Sony E3 2012 Conference Wrap-Up - Article

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 The Sony E3 conference started with a montage showcasing the best the PlayStation brand has had to offer over the last few years, including many of the titles that would be included in the presentation, such as God of War Ascension and The Last of Us. When the montage was over, Jack Tretton took the stage and thanked the PlayStation fanbase for supporting them before welcoming David Cage to the stage. The director of Heavy rain announced his next project: Beyond - Two Souls

 Beyond – Two Souls

 David Cage explained to the crowd that his next game was about the fear of death and the mystery surrounding what comes after; Beyond follows 15 years of the life of Jodi Holmes, a young girl touched by death who is more impacted by it than most. Mr Cage said that Jodi needed to be played by an actress that encompassed all the character represented, and that actress was announced to be Ellen Page.

The scene we watched was said to be early in the game, where a young Jodi was being asked questions by a confused police officer, but she's not answering any of them; in fact, she's giving him the silent treatment. As the police officer continued to interrogate her, reminding her that they found her on the side of the road and that they want to help her, she gets nervous and the score builds an ominous tension before a coffee cup telekinetically shoots across the room, smashing against the wall. The police officer is clearly confused and scared, so he makes an excuse and leaves. After he's gone, the scene changes and an entire SWAT team busts into the police station, looking for Jodi. As the police officer that was interrogating Jodi opens up the door to the interrogation room we see that Jodi has disappeared. This is when the scene jumped to a montage of chase scenes, vehicles exploding, and objects flying all over the place that hinted at her dark secret. When the carnage has died down, Jodi leans over to a fallen but still alive SWAT member, threatening them, claiming that if they don't leave her alone, next time she'll kill them all. She looks up to the sky, saying “Come on Ivan, I think they got the message.” Then the trailer faded to black. While in-game footage was shown, we didn't actually see any gameplay; is this going to be quicktime event driven game or a more traditional action game?

Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale

Once the Beyond trailer was over, Jack Tretton came back on the stage and reminded the audience about the 'Michael' trailer, making a joke that 30 minutes after the commercial all the characters decided to get together in an all-out fight, and that's how we got Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale. Once the developers of the game came out, they said that they were proud to announce that Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale was coming to Vita, and that the game was entirely cross compatible with the PS3 version, and that Battle Royale not only supports cross game play, but cross-platform saves as well. Once they got done announcing the features, they got into a full-on 4-player battle, 2 on PS3 and 2 on Vita, showing how the special attacks built up and how using them got you kills. They clarified that getting kills was how you got points as opposed to knocking others off the stage, and that's how you win. As the special attacks build from level 1-3, the pyrotechnics get more impressive and the area of attack is bigger, making the higher level attacks have a higher chance of killing the other players, since there doesn't appear to be any health bars. The demo finished up by revealing two new characters: Nathan Drake and Big Daddy from the Bioshock series.

LittleBigPlanet Cross Controller DLC

After the hype of finding out about Big Daddy being a playable character, Sony announced a new feature being utilized in some LittleBigPlanet 2 DLC coming out later in the year called Cross Controller play. In Cross Controller Play, one player plays on the PS3 with a controller while the second player is on the Vita, able to see and interact with items in a different way. The LittleBigPlanet 2 Cross Controller DLC has its own unique story.

Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified

After explaining the cross controller DLC, this was where the focus shifted to the Playstation Vita. We were promised 60 titles before the year's end, including stuff like Retro City Rampage and the Call of Duty Vita game, which has been titled Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified; no further information on the title was given, other than the fact that it was due on the Vita this fall.

Assassin's Creed III

This is where Ubisoft took the stage, showing off Assassin's Creed III: Liberation for the PlayStation Vita, assuring the audience that it is a completely original title built from the ground up to utilize the Vita's features and is set in 1978 New Orleans. It stars the first female assassin and there will be bonuses for linking the Vita and PS3 versions of the game, such as Connor's tomahawk. They also announced a white Assassin's Creed Vita bundle, which includes the game and a 4 gig memory card. 

