CHARLES
WARD
T
6
here have been
several
moments
in E3 history that fans
remember fondly as
truly
awe-inspiring.
From the first reveal
trailer of Twilight Princess as ‘just one more
thing’ in 2004 to the
first look at Killzone 2
showing off impossibly
advanced visual fidelity for its time, some of
these events have truly
left their mark. Rare as
these moments are,
even rarer still is an
event which jumps from
moment to moment of
stunned silences and
manic cheering. Enter
Sony’s E3 conference,
which concluded last
night with not only
new information about
upcoming games, but
solid release dates
and gameplay trailers
which teased incredible worlds for us to
explore.
The show opened
with a bang, featuring
a live orchestra playing the main theme for
the brand new entry
into the God of War
series. This time around
we were introduced to
a much more paternal
Kratos, accompanying his son on his first
hunt through the snow
speckled wilderness.
Mechanics familiar to
the series were introduced, with satisfying and brutal melee
combat. However a
much tighter camera
perched over his shoulder marked the biggest
departure from the series, with much slower deliberate combat
replacing the fast and
fluid movements of the
moody protagonist’s
former persona. Kratos still feels bland and
uninteresting despite
the trailers’ best efforts
to suggest otherwise,
but hopefully this could
change over the course
of the game.
While Naughty Dog
did not have a physical
presence at the conference, their legacy was
TANKS FOR THE
MEMORIES,
MODERN WARFARE
felt strongly in Days
Gone, Bend Studio’s
new game featuring a
post-apocalyptic zombie game. With the studio having previously
worked on Uncharted:
Golden Abyss one can
see them pay homage
to other Naughty Dog
entry The Last of Us,
though the feeling I
got was much more in
line with Undead Labs’
State of Decay. It also
went for an emotional appeal, which ultimately fell flat when
the shooting started.
A full gameplay demo
was used to close out
the conference, which
I feel was a misstep,
as the game showed
little we hadn’t seen in
other similar games in
the genre. A remaster
of the original Crash
Bandicoot trilogy was
also announced exclusively for the PS4, to
huge enthusiasm from
the crowd.
Guerilla
Games
gave us a much more