The Sony Press Conference had a good starting and ending, but the middle dragged and bad. The best thing about this year's press conference was that it was much better than last year's boring affair. Sony gave a good amount of time to each demo, maybe too long for one in particular, and showcased some pretty solid games. Much like Microsoft, Sony did jump from topic to topic with no sense of focus or direction and it ultimately hurt them and the conference in the end. Some important topics such as meaningful additions to PlayStation Plus and pushing the PlayStation Vita as more than a port/sequel machine and game showings like The Last Guardian were no where to be found. Sony's conference started out with the unveiling of Beyond: Two Souls, Quantic Dream's new IP. It was a very interesting demo that showed off the game's very realistic graphics and gripping story, but like always I would have liked to see more gameplay. As a first look of a game that will not come out until 2014, it was a good showing nonetheless. That was followed by PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Sony's Super Smash Bros. clone, now for both PS3 and Vita. It was a boring demo that really showed nothing new about the game. They did reveal two new characters for the game in Nathan Drake and the Big Daddy, but who cares unless they make Kevin Butler one of the fighters. After that Jack Tretton ran through a bunch of stuff no one really cared about before going into more demos of Assassin's Creed III and Far Cry 3. While they were new demos for each game, they did nothing to outshine the demos Ubisoft already showed off at their press conference. Maybe manning a ship in Assassin's Creed III is neat, but the demo really did nothing to make it look that entertaining or interactive for a matter of fact and Far Cry 3's online co-op had some obvious problems with lag and loading textures. Right in the middle of the show, Sony decided to shift gears and target the casual gamers with Wonderbook, a neat concept that Sony will never fully support in the long run. They demoed the J.K. Rowling's Book of Spells for Wonderbook, which was absolutely terrible and soo long drawn out that I almost fell asleep due to boredom. Also on top of that the PlayStation Move was so finicky and non-responsive that it made the demo even worse. That was clearly the lowest this press conference could go as things got much better with a demo of God of War: Ascension, which is really more of the same God of War experience, but still good. To end the conference, Sony went with The Last of Us. While the demo was very impressive yet looked like it played a lot like Uncharted, I thought Sony would save at least one surprise for the very end. After The Last of Us demo, which has got me a little more interested, the conference just seemed to end and it felt odd.
Overall, Sony's E3 2012 Press Conference was a decent event. It had quite a few good moments, but nothing that surprised me and got me excited. Beyond: Two Souls would have been a big surprise only if Sony kept their mouth shut and did not reveal that Quantic Dream was going to announce it at their conference. The big dip in quality right in the middle along with the omissions of some big topics and The Last Guardian, which I now believe sadly will not see the light of day, hurt this conference more than Sony has actually realized.
Grade: C+
No comments:
Post a Comment