To start with, it appears to have shifted to Norse mythology. Secondly, the game seems much more nuanced compared to the gore-a-thon that previous games in the series have been. Still has a very cinematic combat that made the series great, but it would appear that Kratos is no longer a bloodthirsty demon he has been in previous games. My hope is that this serves as a stepping stone to a new lead character taking over. Either way, I really liked what I saw from this gameplay demo.
https://youtu.be/CJ_GCPaKywg
Holy shit did Horizon Zero Dawn look great. Guerilla Games get little credit for how nice the Killzone series was. But they are going to get rave reviews for how good this game looks. This game looks like what would happen if Monster Hunter, Dragon's Dogma, and Ocarina of Time had a mecha baby. The universe looks great. The lead character looks great. But most importantly, gameplay looks outright amazing. This is probably my game of E3. I can't wait to get my hands on this game.
https://youtu.be/T5Xx3MdqdgM
Heavy Rain developers Quantic Dream have done it again. They have utterly blown me away with a new cinematic title in Detroit: Become Human. Clearly inspired by Blade Runner, it appears they have taken the visual novel genre on crack and just ran with it. It's not a must buy yet, but I'll at least keep my eye on it.
https://youtu.be/QD1pbWCJcKQ
Let's separate the Good Sony PS VR and the Bad Sony PS VR segments. It had it's hits and misses within the segment, so I'll talk about the good first. The October release still feels a bit early to me, but it was leaked like 3 months ago at the $400 price point and Sony stuck with that. It's an aggressive price point compared to the $600 for Oculus Rift. From a games perspective, they dropped what I thought were 2 major titles. First was the obvious Resident Evil VII (Demo is out now btw). Which from my viewing, looks to be going back to it's horror roots. Color me impressed there and I imagine most of the Resident Evil fans are pleased to see a trailer that involved no shooting or action gameplay. I expect many heart attacks. The second title that caught my eye was Farpoint, out of a little known indie developer Impulse Gear that has been working exclusively VR content and gaming. It is a sci-fi FPS that appeared to be of the stylings of Halo. I know most people just glanced over it, but I look forward to seeing more from this game. The big thing to get here is that Sony really wants PS VR to take off and a making at least some efforts to do so.
https://youtu.be/rxjOFd0YNo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18R6Sb97nM
I had no idea that what I was watching was Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. I thought it was a new Killzone or the EVE Online shooter. I'm always upset when I watch a CoD trailer I like. Because then I inevitably buy the new CoD game, beat the story, and never touch it again. Just watch the trailer and try to understand what I feel. It looks good doesn't it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmaZw1xMxBQ
Meh Stuff
New IP in Days Gone. Zombie apocalypse game were you play a sort of mercenary/bounty hunter. Reminds me of Last of Us. I'm of the opinion that the genre is become played out and that it's hard to meet the gold standard of Last of Us. Oddly enough, they revealed it then waited 50 minutes to show off gameplay. But whatever. It looked ok. Sick zombie horde physics by the way.
https://youtu.be/qkpE8neKrJU
I'm evening out the good with the bad and putting The Last Guardian in the Meh category. The good, they gave it a hard release of October 2016. The bad, no gameplay trailer? Not a good sign at all for a game that already has a very troubling history. Seriously, 3 months from release and they couldn't post gameplay? Inspires little faith in the game outside get it out now.
https://youtu.be/fL2zzgW6YOo
I don't even know where to put the new Hideo Kojima PS4 exclusive Death Stranding starring Norman Reedus in a game that clearly isn't a new Silent Hill. So there was a trailer. There was hype. CGI Norman Reedus was nude. There were fangasms. And I had no idea WTF was going on. No gameplay, so I'm just going to put it here. The real win for Sony here is it seems they managed to salvage the bones left by Konami for Silent Hill and turn it into massive hype for a PS4 exclusive title. Well done, but I have no idea what this game is. Oh, and if you didn't catch it NUDE NORMAN REEDUS NSFW WARNING.
