06/07/11

E3 2011 Roundup - Sony

Time for Sony.

Let’s just get it out of the way. Jack Tretton starts with apologizing for the whole hacking brouhaha, apologizing to publishers, retailers and consumers, and thanking them for sticking with Sony. Enough of that though. GAMES TIME.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. The trailer was fairly standard Uncharted stuff, nothing unexpected. However, standard Uncharted stuff is awesome, so that’s not the worst thing in the world. Multiplayer beta starts June 20, the game releases November 1, but during October Subway will have a special where you can get access to the full multiplayer. For those of you that are interested.

After exclusive #1 was exclusive #2: Resistance 3. Also not surprising, looks good but nothing we haven’t seen. It’s being bundled with a Move setup for $150. After that they briefly featured a collection of God of War handheld games (Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta), remastered for HD on the PS3, as well as the well-known Team Ico collection.

Who comes to E3 for games though? No one. Sony then showed us a fancy cheaper 3D TV. 24” PlayStation branded 3D TV, with a special splitscreen feature that uses the 3D tech to give 2 players completely different images, so you can play splitscreen and still enjoy the full screen. The TV along with 1 pair of glasses, an HDMI cable, and Resistance 3 is $500. Looks like a pretty good deal, but I just bought a TV, so…oh well.

Ok back to games. Next was NBA 2K12, with Move support. Passing, stealing, and blocking are now point-and-click movements, and it looks quite simple. I could see it being a problem trying to point at moving players, but it seemed to work pretty well. I’m not a huge basketball fan so I won’t be picking this up either way, but everyone else will find out how well it works October 4.

Next: Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest. It’s a cartoony action game that uses the Move for things such as sword/shield combat, bow/arrow combat, and puzzles. Unsurprisingly, the motion controls seem to work pretty well. And I know I’ll sound like a Sony fanboy, but this is how motion controls should be done. Buttons are a huge help to motion controls, as impressive as Kinect is from a technological standpoint, the ability to give binary input in the form of buttons (or more complex input in the form of analog sticks) is immensely helpful. Anyway, Medieval Moves looks like a fun cartoonish romp.

I don’t know why they did this, but they showed Infamous 2. The day comes out tomorrow. Actually, looking at my clock right now, it comes out in 28 minutes. Considering they didn’t bother showing Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, it seems like an odd choice to show a game that’s literally about to come out. Anyway, it looks pretty good, not much else to say. After that they mentioned that they’re bringing more robust Move functionality to LittleBigPlanet 2. Yay, I suppose.

Next was a short trailer for Starhawk, a shooter/vehicle combat game that is the spiritual successor to Warhawk. It didn’t show much, but the emphasis is on space, looks interesting. After that was a short teaser for Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, coming out in 2012. It looks like the remastering of the old Sly Cooper games was leading up to this.

Next was an interesting title from the makers of Eve Online. Dust 514 is an MMO shooter that interacts with Eve Online. The two games make up 1 persistent universe, and they interact in battles and the like. This wasn’t mentioned during E3, but it’s worth it to note that CCP has said that Dust 514 will not have a subscription fee like most MMOs, but instead will use micro-transactions to make money. Beta will be out before the end of the year, and the full game will be released next Spring. It looks interesting, and Eve has always intrigued me, so this may be my foot in the door.

After Dust 514 they discussed Bioshock Infinite. The trailer looks beautiful, and exclusive for PS3 the game will be bundled with the original Bioshock on the same disc, so if you missed out on the first one you can try it now. Also they hinted at a Bioshock product on Sony’s new portable (which we will discuss shortly), but didn’t give any real information about it.

Saint’s Row: The Third was the next game, simply to mention that it will have an exclusive game mode and game content on the PS3. Good to know. After that was a preview of a Star Trek game that I believe is just called Star Trek, but it could just not have a title yet. It’s a co-op action adventure, with Move support (surprise surprise), and we’ll get it in our hands in 2012.

Following suit from Saint’s Row, Sony took this time to brag about exclusive content in non-exclusive games. SSX will have an exclusive level modeled on Mount Fuji, complete with, I think he said, 10 drop zones. Need for Speed: The Run will have 7 exclusive supercars. Battlefield 3 will include Battlefield 1943 on the same disc, only on the PS3. Sounds like Sony and EA are good friends right about now. After that, Kazuo Hirai came out to mention PlayStation Suite, Sony’s effort to bring PS content to non-PlayStation devices, such as certain Android phones and tablets. Nothing else was announced, we’ll find out more later. Next was the real reason Kaz came out though: Sony’s new portable.

Previously called the NGP (Next Generation Portable), Sony showed off the PS Vita. 2 analog sticks, 5” multitouch-enabled OLED screen, touchpad, sixaxis motion, front and rear cameras. The wifi model is $250, the 3G model (with AT&T, unfortunately) is $300. It has cross-game chat with friends through the Party feature, and you can also find users around you with the Near feature. But enough of that, let’s get to the games.

You liked Uncharted? How about Uncharted: Golden Abyss? It’s made by the same people who did Syphon Filter and the PSP Resistance game, though Naughty Dog is overseeing development. It looks surprisingly good for a handheld game, and it looks a lot like the Uncharted we know and love. Obviously the graphics aren’t quite as good, but since the screen is so small you can get surprisingly close. You can use the sixaxis motion, touch controls, and regular buttons to control Nathan Drake when climbing. Touch controls seem to make climbing somewhat trivial, but I suppose there’s not supposed to be a lot of difficulty in the climbing segments anyway, so it’s not a big deal.

Next up was an action RPG by the name of Ruin, though it said the title is tentative. The overhead view reminds me of old-school RPGs, Diablo and its ilk. If I get a Vita, which I don’t know if I will yet, I would definitely look into Ruin. One nice feature of Ruin (and, it sounds, other Vita games) is cloud saving between the Vita and the PS3. This way you can save your game on the Vita, then move to the PS3 and pick up where you left off. After Ruin they showed a little bit of the Vita version of ModNation Racers, really only showing the track creation mode. I imagine the rest of the game is what you would expect. Track creation relies heavily on the touch features of the Vita, and it seems to work pretty well and seems very easy, so kudos to them.

Lastly they showed a little bit of LittleBigPlanet and Street Fighter x Tekken before wrapping up with a video of a medley of Vita games, including WipEout 2048, Hot Shots Golf and more. Vita should launch in 2011, so we won’t have to wait long.

Sony had a lot to show. Some of it wasn’t terribly new, some of it they didn’t have much to say, but nearly all of it was interesting in some form. The Vita looks good, the games look pretty good (hopefully most of the ones they showed are launch titles), and their PS3 games also look good, though a lot of it was what we expected and not much more. B+.

Tagged: sony uncharted resistance god of war ico nba move infamous medieval moves starhawk sly cooper dust bioshock saint's row star trek ssx need ofr speed battlefield vita ruin modnation racers street fighter x tekken e3

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