William Shatner then entered the stage and did the obligatory "we're the best" speech with Kaz Hirai getting a special mention but wisely not a microphone, for fear of Ridge Racer motivational speeches no doubt. The congratulations continued as Shatner thanked the gamers and generally acted as if the PS3 wasn't being raped sideways by an industrial heater, a cute white slab and their own previous generation console.
Mercifully moving onto the games themselves the team behind Heavy Rain introduced Beyond; a superbly written and acted animated film starring Ellen Page, who received her own hyped up reveal as if you'd just returned to conciousness sitting on her lap. The story focuses on spirits, ghosts and "what lies beyond" with our heroine having some unique connection to the other side. We saw five minutes from the feature where a police officer talked at our heroine and a swat team burst in tactically surrounding a door. The fairly subdued scene was bookended by a bombastic trailer with explosions, buildings collapsing and a chap seemingly getting possessed. I'm not sure the development team themselves know who their audience is, but the E3 crowd were loving it, perhaps they were given popcorn.
Shatner returned to talk about some guy i didn't know called Michael. I'll confess i became genuinely confused at this point as i was told about a viral video or a toast or some kind of fight. The sound of the "Playstation nation" began to worry me but before my third-reich fears could escalate it turns out all the preceding words actually meant Super Sony Bros, which was a much easier concept to comprehend.
A brief trailer showed us some characters and then the unhealthy gaming cousins of the power rangers waddled out on stage to some inappropriate gangsta-rap.
The game itself was demoed for several minutes as one of the team helpfully commentated on what was happening because sometimes a screen that takes up a whole wall is difficult to see. It's nice to see Sony were even inspired by the flaws of Super Smash Bros in that it's near impossible to see your own character or what's going on amongst all the multicoloured explosions, background cameos and shifting environments.
Admittedly i've never been that invested in Sony's mascots and first party game characters, if i was, perhaps "Fat Princess" would get me more pumped than a deflated, punctured, flat-packed tire.
Following this we had the traditional Sony statistics storm as Shatner bigged up the PS3 to Vita cross play functionality and multiple screen shenanigans. He goes on to guarantee that "crass-cross-platform features will enhance your gameplay and create completely new experiences" That is assuming you avoid any of Microsoft or Nintendo's new games which do the exact same thing.
Some more statistical selling and indie game pictures later and it was boasted that over 200 new games would be coming to the Playstation Network over the next year, which is a good start to catching up with Xbox Live's 500+ downloadable games. Continuing with the thrilling statistics slideshow Shatner then tried to sell the premium service PlaystationPlus, with such luxury features as "automatic updates" y'know? the kind Nintendo and Microsoft do for free? I'm guessing that membership has been waning recently since he then gave everyone in the audience a year's free subscription. I wonder if anyone there didn't have a PS3, that must've been awkward. Some more promoting with the odd phrase "we all know that music and gaming go hand in hand", which is a bit like saying "isn't it great when all your senses work?" and Shatner declared the new Playstation music service "which offers a Cadillac of over fifteen million songs". I don't know much about cars but i'm guessing you have to fold down the back seats for that.
Shatner yakked on a bit more until we finally saw a trailer for Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation on the PSVita which comes bundled with so many extras and special features it might actually make Xbox users jealous. The main Assassin's Creed 3 then had a playthrough with some shouty, ship-based gameplay. Everything from the NPC's on the deck, to the movement of the stormy sea and the vast, detailed ships surfing along it looked impressive and immersive. As i wondered however with the upcoming Tomb Raider, in such a fluid sequence, how much control will the player have? Another classic Assassin's Creed soundtrack was also on display through the demo and the playthrough finished as your ship became close enough to an enemies' for close combat to ensue.
