The Last Guardian: 6/10. I think it's exciting to see a game that's gone through such a troubled development emerge from it, and I'm a fan of both Ueda's past games, so I'm looking forward to it. I do think it was pretty brave to do this as an all in-game demo, because a lot went wrong: wonky animations, bad textures, collision issues, a demo player who wasn't very assertive, the creature AI seemed pretty frustrating, and the section they showed wasn't really interesting. My wife asked "is that a PS3 game?"--yes, of course, it is, just one that's been moved to PS4. I look forward to playing it, and I'm glad it's got done, and I hope it turns out well, even if dated and rough around the edges.
Horizon: Zero Dawn: 10/10. I can't believe Guerrilla made something so interesting. Really fresh premise, I like the combination of low-tech nomadic aboriginal era society and advanced fighting dog robots. Great visual take on post-apocalypse. Combat looked good, like there's strategy, UI looked good, character had a great design and good VA in the trailer. This was the best thing Sony showed.
Hitman: 7/10. CG trailer, so of course it tells us nothing about the game, but I'm interested that it's a reboot and the trailer was cut very well with great music, great synchronization with what was going on, and a wonderful conclusion. Seems like it goes into, among other things, sexual exploitation in the fashion industry. Always liked the kind of parapolitical themes in Hitman.
No Man's Sky: 7/10. I thought the game has come together nicely, the resource collection looked good, the fluid movement between world, space battle, and universal view looked great, and this is still a game I'm rooting for very much. If there was something wrong with the demo is that it's still very much a continued elaboration on the same demo we've seen for a while. More directed, yes, but it's time to actually finish up and release the game
Dreams: 9/10. Looked beautiful, one of the best takes on a sort of pastel-y art style I've seen. The polar bear segment was off the charts adorable. I'm not sure what it will end up being, it looks like it's a sort of video director / game maker with art components. That sounds cool to me. Super creative. Something doesn't have to be a game game to be worth playing. I loved Mario Party, and this looks great.
Firewatch: 9/10. Open world park ranger sim is a great idea, visuals look beautiful, loved the voiceover relationship, good variety of stuff in the trailer, and it's produced by a company that made their money making FTP clients. How cool is that?
Destiny: 2/10. Honestly this is a game that looked mildly impressive the first time it was demoed and has become increasingly less interesting to me every time I've seen it up to and including after release. I appreciate that Activision/Bungie is trying the Software as a Service MMO subscription revenue model, but disguising it by selling you map packs, but at some point it's like: great, this is an MMO. *shrugs*
AC Syndicate: 0/10. Glad they're making an interesting female lead character, other than that this is a crap franchise that keeps getting worse and it's totally overexposed in E3 marketing every year.
World of Final Fantasy: 6/10. Cute little surprise, interested in whether "First on Sony platforms" means PC or 3DS, and what kind of actual game it is.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake: 8/10. I have two positive things to say about this. One is that I thought the trailer production, direction, and voiceover were great and totally bereft of the absolute fucking nonsense "My destiny is to unlock the dream of my fate, now I can be the heroic hero of the generation of the True World inside the fantastic dream of the destiny time! Through my spirit I evoke the fated hero's burden!" garbage cliche-speak that has plagued Final Fantasy XIII and now Final Fantasy XV. By virtue of maybe approaching something sounding like someone who doesn't watch Dragonball 24/7 would say, the trailer's voiceover was really appealing to me. The city looked really well realized, far moreso than in Crisis Core or Advent Children. Also, it's a game that I really like. It's not perfect or unbelievable. Actually it's a kinda rough game that I think will need a lot of TLC to round it out. But I'm looking forward to see what it ends up being. I'm sure it's several years out. I'm glad it's multiplatform.
Devolver: 3/10. Good get for Sony, Devolver has a good track record, but mostly this is stuff that was already announced for other platforms and so not very interesting.
Shenmue 3: 6/10. I get that Shenmue is a legendary game. I played a bit of the first one on Dreamcast and thought it was a neat game with some cool ideas, many of which were not common at the time. I do have the Xbox version of the second game but never played it. The outsized interest in a Shenmue 3 is interesting to me: some of it is clearly die-hard fans, but there's also a big component of "I've never played Shenmue but I'm so HYPED for Shenmue 3" that I think comes from the idea of being "part" of something mysterious or legendary. I'm wondering if those people will actually be blown away with Shenmue or if they'll even play it. The KS reveal was very interesting and I'm sure a trial balloon other platform owners are thinking about. I thought the updated footage looked good; like the original games but slightly more modern. I think keeping it visually simple and old looking is good for continuity and budget control. I'm glad to see the game got funded and looking forward to trying it out.
and here's where we enter the notorious sony conference shit zone
Arkham Knight: 4/10. Interested in the game, totally uninterested in story heavy CG trailers. It's been shown for so long at this point.
Vue TV: 0/10. Slingbox already exists, I don't give a shit. Sony has to stop talking about their 9999999 different video offerings every year.
Morpheus: 0/10. RIGS looked pretty bad and I see it getting the same kind of traction as Nexuiz, the recent Tribes games, or Shootmania. I get that VR doesn't demo well and so I'm sure the stuff on the show floor is going to be really interesting, but as a segment in the conference...
Call of Duty: 0/10. Call of Duty sucks when it's shown at Microsoft conferences, it sucks when it's shown at Sony conferences. It sucks here. It looks ugly, it's stupid, it looks like the same shit from a different year. Totally get why they spend time on it, it's a big deal financially, but what a snoozefest.
Disney Infinity: 0/10. What a bizarrely enthusiastic presentation for the third version of an annualized toy game. Star Wars is so dull at this point.
Battlefront: 3/10. I thought this demoed very well at EA and very poorly here. Duller level, even more UI pollution (seriously this is a Call of Duty level bad UI, prompts and indicators everywhere, the worst of which is when you walk near a Rebel Icon and an indicator pops up near it ... and the indicator is just a Rebel Icon. Wow!)
Uncharted 4: 5/10. I'm not going to dock them points from having a loading screen that goes on too long or a controller that didn't work. That's part of E3. But I can dock them points for having a really boring demo that was same-old same-old. Same cover shooting, same wise cracking, same vehicle and chase segments, graphics in the same style. It doesn't look like what's NEXT for Uncharted, it looks like more of the Uncharted we already had. That's fine, I played the first three, I'll try this. But, it wasn't closing material for me.
Overall I would say that as usual Sony had a very high amount of quality content, but was also let down with a too-long conference. Every year Sony does 90-120 minutes, and every year I feel like they could trim to a tight 60-75 without losing anything.
