E3 2007: Sony Impressions

Before the third-party publishers got their say on the upcoming year we were last left with Sony's phenominally put together presentation, a far cry from last year's horror fest. This is what I thought of it.

Pick-Ups:

Echochrome looks awesome. I never thought I'd hav to use MC Escher as reference material while explaining a game and I am delighted now to do so. Inovative simple and stylized it looks to shatter our ideas of what puzzle games can be.

The PSP redesign was cool and the new entertainment packs seem like they will be viable in the market. I've had droves of people asking me when the system will be back in stock and when this hits it will be a huge boost in their fight against the DS. The added video output capabilities seem cool, but I doubt I would seriously use it, even with the ability to remotely access all my media.

Killzone sets a new bar for what good graphics are. When I saw the trailer I thought it was more fake CG, but with the actual game being played in front of us I know why it was absent for more than a year. This game could be the killer app Sony needs to become a viable player in the console wars.

The upcoming PSP game barrage, with great looking titles like the new Castlevania, God of War: Chains of Olympus and Patapon, looks to finally answer to the complaints that there is nothing to play on the PSP.

Metal Gear Solid 4 looks as good as ever, and even makes Raiden not look wimpy. The real-time trailer is phenominal and we can clearly see that the developers are finally able to take advantage of the PS3's advanced hardware. This is aa good sign of things to come and makes me excited for the day we look back on this and call them primitive PS3 graphics.

Let-Downs:

I thought Home was the coolest thing when they announced it, seeing it in action now not so much. Watching Kaz and Jack talk to eachother like they were schoolboys playing with Barbies really turned me off of it. Phil showed us that it's going to be a really commercial space for you to hang-out in and although the blogging / mobile features are cool, they seem really redundant when we've already got a million different websites and mobile services providing equal services without a $659 piece of hardware.

Another big thing that bugged me about the presentation was the jumbly words they used to further consumer perception. Fiscal year means before summer 2008, this means that most of the titles you are most excited about will not be seen until well after Christmas. They are going to loose some ground because of this, no doubt about it. Secondly they subtract words and keyphrases and fade in and out of expressiveness when talking about the third-party exclusives. They are mostly timed and will be available on Xbox 360 likely within their same time frame of the end of the fiscal year.

The coupling of downloadable games and retail units really makes me confused. How can a game be small enough to download but big enough to warrant a Blu-Ray release? It seems like a muddled strategy at the moment and is likely Sony trying to add more to the 2007 playcount or some sort of market test to see which is more viable economically.

Lastly, Chewbacca really weirded me out when he hugged Jack. Wookie's don't hug, they crush. Jack should be dead.

The presentation was leaps and bounds better than last years, but still had it's fair share of awkward moments. I am much more impressed with the quality of titles that are coming to PS3 than I have in the past, and am begining to see the advantages of the Tylonal-like benefits of slow release strength.

It's dissapointing that they are still lacking in heavy third-party exclusives and that most of what looks good won't be out until 2008 or later, but they're getting more people interested and that can't possibly be a bad thing. The price cut got people's attention, this display is keeping it a little longer.