https://youtu.be/UcaMw4aCz4c
Bad Stuff
And now, the Bad PS VR stuff. They announced that there would be 50 titles compatible with PS VR by the end of the year, and only listed off 5, some of which aren't even on this so called list. Not very inspiring. Most disappointing to me is that they failed to confirm open architecture for VR gaming. I have no idea if a PS VR will work if I want to use it for a VR game on PC. Back on the games talk, one project was a DLC expansion for Battlefront for X-Wing combat. Total tack on and cop out to say you support PS VR. Booooo. The FFXV VR demo was bad. Like really freaking bad. Total trash. I was pissed at how bad it was. Whoever went forward and put that in the presser deserves their inevitable reeming and we never hear of this again. Oh and plot. There was plot. Lastly, as much as I love Mark Hamil, I have zero expectations for a new Batman Arkham game on PS VR. Looks to be released day 1 with PS VR, and they showed no gameplay for it. No gameplay on a game being released 3 months is never a good sign. This sort of effort for a major hardware release doesn't reflect well on Sony. They need to do better if they want to be in the forefront of VR gaming.
https://youtu.be/iN-UyKsSuos
https://youtu.be/otVk3EEjgd8
https://youtu.be/Ya8v30zzpQo
I know it was announced prior to E3 that Sony wasn't going to show off the Playstation Neo, but after Microsoft did a little trailer for Scorpio, I expected Sony to respond in kind. /shrug
Other Notes
https://youtu.be/sLm1A2-Fr7s
In Conclusion
Wild swings by Sony in a heavily condensed press conference. I know many people are already labeling Sony the winner this year, but I think it's a bit closer. Reading between the lines you can see some weaknesses in the Sony showcase. They still get an A rating from me, but I'm not going out and say they certainly won E3. But overall, a great press conference. Much better organization than previous years.
Good Stuff
So they started off with Old Man Kratos (Forever his name. I want an Old Man Logan and Old Man Kratos teamup.) and a God of War live gameplay. This looked MUCH different from the God of War I am use to. To start with, it appears to have shifted to Norse mythology. Secondly, the game seems much more nuanced compared to the gore-a-thon that previous games in the series have been. Still has a very cinematic combat that made the series great, but it would appear that Kratos is no longer a bloodthirsty demon he has been in previous games. My hope is that this serves as a stepping stone to a new lead character taking over. Either way, I really liked what I saw from this gameplay demo.
https://youtu.be/CJ_GCPaKywg
Holy shit did Horizon Zero Dawn look great. Guerilla Games get little credit for how nice the Killzone series was. But they are going to get rave reviews for how good this game looks. This game looks like what would happen if Monster Hunter, Dragon's Dogma, and Ocarina of Time had a mecha baby. The universe looks great. The lead character looks great. But most importantly, gameplay looks outright amazing. This is probably my game of E3. I can't wait to get my hands on this game.
https://youtu.be/T5Xx3MdqdgM
Heavy Rain developers Quantic Dream have done it again. They have utterly blown me away with a new cinematic title in Detroit: Become Human. Clearly inspired by Blade Runner, it appears they have taken the visual novel genre on crack and just ran with it. It's not a must buy yet, but I'll at least keep my eye on it.
https://youtu.be/QD1pbWCJcKQ
Let's separate the Good Sony PS VR and the Bad Sony PS VR segments. It had it's hits and misses within the segment, so I'll talk about the good first. The October release still feels a bit early to me, but it was leaked like 3 months ago at the $400 price point and Sony stuck with that. It's an aggressive price point compared to the $600 for Oculus Rift. From a games perspective, they dropped what I thought were 2 major titles. First was the obvious Resident Evil VII (Demo is out now btw). Which from my viewing, looks to be going back to it's horror roots. Color me impressed there and I imagine most of the Resident Evil fans are pleased to see a trailer that involved no shooting or action gameplay. I expect many heart attacks. The second title that caught my eye was Farpoint, out of a little known indie developer Impulse Gear that has been working exclusively VR content and gaming. It is a sci-fi FPS that appeared to be of the stylings of Halo. I know most people just glanced over it, but I look forward to seeing more from this game. The big thing to get here is that Sony really wants PS VR to take off and a making at least some efforts to do so.
