Sony Conference Recap - E3 2014

After the customary Sony delay (only four minutes this year), the final conference of the day began. Destiny was first, with a fairly long cinematic trailer, featuring lots of nice environments, but no gameplay. It’s releasing at a time that gives it a good chance to become massive, let’s hope it’s as good as it looks. Playstation users will get access to the beta on July 17, and starting from this Thursday, PS4 users will be able to play an alpha version. An exclusive Destiny PS4 bundle will release on September 9th along with the game itself, and hold onto your hats people, the PS4 has a new “glacier white” color option!

Second was The Order 1886, showing off a trailer for the game. A mustachioed man with a lantern creeps around an abandoned building, and finds a zombie werewolf type man feasting on the flesh of a dead guy. We switch seamlessly from cutscene to gameplay, and this game looks phenomenal.

Next we see some pretty origami creatures frolicking in the sunlight. Entwined is the name of the game, a game about two souls who are in love but can’t be together. You control the two characters at once, one with each stick. Looks gorgeous, and it’s out right now!

Next up is some standalone DLC for Infamous, entitled First Light. But that doesn’t last long before Little Big Planet 3 comes out. Sackboy is back, and he’s got even more physics based fun for you. It had a few live demo woes, but the introduction of multiple new playable characters look interesting. You’ll be able to play it in November, and you’ll be able to play the entire back catalogue of user generated content from the first two games on it.

Now we get to find out what the new game from From Software is, it’s called Bloodborn. It’s a pretty horrifying elaborate CG trailer, with demonic dogs, mean looking men, and lots of blood. It’s coming in 2015, but we’re still not exactly sure what it’s going to be.

Next up we have our second dose of Far Cry 4 of the day, this time with a gameplay trailer. Straight off the bat it looks fantastic, with beautiful looking mountains and lots of animals. After killing a few dudes with explosions, we quickly jump into a little golf cart looking vehicle. He jumps from the cart onto the side of a truck, and hijacks it. Suddenly we drive the truck off a mountain, dive out and deploy a wingsuit. Also elephants! All of a sudden we’re into a multiplayer situation, and we’re riding a mini makeshift helicopter around the environment. The elephant headbutted a car and it flipped over and exploded! This looks like a lot of fun.

Next up was a fairly irreverent trailer for Dead Island 2 with a guy running down a beach listening to music, with all sorts of mayhem going on behind him as he slowly turns into a zombie. In more zombie news, the Ultimate Evil Edition of Diablo 3 will feature enemies themed on The Last of Us.

Following all that, we have a cinematic trailer for Battlefield Hardline, but there’s nothing we didn’t see earlier in the day at EA’s conference.

Paradox has a rather hilarious live action trailer for us with a guy dressed up as a character from Magicka. It seems like Magicka 2 will feature user created, open world stuff.

We’ll be seeing a remastered Grim Fandango coming soon!

Next up we’ve got a bunch of stuff coming up from Devolver Digital, including Broforce, Titan Souls, Not a Hero, Hotline Miami 2, and The Talos Principle.

We’ve got the next twisted trip from Suda 51 coming up next. It looks pretty weird, as you might imagine. There’s a lot of RPG style stats, but also a lot of gory combat. The game’s called Let it Die, and the logo is the Grim Reaper riding a skateboard.

Some of the masterful artistic forces that brought you Journey have formed a new studio called Giant Squid, and are making a game called . It’s set underwater, with all sorts of pretty creatures. It’s called Abzu, but we’re not entirely sure what it will be yet, nor when it’ll come out.

No Man’s Sky followed, one of the most anticipated games around. It looks beautiful, with all sorts of wildlife, from small mammals to massive dinosaurs. The seamless transitions from planet to space still look phenomenal, and we get to see a bit of ship combat. Everything is procedural, and theoretically, the universe is infinite. Everyone starts on a different planet, so no two people will have the same experience.

Now onto some hardware announcements, with some Project Morpheus, the system’s virtual reality headset being demoed on the show floor. There’s also a lot of numbers being thrown around to do with PSN. YouTube is coming to PS4 later this year for quick upload of players’ captures. Some new content is coming to PlayRoom, for you to create better looking live streams. PlayStation Now will be in open beta on PS4 in the US and Canada starting from July 31. There’s also a bunch of titles coming to PSVita from the main console. A little remote play device called PlayStation TV will allow you to stream your games to a second television in your home, and will cost $99.

Back to games. World premiere of gameplay for Mortan Kombat X. We’ve got Sub Zero vs Scorpion of course, and this is the gameplay version of the cinematic trailer they put out recently. You can see the Injustice Gods Among Us influences with plenty of environment interaction. Plenty of cringe x-ray shots of bones breaking, and gruesome fatalities. Horrific stuff, but it still looks great.

Back away from games. Sony are delving into an original TV series called Powers, based on the series of graphic novels, and PlayStation Plus users will get the entire thing for free. There’s also a Ratchet and Clank movie coming out, as well as a remake of the first game. Following that was a fantastic looking remaster of The Last of Us for PS4.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was next, with the trailer a lot of people have been waiting for (unless they saw the leaked version the previous night). Kojima impresses with his trailer as usual, as we see plenty of guns, plenty of knives and plenty of Snake.

Next generation Grand Theft Auto V was the next game on show. It looks great, but it’s not the PC version a lot of people are wanting.

Next up, Batman: Arkham Knight. After a slow period with hardware and TV, Sony are starting to bring out the big guns. The previous games look nice, but this one somehow manages to look even better. We get to see some gliding, and of course, a lot of Batmobile, which transforms into a tank after rampaging around Gotham City, because why not? The Scarecrow hijacks the trailer, and he looks legitimately terrifying.

The big finale is here, and it’s… Uncharted! That’s a really good looking Nathan Drake on screen, and the camera zooms out to show off some more beautiful, if not chilling visuals. It’s called “A Thief’s End”, ominously, and it will be out next year.

And with that, Day Zero of E3 2014 is over. We’ve had a long day of conferences, with plenty of ups and downs. Let’s see what the rest of the show has in store for us.