E3 2015 - Sony

The "highly polished trailer and gameplay montage set to energetic pop song" trope isn't quite immediately present as the montage starts off with a dramatic soundtrack, but soon enough all the major players are featured to the lyrics of "do it, do it, here we fucking go." Whilst not strictly a criticism of Sony, this is one of the most baffling lyrically devoid and lazy songs I've ever heard and I've sat through shit like Lily Allen.

Last year's supreme slimy suit Shawn Layden returns exhibiting a new strain of soulless businessman, further progressed than before, entering the deterioration stages of its life-cycle. His fall from grace signified by a wintry beard and a twitchy, breathless demeanour as if he'd barely finished his cocaine before stepping on stage. He blabbers a whale's gut full of jargon and Sony-sucking praise that we hear every year before finally getting to the games.

Unless maybe his beard IS cocaine.

"Our first title tonight has been long awaited" People go uproariously apeshit before anything is even on screen, so great is the hype for The Last Guardian. A gameplay demo starts, where a young boy in a huge desolate world of crumbling abandoned ruins, attempts to traverse (and inadvertently demolishes) the area with assistance from a giant featherycatdogdemongriffin thing.

It's the cutest unholy chimera i've ever seen.

The relationship and co-operation between your character and the creature (apparently called Trico) seems very alive, natural and significant in the story. Some literal leap of faith moments are both tense and effective at building your connection with them. The AI for Trico however will need to be impeccable as you are often completely putting your life in their hands...or talons.

A vague 2016 appears, presumably as a release date whilst Sony President Shuhei Yoshida  almost tearfully talks about how long he has waited to show the game, blessing the fact the game didn't immediately oxidise, rot and disintegrate being exposed to fresh air and seeing the light of day. The creative director also gets a shout-out despite looking so young as to have been in his teens when he started work on the game.

Jason Donovan next enters the stage to introduce an exclusive new IP definitely supposedly claimed to be running on PS4. Horizon Zero Dawn looks like a futuristic Monster Hunter with robots and a greater emphasis on story. Post-apocalyptic but so significantly post that the world has been retaken by nature and remnants of the technologically advanced world are left roaming the plains like metal dinosaurs.

Can you bring yourself to shoot Techno-Bambi?

It seems to play very smoothly with stealth and action options for approaching, trapping and attacking your target. Some of the constant quips from our protagonist feel a bit grating, as though she's little more than a female Nathan Drake but overall an impressive demo for this promising new IP.

A purely CG trailer for the infuriatingly titled Hitman follows. Do companies know that you can go back to basics without having to regress the title as well? Benedict Qwizlebatch describes the next Hitman as the "most ambitious ever created" which technically means they're saying the next title and all following games will be less ambitious than this, which unless you've got premonitions of the future or a very underwhelming business plan set up seems a pretty impossible and unwise thing to claim.

A brief trailer for Street Fighter Five introduces two new characters, Birdie and Cammy (technically returning characters, not entirely new) and Quidditchpatch commits the E3 faux pas of asking the audience "How cool was that?" which is just asking for heckles even if your game is good. Not to mention it makes you sound like a doof as well.

Street Fighter V is coming exclusively to PS4 and PC which is therefore not actually exclusive at all and does anyone in this conference know how actual words work? Are they just reading a script and if they don't throw in a buzzword every five seconds a shock collar goes off around their gonads? 

As irritating as this chummy "cool friend" attitude is from blatant corporate salesmen, the conference does keep moving along at a good pace from trailer to gameplay demo and onward. Next we get a time-limit-crippled gameplay demo for No Man's Sky, an ambitious Sci-Fi sandbox game, looking to have a truly unprecedented scale with a universe-sized universe.

Our demonstrator Sean Murray warps from the crossfire of two warring spaceships and picks a random undiscovered Solar System to visit and warns us that his choice is so random that something horrible could go wrong. Seemingly nothing does and he then lands on a nearby planet with imposing mechanical "sentinels" who try to stop you exploring and meddling with the "fully destructible" planet's environments and ecosystems.

You've got a laser gun as well in case that sways your interest.

Sadly there's no time to see more than the sentinels, beacons (essentially checkpoints), some fish and a few ferrety, beaver-type alien animals just out of vision. If No Man's Sky can truly live up to what it's attempting in this impossibly huge game world with "trading, fighting, exploring and survival" elements, it looks to be a mindblowingly expansive, unique and creatively rich game to play.

