E3 2014 - Sony

Sony's conference begins with a mostly cinematic trailer for a generic seeming, clichéd sounding but polished enough Sci-Fi, looking somewhere between Mass Effect and Halo. The end of the trailer reveals this is actually Destiny, Bungie's much anticipated initially PS4 exclusive and first game since leaving development on Halo. Well that's a rather underwhelming start.

Andrew House enters the stage to yammer about Playstation's vision and how Destiny is the embodiment of everything they're trying to achieve, which is a little worrying. He announces a beta for Destiny available July 17th, and an Alpha for PS4 owners the coming weekend. Continuing to try and hype Destiny they announce a new white PS4 and Destiny bundle.

The Order 1886 is up next with some mutant werewolf zombie...thing action. The game seems very cutscene heavy but does transition seamlessly between that and gameplay. This is impressive visually but will it be confusing when actually playing? In the short segment alone i saw manual walking and what i'm pretty sure was automatic running as you just controlled the aim and fire of your pistol as you run. Will it be clear when and what you have control over? or will the game fall back on QTE's to sidestep this problem?

I feel like there'd be some tension here if we could go ten seconds without a cutscene...

Contrasting this comes Entwined, a surreal colourful title involving a bird and a fish in love, who you control simultaneously flying through obstacles and such. Though not technically a race from what i can tell, a racer is the closest genre category for it. Once someone remembers to turn up the guy's microphone we learn it's designed by recent graduates from the company Pixel Opus. Entwined is their first game and possibly the developers' first time on stage as he's quickly replaced by someone higher up to reveal the $9.99 price and immediate release date.

A brief trailer for some Infamous Second Son DLC and we're dropped rather abruptly into a Little Big Planet 3 demo with a host of new characters and some rather cringey commentary from the players. This gets a lot of praise from the crowd but i can't see much of a difference from the previous games which the next speaker rather confirms stating that all old creations from the first two games can be played in 3. A solid but unremarkable looking inevitable sequel due in November.

"Bloodborne" is introduced as the next project by director Hidetaka Miyazaki and From Software, the creators of the increasingly popular Dark Souls games. Instead of a Medieval fantasy setting this appears slightly advanced, perhaps Victorian era but with much the same staples as Dark Souls with darkness (naturally), blade wielding hooded individuals and demonic monsters (though they might be implied to be vampires this time). The trailer is again purely cinematic and fairly short so unfortunately not much else can be gleaned from this besides a vague 2015 release date.

Far Cry 4 receives a decent length but fast paced demo. As you'd expect it sticks closely to the formula of Far Cry 3 in mechanics and engine from what i can tell. The only noticeable new additions being the new Himalayan setting where tigers have been replaced by elephants and those kind of things. as well as a co-op mode. That said, the gameplay still seems solid, fun and exciting so if there's a another well-told storyline accompanying it then Far Cry 4 should be a great, if familiar sequel.

To tangent slightly, the game appears to be attempting the entire narrative through a first person perspective again, which worked well in 3. This means we don't directly see our protagonist in this demo but i'm disappointed that he sounds like another regular North American guy. The box art that sparked racism controversy, i assumed was a blatant copy of the Far Cry 3 box art style, where the protagonist is trapped or dominated somehow by the main villain who takes prominence in the artwork. This is true again here to a point but the man dominated in the box art appears to be an Asian native to the Himalayan area and yet is apparently not the protagonist of the game. Perhaps this is nitpicking but there's a real lack of diversity for protagonists in games. Wouldn't a native of the land, that presumably gets upset by the villain's intervention, have more interesting backstory, connections and motivation than what seems to be another American tourist caught up in foreign conflicts?

With all the speakers i used to mock leaving their respective companies, we're left with one i found genuinely infuriating. The smirking pumpkin presumptuously talks about "when" you buy Far Cry 4 and a type of download play for the co-op requiring only one person to have bought the game.

Next we move into a strange kind of letter time and apparently someone told Sony we want more zombies...cue a Dead Island 2 cinematic trailer (thankfully far more tonally appropriate than the trailer for the first game) along with Last Of Us zombies cameoing in Diablo 3 for some reason.

Continuing with bad jokes and his misplaced "down with the kids" attitude grinning irritant talks about Battlefield Hardline and its three features. These are as follows, "buzzing buzzword" "buzzing graphical buzzword" "and a grappling hook!" To which he gets a thoroughly deserved concrete cold silence from the audience.

Grappling hooks and ziplines are his "jam"...

A so called "gameplay" trailer shows off snippets of generic first person driving and shooting under a "cops and robbers" theme before Boyes talks Toyes (Fuck, i'm as bad as him) detailing some stuff about The Avengers appearing in Disney Infinity. A segment that never really ends as yet more talking about Destiny and its exclusive features is unintentionally interrupted by the shout of "Hulk Smash!". I'm starting to think even The Hulk could achieve better audio mixing at this conference.

