E3 2012: Sony

Now, I'm an admitted Sony fanboy as the PS3 is the first console I've ever owned and I love it.  Sure they've had some missteps in the past, like pissing off hackers and getting one month of PSN outage for it, and they may not be the best selling console or have the most innovative motion control system, but I don't care.  The consistently deliver prime exclusives and great innovative titles, so I'm behind them.

Example number one of why is their first exclusive, Beyond: Two Souls from the makers of Heavy Rain.  Heavy Rain was an amazing, intense, though occasionally faulty game due mostly to the fact that they abandoned some concepts halfway through development and yet still kept traces of them in there (I'm looking at you Ethan's blackouts).  Nonetheless, to hear of another title from Quantic Dream in the works is a happy thing.  So before anything they announce that the story will follow Jodie Holmes, a woman who has some kind of presence/spirit around her, and we will shape her life over 15 years.  And the woman playing Jodie?  None other than Ellen Page.  Rock on.  Then, the demo starts...and my jaw firmly hits the floor and stays there.  I joked in the Microsoft conference that for the Halo 4 demo it was initially hard to tell that the actors were actually live actors.  Here, it was nearly impossible to tell that the actors weren't real.  The graphics here are unprecedented.  And while little to nothing was shown of gameplay besides the cinematic quality of it, I CANNOT WAIT.  Seriously just go look it up and be blown away.

Next up is Super Playstation Bros, also known as Playstation All Stars Battle Royale, which will pit all your favorite Playstation characters against each other in a Smash Bros clone.  Does that mean it will be bad?  Hard to say.  The real problem it faces is that it all looks so much like Smash Bros.  There's also apparently no way to tell how well you're doing during the match.  You just built up energy to unleash special moves which can essentially one-hit-kill any enemy they hit.  At the end of the match you find out how well you did based on apparently how many you killed versus how many times you died.  They show off a 4 player match with Sly Cooper, Fat Princess, Kratos, and Sweet Tooth, though others have been revealed.  Two new characters are also revealed in the form of Nathan Drake and a Big Daddy.  They also mention that some of the stages are from Ratchet and Clank so you best bet they'll be in there.

The Vita and PS3 will be more integrated as the months go on, with connected versions of Battle Royale as well as Little Big Planet, which will allow you to use the Vita as a kind of remote while designing levels on the PS3.  Pretty cool.

A ton of really cool indie titles I know nothing about are coming to PSN.  With as much enjoyment as I got out of Journey, this can only be a good thing.

Tons of games and discounts are coming to Plus, and everyone in the auditorium gets a free year-long pass.  Damn them.

More games are coming to Vita, including PS1 classics like Tomb Raider and Final Fantasy.  More video is also coming in the form of Hulu Plus, youtube, and Crackle.  But what they're really banking on is Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified, coming this holiday season, to bring a big FPS to the Vita.  Resistance: Burning Skies was supposed to be that, but apparently was really bad.  So they're looking to Black Ops for the big bucks.

Oh but wait...there's another big title coming.  Assassin's Creed 3: Liberation, which looks amazing for many reasons, not the least of which is that the protagonist will be the first female assassin in the series.  From the brief clip they showed the graphics are at least on the level of AC2 if not better, and even the tree traversing will be in the game.  And there'll be a Vita bundle with a 4gb memory card along with the game.  No price point, but if it's for the normal $249, man would that be a good reason to get on board.

Then AC3 comes out again, of course, but this isn't just what Ubisoft showed off in their conference.  Oh no.  This one...brought out sea battles.  With dynamic storms and water, and the ability to control both your ship's movement and the cannons, your Master and Commander fantasies can finally come true.  While it wasn't as frenetically paced or mind-blowing as what they showed earlier, it still looked pretty fun.

Next up, Farcry 3 will boast not only their robust single player campaign, but an entire 4 player co-op campaign.  While it didn't really look too innovative to me besides the lush environments, I'm not much of one for co-op anyways, and it still looked damn impressive.  Then after the action-packed sequence they reveal the handy detail that there will be a map editor so you can "build your own Facry".  Very cool.

Move hasn't been doing very well, with a lot of games that are either on the very casual side and don't get great reviews or blockbuster games that incorporate Move but not to very great effect.  So they say they're bringing something new to Move...storybooks.  Essentially they're augmented reality books that you open up to see a story that you can interact with using the Move.  I immediately smell the incoming disaster that faced other peripherals like the udraw tablet, until they reveal what their first book will be.  The Book of Spells...from J. K. Rowling.  That's right, it's a book teaching you the spells from Harry Potter.  Using the Move.  From the rather extended demo they showed off, it's obviously geared towards kids, but I can see a ton of older kids running out to grab this and learn Wingardium Leviosa as well.  It's also got the history of each spell, as well as some kind of side adventure based on a student who "didn't live up to his potential".  Let's face it, if you're going to sell a new storybook peripheral in combination with another peripheral that's mostly been targeted towards the casual/kid crowd so far, then making it about Harry Potter is the way to do it.

Playstation Suite, Sony's push to open up Playstation to phones and other mobile devices, is now appropriately renamed Playstation Mobile and is in beta development with a ton of companies.

God of War: Ascension revealed pre-E3 that it's going to be the first God of War with a multiplayer system, which for the most part actually looks pretty interesting.  However, for E3 they finally brought out Kratos himself for the single-player.  Now, I've loved each God of War title, even the remastered PSP games, so I have no doubt I'll be picking this one up.  However, I can't help but notice that it looks kind of like the same old story.  Sure Kratos picks up some new weapons, has some new moves, and uses some new abilities like time manipulation, but boy did it play out almost exactly like the beginning of the first God of War.  I suppose that's somewhat appropriate since it's a prequel,  but still, it gives me pause.  Not enough to stop me from grabbing it, just enough to think it won't be a true successor to 3, which was by far my favorite.

Last but certainly not least we finally get an extended gameplay demo of The Last of Us, Naughty Dog's (makers of Uncharted) new IP.  Set in an apocalyptic future where a fungus turn people into semi-zombies, surprisingly most of the gameplay centered around other humans being the enemy.  Just as I Am Alive looked to focus on bullet scarcity and being smart about how you tackle an encounter, Last of Us pulls the same kind of punches, though you also have your helpful kid sidekick to catch enemies unawares and get you out of tight situations.  This ain't no traditional escort mission, this one fights.  Overall the whole scene was intense, cinematic, and looks to be a must-have title.

Overall a very strong showing for Sony, despite the fact that they really only showed 3 standout games.  I'm sure it hurt them not being able to show off Bioshock Infinite with Move support.  Still, got some great games to look forward to in the coming year.

And with that, we're on to the final conference...Nintendo.