E3 2012: Sony E3 Presentation Live Blog

Ok, it's time for the Sony E3 Conference! Who is excited? Me! What will we see this year? The Last of Us, Sony All-Stars, other stuff no doubt. Hopefully Sony have some big things lined up for the PS Vita this year too, since it's been lagging recently. Let us go for it!

EDIT: I've added a wrap up at the bottom with some of my thoughts on the presentation.

11:02am - We hear some dubstep. I was beginning to think we wouldn't.

11:04am - Some sort of team based police game?! SWAT 5?! It won't be, but a man can dream.

11:05am - Jack Tretton hits the stage with some mic feedback. Cheers. Ugh.

11:06am - Jack Tretton wants to pander to the audience.

11:08am - Kaz Hirai stands up, audience cheers.

11:09am - Oh boy Quantic Dream. Here we go, a new IP. David Cage takes the stage. That rhymes.

11:10am - Quantic Dream's new title is called Beyond. It's about death.

11:11am - Beyond takes place over 15 years or 50 years, it's hard to understand when I am busy both trying to get through David Cage's thick French accent and also hating him with every fibre of my being.

11:12am - Jodie Holmes (Jody?) will be played by Ellen Page.

11:13am - We get to see in game footage, from a scene towards the start of the game. It seems they have US voice actors finally.

11:15am - Oh she has freaky mind powers! She can make a cup fly across the room and make a fat cop react awkwardly!

11:17am - Now she's riding a motorcycle and she can possess people apparently or something. She's the Firestarter.

11:18am - David Cage is very excited about how breathtaking his game is, which we saw a split second of gameplay of. Jack Tretton is back on the stage.

11:19am - Oh god, he is talking about that toasting video, leading into PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.

11:20am - And now we get to see the teaser, followed by a guy mentioning the game is coming out on the PlayStation Vita.

11:22am - There are 4 people playing as Fat Princess, Sly Cooper, Kratos and Clownface from Twisted Metal - on two PS Vitas and two PS3s.

11:24am - Monsters and bosses from various games will interact with the stage - regardless of the stage - and players have to watch out for damages.

11:25am - Clownface is called Sweet Tooth, I knew that.

11:26am - It sure as hell looks a lot like Super Smash Bros - not that I'm complaining of course.

11:27am - Fat Princess wins and they are announcing two new characters - the music for the first starts - the Uncharted Theme. For the second a Little Sister says 'hurry' - it will be a Big Daddy.

11:28am - All Stars supports Cross-Play and Cross-Save - so you can save it on your PS3 and pick it up on your PS Vita.

11:29am - Sony also announces Cross-Controller for Little Big Planet 2 - you can use the PS Vita as a controller for the PS3 with the game, in both single player and multiplayer for different experiences.

11:30am - PlayStation Plus is going to have new stuff that probably won't ever come here, with 12 games hitting PS+ in the US this month for free.

11:33am - The PS Vita will soon have PS One games available WOOOP!

11:34am - What happened to the SEN Jack? I called it that all the time, stop saying PSN! SEN looks cooler too.

11:35am - Oh here we go, Call of Duty on PS Vita titled Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified.

11:36am - Aw, no details on Call of Duty. We move on to Assassin's Creed III: Liberation for the PlayStation Vita - with a female protagonist!

11:37am - Exclusive unlocks when you link AC3: Liberation to PS3 AC3. It will come in a bundle with the first white PS Vita.

11:40am - AC3 has ship navigation and combat? Holy heck!

11:41am - Seriously, this ship combat looks amazing.

11:42am - Eager to find out more about what role you play in ship combat because it looks excellent.

11:44am - Ends with the ship's crew boarding the opposition ship. Awesome.

11:45am - Continuing Ubisoft news, it's Far Cry 3 time!

11:46am - Far Cry 3 has 4 player co-op holy heck!

11:47am - The 4 player co-op is its own campaign, the game also has dedicated multiplayer and a map editor, holy heck!

11:49am - Oh boy and now we are on to PlayStation Move. Well, the fun had to end.

