Sony had a nice showing of games this year, despite how rocky the conference as a whole was. There were some surprising announcements, and then there were the announcements that we all saw coming from a mile away. The main problem I had with the games that they showed, is that they didn’t show too many games that weren’t in a montage — and that bothers me.
I understand the idea behind montages, you overwhelm your potential consumers with all the content that’s going to be released on your platform, and it increases interest. I get it — but Sony, you relied far too heavily on montages this year. Shame on you. Here are the games that were actually shown at E3 outside of a montage:
Killzone 3 demo (video here)
This was a great way to kick off E3. Killzone 3 looks just as amazing graphically as Killzone 2 did, perhaps even slightly better. The gameplay showed off the player taking out some hellghast flying around in jetpacks, and then the demonstrator got in a jetpack of his own and started raining down chaos. I think the jetpack thing is gonna be a love it or hate it thing, but I personally love the way the jetpack looks and sounds in first person, and how it seems to control. This game’s sure to not disappoint Killzone fans. Yet another game to add to my list of things I want right now.
Sorcery announced, uses Move (video here)
Now this is by far the most impressive display of the power of the PlayStation Move that was shown at the entire conference. The demonstrator showed off how you can wave the wand around your entire body, and the fidelity of motion is 1-to-1. Very impressive. The wand can fire a basic magic attack spell at enemies by flicking the wand towards the screen. You can also swing the Move controller in different ways to control the power and trajectory of the magic attacks, which is also really cool.
Some of the other types of spells shown off was the ability to freeze (and subsequently shatter) enemies, turn yourself into a rat to reach places you normally wouldn’t be able, and the whirwlind. The whirlwind is also really cool, because it sucks enemies into it and you can control where the whirlwind moves with the Move controller. My personal favorite spell was the fire spell. You can flick the Move controller at enemies to shoot firebolts at them, but you can also paint a line on the ground to create a firewall. That right there sold me on this game even more.
It’s not the spells themselves that makes me excited for this game, it was the demonstration that this is going to use motion control in a way that we haven’t seen yet, but all of us have wanted. A lot of games have tried this before and failed, and Nintendo’s only just recently getting to where they can have that kind of fidelity of motion with the Wii Motion Plus (the new Zelda game has similar control fidelity, for instance). This is the kind of game we all imagined when we first heard “motion control”. My #1 pick for must-have Move game. You’ll be able to get this in Spring, 2011.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11 demo (video here)
I couldn’t be any less interested in golf games, but I must admit this was a pretty impressive demonstration of Move. However, I would just like to point out that, during the demonstration, I noticed some pretty significant lag between when the demonstrator moved and when the game character actually moved. Still, there was clearly one-to-one movement, and having a golf game require you to actually swing like you would with a real golf club is pretty cool. He even missed the ball the first time.. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or bad thing. You don’t want your game to require you to be a real PGA champ, do you?
Heroes on the Move announced (video here)
Not much to say about this one, because there was only a brief gameplay trailer for it. The game has Jak, Daxter, Ratchet, Clank, Sly Cooper, Bentley all together in one game. Looks like to be a mix that you’d expect, action-adventure and platforming. No release date was announced for this.
Little Big Planet 2 details (video here)
Little Big Planet’s back with Little Big Planet 2, and it looks like they’re expanding your creative options even further. The demo showed new competitive gametypes that you can create and expand upon yourself, and the video also showed just how much more expansive your creative options are in Little Big Planet 2. I really enjoyed Little Big Planet, and I was honestly disappointed that the game didn’t get the attention that it deserved. I hope that Sony puts a little bit more marketing muscle behind this one, because I think it’s something everyone should try out. Definitely watch the video for this if you’ve just been reading my descriptions so far.
Final Fantasy XIV (video here)
Sony showed this game off at E3, but only as a trailer. The trailer’s good, but it doesn’t really tell much of anything about the game and is basically just a cinematic trailer with in-game graphics. The game’s still looking good, and I’m excited for it, I just wish more details about it would’ve been revealed at the conference. Oh well.
Portal 2 announced for PS3 (video here)
If you told me that Valve was going to bring Portal 2 to the PlayStation 3 a week ago, I’d point you out to articles where Gabe Newell absolutely trashed the PS3. Well, I would’ve been wrong a week ago, because Gabe Newell himself came out on stage to announce that Portal 2 will be coming to the PlayStation 3. He even made a joke about his past negative statements about the PS3, which was funny. One thing that’s going to set Portal 2 apart from the Xbox 360 version is that Portal 2 for the PS3 will feature Steam Cloud support, making it the closest thing to Steam you’re going to get on a console. The gameplay trailer itself looked like Portal, but with better, more varied environments. Can’t wait for that.
New Twisted Metal game announced (video part 1 part 2)
This, in my opinion, was the star of the show (the Portal 2 announcement was more shocking, though). Twisted Metal was a childhood favorite of mine growing up, as I’m sure it was for a lot of you that are reading this. The gameplay demonstration on the stage demonstrated Team Deathmatch, where it was revealed that up to 16 players will be able to participate online, including online split-screen with up to 4 people on one Xbox.
Team deathmatch appears to work about as you’d expect a Twisted Metal game to play, but the interesting thing is that you can actually pick a helicopter. When you’re in the helicopter, you can apparently switch to gunner mode where you fire off high-powered rounds from above, and you can also pick up your team-mates off the ground to transport them to other parts of the battlefield.
The next multi-player mode they showed off was Nuke, and it’s basically a unique take on the “capture the flag” and “VIP” gametype concepts. Each team has a “team leader” that they have to protect (appears to be an NPC), and of course the enemy’s objective is to capture your team leader and vice versa. After you’ve captured the team leader, you transport it to a a missile launcher, which is marked by a big yellow circle. If you manage to keep the enemy’s team leader in the circle long enough, the team leader is sacrificed to the missile launcher, and a missile is launched at two giant, stationary… monsters in the sky, which you then have to steer into the enemey’s “monster”. If you manage to hit their target 3 times, you win.
It looks like the new Twisted Metal is going to play a lot like the originals did, but with some changes to freshen things up a bit. I love Twisted Metal, so I’m sure I’ll probably buy this on day one. It can’t be as bad as Twisted Metal Black, right?
In closing
I already ranted enough about this in the first post, so I won’t repeat myself too much. I’m really disappointed with Sony’s presentation at this year’s E3, but there were some good titles. If I had to score each conference, I’d probably put Sony’s conference in third with Nintendo winning the show. Even if the presentation was pretty awful, Sony fans are going to have a pretty good amount of new titles and features to look forward to over the next year.
Related posts:
- E3 2010: Sony Press Conference Round-up Part 1
- E3 2010: Nintendo Press Conference Round-up
- E3 2010: Microsoft Press Conference Round-up Part 2
- E3 2010: Microsoft Press Conference Round-up Part 1
- Killzone 3 E3 2010 Trailer
