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.