Having been reawakened, the conference swiftly moved onto the polished if unremarkable Far Cry 3. Another series i haven't fully jumped into so perhaps i'm missing what makes the experience "a new kind of insanity". My main thought throughout was that if the speaker for this demo had handled the cheesy tag-lines for Beyond, then maybe that game would've finished as dramatically as they'd hoped. When i got over Dan Hay's voice and actually watched the gameplay the tactical teamwork of the four player co-op seemed well implemented and intense, now what are the chances this has splitscreen?
Next up was the Wii remo-sorry Playstation Move. Their motion sensing, bloated sonic screwdriver that will be poorly implemented into even more games in the near future. Shatner had a much needed rest as a new speaker appeared who looked and sounded like Derren Brown with his balls in a clamp. Mr Helium went on to introduce Wonderbook; yet another motion sensing peripheral that will assist in making real books increasingly and depressingly obsolete.
Requiring a Playstation Move controller, the Playstation Eye and the new Wonderbook peripheral this might be the most convoluted and expensive way of reading a book ever devised. Luckily for Sony they've wrangled J.K Rowling into their Harry Potter/Book Of Spells thing, ensuring at least thousands of rabid fans will blindly buy all this shit for any chance of continuing their beloved, elongated franchise. We were then privileged to over five minutes of technical issues and the demo host getting talked over by the game's narrator.
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| "You better be enjoying yourself son, we've sold our legs to pay for this." |
Thankfully all the gameplay of putting out fires and shooting insects could be overlooked as the speaker reassured us "The book of spells captures the imagination in a way never seen before". I look forward to seeing that way, and an explanation as to why it wasn't shown in the premier demo.
Shatner then returned with a big chunk of gameplay from God Of War 3, showing the gory, hack and slash gameplay that people presumably love is entirely intact. So intact, it could be from God Of War 2. There was a bit of platforming in there as well but like every game in the God Of War series it's only unique selling point seems to be it's crude brutality, which personally i can get any time i want in the local Weatherspoons.
When we'd seen enough of mutilating elephant barbarians we immediately got another demo of what at first i (as an outsider) assumed was Uncharted as the blackened room filled with grunts and crashing we eventually saw our protagonist catching his breath in a cafe. Now this got plenty of cheers from the audience, so either i'm more out of touch than i thought and hadn't heard of this game or they all thought it was Uncharted as well. The grizzly main character was accompanied by a young woman, who engaged the protagonist in some nice, realistic dialogue as they explored the crumbling, flooded remains of a city.
Visually the game was exceptional with all character animations looking fluid, realistic and best of all human. The setting reminded me of I Am Alive, but this managed to keep that post-apocalyptic atmosphere without resorting to a two-tone colour palette. As the duo reached a house with hostile survivors we saw some simple but effective stealth mechanics in play, with your character reacting to and naturally hiding behind scenery without just crouching beside a table. As the shit inevitably hit the fan and a shoot-out began, the player took a bullet whereupon his companion asked if he was ok and was hiding behind the same table as you with seemingly no prompting or awkward "getting into cover" animations.
As you've probably guessed, what I'm getting at is that this game has taken the incredibly overdone gritty realism style and made it work flawlessly. The enemy AI was already impressive in it's cover taking and manoeuvring the environment but when the player ran out of bullets and the last remaining enemy heard the click of an empty gun, the AI reached a new peak. The enemy broke from cover approaching the player at which point the companion who i'd almost forgotten about, threw something at the enemy, giving the player a chance to rush him and take him out unarmed. The fluidity and realism of this moment caused the audience to be audibly impressed.
The game was eventually revealed to be called The Last Of Us, and my now well-worn concern about player control is still very relevant to this. It played like a cutscene, with a minimal HUD, the survival elements like creating a molotov cocktail in the time it would probably realistically take, were all fantastic but i can't help worrying if this is just another glossy, cinematic game that's only difference from Beyond is that it convinced me it was all happening in-game. Only time will tell i suppose but an impressive and unexpected finish to Sony's mixed conference.
Oh, then Shatner came back with a broken mic and told us to "never stop playing" or did he say "paying"?
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