E3 Roundup: Sony

E3 is starting to wind down, and we’re now through the majority of the conferences. EA and SquareEnix underwhelmed, Microsoft did Microsoft, and Ubisoft and Bethesda shined. How are Sony and Nintendo going to answer? Well, we know how Sony is going to do it, and Ace is going to be on-hand for Nintendo later today.

While Microsoft showed off a whole ton of stuff, including a few exclusives… Sony went the opposite direction and showed why the PlayStation is the better buy as a gaming console. Hint, it’s about the exclusives.

The Last of Us is probably the best game of the PS3 generation; the remastered versions is still one of the top 5 games of the PS4 generation. The opening for it is still one of the single-most intense and gut-wrenching starts to a video game… ever. Ellie was a fantastic protagonist and the whole story around the game was just incredible. How is Naughty Dog, maker of amazing games, going to top it? Watch the trailer… I’ll wait.

I… yeah, this is a day-one purchase where I just go crazy to play it. Ellie was already a badass, but now, apparently, she’s an epic badass. The cinematic tells an interesting story, but nothing compared to how fluid and incredible the combat looks in the game. I haven’t bought a 4K TV yet, or a PS4 Pro… but this may be the game that pushes me over the edge on it. Guess I’d better start saving up my quarters.

I honestly haven’t ever heard of Ghost of Tsushima before; it’s from the same studio that brought us the Infamous series. Their last effort, Infamous Second Son, is a very underrated title that is still worth a play. The game simply looks beautiful, again showing what the investment in 4K might be worth. I also like the flow of combat… it’s very samurai, where combat isn’t a long and drawn out duel, but one or two strikes, tops.

You know, Hideo Kojima is known for two things: Metal Gear and making games that are completely bug-nuts crazy. We got nearly eight minutes of Death Stranding. I’ve watched it twice, and I still have no clue what’s going on here. I think he likes it that way. I mean, half of that thing was him walking and carrying a crazy amount of stuff. Sometimes he had robots following him carrying more stuff. WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS!?

While the Last of Us 2 rightfully stole the show, a pretty close second has got to be the Spider-Man trailer. We’ve known about the game for awhile now; while most movie/comic tie-in games are sub-par, the Spidey games have been highlights in the past.

It’s not directly tied to a movie or specific comic, and that seems to be a huge strength. It gave the developers license to make changes and designs to things, and it just shines. That Electro design, with the scar for the lightning bolts? Kind of brilliant. In short order, they gave us better designs for Electro and Rhino than Amazing Spider-man 2 did.

The gameplay itself looks to be heavily inspired by the Batman: Arkham Asylum games (which, fun fact, had combat inspired by Guitar Hero, of all things). Looking at the video, that was a brilliant choice, and so much of Spider-man works here (and makes more sense than Batman). Spidey Sense as a combat warning? Webbing for movement? The speed and pace all look incredible, and this will be an easy buy for me. I love Spider-man and love a good combat game.

A few other things showed up as well, including a trippy looking VR game by FromSoftware called Déraciné. Given that From is known for making Dark Souls, and this game looks like a sequel to Flower… I don’t know what to believe anymore. There was also the announcement of Nioh 2, a Dark Souls clone that was supposed to be really good.

It wasn’t all exclusives, though. Kingdom Hearts III got some additional air, and unlike what the Square press conference gave us, we got some unique stuff with the PS4 trailer. If you are one of the four people not completely over Pirates of the Carribean yet, are you in luck. Okay, snark aside, it looks interesting, and I’m a sucker for stuff with Donald Duck in it. Call of Duty Black Ops 3, a game that isn’t as good as the first two by any stretch, is also showing up on Plus later tonight for free, so there’s that.

Resident Evil has never been one of my favorite games; I’m not big into horror and general, and the jank of these games tended to outweigh the fun of them. Still, it looks amazing and I’ll likely have to try it out. Maybe not when it hits, but when it’s on a good sale. It’s not a PS4 exclusive, even though they showed off the trailer, and will also hit Xbox One and PC. Sadly, no Switch version (which sucks, since Resident Evil on the GameCube was actually one that I played a lot of and vastly better than the PSX version).

A game called Control was also revealed, by the same studio that made Quantum Break (an Xbox One exclusive). Not sure if it’s a sequel or related, but it looks cool. Quantum Break honestly looked cool, but played like a hot mess. Someday I’ll go back and see if it improved with patches, but for now this will be on my wait and see list.

Sony went all-in for showing games. It was just video after video, which is great, but I will admit that I miss the days of the nutty heads of Playstation being awkward on stage. Still, you have to admire their commitment to the platform, and what they’re showing is why PlayStation is doing so well.