E3 2017 - Sony

Following the success of their Dracula-led orchestra last year, Sony opens their conference with a brand new band...Either that or some buskers found their way into the building. The Middle Eastern tunes grow in intensity as triangular and diamond patterns appear on the screen behind them culminating in this somehow not being an intro to Assassin's Creed Origins.

I mean what connection does this have to anything then? Two vaginas?

The group finishes to a flaccid fade to black followed by a trailer for Unchartered Flight: Lost Luggagey featuring two women I believe were in the mainline Nathan Drake games, now fronting their own temple running, merc gunning adventure. The game looks fine from what you can tell but it's mainly story cutscenes so other than a competent seeming plot, there's not much to parse.

The trailer ends and they quickly throw another one up before the audience realises that Shawn Layden's coke supply is accidentally seeping into the ventilation system. Thankfully the game's scenery is white and wintry to cover it up. The Frozen Wilds DLC for Horizon Zero Dawn looks as fine as Uncharted did with the same vague issue of showing mainly story cutscenes.

Next up is Hell's Zombie Angels which is beating all of Microsoft's zombie shooter games in terms of interest but that's still akin to be the tallest dwarf at the moment. We actually see some gameplay as our biker hero scoots around, shoots a dog and gets into some fisticuffs, featuring the world's quickest and loosest strangulation ever. The game seems to look and play a lot like The Last Of Us which is no bad thing but with the zombie genre having reached saturation point years ago, it'll need more than leather jackets and impressive zombie horde tech to stan-Oh nevermind they've got "zombies" on stage dangling from wires...

Yeeaaaah let's twist again.

That's a lot of set up for one brief synchronised gameplay moment, that some people won't see due to actually paying attention to the game. I only noticed it because the bloody footage cuts away to ensure it. I hope those professional writhers are happy with their paycheck...

The demo finishes with a zombified Winnie The Pooh and some audience fuckwits actually start bowing and praising the screen which is just embarrassing for everyone involved. I don't think anyone even did that kind of sycophantic shit for the Final Fantasy 7 announcement.

I hope for his sake he was a plant.

Shawn Layden arrives on stage visibly upset at his lost stash but ploughing on regardless. He distances himself from the previous showcase claiming that no one told him about the stupid dangling zombie acrobat idea...Hopefully because he would have told them it was fucking stupid. Shawn does the usual circlejerk "Go us" routine with phrases like "it's all about the games" (except for our hired actors and orchestras) "Virtual reality is now a real consumer product" which is a clever way of saying nothing other than it's on the market. Could've been bought by a total of three people so far, all of them youtubers.

He also uses the increasingly irksome word "diverse", just like Microsoft did with their "diverse lineup" that really didn't come anywhere close. It's a good thing to strive for but so far we've seen Tomb Raiders, Snowy Monster Hunter and Last Of Us XL. None of which looked bad but aren't groundbreakingly original either.

Shawn struggles on despite frequent heckles from the audience. He talks about "Strategic partnerships with third party partners" and how "Peter Piper's pickled peppers are paramount to the Playstation platform". After years "Let's recognise the art of gameplay" seems to finally get telepathically beamed from my head to Shawn's and he introduces some jungle-based, dinosaur inhabited, monster hunting type thing tha-Oh it's actually just Monster Hunter, well that saves time.

Full marks for the "Oh shit" expression whilst running.

Unfortunately while we are shown gameplay, some meteoric spanner in the editing room has decided to cut out two seconds of footage between every two seconds of footage making the whole thing a jarring fucking mess to try and watch. Still, this series is supposed to be good, enough so that Sony invested in some limp pyrotechnics for the end of the butchered trailer.

What follows is a genuine surprise in that it's one of those obvious good ideas that people talk about so often and for so long that you assume it will never happen because it hasn't already. Like properly accessible Pringles tubes or democracy. Shadow Of The Colossus being remade for PS4 is unsarcastically a great move. It's a classic game from 2 generations ago, perfect for remastering.

Now just don't do it another five times in the years to come. 

Marvel VS Capcom Infinite continues the trend of extensive story modes for fighting games, which I'm actually a fan of but in this instance it means the trailer is purely cutscenes again. So this tells us very little other than the game looks surprisingly bad graphically and unsurprisingly bad writing wise.

