Sony and Big 3 wrap-up

Don't forget to read my summary of Nintendo's conference, which I just posted, and with no furthur ado:

Sony

Sony was also last at E3 2009, and they had to push the PS Move through as "new", despite the fact that Microsoft had just finished announcing their motion control. That wasn't an issue this year, as both of them had their motion controls, and we knew that, so Sony wasn't at such a disadvantage this time.

Sony opened with a bit of a speech, saying that this year would be the year Sony "brought 3D to games". They quickly followed it up with Killzone 3(D). Which has jetpacks... and aliens... and all those other things that make Killzone Killzone. You'll be able to get your hands on it in February 2011.
Sony also announced that several other games will be coming out in 3D, such as the long awaited Gran Turismo 5 and MLB: The Show.

Then... more speeches. This time about their new motion control, Playstation Move. A fairly big deal was made about the fact that it actually has buttons.
They then informed us that SOCOM 4 will be using motion controls. Yay! I guess...

One of the most unique games I saw this entire E3 was a Move-centric game called Sorcery. As is obvious, you'll be playing a wizard, and you'll use move to aim your spells, draw glyphs on the screen to cast different spells, and all sorts of awesome stuff like that. It actually looks like it works pretty well, as the guy demoing it was able to hit the enemies reliably.

Then they demoed PGA Tour 11. Fairly standard, but it uses Move, which really does make the difference. It seemed remarkably close to 1:1-and the golfer made the hole within par. If you like golfing (or your dad does), this might be a good game to have.

Next came Heroes on the Move, starring such Sony heroes as Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Dexter, and a couple others. Okay, it's a platformer (I think all the heroes are from platformers, or at least pseudo-platformers) where you play as all the different characters, simple enough.

Sony then gave a release date and some prices. It comes out September 19, and the original controller will be $50, the sub-controller will be $30, there's a bundle with both and Sports Champions for $100, and that with the PS3 for $400.

After that came several games with pretty much no information provided, those being Eyepet, The Shoot, and Echochrome ii.

Kevin Butler came on stage and announced a new advertising campaign for the PSP, starring one Marcus Rivers, and a slogan of "Step your game up!" Basically, it's the PS3 commercials with Marcus instead of KB and a different slogan.

Then, predictably, came several games for the PSP. Among these are Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Invizimals, and God of War: Ghost of Sparta... and a stat. That stat is 70+, yes seventy plus PSP games by December of this year, and there's quite a few that look pretty good.

Finished with the PSP, we move on to one amazing looking game. That game is LittleBigPlanet2. The first one was pretty amazing, but this one steps its game up. (See what I did there? Too bad it's not on the PSP) The first one focused mainly on platformers, but you can make anything in LBP2. Some talented individual made an RTS. Yes, a real-time strategy game. You know, like Starcraft? They added so many new features, they decided they weren't even going to talk about them and just showed a montage of awesome games made by players of the first game who were invited to see what they could do with the new game.

Then came an unusual announcement that I've oddly heard next to nothing about: Playstation Plus. It's a subscription based upgrade to PSN that lets you get all sorts of cool stuff-supposedly worth hundreds of dollars, including discounts and free PSN games. We weren't provided with many details, but we did get a price. $50 for a yearly subscription which is the same as Xbox Live.

Sony then declared war on Microsoft. Well, in the FPS arena, anyway. Here comes the reboot of Medal of Honor, and guess what? Goodbye, WWII. We had a good run, but I think it's time to move on. Mostly because CoD did, and look what happened! Moving on, they announced a new character, Deuce, and showed off a map, located in Afghanistan, called Diwagal Camp. Also, a new HD version of Medal of Honor: Frontline will come with it.

Continuing from the EA conference the night before, we saw more on Dead Space 2. Which looks incredible. The dark, lonely, creepy atmosphere from the original is still very much in force. There will also be a limited (to PS3) edition, including Dead Space: Extraction (originally a Wii exclusive) with Move support.

