Coming to us just two days after The
Game Awards, PlayStation Experience is here to give us even more content to
look forward to in 2017! Well, that and some stuff nobody could care less
about. This was easily the better of the two events this week, if only because
PlayStation Experience wasn’t artificially extended to fit in a billion
advertisements. Unless it was Schick Hydroman. I wouldn’t have minded seeing
him again.
Taking it from the top, we started off
what was easily the best part of the conference for me: a gameplay demo of
brand new DLC for Uncharted 4 focused on Chloe from Uncharted 2 and 3! Yes!
It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of the Uncharted series, and I’m always down for
more content, even if it doesn’t include Nathan Drake. Chloe was a great
character in 2 (and she was woefully underused in 3), so seeing more of her is
always welcome. The gameplay looks like your standard Uncharted stuff, with
lots of sneaking around, climbing, and punching dudes. Frankly, I was just
happy we got to see gameplay at all instead of another pre-rendered cutscene.
From there, we moved straight into a
pre-rendered cutscene. Granted, it was a very pretty pre-rendered cutscene for
the next Marvel vs. Capcom game, but considering they said onstage that the
first gameplay would be shown later at a completely different PlayStation
Experience panel confuses me. Why not just show it there instead of making us
tune in at a different time? I’m always much more impressed by real gameplay
than flashy lights and bright colours, and I know several who feel the same
way.
Much of this conference seemed to be
focused on announcing remakes for older games. Crash Bandicoot, Parappa the
Rapper, Loco Roco, Wipeout, you name it, it’s getting remade. Remasters of old
games like these are guaranteed to move some copies thanks to people who’ll buy
them on nostalgia alone, so there’s no worry they won’t sell well. A lot of
them look really great too: Wipeout practically looks like it was made for HD.
I just wish we hadn’t spent so much time on games that already exist.
So how about a game that doesn’t
already exist? Because Sony’s got you covered by making…Knack 2. Yeah, Knack,
as in that game that launched with the PS4 that nobody except young kids liked.
Apparently it moved enough copies to warrant a sequel. I’m not the type of guy
who writes games off after seeing the first trailer, so I’ll keep an open mind,
but come on. Who asked for Knack 2 to
be made!?
There was also an indie highlight
reel, but although I call it a highlight reel, it felt more like a way to kill
time midway through the show. Sadly, none of these games really captured my
attention, save for one called Vane, but that was in and out so fast there was
really no time to really grasp what it was. The pacing was all off here, giving
us not enough time to really take in each game and instead showed them back to
back to back with no cohesiveness. Because all the indies and small devs were
jumbled together, I’m finding it hard to remember any real standout stuff from
this segment, aside from Vane and Ni No Kuni 2. It went on for way too long
with way too little stuff to show.
Thankfully, they were able to recover
in the end, as we got another look at the gorgeous world of Horizon: Zero Dawn,
as well as the long-awaited first look at The Last of Us: Part 2. Finally!
After years of rumours and speculation and leaks, Naughty Dog has finally come
out and confirmed the sequel to 2012’s smash hit. Frankly, considering I
actually never played the original Last of Us despite owning a copy, I’m way
more excited for Horizon: Zero Dawn. As I’ve mentioned before, I love the idea
of a world taken back by nature, with robotic animals roaming the plains and
tribes of humans having sprung up as a resistance. There’ll apparently be more
on that tomorrow, and I can’t wait. As for Last of Us, we didn’t see much aside
from Joel and Ellie hanging out together again, but the graphics looked
absolutely gorgeous. The thing is, it was again a cinematic trailer. The
presenter did specify that the game was in extremely early development, meaning
we probably won’t have it in our hands until 2018 at the earliest.
This year’s PlayStation Experience was
far better than The Game Awards, but it still had some very shaky moments and
lengthy boring segments that prevented it from being truly great. If they’d
only cut down the number of indies shown and given more time to a select few,
maybe then they would’ve done better. I also would’ve again liked less
cinematics and more gameplay. I’ve reached the point where flashy imagery isn’t
enough to sell me on games anymore. I need to see how they actually work and
play before I get interested. Some trailers, like the Uncharted one, had real
gameplay, but it just wasn’t enough to keep my full attention until the end.
So, yeah. Not quite as good as their E3 this year, but at least it was able to
help clean Geoff Keighley’s mess.
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