Sony stomp all over the competition

As I write this the Sony press conference has just come to its conclusion. Now to begin with we at GodisaGeek had already come to the conclusion that this E3 would be their time to shine. Looking at things, they had potentially the strongest lineup this year and the need to make up for the strong but slightly lackluster performance of previous years. So Jack Tretton opens up the conference with the statement of 2009 being PS3’s year and boy he wasn’t kidding. The line-up essentially blew us away. Keep reading on for our epic thoughts on Sony’s conference.

• The press conference begins as Jack Tretton steps up and makes the bold claim of 2009 being the best year for PS3 he reads of a list of games we are looking forward to which include Final Fantasy 13, Modern Warfare 2, Ratchet & Clank: Crack in Time, Heavy Rain and The Beatles Rock Band.
• He starts talking about the success of the PS2 and the 100 new titles coming to PS2 this year. Come on Sony, move on a little!
• Infamous is mentioned  and he says 34 more exclusives are coming this year.
• Ah the first gameplay demo. Two guys from Naughty Dog come on-stage and they boast about multiplayer and co-op while also mentioning the upcoming beta.
• Uncharted 2 gameplay begins, Nathan starts of on top of a rundown hotel. He then “majestically” climbs down the side of the building and scales to the top to check out the scenery. Wow, the view is beautiful. He then proceeds to zipline to another building where he and his female companion encounter a Hind D. A chase ensues where a combination of cover taking and building hopping begins. Eventually Nathan is cornered by the helicopter and some thugs pin him down, a nice firefight takes place. I have to mention the environment looks spectacular and superbly detailed. A lot of environmental destruction takes place as the building appears to be collapsing and everything gets sucked out of the windows, quite splendid physics. Demonstration ends. WOW!
• MAG makes an appearance next and it is the first public unveiling of actual gameplay. 256 people tearing eachother apart sounds fun to me. Every player involved in the demo is displayed on screen. We are shown what looks like a tactical display from the squad leader of the red team. He proceeds to dish out orders to his squad while we switch to the platoon leader of one of the squads, he must play out the orders given. You get points for carrying out the squad leaders orders. Gun fights ensue as they attempt to take over enemy base and each platoon executes its own orders. Demo ends and while we are surprsingly impressed.
• Jack starts to talk PSP, could he be about to unveil the PSP Go? Hannah Montana plus a new lilac PSP is shown on-screen, the crowd cheers sarcastically (we hope). More games are talked about such as Loco Roco 2, Rock Band, Assassin’s Creed and a new Final Fantasy game.
• Kaz Hirai hits the stage and talks about the PSP design and mentions the PSP Go. He pulls out the badboy out and I must say it looks sexy. A 3D model appears on-screen alongside the PSP-3000. There will be no UMD drive, wi-fi, it will be 50% smaller, about 40% lighter and will include a 1GB flash drive. You will be able to download games from PlayStation network. He also announces a new application called Media Go, it will replace the current media manager and will be accessable from your PC.
• The PSP toolkit prices will be lowered, fantastic news for developers. A great move as this will bring more developers onboard.
• Ouch! PSP Go will cost 240 Euros (probably around £200-£250 for us) and will be released on October 1^st
• Talk moves to the PSN video delivery service and its move to the PSP enabling direct downloads.
• Kazunouru Yamouchi takes the spotlight and announces Gran Turismo for the PSP then proceeds to shows it running on the PSP Go at  60fps. A total of 800 cars and 35 tracks with 60 variations will be included aswell as a car trading system. The game will include standard races, time trials and legacy mode basically all the content you would expect from a full release will be present. The game will be release along side the PSP Go on October 1st.