Still no release date given although one is promised soon. I just hope the team at Hello Games have enough time and resources to make No Man's Sky a full universe as well as a huge one. I'm fearfully reminded of the many copy-pasted, palette-swapped, near-barren planets in the first Mass Effect's universe.

Quizzlematch yet again asks the audience pointless, embarrassing loaded questions before quickly moving onto another exclusive new IP called "Dreams" presented by a future hipster wizard monk guy. Suitably his game is equally as confusing but in a nutshell appears to be a simulation of dreams, creating, sharing and playing through them. 

Did you let your dreams decide what you should wear today?

With the PS4's motion controls you "paint" your dreamscape and then puppet your characters in a kind of motion capture process which the developer promises is very easy and intuitive. The game has a very surreal, paint-like art style and appropriately is a little blurry and abstract. Again we're given an unjustly short amount of time with the game but are promised more soon at Paris Games Week (Which is the end of October if you consider that "soon").

Frankly if this game can live up to its wildly ambitious potential it'll be as breathtaking as Microsoft's Hololens demonstration. It's the kind of truly inventive idea i ironically used to dream about in games and now it seems games are starting to truly think outside the box and bring fascinating new ideas to realisation.

You tell me i can create a Polar Bear-headed pianist in the middle of a field and make me wait 'til October for details?
Curse you future-wizard-hipster-monk-man.

Firewatch is our next trailer; a first person survival game with a mysterious plot propelled by radio conversations with you (a "lookout") and a woman somewhere in a control room. You seem to be a ranger of some kind for a huge nature park that loses almost all communication and power, leaving you and your radio companion to set out and find the cause. 

Yet again puncturing my excitement with intolerable speakers, chunky onion Adam Boyes swaggers in laughing at his own jokes and littering the conference with pointless personal anecdotes. We get it, some or most of your employees probably play and enjoy games too. Don't use your massive corporate promotion and sell show to try and convince me these people are my buddies.

You can't eat super moves, please don't describe them as "delicious".

Anyway, there's an expansion for Destiny called The Taken King with a new storyline where you fight a black Satan dragon or something. ChuckleOnion returns with more in-jokes, dead air, cringey anecdotes and babble before moving onto a purely CG, non-gameplay Assassin's Creed Syndicate trailer which focuses on the alternate playable protagonist Evie Frye. Evie seems to be embodying more of the solo stealth aspects of the gameplay rather than Jacob's cockney gang brawls and street fights.

During Jacob's narration in the trailer it finally hits home that yes, his accent sounds fucking weird. I had my suspicions from the start but there is something quite wrong with his voice. The character is voiced by Paul Amos, a Welsh actor, whilst Evie is voiced by an English actress. Perhaps Paul is versatile enough to do a convincing Londoner accent but it doesn't seem to be on display here, which given the embarrassing pratfall of AC Unity having British voiced aristocrats in France doesn't bode well for Ubisoft's competence on this flailing franchise.

Moving on we see a trailer for weird bobble-headed cutesy version of Final Fantasy, imaginatively called World Of Final Fantasy. This is followed by a CG trailer for a Final Fantasy Seven remake, sending the audience into a frenzy and with a rather meta voiceover narration "The promise has finally been fulfilled". The end of the trailer invokes a rather uncomfortable feeling though as the crowd goes insane with applause and cheers whilst the word "REMAKE" appears alone on screen in a bold dramatic font.

That glint really doesn't help either.

I haven't played the Final Fantasy series but am aware that seven is considered the best one and a remake was little more than a mythical dream for most people so this is still good news, fantastic even for fans, and a strong play by Sony but given the swamping of constant reboots and remakes in the industry, the ending didn't sit right with me personally.

The crowd continues to go batshit as OnionBoye giggles and eventually stumbles onto his next announcement. Four new retro-styled pixelated games under publisher Devolver Digital. One is a 2D, stealthy, gory, ninja, action game called Ronin, one is a 2D, fantasy, gory, magic, beat-em-up called Eitr. A 2D. gritty. gory, soviet beat-em-up Mother Russia Bleeds and a 2D high school, cartoon interlaced beat-em-up called Crossing Souls.

Devolver have published some very good games in this pixelated style like Hotline Miami, Bro Force and Titan Souls but these new four really could've just been the same game with different skins and titles. The art style alone should not sell these games and it seems Devolver might be entering a typecast rut.

