Ubisoft

It’s something I’ll say to anyone who will listen, but I miss Mr. Caffeine. The Ubisoft press conferences have fallen into this odd pattern of almost deliberately being filtered through a series of bad jokes followed by deafening silence, but no one has ever leaned into it with as much commitment and tragedy as he did. Still, Aisha Tyler continues to feel like an adequate replacement. As a presenter she’s actually pretty good, but the humour comes off as mystifyingly awkward enough to provide some entertaining moments. Hm? Oh right, video games.

Ubisoft opened strangely, perhaps more so than EA. It was surprising to see a video game conference kicked off by Jerry Cantrell standing there playing guitar solos, but it was also rather shocking to learn Rocksmith had sold enough copies to warrant a sequel. Rayman Legends is still looking great, not just because it has more of Rayman Origins’ excellent platforming, but also because it could have easily used an art style identical to Origins and looked great, yet Ubisoft decided to go one further and give it its own unique look. The last Rayman had visuals like something from an excellent cartoon, this one has visuals more like something from an excellent painting.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot trailer was rather painful to watch. It was a bit like one of Valve’s Meet the Team videos, except all the jokes were along the lines of “He fell over”, “He’s swearing”, “That frog is vomiting”, etc. A lot of people seem to be excited for South Park: The Stick of Truth, but I find myself rather neutral towards it. It looks like the TV show and seems like it has moments in it that could have come straight from an episode of South Park, but how it will play is another matter.

Things picked back up when The Crew became the conference’s new point of focus. I mentioned how much I want a Burnout Paradise 2 in my last blog post and this looks like it could be the closest thing we’ve seen to it yet. It has that excellent open-world driving at its core, the world looks huge, and like many similar games it’s trying to break down the hard divides between single player and multiplayer experiences. The Watch_Dogs trailer was also very cool, although I did expect Ubisoft to have some gameplay on offer. Rabbids Invasion didn’t appear particularly engaging, but we’re obviously not the target audience for that title.

The conclusion of the conference was uncannily similar to how Ubisoft ended their conference last year. A stylised video that covered the details of a current wide-scale threat to humanity, followed by some gameplay of a great third-person shooter game that seemed to have come out of nowhere and blurred the lines between environments and sleek futuristic UI. The Division’s gameplay came across largely as the same combat we’re familiar with from the flood of cover-based shooters from the last decade or so, but its initial set-up gives it a lot of potential, and its innovative interface could present an action RPG where even basic menus, markers, and points counters become visually engaging.

Sony

The general opinion at the start of Sony’s briefing declared that all they had to do to beat Microsoft was get from the beginning to the end of their conference without announcing the same kind of nasty restrictions for the PS4 that the Xbox One is facing. Not only did Sony manage that, they did a whole lot more while they were at it.

Among other games, the conference’s opening showcased more of Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls, but while it is graphically impressive, telling us what Beyond actually is as a game seems like Quantic Dream’s last priority, and at this point it’s looking like a fair possibility that it could be another modern military action game or another Heavy Rain, essentially taking the form of a movie full of QTEs and dialogue choices. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but suffice it to say I feel a bit lost.

The new Batman: Arkham Origins trailer brought a grin to many faces, and although I'm not as captivated by the villains they’ve showed in Origins as I was with the antagonists of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, having the chance to get another dose of Arkham’s empowering stealth, combat, and traversal mechanics is still a very enticing prospect. I’m not the biggest fan of steampunk, but the trailer for The Order was intriguing, largely because it managed to keep its monsters ambiguous and mysterious. I hope it doesn’t just turn out that they’re werewolves. The Infamous: Second Son trailer also was also a nice treat, and it felt like the characters in there actually seemed more human and relatable than the characters from the Beyond trailer. Really, Sony showed off so many games it’s impossible for me to mention them all here and still keep this something close to a brief review.

Quantic Dream’s tech demo for The Last Sorcerer was both mind-blowing as a piece of modelling and animation, and amusing. I’m not the kind of person who usually loses it over the latest graphics technology and more realistic rendering methods, but it’s undeniable that there was something amazing about the subtle expressions that were captured in that demonstration. Up to this point in the conference it felt like Sony’s offerings had been impressive, but I think it’s here that the conference took a turn and became something really special.

