E3 07 Sony Press Conference

Posted by: John at 7/11/2007 6:12 PM - Comments (0)

More On: Sony

Sony held their press conference over at Culver Studios in Culver City like last year and I think they had a pretty good showing this year. We arrived a little late because of the shuttle service but we did walk in in time to see the new PSP. It's smaller, lighter and features a nice video output. The 19% reduction in width should make it a little nicer to carry around. If you want to view all your movies or videos on a big screen TV, just plug a video cable to the PSP, press the display button, and you're pumping video to a display of your choice. Kaz showed a trailer for Spider-Man 2 on the PSP and easily changed it to the large screen through this method. Two new colors were shown with the one that Chuck is picking up being a white one with Darth Vader on the back. While the current PSP is priced at $169, the new ones come bundled with a game and priced at $200.

More after the jump.

A lot of Home was on display and I like how they integrated the service with your own web space available through Sony. Phil Harrison showed a nice demo where he took a picture with his phone, which had the XMB interface by the way, and it appeared in his Home space. The one thing they did show that I was happy to see was that you could launch games in Home and jump in to the game with your friends. Quitting the game put you back straight into the Home software making it clear that Sony's keeping its promise to make Home integration available once the service launches.

Sony didn't use statistics to toute their product and let the games speak for themselves. From what we saw, I think Sony's positioned themselves pretty well. First off, their third party support is strong and we got a debut of a new Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer that showed the game as you would see it when you play. I migh have drooled a little while the trailer was playing and Kojima announced this will be his last Metal Gear game as well as tie up all the storylines from the past. Could we see the death of Solid Snake in the fourth game?

Sony ran quick vingettes on other games as well and Infamous along with Uncharted Drake's Fortune look quite impressive. Infamous has this Heroes type feel where you are an individual infused with power that you can use for either good or evil. It's up to you to decide and I hope that there's a lot of diversity if you can play as either side. Uncharted features 3000 different animations for the main character and with the help of some blending techiques offer some impressive looking action.

A big news coming out the press conference is that NCSoft is partnering with Sony to produce some titles. Whether it's new IPs or converting some of their products to the platform, NCSoft should give Sony some nice MMORPGs to their platform.

Little Big Planet looks pretty slick and the ability to create new levels and share them with others will offer a ton of replay value for this game. The editor looks simple to use and you can create some fun shapes by subtracting areas from solid objects. Build up puzzles and trade them with others. Little Big Planet's going to be hit for the PlayStation 3.

Ratchet and Clank comes back in a big way with Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction which had some nice visual style. We actually got to play this after the showing and the one level we played was rather fun. I threw down a transmographer to turn the enemies into penguins. Tossing a groovinator made the penuins do a funny dance. The groovinator also made some robot enemies shake about and pelvic thrust with hilarious results. Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction looks like another great game and another great title for Insomniac Games.

The Heavenly Sword feature dwelved a little more into the story. The main character is in posession of a sword made for the Gods and since the sword isn't for humans, it's draining the life away from the female lead. The action ranges from one on one combat to hordes of enemies giving some variety to the fights in the game. Heavenly Sword looks like a great title and I really liked the action that was displayed in the demo.

The grand finale for the show was a real time showing of Killzone 2. Sony got a lot of flack for showing a pre-rendered demo of the game and this time they had a member of the development team playing through the game to show that it indeed running on a PlayStation 3. The game looks very well made and everything gelled together well making the visuals in Killzone 2 one of the more impressive looking games I've seen so far.

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E3 2008: Dark Void (Interview and Hands On)

by: Chuck - posted: 7/20/2008 1:50 PM - Comments (0)

One of the games that I wanted to check out going into E3 was Airtight's Dark Void. The early trailers had shown some stomach churning vertical combat and given that Airtight is composed of a lot of people who worked on the Crimson Skies games there was a lot of potential in the game. After talking to Jose Perez III (audio below) I think Dark Void is another game to keep on your radar.

