E3 2013 - Sony

Following their tradition for inappropriately bombastic openings, Sony started with an overblown rave sequence followed by a lengthy montage of trailers. At the end of this some painfully gangster music introduced William Shatner on stage who welcomed us all with a "what's up?" before busting a cap in an audience member and breakdancing in a furcoat surrounded by "hoes".

For all their blitzing spectacle on the screens they do love to hear themselves talk at length and in all the familiar "we're vaguely amazing" jargon we're subjected to every year. They spent some time praising PS3 and less convincingly Vita, claiming "Vita is just beginning its life cycle" and "people love Vita once they get their hands on it"...well that's one way to put it...

Just let the neurotoxins kick in...

Andrew House came on to introduce the PS4 console itself, evidently regretting the backstage dare to inhale helium before walking on. The console itself is unsurprisingly a big black box. Inoffensive but not mindblowing either. What is new are angled edges at the front and back, which look quirky initially but imagine trying to slot the console into a cabinet or shelf and finding this tiny aesthetic design element stopping it from fitting perfectly. Maybe that's only a concern for OCD sufferers.

Bill Nye walked on next to a grand orchestral theme tune and talked about the PS3's television and music capabilities. The "availabiddely" of Daft Piddly, Nine Inch Niddlys and Breaking Biddies wasn't undermined too much by Nye's constant stuttering. I can't really blame him for being nervous, it's not like he's the CEO of the company or anything...

We heard briefly about the PS4 and social media before the importance of creative new games and we were promised a wealth of entirely new titles. The following trailers were mostly impressive including a historically mixed shooter called The Order but even when told they were completely "in-engine" it didn't detract from the fact they were nothing more than trailers.

The floating old man head from the reveal was fixed onto a body and another trailer showed either a joke or a kind of comedy, meta-game...it was never fully explained. An interesting arty number called Transistor followed, proving you really can't have too many trailers in Sony's opinion.

A great deal of new indie games were shown off, ranging from metal-slug style shooters, an oddworld one remake and first person, blair witch video camera horror, amongst others. All of which we're told are exclusive to the PS4. Square Enix then told us of the next Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, the former of which surprised me by seemingly showing actual gameplay in its trailer which i'd heard was pretty much non-existent in Final Fantasy these days.

An annoying transition from an unfunny suited pumpkin later and we finally saw the first gameplay in a premiere demo of Assassin's Creed VI, which was intermittently quite impressive until it ground to a complete halt from a glitchy, freezing showcase.

Attempting to overlook the meltdown of one of the most anticipated games of 2013, they moved swiftly onto a new hacking based stealth game called Watchdog. This looked unique, interesting and actually fun to play through hacking electronics to avoid the police and assist accomplices in escaping, not to mention any competent addition to the dying stealth genre is a godsend at this point.

Press X to tweet about your mad skills...

The unfunny pumpkin returned and grinned about sports results seemingly forgetting he was at a gaming convention before an embarrassingly brief NBA trailer told us little more than there was indeed an NBA game in development with "Lebron James"...i think he plays basketball and is quite good or something...

Another round of trailers for Elder Scrolls Online and Mad Max, then the unfitting heavy bass tunes signalled the return of Shatner on stage. He snidely debunked any worries that PS4 would make the same shitheaded decisions as Xbox One regarding used games and compulsory internet connection to which this received thunderous applause and cheers from the audience. Whilst it is relieving to see the entire industry hasn't lost its mind, it's somewhat depressing when common sense has to be so vigorously praised in letting customers use a product they bought.

In fact this part did everything but hold up a big sign saying "Fuck you Xbone"...

They continued by talking about their online features which might have sounded dull or mediocre otherwise but in comparison to Xbox One's labyrinth of rules, restrictions and fees seemed a luxuriously easy and simple process.

To build on the momentum gained from not following Microsoft's mistakes they debuted the first ever gameplay of Bungie's much anticipated, mysterious new game "Destiny". This took a while to seem anything more than another Halo-esque FPS with aliens, not assisted by some more glitching and freezing perhaps explaining the shortage of gameplay demos in the conference overall. As more players joined the co-op shooting their "banter" became increasingly inane and irritating but despite this, the game looks like it could be some fun, if only as a Playstation Halo substitute.

The helium chap returned to talk about clouds and faster gaming which was ironic considering the seisure and collapse of two out of three of their gameplay demos. Luckily they finished by delivering another crowd-winning move with the reveal of the PS4 price at a less than expected $399 or £349. This and the sheer number of titles shown was admittedly impressive but whilst the internet is ablaze with news of Sony "winning E3" i find i can't much describe it as a victory when your console is simply the least shit.