• Kojima takes the stage (I get excited and cream my pants a little) and he announces Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker for the PSP. This is apparently set 10 years after MGS3. Kojima acknowledges he will take part in production as will the MGS4 team. He promises it will take full advantage of the PSP hardware and will look great. A Peacewalker trailer is shown that begins with an atomic explosion and a typical Kojima cut scene follows. We see Big Boss take on an unknown military outfit at which point  it cuts to him sneaking around in typical MGS fashion and then cuts to him running along what looks like a beach. Boss takes out a couple of soldiers and even reverse parachutes one into the sky. Maybe a new soldier acquirement procedure for outer heaven? (simular to how you recruited soldiers in the previous MGS PSP title). Trailer ends with Big Boss sneaking past a soldier and then hiding in a box behind the soldier. Then another Big Boss comes along and hides in the same box. The soldier is then alerted and they both run off while the soldier is dumb founded! Totally weird but hey it wouldn’t be a MGS trailer without the usual Kojima charm. No exclusive PS3 game though eh?!
• Jack talks Resident Evil and announces its arrival next year on the PSP. Little Big Planet, Socom, Monster Hunter, Motorstorm and a new Harry Potter are also anounced for the portable console.
• Trailer for PSP is now shown first up is Little Big Planet followed by Jak and Daxter and a multitude of other titles including Motorstorm, Socom, Monster Hunter, Tiger Woods, Madden, a Star Wars game, Rock Band, Guitar Hero and what looks to be Soul Calibur and a few titles I’ve not seen before.
• He now talks PSN statistics and states there are 24 million users on Sony’s online network aswell as 475 million pieces of content downloaded to this exact day. Overall there are 200 titles on PSN store and 90 exclusives (seriously Sony no more statistics and figures!)
• 50 PS1 classics will be added to PSN starting today with FF7
• Home talk begins explaining it’s usage and how it has been growing to the point where it has become a tool to promote other Sony products. He talks about the effect of Capcom games such as Street Fighter IV and the effect they had on Home. Ubisoft and Namco will also have content for the (quite pointless) digital universe that is Playstation Home to name a few. We’re shown a trailer of people walking through Home and what has got to be the ugliest Chun Li costume ever seen. Avatars are interacting in different themed rooms and such.
• Next we are shown a video of what to expect for ps3 this year. Uncharted, Infamous, Madden, Final Fantasy 13,  MAG, Arkham Asylum, DIRT 2, GhostBusters, Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma, Mafia 2, Buzz, King  of Fighters 12, Tekken, Tiger Woods, Heavy Rain, Fat Princess, Singstar, Marvel Alliance, Little Big Planet, Bioshock,  Fight Night, Ractchet and Clank and God of War were shown to name a few.
• We are then taken through what Rockstar have brought to Playstation in the past. This is preperation for the unveiling of thier new IP.  The game is called Agent and will be an exclusive 1970s espionage game for the PS3.
• Ubisoft’s Assains Creed 2 is shown. Sebastian showcases it and states that they are striving for diversity this time round (dam straight first one has none at all). We are shown actual gameplay footage, which starts of with the protagonist sitting on a bench in what looks like a festival of some sorts. He gets up assassinates a random victim and then begins to scale the surrounding buildings. We are then informed the protagonist is to learn to be an assassin in this game instead of being one from start ala the original game. He scales a tower until he reaches Da Vinci’s famous flying machine and flies around Venice. This scene looks amazingly beautiful with fireworks going of in the distance and various graphical effects being applied. The machine catches fire where he then proceeds to jump onto yet another rooftop. A short scene reveals itself where he scenes he begins to sneak across a rooftop taking out guards along the way in a stealthy manner. At which point comes the trademark jump into a bail of hay but with a twist. This time a nearby guard is drawn in and killed off. We are shown the combat system next where three guards are dispensed with relative ease and then the final assassination takes place very similar to the original. The whole environment proceeds to break down VR style and rebuilds itself while the protagonist makes his escape into a nearby river. The demonstration then ends. FANTASTIC!
• Square Enix is up next and we are shown a trailer. It is all CGI but looks brilliant. Some of the in game battle sequences are shown off, looks interesting and amazingly pretty. The game is coming in 2010.
• MEGATON ALERT! Tretton announces that Final Fantasy 14 is in development (that shocked us) and will be a PS3 exclusive. A short trailer is shown and from the looks of it this is a much more fantasy oriented game than Final Fantasy 13 and could quite possibly be  a MMO.
