E3 Day 0 (Part 3) -- The Sony Press Conference

Written By: Tyler

Here we are... the last press conference of the day/night. I don't have to remind you, but remember when Sony came out and Ether'd Microsoft? Can they do it again? What does Sony have to say for themselves? Read below.

We see the blue, we hear the calming, pretty music... and then there is black. When images and light return the stage, we see Mars. It looks exactly like Mars and I would know because I've been there. But what does this all mean? It's your destiny to know. It's um, Destiny, and spoiler alert, it still looks really cool, even if the opening video didn't really give us much in the way of gameplay footage.

Andrew House takes the stage and uh, rocks the house (okay I'll stop) by talking about understanding what it takes to be the best in the world. Then, he announces that Playstation gamers will get their grubby little hands on the Destiny beta first on July 17th. Also, starting on Thursday Playstation owners can play the first-look alpha of the game. If you act now you can actually help develop the game. One of these things is a lie made by me, I'll let you guess which.

There's also a white PS4 coming, with an exclusive Destiny bundle.

Next comes a new exclusive IP: The Order: 1886. It is a dark, third-person shooter and in the footage there's a lot of walking through the dark with only your flashlight. But wait, there's more, because you are not alone. I can't imagine. At least now we've seen some gameplay.

Jumping from dark, scary and depressing to light and beautiful, we have two bird-things flying through the air. It's Entwined, and it's apparently about two souls that are in love and can't be together. You have to guide two things at once using the dual sticks, and when you bring them together they'll transform into a dragon. Could be neat, but I wish my soul could merge with something and become a dragon. It is available right now for $9.99 so I think I may have to check it out tomorrow.

Infamous: Second Son is getting standalone DLC. You get exclusive content if you own Second Son but you don't need it. It's called Infamous: First Light.

Then Little Big Planet 3 hits the stage. I'm not real familiar with the previous two, despite buying the first (and not playing it yet) but it appears there are new characters. It looks charming like the first two did and this co-op play looks entertaining. I know they're slightly different but I feel like Little Big Planet 3 will be a better game than Project Spark.

Next on the agenda is the new game from From Software, Bloodborne. They appear to be trying something new by making a dark, gruesome game. You can get it in 2015.

Then Far Cry 4 flashes on the screen. We saw the first five minutes of the game earlier during the Ubisoft press conference, but now we see some gameplay. The video involves the player walking around, where he then picks up some equipment and starts grappling. Then he walks through the trees a little and after that the fun starts. In an unexpected twist, it looks like it's going to play like other Far Cry games, but that isn't even a criticism. Trust me, this looks like it's a lot of fun.

But they're not done, because this one seems to have co-op or at least some form of multiplayer. You can invite your friends to play with you even if they don't own the game... but only on Playstation. What?

What don't we see much of? Zombies. So we better make a game about zombies. We get to see go jogging while people get molested by zombies, things crash and an upbeat song plays. But then he transforms into a zombie himself. The video is silly fun. It's Dead Island 2.

Battlefield Hardline makes another appearance. I'm already sold, I didn't need this, but it's more of a mixture video of gameplay and cinematic. I'm more impressed with what EA showed us in their press conference.

There's an exclusive Disney Infinity collectors edition for PS3 and 4.

They talk about Destiny some more, talking about how Playstation owners will get stuff for owning it on a Sony system. Hulk also smashed during that, which made me chuckle.

They have a new partnership with Paradox Interactive. The first game they're working on is the new Magicka game, appropriately titled Magicka 2.

Grim Fandango is getting a remastering. I suck at Adventure games but I dig this one. It will be exclusive to PS4 and Vita.

After the biggest cheer of the night, we get a montage of a bunch of games who make their debut on Playstation platforms. I won't list them all because I've already forgotten the titles as I write this, but a lot of them look really cool. Some of them are Not A Hero, Hotline Miami 2, and The talos Principle. Wait I can do this... Titan Souls and Broforce as well. I may have missed some.

