E3 Day 1 impressions: Sony

So the monolith that is Sony is now off the stage and we have been hammered by what we came here to see... GAMES.
Sony certainly has the leg up on the competition so far this year, but I still feel like something is yet to come.
Here are a few of Nick's notes from the Sony conference.

• The Last of Us- Wow, what a brutal environment, and I totally mean that in a good way. You really get the sense of the lethality of the world from the interactions of the characters and the enemies. Stealth will be key as you try to get the drop on guards, and gameplay looks very solid and Uncharted like as expected from Naughty Dog. I came into the gameplay footage of The Last of Us worried about what the girl character will be to the main character and if she will be a huge hindrance and eventually just an annoyance. Well, Naughty Dog, you have put my worries to bed as we see the little girl distract a guard so you can get the drop on them then stab another one in the back as he tries to strangle the character to death. Should be an amazing experience.
• Beyond- Quantic Dream opened the conference swinging by showing off their new IP Beyond. You play the role of Jody Holmes, who will be voiced by Ellen Page, who is a young girl haunted by "something from beyond this world." The people who brought us Heavy Rain are at it again with a game that looks more like a movie then it does a game. You have to hand it to them, they know how to make video game pixels emote. They promise the development of 15 years of character from Holmes, which should be interesting. I'm not all in on this IP, but it will be fun to see what people who play the game think.
• Playstation All Stars Battle Royale- Smash Bros. Brawl for the PS3 is everything it should be, and it looks great, but I'm just not excited. Parappa the Rappa? Really? Meh. Announced were Nathan Drake and Big Daddy, so that's cool, and the super system that leads to some fun animations, but I am just not hyped for this game. What was cool was seeing four players play the game with two on PS3 and two on Vitas. That's what I have been waiting for with this cross platform gaming. Bravo.
• Vita cross platform- Speaking of Vita cross platform stuff, we didn't get to see a lot of it at the conference, but what we did see made me VERY interested. What Sony did was talk about was a little cross platform DLC for Little Big Planet 2 that turns the Vita into a controller for the PS3. Very cool in theory. Very cool.
• More AC3- Remember in my Ubisoft notes where I said I wasn't excited going into E3 about AC3? Well, the Sony conference just made me again want this game. This time it wasn't the smoothness that took my breath away, it was the ship-on-ship combat with big ships that made me sit up and watch. Very nice.
• All the crap you don't care about- Leave it to Sony to throw in a bunch of stuff in the middle that nobody cares about to bring the show to a screeching halt. This year's brick wall was again the releases for the Playstation Move, mainly the Wonderbook. The Wonderbook is this book that you use the Move with to tell stories and the like. Great idea for children, but terrible to showcase at a conference where you just showed off an interesting title like Beyond, a huge fan wank like PASBR and all the while everyone dying to see God of War and The Last of Us. Sure, you got J.K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series on board, congrats, just show that off later. Same for Playstation Suite (now Playstation Mobile). Unless you were going to come out swinging with a bunch of mobile games for the Android that are Playstation certified, just keep that on the back burner and talk about it later when we don't have our hands under our seats waiting for The Last of Us. But you did better than Ubisoft, so you win that one.

E3 Day 1 impressions: Ubisoft

So E3 is in full swing, and with it the many keynote pressers that make up the blunt force trauma of information to your brain.
While we didn't get up and get around to watching the Microsoft presser at 9 a.m. (yeah, that's too damn early), we will get around to it and will talk about what is going to come out for XBox in the future. Expect that to come in the coming days, as well as reaction to the EA presser.
What we did get around to looking at on Monday was the Ubisoft presser and what we saw was pretty interesting.
Here are a few quick impressions from Nick:

