Sony looks to have come out with full force at this year’s E3, showing off plenty of big name classics and lots of smaller but just as impressive games.
The Last Guardian by Fumio Euda looks promising to be a very emotional story driven puzzle game. With a big fluffy gryphon that clearly shares a bond with the main character how could anyone not want to see what they get up to.
Horizon Zero Dawn takes the player into a post apocalyptic world where nature has taken over and humans have become tribal and are forced to hunt robots to survive. The beautiful views of nature were disrupted by the appearance of robot dinosaurs that look a bit like the Geth from Mass Effect and sort of took me by surprise. This interesting twist on the post apocalypse idea really got me interested in how the characters are going to grow and develop.
No Man’s Sky, as always made a brilliant impression by showing its huge scale and unique environments. The vast sprawling universe of thousands of fully explorable planets populated by fauna to be discovered amd catalogued, with resources to be traded and robots to be destroyed. Frankly this game had me hooked from when it was first shown at E3 in 2013 and I can’t wait to explore the giant universe that was showcased this year.
Dreams is a bizarre game that takes the player into a very artistic space akin to lucid dreaming. Players are able to collaboratively create art pieces and levels completely from scratch and animate them entirely using their controller. The sheer variety and creative freedom this game looks to offer could put it on par with the likes of Little Big Planet and Project Spark. The very unique gameplay was really cool and made me wonder what the limits of this game are going to be and what weird creations people are going to make.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate looked as fancy as ever with a shiny CGI trailer and no actual in game footage. The apparent lack of gameplay and messy release of the previous title however didn’t seem to stop the audience from getting thoroughly hyped however.
Devolver Digital brought with them a montage of four new titles (Ronin, Eiter, Mother Russia Bleeds, Crossing Souls) that look like a perfect fit in their typical low-fi, ultraviolent lineup. While this isn’t a particularly bad thing because it is what they’re good at, everything we were shown looked quite similar to other games that have come before. They’re going to need that special something to make them worth while like Hotline Miami.
It’s been 15 years since the release of the last game of Shenmue so Ys Net have decided that it’s now time for Shenmue 3. The developer made a brief appearance, only to plug its Kickstarter campaign which was unusual and unexpected. Shooting from around $4,000 on announcement of the link to around $700k by the end of the show this is very likely to hit its goal with little trouble if continues at this pace.
Project Morpheus, Sony’s own virtual reality headset promises to harness the enjoyment of multiplayer that many of the other VR systems look to be missing, going so far as to introduce a new IP with that purpose. As long as it keeps that promise it could well be one of the better VR headsets that will fill the market in the near future.
Black Ops 3 brought some new features to the table, most prominently four player campaign co-op. This is something I have wanted since the original Modern Warfare. Tightening the gun play to typical Call of Duty standards should help get rid of the Titanfall comparison the plagued Advanced Warfare. Plenty of cool new abilities are added. Whether they are a story mode exclusive or carry over into multiplayer we have yet to see but shooting fire darts out of your hand seems pretty badass. A big announcement was the fact that PlayStation is now the home of Call of Duty so players on the platform will get first access to all upcoming map packs and a multiplayer beta coming this August.
Firewatch is a beautiful game that looks like it is going to have a a very deep story. The possibility of having to explore a dense woodland in search of clues both tantalises and terrifies me. As cool as it will be having all that freedom the completionist in me really hopes that I won’t have too much trouble collecting all of the clues in that expansive world. This game looks set to have a really lonely atmosphere thanks to the only connection with another person being the walkie talkie the character carries with them.
Something that caused a big stir in the audience was the reveal of the next Hitman game. It had a trailer that actually looked a lot better than the majority of the Hitman movie but alas, contained no gameplay. We can only hope it is shown at other events.
More Star Wars Battlefront was revealed, but as with other showings throughout the day, there was no mention made as to features like game size. We hope Dice continue their trend of making huge 64 player games like Battlefieled 4. One can only be a bit concerned by the silence.
Street fighter 5 brought back the regular cast of fighters much to the delight of the audience who witnessed M. Bison get absolutely shredded by Cammy. What looked to be slight graphical improvements that will probably be mostly ignored during actual fighting managed to make the game look up to date but kept that classic stylised look that Street Fighter holds so dear.
Wrapping up the show for the day with their headline franchise, Sony hit a small bump when attempting to show Uncharted 4: A Theif’s End. There was an overly long dark period at the beginning which didn’t bode well followed by a lengthy moment of Drake just standing there awkwardly until it was decided that it should be restarted. What followed however was some stellar gameplay and a frankly cinematic set piece that reminded us of that scene in Bad Boys II where they are crashing a yellow hummer through a shanty town down the side of a hill. Even though I don’t own a PS4, the quality of the voice acting and graphics are almost enough to make me want to fork out for one.
E3 is taking place in LA and is considered the biggest games exhibition in the world.
YouTube are even streaming the event live this weekend.
