Sony E3 2016 Briefing Round Up

So the time has arrived again when all the PlayStation fans have the chance to get hyped and maybe cry a little bit. That’s right Sony’s E3 press conference took place during the early hours of Tuesday morning and I have to say the line up was looking pretty impressive however, I personally don’t think this was Sony’s best E3.

*Spoiler alert* there’s a lot of games to get through.

Kicking things off with a bang!

To kick things off, Sony started their show with a live demo of everyone’s favourite God killing Spartan, that’s right Kratos is back! in the next instalment of the God of War series, God of War for PS4 sees Kratos taking on a role in a setting centred around Norse mythology. During the demo, we see Kratos and Kratos Jr.(because let’s face it we know that’s how this will turn out) hunting in a forest and then being ambushed by some what appears to be dead Vikings shortly followed by a really angry troll screaming about Valhalla, all of these proceed to get smacked about in typical god of war fashion before having their lives ended at the hand of the newly bearded Kratos. This father-son bonding activity is brought to a close with Kratos helping his son with his first kill then by a nice looking panoramic shot of some mountains followed some lightning aaaaand…A dragon? yeah a dragon because dragons make everything better.

*Begin dramatic orchestral entrance music* Next on was Shaun Layden, Chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, who proceeded to welcome everyone and to explain that the next hour was to be full of dazzling and transformative games. Roll on the next announcement!

So next on the list was Days Gone a post-apocalyptic, survival game with motorbikes, now this didn’t particularly interest me but I can see the appeal for people who like that open world survival type games. This seemed like it had everything to suit your post-apocalyptic needs from abandoned towns with a few dead bodies scattered around, to creepy creatures that would rip you apart soon as look at you and of course a story filled with misery, sorrow and survival of the fittest. What more could you possibly ask for?.

Now, this next trailer doesn’t really need a long winded explanation because everyone knows of it. It seems like ages ago since this title was announced back in 2009 and the crowds’ reaction was enough to give you an idea of just how long people have been waiting for it. Well the wait is finally over, The Last Guardian finally has its official release date and is coming to PS4 on 25th October 2016 and all I’ll say is, lets hope it was worth the wait.

So after that last announcement ask yourself this, what do you get when you throw a Lara Croft style protagonist into a world filled with machine animals? Confused? Well Guerilla Games may have just answered that for you, Horizon: Zero Dawn was up next. The game is set in a world where machines rule and humans are no longer in charge and you play as Aloy, a young hunter who wishes to discover the secrets behind the rise of the machines and how they came to rule the Earth. Now I enjoy open world games and I find the idea of weird machine animals pretty cool so you can imagine how I felt when I saw a giraffe looking animal with what resembled the front of the Starship Enterprise stuck to its head, and there was loads of these things. Mixed together with great visuals and some decent looking gameplay, Horizon: Zero Dawn looks like it could have it all but I guess we’ll have to wait and see if it delivers when it releases in March 2017.

Okay so next up is…Okay so sometimes when video games are made to look like movies and try to tell stories like a movie, it doesn’t always end well, yes I’m looking at you *braces for onslaught from Ellen page fans* Beyond; Two Souls; however, Quantic Dreams’ latest game seems like it might be rather interesting. Detroit: Become Human is set in a world where androids have taken over the boring everyday tasks that we humans basically can’t be bothered to do; however, some androids start to vanish mysteriously and some start to gain sentience, these androids are called deviants’, so basically it’s I Robot the game minus Will Smith and with fancier robots.

With this next game, now I’ll admit I’m not a massive horror game fan, I haven’t played any horror games since Resident Evil 4, mainly due to the fact I felt the series lost its original horror roots after that but that’s just me, I’m sure there are may who would disagree and say resident evil 5 and 6 were good games too and to that I’d say they were good games…Good action games but back to the point, now it seems like Capcom might have just pulled it out of the bag with the announcement of Resident Evil 7 for PS4 and also for Playstation VR, this for me personally, is one that I think looks really good and could help the series make a comeback.