A shame to see Rob Liefeld's still getting work.

Next comes a big step backwards in the form of Call Of Duty WWII who're trying to capitalise on Battlefield's success with World War One by ignoring what made that game work and placing theirs in a setting already thoroughly explored to death...by them.

Speaking of going backwards, Skyrim is coming to PSVR for some reason. Presumably attempting to outdo Minecraft as the most remade, remastered and resold game in existence. Now's about the time when we show off the indie darlings so how about Star Child. A Sci-Fi platformer where you escape demon insects with the help of huge robots. The Inpatient looks like another entry into the woefully bad conditions in mental hospitals genre of horror games.

So as the conference continues to flip-flop between tedium and mild intrigue, it decides to instead go outright insane revealing a fishing game expansion for Final Fantasy (insert number here) set to a cheesy guitar metal soundtrack. Even if this had made me laugh it would not justify an entire title announcement trailer or frankly even a passing mention under someone's breath of a bloody fishing game.

Sean Lock and his roadie don't look too impressed.

So about that diversity? It doesn't apply to VR games right? 'Cos Bravo Team looks and sounds like the most generic FPS military dust tripe I've seen since Call Of Duty five minutes ago. Continuing this VR section they're finally making a Stuart Little game. For some reason though they've given him a sword and called the game Moss. Could be a nice little platformer but I feel like VR's gonna ruin it by making us control a bloody assistance orb other than the plucky mouse protagonist.

A brief unnecessary interlude has a schizophrenic camera go apeshit spinning around a couple of PS4's before moving onto one of the most solid titles of last conference, Dad Of War. The extensive trailer shows more story aspects as Kratos Junior and War Beard travel around hitting things with axes and getting on each other's nerves. If anything manages to be a highlight of the showcase this year it's arguably still Beard Of Dad War.

And I like whatever the hell this thing is.

Now it's time to redefine pretentiousness with David Cage's Detroit and a melodramatic trailer filled with his trademark autistic-sorry auteuristic themes of heavy handed morality and utterly inhuman dialogue. I suppose he gets away with it if they're all androids but from what we see here C3PO's disembodied leg has more humanity than these protagonists.

From a purely gameplay perspective there is none.

I thought the game was actually achieving something close to meaningful when the generic shaved head man frees a bunch of android people and declares "You can be your own masters" followed by all the androids blindly swearing allegiance to him. But apparently Mr Cage didn't pick up on that so shaved head man just dramatically steps off his podium and says "then follow me."

"That's what we are to them, just merchandise on display in a shop window."
No that's literally what you are. What you're saying isn't profound, it's exposition.

A little later shaved head man's sidekick delivers a line I last heard in one of the Star Wars prequels and I officially step off the ride. Not insignificantly pissed off with that hot garbage, a trailer for Destiny 2 does little to sway my mood. Showcasing the Immortan Joe looking villain, alongside some scenery and customisable equipment all looks fine but "fine" should not be the main take away from E3.

Shawn returns, a little too composed and together for my liking, before introducing the new Spiderman game a little too early as the stagehands haven't finished wheeling the screen on yet. Pleasingly we see some uninterrupted gameplay and it becomes quickly apparent that the Batman Arkham style of stealth and combat is the safe direction they're going with this game.

Hopefully this being Spiderman will be enough to keep that system fresh although a bit too much of the other actions appears to be QTE-based which is disappointing. At least the tone and writing seems on point but y'know...We're getting a movie for that.

Like I'm sure we could manage to at least push the analog stick during this.

Cue trendy songs and a big round up of all the trailers with god awful crash zooms edited onto them. Did that seem a little low energy? Do I seem a little low energy? Well that's how both conferences have felt so far. It's like Sony and Microsoft forgot about E3 and had to rapidly slap some shit together last minute. If i wasn't writing this down I'd have forgotten a lot of what was shown already.

And to top it off, Shawn Layden appears almost functional now, to the point where I worry he might never spiral into cocaine madness after all and he'll just return to being a sleazy businessman. I think we can all agree, that's really the biggest disappointment of all here.

Why do you constantly selfishly refuse to ruin your life for my personal head narrative?