Then Valve gave us their "surprise". Portal 2, via the most awesome medium ever-GLaDOS. From the trailer we saw, it will be much more complicated, and we know its going to be longer. Valve also announced that the PS3 version will be the best console (important distinction. Don't forget about the PC!) version of Portal 2, due to the inclusion of... Steamworks. This means that Valve will be able to conduct their signature after-launch support much more easily.

We next saw a pretty cool looking, but not incredible, trailer for Final Fantasy XIV, the new MMO coming from Square Enix. Not much else to say, just go watch the trailer if you want.

Then came Mafia 2, and an announcement that there will be PS3 exclusive content

After that came more Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (it was shown at the Ubisoft press conference the night before), along with an announcement that there will be a PS3 exclusive multiplayer beta/demo.

Also shown was Metal Gear Solid: Rising, and a really cool trailer showing Raiden as the protagonist slicing up bad guys with the sword--which you are precisely controlling with Move. The trailer ended with an impressive display of control: A watermelon being sliced into wedges. Very clean wedges, too.

And then montage time of new games that apparently didn't rate much time-- despite the fact that there were some pretty cool games in it. Included were Tron: Evolution, DC Universe Online, True Crime, Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat 2, and Castlevania Lords of Shadow.

Nearing the end, we saw a trailer for the long-awaited Gran Turismo 5. Graphics amazing as always-- that's pretty much all you can see in a racing game like that. It's main hook, as far as I can tell, is the ridiculous number of cars in the game. Hundreds of cars, about 100 of them with fully detailed interiors. What's the point of detailing the interior?
After that we saw the sequel to Infamous, one of the most promising PS3 exclusives to come out in recent years. You'll be seeing Cole, with new ice powers to supplement his lightning powers from the previous game, in Infamous 2 sometime in 2011.

Finally, we got proof that David Jaffe is a liar. Twisted Metal and Sweet Tooth are coming back to the Playstation. Twisted Metal is the longest-running series on Playstation, but it hasn't had an installment on the PS3. In case you don't know, Twisted Metal is a car combat game. As opposed to Mario Kart or Blur, where you're racing and getting ahead using weapons, defeating enemies is the goal in Twisted Metal.
It was a particularly spectacular reveal, complete with an ice cream truck and a guy dressed as Sweet Tooth. (Proof that clowns are scary.) Includes new Nuke mode, which happens to be one of the most complicated ones I've seen. You have to capture the enemy leader (two sides, the clowns and dolls), take him back to your missile launcher, keep it there for a while, and then hit the enemy's flagship thing with the missile. Do this 3 times before the other team and you win.
In short, it looks to provide what nothing else can, and well at that!



So, this year was a pretty good year, as far as I'm concerned. None of the conferences were complete flops, and there seems to be dozens of games coming in the next year or so. The motion controls appear to have some potential, but more traditional games are far from being neglected- in fact, Nintendo, known for its focus on casual gamers, had a remarkable line-up of almost retro, hardcore games.
Personally, Kinect looks like it has more potential to be incredible, but PS Move looks like what potential it has is being used. I'm definitely glad that Nintendo is getting back to its classic franchises.
I give the win of this year's E3 to Nintendo. Admittedly, Sony's conference was definitely the most fun (Kevin Butler is awesome!), but it was full of montages and claims that Move and 3D are the wave of the future and completely revolutionary, even when it's obvious that Move is just a more accurate, even stupider looking version of the Wii's controls. Microsoft, despite quite a few big games coming out this year, didn't do anything unexpected, so it takes last place for me.

Tell me in the comments what you guys think!


P.S. Considering adding new writers to the blog. I'd still do more writing, but I think it would expand what we can cover, and have the end result of more information for you guys. Besides, it'd be kind of cool to be a senior editor of my own site! If you actually know me, or have a particularly interesting topic you know about and want to write on, feel free to ask!