Some Virtual Reality Goodness

Well after that barrage of games it was time for another appearance from Shaun and this time it was to talk a little bit about PlayStation VR. PlayStation VR will be out in the US on October 13th 2016 for the price of ($)399 and will also include over 50 games on launch, now that’s quite a lot! So how about we take a look at some of these games.

First up was Farpoint, a game developed by the indie studio Impulse Gear, which sees the player exploring after crash landing on a hostile alien planet and attempting to discover the secrets that the planet holds. Next up was Star Wars Battlefront: X Wing VR Mission which teased a small space battle against the forces of the empire, this was then followed by the announcement of a Batman VR game that is coming exclusively to PlayStation VR in October 2016.

Okay so that’s the VR stuff out of the way or so I thought, next up was one of my most anticipated games of E3, the Final Fantasy XV trailer showed me everything that I hoped would be in the game and more from Chocobo riding, to massive boss battles, gorgeous environments and much more. That wasn’t the end, Square Enix just kept on giving when they showed off a specific VR version of game were you play as Prompto during the Behemoth fight which was in the demo version of the game which came with Final Fantasy Type-0.

Back to the Big games

Now I was a little stumped and surprised by this next announcement, the game showed awesome space battles followed by zero gravity combat and people being sucked out of a giant spaceship into the vacuum of space. Now I thought this was an amazing new sci-fi shooter but turns out I was wrong, so when the title for Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare was shown at the end of the trailer I thought oh my god this looks AMAZING!!! Yeah it looked that good I think Infinity Ward’s next instalment of the Call of Duty series will be a must buy for both existing and new fans when it launches on November 4th. Then, as if one Call of Duty game wasn’t enough, tagged on at the end was the footage from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered which looked equally as impressive with its shiny new upgrade onto the current generation.

This next part makes the inner child in me soooooo happy, as Mr. Layden returned to the stage he was accompanied by a tropical backdrop with some familiar theme music and the shadow of an old friend. Yep, Crash is back and he’s getting the complete remaster treatment as Shaun proceeded to announce that not just Crash 1 but also Crash 2 and Warped will be launching on PS4. Everyone’s favourite bandicoot will not only be making a comeback in his own series but will be crashing (get it ‘crashing’…never mind) onto PS4 in Skylanders: Imaginators in October later this year together with a whole host of new Skylanders which the player can create and control throughout their adventures in Skylands.

This next trailer showed some more of the story of the Lego version of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which combines the fun of Lego, everyone’s favourite plastic building block and the epic universe of the new Star Wars film, it even has golfing Stormtroopers.

*Enter Andrew House* House explains how Sony’s partnerships with excellent developers and story tellers has made this year’s E3 one of the strongest line ups for PlayStation. Now as people who play games know there is one man who created one of the greatest game franchises ever and his name is Hideo Kojima, yes the man behind Metal Gear Solid is back and he had an interesting announcement in the form of some real time footage from his latest work entitled Death Stranding. Now personally, I couldn’t make heads or tails of this, there was Norman Reedus lying naked beside a baby that eventually turns to oil…I dunno, so I’ll let you make up your own theories and just move onto the final announcement from Sony.

So to wrap things up, Insomniac games have partnered with Marvel to bring New York’s web slinging superhero Spider-Man to the PS4, where we see our masked vigilante foiling the plots of criminal and beating up bad guys with the use of his amazing spidey powers all to keep the citizens of the city safe.

And with a quick sneak peak at the gameplay of Days Gone (check the video below if your curious), and a thank you for coming we reach the end of this year’s Sony E3 press conference.

Release Dates!

So here is a list of all the important information you need to know without the extra ranting to go with it.

The Last Guardian – 25th October, 2016
Horizon: Zero Dawn – 28th February, 2017
Resident Evil 7 – January 24th, 2017
Playstation VR (US) – October 13th, 2016
Batman VR – October 2016
Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare – November 4th, 2016
Skylanders: Imaginators – October 2016

Overall I think year’s conference was done really well and there are plenty of games on offer to keep the PlayStation fans happy for a long time, but again there have been better conferences by Sony.

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Straight from the streets of SouthTown, all Dunks Powah'd and ready to Bust A Wolf. Catch me on Twitch/YouTube.

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