You play Will, your typical everyman who's sucked into the Void while traveling through the Bermuda Triangle. Now you have to find a way to escape and defeat the Watchers, an alien race trying to destroy mankind. The best way to think about the vertical combat is to take the cover based gameplay from Gears of War and turn it 90 degrees upward. Throw in a little acrophobia and now you're talking Dark Void's core gameplay mechanic (which makes sense given that the game is using the Unreal Engine 3). You'll only be climbing up rock surfaces for part of the game as eventually you'll build a fully functional jet pack and that's where the Crimson Skies influences really start to show. With the fully upgraded jetpack you can zoom around levels without any worries or restrictions and the game opens up to accomplish that.

I only got to play the game for about five minutes but zooming around the with the jetpack was a lot of fun as you got to try and take out a series of flying saucers. The real key is that you need to board one of the flying saucers and then use it to take out the others in the area. Once you get close to one of them you press the B button and then that kicks off a small mini-game where you circle around the edge of the saucer trying to work your way in. Thankfully it's not a quicktime event but once you have control you can then zoom around and take down the rest of the aircraft with ease. Controls are very tight and responsive. I will admit that flying in the jetpack is a bit like flying in WarHawk as you have the option of hovering as well as flying forward.

From what I saw the game looks like it's coming along well. I do worry that the vertical combat part of the game is going to take some getting used to as you do have to climb your way along a linear path but I don't think a lot of people will mind it. I guess we'll find out when the game ships. Here's our interview with Jose Perez III that explains more about the backstory of the game and more about the vertical combat gameplay.

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E3 2008: Motorstorm:Pacific Rift (Interview and Hands On)

by: Chuck - posted: 7/20/2008 12:52 PM - Comments (0)

The original Motorstorm was one of the better looking titles for the PS3 and did a fairly good job of showing off the strengths and weaknesses of the PS3. You had amazing visuals, interesting SIXAXIS controls, and some really brutal load times. The follow up game looks to build on those strengths and fix a lot of the issues with the first game. In our chat with Paul Hollywood, the creative director on the project and he confirmed that the game will not require a hard drive install to increase speend.

The game is placed on a new imaginary jungle island which provides for some new challenges. You'll now have to deal with foliage and water which can slow down smaller vehicles. Water is important in other ways as it can instantly cool down your engine from boosting which adds a new tactical element to the game.

I did have the chance to go through one quick race in the game against Mr. Hollywood using the game's new split screen mode. The game builds on the amazing visuals of the first as the graphics are just jaw droppingly gorgeous. While Pure comes close I still think Motorstorm: Pacific Rift has a slight edge on them graphics wise. Gameplay is still fast paced and the game retails the multiple paths through a course setup from the first game.

Load times for vehicle selection are now almost non-existant as you now pull up a 2D card with the information about the vehicle rather than the 3D model of the car. This may change by the time the game ships but for me it works. Level load times have also been decreased dramatically and this isn't final code. The racing itself will be familiar to fans of the first game (why ruin what works well). I was able to narrowly defeat Paul but I have a sneaking feeling he let me win. Hopefully I'll be able to get a re-match this fall when the game is released.

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E3 2008: Pure (Hands On)

by: Chuck - posted: 7/20/2008 12:51 PM - Comments (0)

Despite a packed schedule I ended up with about fifteen minutes of free time to spend in the Concourse Hall. After seeing all the videos and screenshots of Disney's Pure I thought I might pop over and see if the game played as well as it looks. While the game look a lot like Sony's Motorstorm games they play concepts are vastly different. Motorstorm is a pure racing game with various vehicle types while Pure is a trick based ATV game.

Pure looks as good in person as it looks in all the trailers we've shown as the racing environments are lush and highly detailed. The heard of the game is the jump trick/system. Before you hit a jump you pull back on the left thumbstick and then push up as you go over which gives you big air. While you are in the air you can pull off tricks with the facebuttons. You start off with just having A button tricks available but as you pull off tricks on the track you earn boost which unlocks the other