Ubisoft already showed some gameplay of the upcoming Assassin’s Creed III, but they saved a new feature for Sony’s press conference - naval warfare. It’s looking like new protagonist Connor will end up rising pretty high in the American militia’s ranks, as the demo finds him as the captain behind the wheel of a naval warship. Oceans look expansive and have real-time waves, and the weather effects showcased earlier today at Ubisoft’s press conference will surely have interesting effects on how ship battles play out.

The ship-on-ship warfare was interesting, though seemed to boil down specifically to positioning and the timing of your cannon volleys. Even more interesting though was the inclusion of ship-boarding for on deck sword fighting. Unfortunately, the demo cut out right before we could see any of that in action. After the demo, the audience was treated to a sweet PS3/Assassin’s Creed III bundle, which includes exclusive PS3-downloadable content.

Far Cry 3

Ubisoft had already showed the single player campaign at their own conference, but we got to see an exclusive first look at the Far Cry 3 4-player co-op campaign. The co-op campaign is completely unique to the single player campaign and seems to be very objective-based. The gameplay demo we saw followed the 4 players attacking a camp of enemies in a jungle, moving on through a bridge to get to more enemies; once the enemies were killed, they blew the bridge and the demo ended. The game looks as beautiful as you'd expect from Far Cry, and the co-op really adds another dimension to the series that could pump all sorts of new life into it.

WonderBook and Book of Spells

While Microsoft focused on music, movies and sports for the majority of their press conference, Sony decided to one up them the only way they know how: Books. Well, not really. WonderBook is a new, book-shaped peripheral that works with the PlayStation Eye to provide interactive stories. So Sony’s new WonderBook isn’t really books as we know them, but the new PlayStation Eye peripheral seems to have a lot of potential. 

The first game in Sony’s WonderBook line was announced to be Book of Spells, the result of Sony’s partnership with J.K. Rowling and Pottermore. Set in the universe of Harry Potter, Book of Spells teaches players how to cast spells taught in Hogwarts, with the PlayStation Move as a magic wand. Players cast spells by drawing symbols in the air. However, non-responsive gameplay really killed the momentum of what was otherwise an intriguing concept.

Playstation Mobile

The Playstation Suite is now called Playstation Mobile and will soon allow all Playstation Certified games to be published and distributed on any HTC device in addition to the Sony and PlayStation brand hardware. They also announced that some PlayStation Media features ,such as Amazon, Hulu Plus, CinemaNow, Netflix, and Crackle Television are all going to be available on the Playstation Vita. PS One Classics will also be coming to the Vita this summer.

God of War: Ascension

We got our first look at God of War: Ascension’s single player gameplay, but aside from some outstanding graphics, it was just more of what we expect from God of War. Being first in the series chronologically, Kratos looks far less buff this time around, but otherwise the gameplay is pretty much the same as the rest of the series. A new move revealed Kratos’ new ability to pick up and use enemy weapons, so that could potentially shake up the gameplay quite a bit.

The Last of Us

With the exception of Ubisoft’s surprise Watch Dogs, The Last of Us is an easy contender for E3 2012 game of show. Naughty Dog’s new game has been building hype since its announcement at last year’s VGAs. We finally got to see some actual gameplay, and it was glorious. 

The demo started off with Joel and Ellie trying to make their way through a seemingly abandoned post-apocalyptic city. Visually, the game impressed, but it wasn’t until we got to combat that the game started blowing minds. With only four bullets in a revolver, Joel and Ellie had to rely on stealth, misdirection, and their wits to take out the group of half a dozen enemies.

Most impressive was how the enemies actually seemed like characters. Enemies weren’t only surprised to see Joel in their hideout, they were scared of him. “Jesus Christ, he has a gun!” one of them yelled. Another begged for mercy when Joel grabbed him as a human shield, and another screamed in pain after being lit on fire by a molotov cocktail created through what appeared to be a fairly in-depth crafting system. The demo ended on Joel with a shotgun in his hands, pointed at a downed enemy’s head, as he begs “No, please -” Boom.

Wrapping Up

Overall, the Sony conference had a lot of great information and demos, but everything was announced or leaked before the show, leaving very little in the way of surprises. That said, seeing more details about Quantic Dream's new game, Vita games, and The Last of Us gameplay was great.  

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