• Zombii U- As a Wii owner, this game looks very interesting. We saw a lot from Ubi about trying to get Wii U ready for launch of the new console, and the things they showed off at the conference used the tablet well and looked crisp. What grabbed my attention was the end of the Wii U portion with Zombii U, and while it didn't have any gameplay footage, the concept was nice and the trailer did its job of getting my attention. What makes me very interested is that a zombie-centered first person shooter for the Wii U goes ahead and opens a door wide I was wondering about. It seems that the Wii U will not just be for the casual gamer, and Nintendo has finally realized that getting a nice stable of Rated M games for the core audience will be key to staying a big dog in the fight and not just a kid's toy. I would certainly trust the property if it were in the hands of someone else like Capcom, but Ubi is a good company who will work hard not to let anyone down.
• Assassin's Creed III- To say I was not excited for AC3 is an understatement. I never finished Brotherhood and didn't really want to get into Revelations because of that. When AC2 was announced and was bandied about at E3 a few years ago, I salivated massively about the property and wanted to see more. This time, I went in with a much more negative mindset. Boy, when you are wrong you are wrong. The trailers looked amazing, which was expected. However, I didn't expect the gameplay demo to look so smooth on a Playstation 3. What I saw was a lot of what I love about the series, racing up the side of something then jumping from post to post while snagging handholds and looking for the next step. If the actual play for a normal gamer like myself comes out half as smooth as it did for Ubi's pro, this game is going to be amazing. The new whip and human shield elements showed off are also interesting, especially the human shield. Being set in the American Revolution, the mass production of guns was one of my biggest skepticism about the AC franchise going here. What I saw didn't entirely put my mind at rest, but it did shut it up long enough to get a good idea of how things will be. Ubi also really tried to sell the tomahawk, which almost looks like it is replacing the hidden blade as a favored mode of dispatch. Will be interesting to see what they do with that. Ubi closed by saying the scope of the game will be 30 years spanning from before to after the revolutionary conflict. That's nice, because it would be a disservice to just hold the entire game in a tight window. The first AC game was a pretty over-focused game, while the second may have went too far in the other direction. I think they may have found the wheelhouse and are ready to deliver.
• Shootmania- Ubi then showed off their free-to-play PC game model and all the games they plan to put into play through their online service. Not being a big PC gamer besides Minecraft and not being a big multiplayer lover I didn't get a lot of out these games, but if they can find a nice way to get a free-to-play model to work, that should set the stage for other companies to move in that same direction.
• "Watch Dogs" CTOS- Ubi closed the show with a new IP, called CTOS, and it is very intriguing. Based on the idea that everyone has a digital footprint that can be hacked into and used against them, you take the role of a hacker who uses the internet to get information and use it to take out targets. We didn't get a lot of the actual plot story before Ubi went into gameplay demo, which was odd, but I think after we had the 45 minutes of James Cameron setting up Avatar Ubi has learned their lesson and realizes that they should just show us the product then try to tell us more about it later after we are already hooked. Open world and third person, CTOS has the look and feel of GTA 4, and has that same gritty feel. It also has the same kind of player movement that you come to expect from games like this lately. Shooting and taking cover also very GTA 4 and since that's almost the standard of the day, I can't fault them for that. I will say that the hacking elements make for an very interesting way to get your way, like jamming cell signals to distract bouncers or making street lights change to cause a traffic accident to pin in your target. Just a cool concept all around, can't wait to see more.
• UbiFAIL once again- Finally, Ubisoft was at it again with yet another year of tooth-pulling awkwardness in the dude who represented "the fans questions" at this year's conference. I came into the whole show a little late, so I didn't get to see all the wonder that this guy and his overly excited "to the extreme!" attitude gave to the conference, but boy I am really glad I missed a lot of that. When is Ubi going to learn that they don't need to entertain with their conference hosts, that's what the product is supposed to do for them. I keep thinking of Joel McHale having to fumble through things with French Canadians before Cameron came on to bore us to death. Then there was that 30 minutes of dancing to dead Michael Jackson's songs. Ubi is going to hit one out of the park one day, and it's going to be a robot who rolls out, says "Assassins Creed 7!" then rolls away to the screaming cheers of the audience. If we can only hope.

That's all from Ubisoft, be back later with some Sony notes.