11:50am - Andrew House takes the stage to talk about the Move. He thanks the fans too.

11:51am - we are seeing an innovative new product... It's a book. Family fun.

11:52am - Ok, so it's called Wonderbook. Augmented reality, le sigh.

11:53am - Diggs Nightcrawler is a detective story designed for Wonderbook, JK Rowling is designing a title for the Wonderbook - the Book of Spells.

11:55am - Book of Spells features all new writing and is a part of the Harry Potter universe.

11:57am - You learn spells and use them in puzzles and the like throughout the game.

11:58am - Ok I'm trying to remain interested but I'm having difficulty.

11:59am - That said, my niece and nephew are going to go freaking mental.

12:02pm - Ok, it's still going.

12:04pm - It's over! Holy hell! Andrew House comes back out to read a quote off the screen from JK Rowling. Woo.

12:05pm - Now he's talking about the PlayStation Suite, bringing PlayStation games to Android devices soon.

12:06pm - HTC are the first non-Sony partner to have PlayStation Certified Android phones, cool?

12:07pm - So now PlayStation Suite, which he has said like a half dozen times, is PlayStation Mobile. BUT FOR HOW LONG?

12:08pm - Jack Tretton is back, we can go back to the games!

12:09pm - What's next? God of War: Ascension!

12:10pm - We are seeing what looks like gameplay footage of Kratos tearing the head off some goat men. He hates goat men.

12:12pm - Kratos is using his special powers to muck about with time. Then more goat men show up. Oh goat men.

12:13pm He gets beaten about by a giant tentacle, then boom, he's fighting a, well not a regular man, but not a goat man. Then oh boy, goat men show up.

12:14pm - Goat men are for idiots! Now Kratos is fighting an elephant headed man!

12:16pm - Kratos has no sympathy for the elephant man, beats him to pieces and then jumps at that freaking Kraken. The release date for Ascension? March 12 2013!

12:17pm - Nothing happens for a while then people start whooping for The Last of Us.

12:18pm - We are getting to see some gameplay of The Last of Us now - it looks as awesome as you'd expect.

12:22pm - The Last of Us looks brutal as hell. Grisly even.

12:24pm - And it ends with a bang. Holy heck, that game looks amazing.

12:25pm - And it ends. Good times.

So, what did we get from Sony? I'm sure a lot of parents will be excited about Wonderbook - and it does look more interesting than the impression you might get from 'a book that uses AR to make stuff happen on the screen' but it feels a little like uDraw to me. At least with JK Rowling behind it however, it won't bankrupt the company. PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale needs to die in a fire, for no other reason than I don't want to type out PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale ever again.

But on a serious note - yes, it's Smash Bros - and if that's the only comment you have, then guess what, everyone else on the planet beat you to it. It was amusing to see the Nintendo fanboys crawl out of the woodwork to guffaw and act like they were dropping truth bombs however.

The two most important parts of the conference were kicked off without a doubt by the new Quantic Dream game - which I've seen referred to as 'extra long Ghost Dad' and 'Heavy Rain meets Messiah' - two seemingly apt descriptions - although we've seen very little of the game so far.

And The Last of Us was the other hit - everyone was excited when it was revealed last year, but from what we could see it looked like Uncharted: Zombie edition. Not anymore however. There is a grisly... I hate to say it, but raw presentation of fights which gives the entire thing a sense of tension. I was in the 'well, I'll play it because it's Naughty Dog' camp before, but now I'm definitely in the 'MUST PLAY' camp.

The PlayStation Vita did not see a lot of titles, which is very disappointing - while Tretton mentioned that there were 40 games available for it already, I'd be hard pressed to name half of them - and even harder pressed to name 5 that I still play. I love my PS Vita for the PSP games I never had a chance to play previously (and some I wanted to play again) and the addition of PSX games is nice, but old platform games can only sustain the platform for so long. It's important to note however, that while the PSP had some stellar first party titles, it had a heck of a lot more third party titles - so it will be interesting to see what the other developers bring to the table.