It was great to see some friends of Giant Bomb up on stage showing off games they really cared about, Transistor looks like it has something seriously going for it, and the way that Sony showed their commitment to independent game developers overall was beautiful. Microsoft had one indie game at their show, Sony had eight. I think they’re a company that understand that truly embracing independent developers is essential to ensuring your games are doing plenty of original and different things, instead of just being one big mountain of AAA titles. With a new generation of consoles, the temptation is also there to just show big 3D games that are utilising the raw power of the new hardware to make things look as realistic as possible. It was great to see that Sony aren’t afraid to show off some 2D games that are being inventive with their art styles.

Moving on, Kingdom Hearts and a new Final Fantasy I could care less about, but the Assassin’s Creed IV demo was very exciting, even if it did have its technical hitches. I’ve played a lot of Assassin’s Creed and I thought it was a series I was done with, but I have a particular weak spot for pirates. There seems to be an inherent difficulty in basing what is largely a platforming game around people who spend most of their time sailing the oceans, but if the demo was anything to go buy they’re striking a good balance between having you frolicking around the seven seas and bounding across the rooftops of coastal cities. Who’d have thought naval combat would have become such a popular part of the Assassin’s Creed games.

It seemed unlikely that they’d top that demo, but it was here that we finally got to lay our eyes on some fresh Watch_Dogs gameplay. Looking at Watch_Dogs, I see a lot of the same things in it that made me like Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I like its cyberpunk elements and the game’s general focus on hacking and electronic systems, I like the dark dystopian tone, and I like that it has a narrative that touches on real problems we’re facing today and are likely to face in the near future. There’s something more than just that to it though. Most third-person open-world games let you empower yourself through weapons, and display your physical prowess over your enemies. Watch_Dogs has a firearm, but it’s also a game that seems to have a major focus on mind games, and causing anarchy and destruction without ever having to lay your hands on a person. It’s cool to take down an entire army with an assault rifle or assassinate elite guards by careful use of your wrist blades, but there’s something uniquely empowering about being able to instil panic with a few clicks on a smart phone, playing psychological tricks on your enemies, or causing complete chaos while everyone around you is oblivious to the fact that its you doing it.

Destiny didn’t catch my eye like I thought it would, but it may still have something going for it. The environment and character design seemed rather bland, and it was hard to see how the RPG shooter mechanics improve on something like Borderlands, but the public events could be a legitimately enjoyable experience, and games like this and The Elder Scrolls Online show that we may finally be reaching an age where the console MMO is a reality. However, it was the announcements either side of the Destiny demo that were the briefing’s real shining moments.

Some have called what happened at the end of the Sony conference the final nail in the Xbox One’s coffin. I’m hesitant to make such a bold statement. I’m sure there will be plenty of people who naturally transition from the 360 to the One, Microsoft have a lot of marketing power, and even if I’m sceptical of it maybe the media features of the One will be a draw for some people. What’s certain though, is that Sony dealt a significant blow to the Xbox One that night, and I think we saw a little piece of gaming history. There’s always some degree of trade-off between the consoles, but the advantages that the PS4 is going to have over the One are rather staggering.

Unlike Microsoft, Sony are offering a console where players can share games freely, used games aren’t restricted, you don’t need to repeatedly connect to the internet to play offline, and indie devs are truly supported, and all of this is coming at a lower cost than Microsoft are offering for their machine. It’s a little disappointing to see the PS4’s multiplayer functionality get locked up behind a paywall, but Sony have worked diligently to avoid the mistakes of the PS3. Instead of confounding programmers with cell architecture, they’ve worked with devs to create a machine easy to develop for, and instead of alienating gamers with an uncomfortably high price point, they’re providing us with a console where it really feels like they want to give the consumer as much as they can.

In some ways I don’t want to see Microsoft pummelled into submission here, I think they come out with some excellent system exclusives and they have the ability to provide quality products and services, but at the same time I feel ecstatic to see Sony respect the consumers and developers where Microsoft have disrespected them. While the crowd at Sony’s conference was often too loud for my tastes, seeing people chant Sony’s name from their seats was elating, and in a way I want this to be devastating to Microsoft, because it will send a message to the rest of the industry about what happens when you don’t treat your customers right. Gamers often put up with more bullshit than they collectively tell you they will, but it’s usually because they’ll get something they really want from doing so. This time, there’s an alternative to the bullshit.