But Sony’s conference did improve, firstly they got rid of
the ‘elephant in the room’ when Jack Tretton immediately addressed the
Playstation Network problems, and credit to them for that. People wanted an
apology, a real one, and this was probably Sony’s best chance to do that.
Once the apology was out of the way, they chose to talk more
about what the PS3 has already achieved, sales etc, followed by new additions
to the Playstation network. There was a lot of talk at this conference.
Exclusivity
So were there any games amongst all the waffle? Well first
up was the obvious choice Uncharted 3 of which they showed off a playable demo.
Uncharted is one of the few reasons that makes me consider actually buying a
PS3, it does look really good, lots of action, big levels, places to explore,
good cinematics, it’s got everything you’d want from a game…apart from mulitplatformality!
The Uncharted 3 demo was much better than the one Microsoft
showed for Gears of War 3. It had more to offer. In Gears they got in some
heavy mechs and shot at a monster for a while. In Uncharted 3 though we saw a
range of what the game has to offer. It started off with Drake being stealthy,
sneaking around a ship and picking off targets slowly and quietly. Then he
reaches a dead end, the enemy surrounds him and we’re treated to a cinematic of
him escaping and getting his hands on a weapon. Then we get to see what Drake’s
like in a firefight. It’s actually really impressive! It’s all very dramatic,
there’re some really good CQC moves available to him involving grenades of all
things, it’s all very diverse with plenty of running, jumping, swimming and
climbing and it’s got all the drama of, well a movie. It’s basically what Metal
Gear Solid should be like. They even showed off a trailer for the game which
looked good, all be it it used 3D.
Straight after Uncharted was done and dusted, Sony went
straight to its other exclusive title: Resistance 3. I’m not a massive fan of
Resistance, I’ve played it and well, it’s okay but it’s nothing special.
Resistance 3’s playable demo was shown in 3D too, already they were building on
a theme here. The game itself was pretty much more of the same really and it
wasn’t that impressive to be honest. If I had a PS3 I might play it, but unlike
Uncharted, it’s not exactly got me wanting a PS3. It’s a first person shooter,
pretty generic, I don’t really see what all the fuss is about. You can shoot
through walls? Perfect Dark was doing that on the N64.
As for other games, they announced more on the HD remakes of
Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and the PSP will be getting new God of War titles.
I couldn’t really care less about God of War, but Ico was brilliant on the PS2!
If I had a PS3 it’d be a must-buy title. Oh yeah, all of them are 3D compatible,
like you really give a damn.
3 Dimensions
I’m going to have to address this pattern now as I can’t
ignore it: 3D gaming. EVERYTHING had 3D involved in it and they wouldn’t stop
pandering to the God of 3D all the way through the entire show - Uncharted,
Resistance, God of War, Ico, Medieval Moves etc etc; 3D is the way Sony are
going. Microsoft didn’t mention 3D once! How could they, it’d take up their
precious Kinect time.
I couldn’t care less about 3D, all of what they were talking
about with regards to 3D just flew over my head EXCEPT one thing that looked
pretty cool: the ability to wear glasses in multiplayer and see different
images on the same screen. That is awesome! No more screen watchers! Finally a useful
gimmick Sony, thank you.
Moving on…
Okay, back to the games, and as predicted Sony went on to
talk about the Move. It felt like they’d been resisting the temptation to talk
about it, and then they just gave in and wouldn’t shut up about it! They
started by mentioning that Resistance would have a zapper that’d feature the
Move before moving on to talk about NBA 2K12. In it you can use the move to
play instead of the traditional controller, and in an attempt to wow the
audience they brought out Kobe Bryant to have a bash at it.
He played it for a little bit and was his jokey self,
playing to the audience, but it was a little embarrassing to hear an NBA star
start saying how realistic and how great a game it is, shouldn’t he be trying
to encourage kids to play actual basketball? You cant take him seriously
because he’s just picking up a paycheck. Drink Pepsi, it’s nice. Play Move it’s
so realistic. There’s no difference.