Only one of these however features a faceless woman repeatedly punching a dying pig in the face...

A brief introduction about kickstarter successes leads into an announcement trailer for Shenmue 3. Another mythical title so lost and believed extinct for so long that the crowd almost seems to explode with shock and joy before the audio-mixer wisely cuts them off for fear of laptop screens around the world shattering under the intensity.

The trailer shows scenes from the first two games and documentary footage of Creator Yu Suzuki planning to entrust his game to kickstarter, finishing with him telling the audience "The fate of Shenmue 3 is in your hands now" as he stands in a dimly lit car park somewhere, hopefully not representative of his current housing situation.

Yu Suzuki then briefly joins the Onion on stage to count down to, what i assume was the initiation of the kickstarter. At the time of me writing this, the kickstarter stands at three and a half million dollars pledged against its initial two million goal and there's still the best part of a month to go.

The rabid fervour people have for this series did not dissipate with the E3 conference itself, and whilst Shenmue is another series I've not followed, it's uplifting to see so many gamer's dreams given hope and recognition. We'll see if their passion (and empty wallets) will be rewarded when the game finally releases.

OnionBoils casually goes over how many amazing announcements Sony has made before leading into a Batman: Arkham Knight trailer that could also be its intro. We control police officer Owens inside a diner of a very ungothic looking Gotham. Crime has supposedly fallen and the city is as close to prosperous as it realistically could be.

Owens inspects a hooded gentleman smoking who turns out to be either Scarecrow or one of his thugs and as you'd expect everything goes to shit due to his fear gas and you briefly attempt an FPS section against hordes of demonic scarecrow people attacking everyone in the cafe warping under Scarecrow's influence.

Please don't be shit, please don't be shit, please don't be shit.

The demo ends with announcing "Scarecrow Nightmare Missions" exclusive to PS4 but it's unclear if this itself was one of those missions or part of the base game. Personally i kind of hope they're separate and they just put you in the shoes of a few different Gothamites during the outbreak of Scarecrow's plan. That would actually strengthen the game a lot in terms of world-building and emotional motivation since during gameplay Arkham Knight's open world is yet again populated only by thugs and Batman himself.

Bearded Mouse Andrew House enters the stage to talk about Sony's own Virtual Reality visor "Project Morpheus" whilst glimmers of games designed for it play in the background. House squeaks about multiplayer games for Morpheus spearheaded by what looks like a discount version of Halo called RIGS. He continues reminding us that Playstation exclusively has Spotify in their pocket and their "ambitious" (there's that word again) TV streaming service Playstation VUE.

Going on for a dangerously long time about non-gaming subjects, Playstation VUE in July will apparently offer "Alucard" channels containing "Showtime" which I've never heard of "Fucksucker Plus" which speaks for itself and something exclusive from Machinima. Possibly a fantasy adventure series where content creators embark on a hopeless quest to get paid.

"Alucard" Channels sound like they would suck to be honest...

"The single biggest franchise in video games" is next and whilst i pray that Mr Mouse is exaggerating, i fear that he actually might not be and CODBLOPS Three is announced with exclusive footage debuting on Playstation 4 because buzzword buzzword zzzword.

Mark Labia takes a misguided new career step away from cheesy radio DJ voicework and hopefully involuntarily manages to sound like the exact obnoxious dudebro Call Of Duty probably wishes wasn't its primary fanbase.

Mark says CODBLOPS "isn't afraid to take you off the rails" which is a stupid statement because we shouldn't be anywhere near the rails unless COD was a fucking rail shooter, which it purports not to be until you bring up its supposed venture away from it, which is rather admitting to faults just as you run away from them.

"The weapons, equipment and character abilities you'll earn through gameplay are chosen BEFORE each mission." So we have a pre-level loadout? OK cool, why did you put such emphasis on "Before". We're not going to choose what weapons we used in a mission after we've just finished it. Or does he mean that you'll be restricted to a set load-out and unable to pick up new weapons on the go? because that sounds stupid, and if he doesn't mean that, what the fuck does he mean?

"How you equip yourself changes the way you play each encounter" What a mindlessly redundant phrase. Of course it does! If I'm holding a pistol I'm going to play different to if I'm holding a rocket launcher. That's not innovation, you're just describing basic game mechanics that have been in place for decades.