Oh god yes, here we go. The new Suda51 one game, that's only coming to PS4... I'm a huge Suda51 fan and up until now we only got a brief teaser that told us nothing about his new game. Only this is called Let It Die and it's not the game I thought he was making. What a confusing guy.

Then there's an awkward transition to Journey. Then we get to see the Giant Squid game, Abzu, and I'm not really sure what the point is. I don't think that's a criticism because it's intriguing and beautiful. It's another exclusive console debut for Sony.

No Man's Sky then shows up and it's even more gorgeous than I remember it being the first time I saw it. It's got the visuals and the scope is incredible, especially when you consider it's an indie game. It's a procedural universe, and every player will start on a different planet where the universe is supposedly infinite. Whether it'll be fun to explore these worlds or not remains to be seen, but I'm optimistic and anticipate this game.

After being inspired by No Man's Sky, Andrew House comes back to talk about the Playstation Camera and starts discussing Project Morpheus.

House introduces Shawn Layden, the new President and CEO of SCE. He starts talking about the PSN and statistics. Youtube will be coming to PS4 later this year. In the summer, their broadcasting will be enhanced. He also thinks that free-to-play is important, and there are a bunch of games coming in the next year, then we're treated to a montage of some of these games. Some look cool, some look crappy, but all will annoy a large portion of gamers who hate F2P.

Playstation Now is going to be available in beta on July 31st on PS4. Shortly after it will be on Vita
and PS3. I'm excited for this.

Layden then went on to talk about PS Vita. There are over a hundred games in development for the platform.

Playstation TV is a thing too. You can pair it with your PS4, and play your games via remote play on another TV. When it's released it will cost $99 but there's a bundle for $139 that includes a Dual Shock 3, a game, and an HDMI cable.

After that, we get the world premiere of gameplay footage of Mortal Kombat X, and guess what? That teaser trailer we saw a while back was not gameplay footage, to those who debated how much of it was. When did Mortal Kombat get gory?

After Mortal Kombat, Andrew House comes back and starts talking about movies and television on Playstation. Their first original program is a show called Powers, which is about superheroes.

If you didn't know, there's an animated Ratchet & Clank movie in the works. We got to see a little bit of it. 

Finally we get back to games... with the remastered version of The Last of Us. If you haven't played The Last of Us and you only own a PS4, you definitely have to check this out when it releases on July 29th because it definitely lives up to the hype. The footage presented also has a cover of a Nirvana song so that's a plus in my eyes.

I love Metal Gear, and Sony knows this, so they chose to show us a new trailer of Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Not that I need a new trailer, but of course it looks awesome. The trailers for this game have been incredible.

Next comes Grand Theft Auto 5 for PS4. I'm really happy about this because the online aspect of the game seems really interesting and my PS3 broke a while back so I haven't gotten a chance to play it.

After stroking the audience with next-gen GTA5, we get to see the next Batman game, Arkham Knight. This was a must-buy before I knew anything about it. The video that they showed made me happy because now there is no doubt in my mind at all that the game is going to be awesome.

The press conference ends with Uncharted 4. If I'm being honest, I'm not real excited because I'm not a fan of the series, but it's nice to see that the game hasn't imploded with all the people leaving over the past year. It's just a short cinematic, but it says that it's coming out in 2015. There is a big applause at the beginning of the video and at the end.


Closing Statement: Sony suffered from some technical issues on occasion during their presser, but for the most part it was good. It's interesting that they were more like Microsoft last year than Sony of last year... focusing a bunch on their non-game features. Some of this is really interesting, but I felt like it went on a little too long and started clamoring for more game talk. After the talk about all their hardware and services, they came back in a huge way though, which I think kept Microsoft from edging out a victory here. The games that Sony showed are, for the most part, just more interesting.

