First Info from Sony's Pre-E3 Gamers Day

fdevine

I haven't had a chance to go through this yet, just a glance, but some good news for PS3 owners it seems......

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3159592

SOCOM for PS3 is the one that jumped out.

AFAIK, these are Sony's own announcements. Gaming press get to announce more tomorrow.

(edit) SOCOM, will be purchasable from the PS Store and gameplay will be 'online only' apparently.

steviec

Yea SOCOM seems pretty lacking in content, only a few maps, I reckon it's just to get something out there while they work on a proper retail version for the future.

Not that I've any interest in SOCOM anyway, it always seemed to me to be an FPS for PS2 owners who didn't know any better. Then again I only had a short play of it once so maybe I'm wrong.

Another big game though, along with Warhawk, Tekken and the like that are really beginning to redefine what to expect from downloadables. I've been playing Calling All Cars, and along with Gripshift it really shows up the never ending rehashes of ancient games Live Arcade have been getting. Hopefully the competition will lead Microsoft to get their act together, because Live Arcade started out great before losing it's way.

Other highlights of the Sony event were Heavenly Sword and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, both have been receiving a lot of positive reactions from people who tried them and both look simply amazing in videos I've seen. They're really living up to their original demonstrations at E3 last year.

Couple of games I hadn't heard of before were Pain, which is yet another brand new downloadable title, which seems to be like Burnout's crash mode except it involves putting a guy in a catapult. Looks kind of interesting but I'd imagine it would get repetitive quick, still, for a downloadable game it looks good. The other new title was Folklore, which seems to be a Hack & Slash game, didn't look too interesting to me to be honest but it's been getting good feedback from those who tried it.

In addition there were all the games that have already been shown plenty recently, like Little Big Planet, Lair, Ratchet & Clank, all of which continue to impress although from what I hear people are a bit unsure of Lair's controls which would be a pity because everything else about the game is meant to be amazing but that could be a breaker. LBP is as big a hit as ever, and Ratchet & Clank looks really really impressive from the video I saw.

So lots of potentially great games there and the vast majority of them are brand new concepts rather than sequels, which is nice.

LookingFor

steviec wrote:

So lots of potentially great games there and the vast majority of them are brand new concepts rather than sequels, which is nice.

And they're all coming this year.

Pretty killer lineup, IMO. Virtually everything shown looks great to one degree or another, and have been getting positive impressions. It's kind of funny after so much quietness to see a lot of game sites just plastered in PS3 previews and media

Uncharted, Heavenly Sword and Ratchet&Clank in particular look really good. Awesome stuff.

(Also pretty cool that Folklore apparently starts out in a fictional Irish village!)

projectmayhem

steviec wrote:

Not that I've any interest in SOCOM anyway, it always seemed to me to be an FPS for PS2 owners who didn't know any better. Then again I only had a short play of it once so maybe I'm wrong.

tbh i felt that if they got socom right on ps2 it would have been the counter-strike of consoles, but the ps2's online infrastructure just wasn't there. with a few more updates to ps3's online system (better friend system, inviting people to play with you etc.) and socom continuing to be solid, then it could easily be the counter-strike of consoles.... except 3rd person.

good gamers day conference. i think sony learned a lot of lessons from their flub last year (particularly at e3). it'll be interesting to see what else comes out in the press tomorrow morning, and then at e3 in a few weeks of course.

fdevine

If I picked up right on the embargo thing.....what we got today is the stuff Sony wanted us to hear about.

Some great titles in there including a few I knew nothing about.

Warhawk, which I did know about, is getting its beta test in the coming weeks, so if you have a US PSN (not sure if its US only) account register your interest to be in with a shout.

Tomorrow morning (midnight Pacific time, so 8am ish for us) will see the 'big' announcements, if indeed there are to be any.

I don't honestly know what to expect, but why would Sony stop people reporting on it if there wasn't something big in the mix?

LookingFor

fdevine wrote:

If I picked up right on the embargo thing.....what we got today is the stuff Sony wanted us to hear about.

fdevine wrote:

Tomorrow morning (midnight Pacific time, so 8am ish for us) will see the 'big' announcements, if indeed there are to be any.

I don't honestly know what to expect, but why would Sony stop people reporting on it if there wasn't something big in the mix?

The embargo was up the night before last. There's no other embargos, no other announcements to come from this. You will see more coverage of games hitting the web, but there'll be no more news as such.

The embargo was simply to stop journalists from racing each other to get stories onto the web, and allow everyone enough time with the games. By enforcing an embargo, everyone might as well stop to relax and enjoy the games rather than worrying about getting stuff onto the web before everyone else. Nintendo is holding a similar sort of event next week apparently, and it will also be embargoed until a specific time.

McDermotX

LookingFor wrote:

Uncharted, Heavenly Sword and Ratchet&Clank in particular look really good. Awesome stuff.

Naughty Dog's Uncharted really does look the business lately.....animation and physics do more to convince the player than higher, and higher polygon counts ever will. Developers should be focusing next-gen dev on pushing these aspects more than anything else (apart from gameplay obviously !)
Here's hoping they can fit an excellent game around their engine work..

Excellent example of lighting, animation and physics at work

LookingFor

There's HD versions of the Uncharted trailer and some other stuff up at the US playstation site.

http://www.us.playstation.com/Media#Page=1&PageSize=15&Section=Media&Console=4&Type=1,11,2,3,4

I'm taking a shine to Folklore. Looks very Tim Burton-esque, and it supposedly plays very well.