"Brand new things that you've never seen on the platform" apparently equates to a Magicka sequel so mindblowingly innovative they had to pad out the trailer with a live-action sketch, leaving about ten seconds of gameplay that looked like your standard Diablo with wizards. Boyes is interrupted again by a "special" joke letter about Tim Schafer and old adventure games which leads to revealing a Grim Fandango remake for PS4 and Vita. I've not played Grim Fandango but know of its cult popularity and it gets huge cheers from the audience so we'll assume for now this was a good move.

A montage of upcoming indie games follows, again sold as initially exclusive to Playstation and all published under Devolver Digital. Broforce, Titan Souls, Not a Hero, Hotline Miami 2 and The Talos Principle offer mostly visually retro shooting and action with the exception of the last title that's full 3D and looks more like Portal. Next up is "Let It Die" Suda 51's new title, exclusive to Playstation. Other than violence, gore and guns the mostly live-action trailer tells us very little. At the opposite end of the spectrum comes ABZU. From the makers of Journey which appears a similarly styled and atmospheric game this time set under the ocean.

No Man's Sky is an open world procedurally generated indie Sci-Fi looking like a first person spiritual successor to the best parts of Spore. Exploring alien planets, discovering new species and vast space battles all feature in the trailer and whilst the gameplay appears a little sparse, the concept, visuals and potential look great, apparently inspired by classic Science-Fiction literature this was the closest to a "wow" moment that i really got from the whole conference.

The transitions from within the planet's atmosphere to outer space appear seamless.

Andrew House returns to briefly talk about the Playstation camera and the virtual reality headset endeavour "Project Morpheus" For which they state two demos are playable on their show floor. Obviously i can't say any more about that, not having been there but many consider VR to be the real step into the future for gaming.

The slimiest businessman ever slithers onto stage and rattles off statistics about online play and social connectivity. How Playstation has advanced its stream and gameplay sharing capabilities, directly through Youtube and seemingly Twitch. As well as this, a ton of Free To Play games are introduced by objectively the worst possible hand wringing oily suit to do so. I've never completely felt comfortable with Free To Play games if only for the deceptive title of the format and it feels even more money-grabbing being described by Lord Business.

He's been to "every E3 except the very first one" and still has no idea how to do a good conference...

Next a significant section talking about Playstation Now. The backwards compatability download service being very slowly implemented to allow PS4 owners to play PS3 games. Then some stuff about a device allowing Sony TV owners to play games without needing a Playstation. Snake Oil continues to drone on about Playstation's vision, history and his own personal anecdotes until we finally get a gameplay trailer of Mortal Kombat X (10). A lot of knowing how well a fighting game works is playing it yourself but the noticeable changes in the trailer are graphical enhancements, new characters, and fatalities that seem pretty brutal even for Mortal Kombat.

Riskily talking about television for a while, we're introduced to an adaptation of the graphic novel "Powers". This basically follows two homicide detectives in a world full of superheroes and i guess it could be alright but all they currently had to show was concept art. Also there's a Ratchet and Clank movie coming and a PS4 remake of the first game. Andrew House mercifully returns and shows us a purely cinematic trailer for Metal Gear Solid V (5) and an announcement trailer of Grand Theft Auto five for some reason coming to PS4.

As the excruciatingly long conference draws to a close (only fifteen minutes longer than Microsoft's, but fuck me did it feel a lot longer) there's a gameplay trailer of Batman: Arkham Knight. Showcasing the Batmobile driving sections, it seems they were either controlled by an expert or are very fluid and transition quickly to and from normal gameplay. The batmobile also apparently has Bat-Tank capabilities which is nice variety even though it looked a bit generic in action. The trailer finishes with a threat from Scarecrow and a brief look at his seemingly disfigured face. House bookends the trailer by announcing exclusive levels for PS4 owners of the game. While i'm incredibly cautious about getting hyped for a fourth Batman game, this footage does show promise and PS4 exclusive content will help persuade gamers to their cause, even if the tactic feels rather sleazy.

The conference finishes with a solely cinematic announcement trailer for Uncharted 4 where the story narration and subtitle of the game suggest a conclusion to the series. Take this with an overburdened truck full of salt however since how many times have you heard characters like Nathan Drake taking "one last job" and even if it is, assuming it's successful, the industry sure as hell won't let it die.

So a pretty mediocre performance from Sony as well, rivalling but not really surpassing Microsoft or Nintendo. No Man's Sky is personally a highlight from all of E3 and not just this conference but then negating that for Sony is the unsettling, tedious and overly long presentations from Captain Corporate. Besides that there was the similar problem of generic looking games and far too many CG or cinematic trailers without gameplay.