Tagging My Way Back Into Your Heart - An Infamous: Second Son Review

Written By: Tyler
Platform Played On: PS4

Rating: 8/10
Verdict: While it "tweaks" more than it "innovates," the Infamous series is solid and Second Son is an improvement in some ways while being a step-down in others. I don't feel that the story is as good as the first Infamous, but the characters are an improvement and the fact you can use different types of powers instead of just electricity is appealing to me.


When the first Infamous came out, I bought it over Prototype originally, though I ended up getting Prototype eventually anyway. My reasoning for this was because Infamous looked like a less flashy game with better pacing. Prototype seemed like it would be fun for a shorter period of time. I was correct in this assessment, as Infamous was just a better game in the long run. Though a person could criticize Cole, I felt the story in the first game was pretty awesome, with a great plot twist. Infamous 2 improved the series gameplay-wise, but I felt the story was lacking.

Now there's Infamous: Second Son, the third entry in a really solid Playstation exclusive series.

In Second Son, you play as Delsin Rowe, a rebellious graffiti artist who wears a beanie that has a tendency to annoy his straight-faced cop brother Reggie. He does this by constantly being up to little petty crimes (such as tagging) where Reggie has to arrest him... again. Delsin is a member of a tribe, and of course before you know it, things take a turn for the worst when Augustine shows up. Brooke Augustine is the main villain of the game and is a member of the Department of Unified Protection -- a group that is out to imprison all "Conduits" (or Bioterrorists) because they have powers and normal people obviously do not.

So far, so X-Men, basically. Can humans and mutants Conduits co-exist?

Where Infamous had a bigger story, Second Son strips it down and tries to focus on the characters. Because of this, the characters are more developed and interesting but I felt the game lacked the sense of intrigue that the original game did. Some people have praised this move because they disliked Cole so much, but I felt that Infamous felt different because of the direction they went. By the time the end came I was in awe of how the story turned out, but Second Son lacks that for me. It's not that Second Son has a bad story, but it's more predictable and despite their best efforts to create interesting characters, they're basically all just cliches. Delsin is carefree, with his pins and his damn beanie, whereas there's a character who is a typical punk rocker chick, and there's a nerdy gamer. Oh, and of course Delsin's cop brother who only wants what's best for him. You can learn their backstories when you gain their abilities (more on that in a bit), and that helps flesh them out a little in regards to their motivations.

The interactions between the characters are fine, but it doesn't inspire to be anything more than a lot of games. I had a hard time getting invested in any of the characters, but Delsin is an improvement over Cole... and even helps present a few genuinely funny moments throughout the game that made me chuckle a bit. Augustine had an understandable motive, but I feel like I've seen it a million times before. It wasn't told badly, it was just pretty average.

What I do like though is that the game is paced well. This applies to every aspect of the game, whether it's gaining abilities or the plot. The game never overstays its welcome, and this has been something that Sucker Punch has done really well throughout the entire series. Sucker Punch gives you new abilities at a good pace, so you're always getting something. You start with Smoke powers, but before you know it you have Neon, and the game goes on from there. It doesn't flood you with abilities like Prototype does, so it's hard to get bored of it.

I figure a point of contention with people would be how long the game is. You can complete it quite fast, especially if you don't 100% it. The story goes by quickly, but to be fair, there's a "good and bad" morality system -- like in the previous games -- so you can always go through and play the game differently. As far as I know, people react differently to you but the overall game doesn't change much outside of the ending.

The moral system isn't anything special, and I can't help but think of a game like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic that seems ancient at this point but does this kind of thing exceptionally well. I know, I know, they're two different genres but why can't we expect a little more at this point? Is the moral system a good addition to a game? Almost always that's a yes, but Infamous: Second Son -- like its predecessors -- doesn't do anything memorable with it. It works, but I would have liked to see them do more, especially since this is the third game.