https://youtu.be/rxjOFd0YNo0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c18R6Sb97nM
I had no idea that what I was watching was Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. I thought it was a new Killzone or the EVE Online shooter. I'm always upset when I watch a CoD trailer I like. Because then I inevitably buy the new CoD game, beat the story, and never touch it again. Just watch the trailer and try to understand what I feel. It looks good doesn't it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmaZw1xMxBQ
Meh Stuff
New IP in Days Gone. Zombie apocalypse game were you play a sort of mercenary/bounty hunter. Reminds me of Last of Us. I'm of the opinion that the genre is become played out and that it's hard to meet the gold standard of Last of Us. Oddly enough, they revealed it then waited 50 minutes to show off gameplay. But whatever. It looked ok. Sick zombie horde physics by the way.
https://youtu.be/qkpE8neKrJU
I'm evening out the good with the bad and putting The Last Guardian in the Meh category. The good, they gave it a hard release of October 2016. The bad, no gameplay trailer? Not a good sign at all for a game that already has a very troubling history. Seriously, 3 months from release and they couldn't post gameplay? Inspires little faith in the game outside get it out now.
https://youtu.be/fL2zzgW6YOo
I don't even know where to put the new Hideo Kojima PS4 exclusive Death Stranding starring Norman Reedus in a game that clearly isn't a new Silent Hill. So there was a trailer. There was hype. CGI Norman Reedus was nude. There were fangasms. And I had no idea WTF was going on. No gameplay, so I'm just going to put it here. The real win for Sony here is it seems they managed to salvage the bones left by Konami for Silent Hill and turn it into massive hype for a PS4 exclusive title. Well done, but I have no idea what this game is. Oh, and if you didn't catch it NUDE NORMAN REEDUS NSFW WARNING.
https://youtu.be/UcaMw4aCz4c
Bad Stuff
And now, the Bad PS VR stuff. They announced that there would be 50 titles compatible with PS VR by the end of the year, and only listed off 5, some of which aren't even on this so called list. Not very inspiring. Most disappointing to me is that they failed to confirm open architecture for VR gaming. I have no idea if a PS VR will work if I want to use it for a VR game on PC. Back on the games talk, one project was a DLC expansion for Battlefront for X-Wing combat. Total tack on and cop out to say you support PS VR. Booooo. The FFXV VR demo was bad. Like really freaking bad. Total trash. I was pissed at how bad it was. Whoever went forward and put that in the presser deserves their inevitable reeming and we never hear of this again. Oh and plot. There was plot. Lastly, as much as I love Mark Hamil, I have zero expectations for a new Batman Arkham game on PS VR. Looks to be released day 1 with PS VR, and they showed no gameplay for it. No gameplay on a game being released 3 months is never a good sign. This sort of effort for a major hardware release doesn't reflect well on Sony. They need to do better if they want to be in the forefront of VR gaming.
https://youtu.be/iN-UyKsSuos
https://youtu.be/otVk3EEjgd8
https://youtu.be/Ya8v30zzpQo
I know it was announced prior to E3 that Sony wasn't going to show off the Playstation Neo, but after Microsoft did a little trailer for Scorpio, I expected Sony to respond in kind. /shrug
Other Notes
- Crash Bandicoot is getting all 3 of the PSOne games remastered for PS4. Looks like a timed exclusive and may be coming out for Xbone.
- Oh, and Crash is coming to Skylanders. Meh. Make your own Skylanders too. Meh. Not my thing but not enough given for me to give it a category.
- This was followed by Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Ok.
- A new Spider-Man game by Insomniac. This is what happens when you release a major movie. You get games with it.
https://youtu.be/sLm1A2-Fr7s
In Conclusion
Wild swings by Sony in a heavily condensed press conference. I know many people are already labeling Sony the winner this year, but I think it's a bit closer. Reading between the lines you can see some weaknesses in the Sony showcase. They still get an A rating from me, but I'm not going out and say they certainly won E3. But overall, a great press conference. Much better organization than previous years.
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