PlayStation Gave Fans Just What They Wanted @ E3 2015

Attending the PlayStation Press event for the first time was something of an experience, after spending all day in lines, bouncing from one event to the next, it was nice to sit down and relax, which is what sony allowed everyone to do before heading in, because they knew everyone would be at the edge of their seats.

After a welcoming speech by the PlayStation America CEO Shawn Layden, we got our first game of the show and one that made a lot of grown men cheer and applaud, The Last Guardian. The game has the same visual style it did when it first appeared many years ago, but this time it was gameplay not a trailer, so while it was nice to see that, PlayStation did not stop there.

Over the course of the next hour we got to see a lot of games, either exclusive to PlayStation, Coming First to PlayStation or featuring exclusive content for PlayStation. Final Fantasy VII Remake was announced, which again sent people into fits of joy, all around the Shrine Auditorium, we got a glimpse into a brand new Final Fantasy game, where the characters are a stylised version of Chibi characters and we even got a final look at Batman Arkham Knight, before its release next week.

Disney and Star Wars were there in a big way, firstly John Vignocchi appeared on stage to announce a collectors edition of Disney Infinity 3.0 featuring a timed exclusive Boba Fett figure. That was followed up with more gameplay of Star Wars Battlefront, which looks amazing. But even with all those big things, there were still more games announced for the first time, Guerilla Games took to the stage to announce their new title, Horizon Zero Dawn.

In the game, humans have gone from a most advanced species on the planet, backwards to caveman style tribes, but the world continued to move forward. Plants and tree’s have taken back the cities, with the decedents of humans now living in small camps, but some also live in larger ones, living like kings. There are stories panted on cave walls that tell of the fall of our race, but not what caused it. But while that alone was enough to make me want this game, when the main character went out hunting, they were not going for deer or such, they were hunting mechanical animals, creatures born from somewhere or something else, when things were getting going the demo ended and we were back to our reality.

The other new game that was shown off, that made very little sense to me was Dreams, which to be fair the creative lead and studio co-founder Alex Evans said it would. Though while I am not baffled by the concept, I am worried that the game won’t make sense to anyone, regardless of how its explained. Using the PS4 controller, you can sculpt a image, then you can animate it, like a puppeteer. The trailer that was showed off, did show some amazing scenes, but I feel it will be a game better used by artists rather than gamers, but time will tell.

They also took some time out to talk about indies and what they are working on, while it was not as heavily focused as it was in the past, it was nice to see. We got another look at Project Morpheus, via way of a video, but the surprise of that segment was when Shenmue 3 was announced to becoming to PlayStation 4, as well as PC, via Kickstarter which they launched on stage, it is already funded.

Perhaps the biggest non-surprise, surprise was Call of Duty Black Ops 3 is going lead on PlayStation 4 and all PlayStation platforms are getting the DLC first, before the others. Which means Xbox gamers will now have to wait, just like PlayStation gamers had to, outside of that nothing else is really changed. Call of Duty still looks like an intense game, with quite a number of large explosive scenes, the multiplayer has been teased as being something even better, with the all new movement abilities and Zombies is getting some new features, though they were not discussed at that time. We were shown though a 4 player campaign mission, with a lot of explosions and such, but I liked the idea of switching up your gameplay style on the fly to adapt to different enemies.

Of course, PlayStation ended their press event with the biggest game they have in their stable right now, Uncharted A Thieves End, a 7 minute demo played out to stunned viewers, this was the cherry on an event that pleased all the diehard PlayStation fans, but also game the casual fan things to look forward to.