E3 2012: Sony
I’m not quite sure how I feel about the last hour and a half of the Sony press conference. Maybe it’s late or maybe a lot of the more exciting things have already happened today. It felt really dull. Jack Tretton is a great speaker, if not one of the best who grace the stage at E3, but even he couldn’t ignite me. Maybe because I wasn’t able to be in the audience and be bribed with a free Plus subscription.
The only real interesting hardware news is the “Cross-Controller” concept which is aimed directly at Nintendo’s Wii U. I’m not sure how hard it hits across the bow because that is one mighty expensive controller and we have yet to see any information aside from it’s possibility and a few titles. I think it is just another expensive gimmick that is a neat feature if you own both systems and a pass if you don’t. Nothing screams must have.
Speaking about shooting across the bow, during the Sony briefing Ubisoft showed more Assassin’s Creed 3 game play, featuring a pretty lengthy naval battle across the open seas. I have to admit that looks pretty neat (although I hope it only happens once in the game otherwise I could get a little sea-sick of it). It’s late, excuse the bad humour.
Moving right along to some original content. Quantic Dream’s new IP features actress Ellen Paige in the roll of the protagonist. I like how Quantic Dream pushes real time cinematics. It really is quite breathtaking. While the characters in game look great, I’m not sure if I’m feeling the concept just yet. I’m also looking forward to the mechanics of the game as well which were not featured. Will it be more of the same vis-a-vis Heavy Rain or is there some new ideas lurking in this beautifully rendered world.
This one surprised me. Obviously there will be comparisons between Uncharted since it is from the same developers. And they wouldn’t be completely wrong. However, it’s not a clone at all. The first thing I noticed is that you have a health bar with no regeneration and what looks like very little ammunition. So it is more down the lines of survival horror. Making every bullet count. I am also very impressed with how smoothly the action and scripted scenes play out. It looks like you’re playing a well choreographed movie fight scene. Very impressive.