• Oh boy, here we go. Tretton starts talking about the Eye Toy and motion controllers (Everyone is following Nintendo).
• Two guys working on the control come onto the stage. One of them holds a very weird looking stick in his hand with a purple bobble on the end that can be tracked by the Playstation Eye. On screen we see a graphical representation of it that moves in realtime. He turns on a TV in this virtual environment and whats happening in the real world appears on it with whatever virtual item the developer chooses. A number of items appear in his hand one of which is a fan which he holds up to his face and then opens which was kinda cool. He says he doesn’t just want do casual games but “gamers games” too (we’ll believe it when we see it) and proceeds to play a sort of FPS mode. He moves onto a table full of shapes and manipulates the shapes in real time with the ugly “wand”. They then move onto drawing and writing. He begins to spray paint a wall where we are told even the angle of the spray can, can affect the outcome. They then move onto laying out a string of domino’s, which he then topples over. A table top war game is shown sort of akin to an RTS. Next they move onto 3D character movement where one of the guys controls an avatar and has a little fight. In its current state the whole thing just looks rather glitchy. Some archery is then demonstrated which just looks like a prettier version of what Nintendo showed us earlier today. Demo ends.
• Jack talks Little Big Planet and throws out a few statistics and announces some new costume customizations by Disney.
• United Front games step up to the stage to announce something called Modnation Racers. It has a very strong cartoon-ish graphical style and is esentially a kart racing game with customizable characters ala LittleBigPlanet. They tell us the emphasis is on design and the gameplay is in the mould of Mario Kart. Users can create and share their own track using the in-game editor, which looks amazingly simple to use. This game looks surprisingly good, not bad at all.
• Jacky boy is back again we are shown The Last Guardian from Team Ico which is essentially the leaked trailer for those of you have seen it with a few more added scenes and a little more polish. This game looks fantastic.
• Gran Turismo 5 trailer is  next up on display and it looks like a GT game should do, absolutely STUNNING. It  incorporates the many different race types from Rallying to NASCAR.
• Next what we’ve all been waiting for…..God of War 3. The guys at SCE demo the game for us and we are greeted by a start menu bearing Kratos’s ugly mug complete with that nasty scar Zeus gave him in the previous game. He begins to make his way up a pathway and through an epic set of doors into a dungeon liek area. The detail on Kratos’s armour is lovely as he uses a flying enemy to cross a series of large jumps until he returns outside where the screen proceeds to shake. Outside the titan Atlas makes his way up the side of what seems to be mount Olympus as the sun God fights back. Kratos mutilates some bog standard enemies until a minataur appears. He battles with him using some new gauntlets he has possession of. Then our favourite QTE sequences set in as Kratos quite brutally slaughters him. The sun God continues to fight back. It all seems very epic as a chimera sneaks onto the screen. Kratos ends the battle by snapping off its horns and driving it through the chimeras head. The demo is then abruptly stopped as we are given the excuse “we dont want to ruin it for you before you get your hands on it”  DAAAAMN THEM!
• Jacky boy closes out the conference. Fantastic.

Now I have to say I think we have a winner for best conference of E3 here. From start to finish it was nothing short of enthralling as Sony unveiled one masterpiece after another. There were just too many notable IP’s here to pick one that stood tall above the rest.  With titles like Uncharted 2, Final Fantasy 13 and God of War 3 this most definitely will be a strong year for the guys at Sony and definitely the excuse I have been looking for to play my PS3 a bit more. Also with exclusive Metal Gear and Gran Turismo titles coming to PSP it has cemented the purchase of the PSP Go amongst some of our staff. If I was to choose something that slightly took away from Sony’s impressive display it would be their new motion controller. This attempt to jump on the casual bandwagon was quite disheartening and glitchy to boot and while it was definitely interesting I think it could of been better presented. Overall, well done Sony!

If you missed it or just want to watch the conference again please click here