If you choose to 100% the game, you will get more hours out of it, obviously, but it's still not very long. I don't care because there are tons of games I want to play and I don't need every game to be a hundred hours, but this seems to bother some people. Let me repeat: it's not a short game, but it's not as long as a lot of sandbox games are. None of the Infamous games have been long though, and I think it's a blessing because a) Sucker Punch doesn't just milk the game to the point of boredom and b) the side-missions and whatnot are repetitive (hell, by default in the genre they usually are).

I'm not a huge fan of what I call "fluff gameplay." What I mean by that is I don't really think making you walk long distances over and over again (looking at you MMOs) and doing the same repetitive tasks over and over again (looking at you most sandbox games) is necessarily a good trait for a game to have. The side-missions are decent, allowing you to tag walls (by making you turn your controller on its side and press R2 to spray paint the holes of your stencil), find a secret agent in a crowd, and a few other different things, but the game doesn't overload you with them. I actually think this is a strength, because I end up skipping most side-missions after a certain point anyway because they get exhausting. In Second Son, I don't feel like I'm missing as much. I don't generally take points off of games for sandbox games having repetitive side-missions because I am aware it's what makes the genre what it is, though there are some games that are terrible in this regard.

The most interesting side-mission though is the Paper Trail. It is a mixture of typical Second Son side-missions and actually going on the internet to solve a crime. There are going to be six episodes, updated each week (for free), so I can't say how it all ends, but it's a novel idea and stands out.

The game looks good and shows off the power of the PS4. I'll be honest... since I'm not really a graphics whore, I generally have nothing terrible to say about graphics, but I can still appreciate when a game does them well. The character models are detailed to the point that they actually have some real emotion on their faces, and the city looks great too when you're looking down over it.

Seattle is also designed well. Gone are the days of having to grab ledges and slowly jump up buildings (thank God), because now there are ways to get up quickly and efficiently. For example, with the beginning Smoke power, there are vents that send you shooting up. These vents are frequent and welcomed. The other abilities allow you to run up, or fly up, and I can't stress enough how fluid this makes the game feel.

As a whole, from a gameplay perspective, Second Son is the best in the series, but like most of the game, it also feels incredibly familiar. Sucker Punch merely tweaked certain aspects of the game rather than innovate them. This is fine, but it's hard not to feel it all becomes a little "been there, done that" at this point.

However, it's still fun and the enemies are intelligent and dangerous so you're never just going through the motions. They present a challenge, even if there are only a couple of them shooting you. You can die if you're not careful, but if you're smart you can do a lot of damage quick.

The different powers you get are still basically like the powers that Cole gets, which is kind of a disappointment, but there are a few different ones. Still, it seems like each type of power follows a similar template to one another. Neon doesn't feel a whole lot different than Smoke, but there are little changes here and there. They vary slightly, but you will always have a movement ability, a missile ability and a normal shooting ability.

You can make these abilities more powerful by collecting shards. Shards, like most things, show up on the map -- which streamlines the experience as a whole and makes it better since you aren't just wandering around aimlessly trying to find things -- and they act as points. You've done this before... get so many points, put them into whatever power you like most, or unlock upgrades to them. The only thing that holds you back is karma, which is the moral system. If you aren't a certain karma level, you won't be able to progress your skills. That's why it pays to go all-in, whichever side you choose.

This isn't a spoiler unless for some reason knowing what song plays in the credits is a spoiler to you, but I thought it was a nice touch to have a cover for Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana. It's not as good as the original, but how often do you hear a Nirvana song in games?

If I sounded so negative that you're questioning the score I gave it, let me explain. I enjoyed my time with Infamous: Second Son. Even though it's more of the same, it's a good more of the same because the series is great. I'd probably give the first Infamous a 9 because I loved the story, and I knocked Second Son down a point because despite the story being more personal, I didn't get emotionally invested in it. I also think at this point the developers should consider going a different route with the series. Don't completely change anything and keep the core gameplay, but add more to the experience.