They announced that Move’s also coming to Little Big Planet
amongst many others and they showed a trailer for the new Sly Cooper game which
I think more people would have cared about had Sony not bored them to death
beforehand. I mean, everyone was here to see the PSP2 (or the NGP as it’s also
known) and they took forever to get to it, like at least an hour! Does anyone
care about Dust? Hell no! Or at least maybe they would be if you would pick up
the pace of your conference!
Cut the chatter
That was my main issue with this conference. It was just too
boring at times and because of this I just couldn’t get excited about much to
be honest. They started well with Uncharted 3 and Resistance 3, but once they
were out of the way it just dragged on and on showing poor Move games and just
blabbing on about absolutely nothing until they finally got to the PSP2. I
watched the conference at the back end of the day which proved to be a big
mistake as I couldn’t keep my eyes open during it as it was just so dull.
You thought the PSP2 was coming up? Wrong. More Playstation
Move content including the new Bioshock game: Bioshock Infinite. I have to say
it looks pretty lame, not as good as the previous two, it‘s set in the sky and
it misses the water big time. A Star Trek game was also shown which also didn’t
look fantastic, it’s a movie game - say no more. EA are bringing out Need for
Speed, SSX, and Battlefield 3 with exclusive PS3 content. Do you care? No, bring
on the PSP2.
Good things come…
Anyway, they FINALLY got onto the PSP2! Kazuo Hirai revealed
it, which isn’t the best omen to have, and it’s called the Playstation Vita,
which as a name has a bit of a Nokia N-Gage feel to it, I would imagine it’ll
get shortened to PSV.
So what’s so special about the PSV? Well it has two analogue
control sticks, a 5” touch screen, front and rear touch pads, front and rear
cameras and six-axis control. It’s going to be wi-fi compatible and 3G when
outside of a wi-fi zone so you can play games online and do all other online
things like social networking and browsing the net. Voice chat is also a
feature people will no doubt be pleased about. The funniest part of their
conference came when they revealed they’ll be using at&t for their mobile service
and it was greeted by boos! Hilarious!
Credit as well to Sony for actually revealing their price
plans: the PSV with wi-fi only will set you back $249.99 or 249 euros if you’re
buying it in Europe, there wasn’t an official price for British pounds however
it’s estimated to be around £219. It’s not a bad price considering it’s roughly
the same price the 3DS shipped for at their launch. If you want it with 3G as
well as the wi-fi then you have to pay extra I’m afraid; it’s $299.99, that’s
299 euros and roughly £264.
Anyway, after more talk they finally moved on to showing
some of the games for it. First up was an Uncharted game called Golden Abyss. A
guy who looked like Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park came on stage to show a
little playable demo of the upcoming game which looked very lush. It’s pretty
much at the same level graphically as the PS3 which is quite impressive. Less
impressive though was the gameplay. I don’t think they’ve learned from
Nintendo’s early mistakes with the DS. There’s just too much emphasis on the
touch screen; it’s great to have but you don’t need to use it for every aspect
of the game. Take for example the melee sections of the game, you press on the
touch screen to make Drake punch or kick enemies and slide your finger up and
down to perform finishers, it works fine but it just feels odd. You can also do
something called painting edges where you can give Drake a route to take; again
it works fine but it almost takes you out of the game while Drake’s following
your guidance. Games like Uncharted are at their best when you’re constantly
part of the action, taking yourself out of that almost defeats the purpose of
it. Tapping ledges to make Drake jump to them might prove handy, but I think
there’s too much touchy feely going on; and I’m not a huge fan of six-axis
controls either. I may be over-reacting though as they did say you can choose
how you play, so you don’t have to use these control methods.
