Sony E3 Keynote Digest

Sorry for the delay with this one, but here goes!

- High Def 3D is Sony's vision of the future. "What PlayStation did for Blu-ray, we're now going to do it for 3D as well." 20 native 3D titles are expected by March 2011.

- Killzone 3 was demo'ed, in 3D. This game is looking pretty sick!

- Many many big titles listed as supporting 3d, including Gran Turismo 5.

- Sly Cooper collection was announced (a la God of War Collection)

- Playstation Move had quite the showing - the fact that the entire Move setup will run you $30 less than Kinect, AND will include a game is pretty huge.

- A title called Sorcery was demo'ed with Move. The Move wand and the navigation stick were used to move the character around and cast spells. I wonder if the last Harry Potter games will support this?!

- Tiger Woods 11 w/ Move support - nothing shocking there.

- A new Move title - Heroes on the Move - includes a ton of 1st party characters (Rachet, Jak, etc)

- Kevin Butler gave an epic speech! "Because every gamer is a true gamer. Motion gamers. Sitting gamers. And even though we may pledge allegiance to different flags, we all serve one king, one master... and his name is gaming! Forever may he reign!"

- Move will hit retail September 19th in North America with many many options - $49.99 for the Move wand, $19.99 for the Navigation stick. $99.99 gets you the Sports Champion Bundle, which is a Move wand, and EyeSight camer, and the sports title they've been showing off. (Add the Navigation stick for the full move setup and you're looking at about $120 total)

- Time Crisis is a Move launch title!

- PSP was up next with God of War: Ghost of Sparta, inviZimals, EyePet and a new PSP spokesperson, Marcus. "We've got good kids playing bad games"

- Sony announced a replica of their E3 booth will be in Home (meh)

- Little Big Planet 2 was shown, nothing terribly surprising there.

- And at last as rumored - premium PSN. PlayStation Plus will cost $49.99 a year and provide early access to demos, dlc and betas. As a GAP member that last bit really chaps my ass. Sony is claiming hundreds of dollars worth of content will be provided to Plus members. Cross game chat also has been anounced - One plus member can have 3 other non-plus members within the group chat. Once all Plus members leave, the chat is disbanded. Kind of bittersweet.

- Exclusive Medal of Honor beta for the ps3 - July 21st.

- Dead Space 2 will support Move - the limited edition of the game will also include Dead Space Extraction previously on the Wii.

- Now this was sort of huge... Portal 2 was announced for the PS3. PLEASE PLEASE let this lead to more Valve games on the PS3! There is no reason to deny PS3 only gamers they joys of Valve games.

- Final Fantasy 14 Online was shown.

- Lots of exclusive DLC for the following PS3 titles: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Final Fantasy 14 Online, Mafia 2. AC Brotherhood multiplayer beta is a PS3 exclusive.

- Gran Turismo 5 has a release date at last! November 2nd 2010.

- inFamous 2 was shown in trailer form - new city, new ice powers

- And one last surprise.... TWISTED METAL!!!!!!!!!! I am wondering if this will be a disk release or PSN release. I'm leaning towards PSN.

Current Gaming and other items

Why hello everyone - sorry for the long delay in posting, but to be brutally honest I've reached the point of burnout with Final Fantasy 13. This has resulted in a short break from gaming.

HOWEVER!

Over the wonderful Memorial Day Weekend 2010 I found myself with an urge to play something completely different which served as a reminder that I had not cracked the seal on my copy of inFamous for the PS3. I picked this game up back in March when i was flush with Best Buy gift cards from my birthday - but i never got around to playing it due to FF13 soaking up the majority of my playtime.

So, after a weekend with inFamous I must say that I am kicking myself for not making this a day 1 purchase. The first point that makes this game a blast is that you're playing a superhero without hundreds of issues of back story to conform to or any sort of preconceived notions about the character (Cole). This of course allows the developers to write the rules as they go along. The second point that makes this game great is while playing it - and bear with me on this it's kind of hard to properly articulate this - it feels *easy* to move and play as a super hero. Running and jumping between buildings and latching on to them as you crawl along the sides will of course remind the player of a certain spider-related hero from the Marvel universe. There's really no escaping that comparison. But in my opinion, there has yet to be a game for that Marvel character that has felt so natural as inFamous.

inFamous is built around a karma system, which in itself is nothing new but it does provide an interesting twist to how you play the game (the karma system reminded me quite a bit of the system within Knights of the Old Republic) and how the NPCs will react to you. If you play as a good guy eventually the NPCs will cheer you on, take pictures of you and in some cases even aide you in taking out enemies (they'll throw rocks!). Play as a mean son of a bitch and the NPCs will fear you, run away, and sometimes throw rocks at YOU.

Graphically the game isn't anything groundbreaking for this generation, but the graphics engine will certainly get the job done and look pretty good while doing so. Like the bulk of PS3 titles it is a 720p native game.

In other news we're rapidly approaching this year's E3, which is looking like it'll be all about Natal and Move from MS and Sony respectively. I wonder if the 3DS will be the focus for Nintendo, or if they've got something else up their sleeves...

Final Fantasy 13 and the lack of remote play (among other things)

So, I've hit the 20 hour mark in Final Fantasy 13 on the PS3 and still enjoying the hell out of it.

That said, why wasn't FF13 designed to use the remote play feature? To me, it seems like a perfect fit (even the controls could be easily mapped to the psp - only difference is the lack of a 2nd analog nub so camera control would have to be done with a combination of keys). It's a really long game and for those of us in a household where we must share the TV with a significant other, it can be hard to really sink in a bunch of time every night.

Basically i'd love the ability to continue my FF13 game while my S.O. watches some of her DVR'ed programs. It just seems like a huge missed opportunity to put remote play to REALLY good use.

In other news, Playstation Move was demo'ed at PAX East and honestly I'm still not sold on the idea. [to be clear, i'm not sold on MS' Project Natal either...] I know i'm going to sound like pretty much every other game blog out there when i say this, but Playstation Move really just feels like a juiced up Wiimote. Nintendo took a huge risk with the Wii and it's control scheme (not to mention tons of flak regarding the motion sensing game play), and yet here we are almost 4 years after the Wii's launch and both MS and Sony are racing to push out competing technology. Suddenly fanboys on both the MS and Sony camps are interested in motion controls because it's now coming from their respective platform of choice.

I find this 180 in opinion both silly and predictable.

Oh and God of War 3... if you own a PS3 you really should own this title. A friend of mine put it best:

"God of War 3 starts where most games end."

I really couldn't say it better myself.

By now I'm sure we've all seen the hilarious GOW3 spot with the angry girlfriend. The best part in this ad imo is the fact that the bulk of the game play footage is from the first level. Starts where most games end INDEED.

Until next time...