In what has thus far been an E3 filled with trailers heavy on pre-rendered scenes, and speculative gaming (Bethesda, if you release TES VI before 2022 I'm out 5 bucks), Sony decided to focus on game play...oddly enough.
Yes it was painfully slow, and at times confusing, but the meat of Sony's conference did seem to be focused on giving us reasons to buy these games. It looks like the focus for Sony is going to be on cinematic tales well told.
The Last of Us Part 2
The conference started out in a church, with a Kingsman reference, as well as some truly cringe worthy divine phrases. Composer Gustavo Santaolalla broke the silence with very emotional, and very slow well, banjo playing. In what felt like an age he played through an entire piece without a single second of game play being shown.
The trailer Sony gave us, though, was entirely worth the wait. We get almost twelve full minutes (I checked the video length on YouTube for this one guys) of game play and cinematic scenes. The trailer starts in a church, finally tying the whole experience together.
We start in on a much older Sarah, partaking in some revelry. Everything from the details of the fluid in the glass, to the more noticeable things like the incredibly fluid facial animations (looking at you Assassin's Creed), even in a scene as mild as a church fete, were jaw dropping. Naughty Dog had it's engine on full display from the moment the scene opens.
We get some very interesting character, and relationship development, before cutting to an extremely length, and satisfying, cut of actual game play.
The Last of Us 2 is a beautiful, ofttimes extremely brutal, game, but it decidedly plays like a Naughty Dog game. The fighting definitely had a greater weight to it than anything we'd seen previously, particularly games like Tomb Raider, and Assassin's Creed, where the combat definitely felt much more "arcade," than "simulator."
This is where I think the content of Sony's conference stands out, both in a good and bad way. There was a clear theme on the night, incredible cinematic experiences, and showing actual game play in an extensive enough manner that we gamers can feel like we're making an informed decision when we decide whether or not we want to play these games. What was lacking in the revelations tonight was game mechanic innovations.
Ghost of Tsushima
Wind and leaf physics people, this game has what are probably the most incredible wind and leaf physics ever seen before (at least on a console). To say that Ghost of Tsushima is gorgeous would be a bit of an understatement. This truly continued the theme of the night of highly cinematic single player experiences.
While the visuals shown truly blew me out of the water, and the theme was definitely unique, that is an authentic feeling feudal Japan, the combat did have a very clunky look to it. The developers have been quoted as saying they were so worried that before they could release a feudal Japan Assassin's Creed game would be released, and they seem to have unfortunately brought in a similar "sticky" battle system.
After seeing the fluidity of the combat shown in the Last of Us 2 trailer, there was definitely some noticeable robotic sticky movements to the stance switching seen in the duel between Jin and Masako. The movement of the crimson leaves, both from their steps, and the wind, with the backdrop of a setting sun really brought me into the moment, and the jilted movement of the stances was so jarring.
This is still definitely a game I want to play, but I'm a little underwhelmed with some of the animation transitions considering what I'd been seeing throughout the rest of E3. I know one thing for sure, I will be playing this game with the Japanese audio.
Death Stranding
What can I say about this? The game still looks weird as hell. We have new hints about the underlying plot. There's definitely something about babies, rebirth, life/time suckers that force you to cover your mouth, and stuff that needs to get delivered. Oh, and you can also gross my wife out easily with toenails.
Somehow still interested in this game, if for no other reason then to figure out what is going on.
Spider-Man
This was definitely the biggest surprise, for me at least, at Sony's E3. I still have a strong hesitation when it comes to superhero console games. The Arkham series has been the only true success in a long line of terrible, or terrible but funny games about comic book characters. Parodies of the genre have typically done better than the actual games themselves.
It'd be easy to compare this to the Arkham series, but what truly stood out to me about what I saw in this game was how well the fighting mechanics fit Spider-Man the character. I think Arkham did a great job of creating a consistent fighting style for the Batman character. In the comics he generally has a "catch-all" fighting style, and that would have been nearly impossible to reproduce in a game without the button configuration being a nightmare.
The approach to the Spider-Man combat centers around his Spidey-senses, and this is brought to life in the game in what appears to be a very natural, and easy to grasp manner. It definitely appears to be a perfect blend of easy to play, tough to master. Everything is flying around so quickly, and Spidey is constantly forced to make split second decisions. There's just enough of a slow-down that you're given a chance to do something super-human, but not so much that it breaks the flow of action on screen.
I personally hadn't heard much about this game prior to E3, so I had very minimal expectations going in, but after less than 10 minutes of gameplay/cinematics I was sold.
It was only a kiss...
These are just there big four announcements Sony had announced prior to their show, and they more than delivered a large enough punch to keep Sony on top of this current generation of consoles. A lot of the heavy hitters do seem to be coming out Q1 2019, so it'll be interesting to see if Nintendo sneaks in a few big first party titles to win out during holiday. This would definitely be the year to do it.
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