ModNation Racers was another game they announced which
looked pretty cool in the way you can develop your own tracks on it and I’m
presuming you can throw them up online for others to drive on. It’s not exactly
Mario Kart in terms of gameplay, but it has cool features nonetheless. The game that grabbed most attention was the game that
was practically made for the PSV: Little Big Planet. In it you can do
everything that you used to be able to do but you can now touch the screen to
make playing it a whole lot easier. The tilt function is actually useful on
this game and makes it look a lot more fun! Of all the games shown for the PSV,
it was this one that caught my eye the most.
However, it wasn’t the only game that looked good, Capcom
have whored out Street Fighter again and this time it’s with Tekken. Yes,
Street Fighter X Tekken was also revealed for the PSV and it looked pretty
sweet to say the least. It even features Cole from the Infamous series as a
playable character on the roster. They showed a very quick demo of it that I
couldn’t really grasp, I didn’t even know which character he was playing as but
anyway, it looks good.
Saying all this, even though the Playstation Vita looks
pretty good, I can’t see myself buying one. It doesn’t really have the same
buzz that the 3DS had about it when it was revealed at E3 last year. I don’t
have a 3DS but out of the two, I’d probably end up siding with Nintendo’s. I
don’t really want it for the 3D effects, the games on it just look a little bit
more superior. Nintendo pretty much own the handheld market and have done for
decades and it’s that experience that shines through with the upcoming 3DS
titles. What I will say though is that the PSV looks to be a huge improvement
on the original PSP, which I thought was a poor console.
So yeah, bye!
And that was that, Sony conference over! I think the most
amusing part, even beating the at&t boos was the ending, Jack Tretton just
walked off stage and it ended. It’s quite possibly the most anti-climatic
ending to a conference I’ve ever seen! Microsoft revealed Halo 4; Sony said bye
and walked off stage. Brilliant.
Overall Sony’s conference was okay, if a little boring.
Okay, really boring. From the moment it started with that five minute long
promo video to the sheer amount of words they spewed out of themselves. I
wouldn’t mind but most of it was just the generic rhetoric we hear from execs
about how it’s revolutionising the industry, or how it’s changing the face of
gaming. Too much talk and not enough gaming!
They did have a lot of content to show but because of this
they became a little disjointed. Previews of games were brief with the
exception of the very good Uncharted 3 demo and they could have used some of
the time they wasted yakking and showing boring promo reels on actually showing
the games they have coming up. There was also an absence of The Last Guardian which
was pretty disappointing.
It’s hard to decide if it was better or worse than
Microsoft, they were more or less the same but for different reasons. Microsoft
chose to talk about Kinect again which became tedious but they did reveal some
great demos in Gears of War 3, Modern Warfare 3 and Tomb Raider. Sony focused
less on their Move but did ruin it for themselves by constantly shoving 3D in
your face as well as the constant babble.
The good thing about Microsoft was that they staggered their
content so the audience wouldn’t get bored, they’d show some Kinect games, then
they’d show the more hardcore elements in-between. Sony however structured it
as follows: PS3 games > Playstation Move > Playstation Vita. The problem
being that by the time we got to the Vita everyone was bored senseless and the
games they showed during their Move onslaught I just could not get excited
about.
Sony were a little more excitable on stage though, I’ll give
them that. They threw in a few gags here and there while Microsoft just
performed like animatronics! One very good point about Sony’s conference was
the fact that all the games on show were playable at E3. You couldn’t exactly
have a bash on Halo 4, so it beat Microsoft in that department.
Between the two it was a draw. Kinect shoehorning in the
core games ruined it for Microsoft while Sony lost points for pandering to 3D
and boring us all to death! Considering Sony are currently having a tough time
though, this was a very good performance by them and they deserve some credit
for how they handled the PSN failings. If I had to choose who’d won out of the
two, I’d pick Sony, simply because of that embarrassing Ghost Recon moment
during Microsoft’s conference.
Also, no mention of Ridge Racer. Disappointing.
***
The Playstation Vita tralier is below...
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