"The year is 2065 and we're in an off-the-books mission in pursuit of a high value target in Cairo, Egypt when all hell breaks loose." OK Firstly, stop talking to us like we're military grunts because it doesn't sound cool, it doesn't help immerse us and you sound like a colossal bell-end.

Secondly i thought the entire point of "Black-Ops" is that everything they do is covert and "Off-the-books". Are you implying they had official, well known black-ops missions before? Do you even understand the words coming out of that smirking hole in your face or did they just fit a tube down your throat to the dark corporate-installed void that pumps the shit out directly?

I didn't think it was possible but i think i actually find Mark Treyarch more insufferable than Adam Onion Boyes.
Sony really are innovating this year...

As for CODBLOPs3 it looks like the same old stuff infused with TitanFall future tech that we saw in Advanced Warfare like wall running, jet boosts, Metal Gears and an outstretched palm that just makes people explode which seems like a grossly overpowered hand gesture incredibly easy to accidentally misuse.

Another slightly more bearable Treyarch man appears who looks like Les Grossman after liposuction and leads into a multiplayer gameplay trailer. Apparently it feels "unlike any call of Duty before" which I'll have to take his word for because the footage makes it look like the same twitch-reflex, insta-death fest, where only the one dominating player has any fun but then i guess I'm just a "filthy casual".

Anshrew Mouse returns for another "highly polished trailer and gameplay montage set to energetic pop song" making Sony the clear winners at having the most of this meaningless trope at E3.

The still coked-up Layden returns to the stage briefly, trying his best to not talk a million words a second before a far too enthusiastic speaker from Disney-Interactive talks about a new Star Wars game in partnership with Disney Infinity 3.0. It's hard to decipher what he's saying because it all drowns out into a wash of white noise due to his style of speaking like a mentally unstable, QVC sponge salesman.

"And that's not all! Buy Star Wars Twilight Of The Republic Disney Infinity Playset On PS4 today and get TWO exclusive Star Wars Rise Of The Empire Disney Infinity Limited Edition Starter Packs AhbSOlootLeeFREE!"

The following trailer for...one of the products he mentioned shows horribly deformed versions of all your favourite Star Wars characters. Darth Vader now looks like Emperor Zurg from Toy Story, Han Solo looks like that male model guy from Tangled and Chewbacca just looks horribly mistreated and malnourished.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on this since it's a kid's thing but all these jargon spouting business-bots are driving me insane. To highlight this, our Disney guy who seemingly got his training from the fucking Disneyland mascots goes on to reveal an exclusive Boba Fett figure, who is presumably only valuable because he looks reasonably in proportion to how human bodies work.

Continuing with Star Wars, we see a gameplay demo for a different map in Dice's Battlefront, seemingly from the campaign mode. It isn't as impressive as EA's Hoth-based demo but it still looks pretty fun, assuming a few more alluring details, characters and maps come to light.

Sony finishes their conference with a demo for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End where our plucky hero Nathan Drake stands near-motionless as his ally disappears into a crowd and Drake has an existential crisis, pondering the true meaning of the hard philosophical questions life poses. Is the soul a separate entity from the mind? Can we be certain of anything outside our own mind? Is anyone truly moral? and if so what are morals?

The demo then restarts and the gameplay initiates properly. Witty character banter, third person shooting, platforming and driving chase sections are all intact as the usual things to expect from the Uncharted games. Everything runs and flows incredibly smoothly and the routes through levels appear very dynamic and versatile allowing you to indulge your Indiana Jones fantasies whatever route you take. 

You even have a senior companion who criticises your young dumb actions...He's probably called Shane Connelly...

Of course this could all just be a very carefully rehearsed demo and Uncharted suffers the same problem Tomb Raider had in demonstrations about ambiguous amounts of player control. Still, at least he didn't fall through the world this time.

Sony's conference at large seemed quite a simple downhill slope from a mountaintop. Some incredible peaks at the start but if you're not a fan enthralled by any of their big returning game announcements, the impressive titles with any actual gameplay were all shown rather early on. Not to mention the incessant bollocks-spewing chummy wanker style speakers all tarnished their respective products and made the whole conference feel far longer than it was.

Seriously guys, I appreciate you trying but it's a lost cause. If you're a soulless suit just accept it, let the actual human beings with real words do the gameplay demos and you can just introduce the next thing and welcome people (Preferably all in one walking motion from one side of the stage to the other).

Except Shawn, he can stay...but only because i'm now invested in his character arc and descent into madness.