by Hedge
The Machine
The PS4 will feature an advanced PC architecture, 8GB of memory and both local and cloud storage features. I’d love to tell you more about it but they didn’t show the goddamn console. I have, right now, zero idea what the damn thing looks like. So maybe calling this the Playstation 4 Event was a little overzealous. Perhaps the Potential Future of Sony Console Games might have been a better fit.
Would it have killed them to show off a render of the console’s look? Considering it’s due for release this holiday season, the fact that they didn’t have even a single shot of the machine itself was pretty fucking sad.
The Controller
Using more or less the same form factor as previous controllers, the Dual Shock 4 adds in a touch pad (whether it’s capacitive or not wasn’t clear) and a lightbar, which allows the console to more easily identify players in the same way as the move controller. Also included is a share button, which can be pressed at any time to share video or screencaps from current games directly with friends or the wider community.
This feature was demonstrated during the KillZone segment where the final gameplay moments were uploaded using the share button, directly to the KillZone Facebook Page.
It will also ship with a 3D stereoscopic camera, which is essentially a Kinect. They can’t not have one nowadays really I suppose.
The Service
Local storage, easy sharing, remote play on multiple devices like the PSVita and your mobile phone and access to old games (but only the better ones) via cloud streaming. Pretty much confirms that my current PS3 games won’t play on the system, which is pretty disappointing whilst being totally expected.
The Games
Knack
The first game announced for the PS45. Cute title with Professor Layton style character designs. You play a robot named Knack who can pull together new material to change his size, shape and abilities. The game’s antagonists are goblins (who look more like orcs) and it looks sort of like the new Ratchet and Clank.
KillZone: Shadow Fall
Killzone sequel starring the guy from Crysis3? As a continuation of the franchise it looks as expected, although admittedly very, very pretty. Lots of shiny surfaces and coloured glass. Given that I’ve been disappointed with every KillZone game to date though, I’ll be approaching this with extreme caution. Guerrilla are great at cinematics and demos, less so at delivering a game without a billion glitches in it.
Drive Club
It’s a racing game so the demo showed the usual; the cars are ‘painstakingly recreated’, show ‘gorgeous detail’ and in ‘glorious high definition’. We didn’t see anything that looked real-time to me, just pre-rendered scenery and cars.
InFamous: Second Son
A totalitarian city, a world where the state has total control and a new breed of superpowered citizen threatens national security. No in-game footage, just very pretty cinematics.
The Witness
So, it’s Myst? All environmental, with puzzles and such to solve that let you direct lights around an island. It essentially looks like Myst but with art by Jonathan Blow, so fucking amazingly pretty. It looks like it might be another winner like Journey was for the PS3, artistically if nothing else.
Quantic Dream
Quantic Dream showed us a tech demo featuring an old man rendered in real-time on a PS4, and with an unprecedented level of detail for a console release.
Media Molecule
Sculpting with the move controller. Sculpting in 3D. Sculpting in 3D and then animating, live, with that same controller. It all looks very rough and early, it’s an interesting creative exploration for sure. What was capable at even this early stage (the console isn’t even out yet and typically these things don’t hit the mark of what they can do until at least a year out) was pretty special.
Capcom
Spent a million years talking about the history of Capcom’s relationship with Sony consoles, in both Japanese and English. When they finally got to the point, codename Panta Rhei is a new graphics engine in development at Capcom. To show it off, we were shown Deep Down (working title) a game which on the surface appears to be a high fidelity fantasy game with stunning looking faces and environmental footage – fire in particular was lovely – but then at the end has a fancy, futuristic screen sending messages from Street Fighter‘s Blanka regarding help with the dragon battle.
So pretty, but confusing.
Square Enix
Real time cinematic demo using Luminous Studio. We’d actually already seen this – they showed the same demo a few months back. It’s very pretty but I was hoping for something new.
Next up was the brand director for Final Fantasy. Who told us they were making a new Final Fantasy game for release this year then left the stage. Apparently that’s news. I’d be more shocked if they said they weren’t making a new Final Fantasy game.
Ubisoft
WatchDogs! I was hoping this was for current generation consoles but I think that was probably a bit naive of me. The premise appears to be similar to that of the television series Person of Interest, and showed us the player hacking citizen’s mobile devices, to find potential victims of crime and then preventing that crime.
We also saw him hack a guys bank account and then later free-run Assassin’s Creed style across the urban landscape whilst hacking technology to help his escape; raising bollards to crash a police car, hacking a train to stop it and allow him to get on board and hacking cameras to prevent his identification.
As it’s a next gen release, I guess that means I’m buying a PS4.
Blizzard
Yes. That Blizzard. They started by announcing world domination. Excellent. Then they announced Diablo III for PS3 and PS4. Which would be exciting if I hadn’t already gotten bored with Diablo III months ago. Maybe I should finish that actually. It’s a good game, I enjoy it but I dunno. It didn’t hold my interest for long.
It has a new four player, single screen, single console co-op mode. That’s actually all they announced. I guess they’ll keep the bulk of their information for Blizzcon.
Activision and Bungie
Activision have, apparently, brought Bungie to the PS4 with Destiny, their new game. Destiny is a SciFi FPS featuring a persistent online world. It looks gorgeous with very high fidelity visuals and a lot of JJ Abrams lens flare. Looks like Marty O’Donnell is doing the music too.
Destiny won’t be an exclusive – it’s available on PS3 and PS4 – and from their comment about ‘exclusive content for Playstation users’ I’m taking it that it will be on the next iteration of the Xbox too.
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Overall, there are some amazing games coming for this new console but the lack of console itself was greatly disappointing. I’m guessing we have to wait until E3 to see that, and to get an idea of the price point for this new console.
