Rating the Conferences: Sony

Uh-oh.  The "big dog" has arrived...




Rating: HOLY F- (A++)

If you paid attention to the internet scuttlebutt the night before, you knew there was a possibility of what happened.   I said: “Sony can only disappoint, or break the internet” roughly two hours before their conference started.  Fortunately, Sony decided to go for the latter.

We should’ve known they weren’t fucking around when they started on time for once.  They wasted absolutely ZERO time and kicked things off by re-introducing The Last Guardian.   Though I didn’t care about it when they revealed it in 2009 (and care even less now), it was a beautiful reveal and a great way to start things off.

But they weren’t done.  Horizon, the game I’ve been talking about for ages, was next and it looked jaw-droppingly beautiful.  Boasting a unique setting, hauntingly beautiful music, and a bad-ass female protagonist hunting down ROBOT DINOSAURS, Guerilla Games may have generated more hype for an IP in that one showing than they have the entire time Killzone’s been in existence.   That’s still my most hype game of the show, and I hope it comes out in the early second half of the year.

But they still weren’t done.   With some expect trolling lessons pulled straight from the Square-Enix book of trolling, they brought up Final Fantasy.   By then the rumors had spread, and you could hear the crowd erupt with excitement…but what we got wasn’t what we expected.  Instead, it was World of Final Fantasy, a cute title whose existence on PS4 alongside Vita all but proves portables are dead.  The excitement tampered down…could the rumor have been a cruel joke, and were we condemned to what was already a great, but unfortunately not quite “legendary” E3?  

NOPE.  Just fucking with you, Sony said—here’s Final Fantasy VII: Remake.   And as if pulling all their ideas for new games from deep within the bowels of core gamer forums, pulled a Shenmue 3 Kickstarter out of their hat.   

Last Guardian.  Final Fantasy VII: Remake.  Shenmue 3.  All in one conference.  I legitimately thought I was dead for a moment and went to some strange gamer heaven.  If Suikoden VI had been announced I legit would’ve started calling people to make sure I was still alive.  

Fortunately, not long after that the excitement started to ramp back down as they reminded us about app talk, the FPS twins (CoD and Destiny), games that really shouldn’t be at E3 anymore (Arkham Knight), and the now-staple indie sizzle reel.  But it was a fantastic 45 minutes or so, and I’m not the least bit upset about how it ended—they earned the right to talk about all that junk after that.
They even ended with a trailer for Uncharted 4.  Sure the game crashed at first, but after such a beautiful conference I wasn’t even mad.  Just reminded that “Oh, on top of all this legendary stuff, UC4’s coming.”  

Bravo, Sony.  Fucking bravo.  I know I’m a Sony fanboy, but I like to think I call them on their shit—I still think Microsoft beat them out last year—so I can’t help congratulating them when they get it right.

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