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PlayStation Experience Event 2014 - 20 Years of gaming memories distilled
- Thread starter Amir0x
- Start date
fallen_dawn
Member
I think that they said it would be annual. Sounds like it was fairly packed, despite tickets going on sale fairly late. I wonder how many people Sony were expecting to cater to, and if they met that...
Nightengale
Member
They were giving away like 300 tickets themselves, not including other 3rd party partners that had giveaways like IGN. And price dropped to $50 at Groupon.
They probably didn't hit their internal expectations, but frankly, it's somewhat expected. You don't suddenly just drop a news like this a month or two in advance and expect fans to be financially loose enough to drop the fare for flights easily.
I am sure Sony will learn a lot from this event when/if they do the next one. Selling tickets should be easier, with more anticipation, preparation as well as new ideas to get the crowd cheering from the start....
bananafactory
Banned
Didn't get to go but loved the weekend. All of the stuff on the Twitch channel was cool and they showed off a massive amount of games.
A Night Under No Man's sky was honestly my highlight though. Lovely combination of music and beautiful footage
A Night Under No Man's sky was honestly my highlight though. Lovely combination of music and beautiful footage
bananafactory
Banned
If this is indeed an annual thing, I plan on going next year! It would be my first real gaming convention and it sounds like an absolute blast
Same! I've never been to any kind of convention or con, so PSX seems like a perfect place for me to start
GorillaWithDandruff
Member
Part I
Part II
The Playstation Experience - Part III
After playing these games, I thought of getting back on track with the Witness, but alas, the queue was MUCH longer than the last one. So I checked on The Order and was taken aback by the enthusiasm for that game. The only 2 places I've seen a queue like that are at an amusement park anywhere in the world or a Hindu temple back in India. Or the passport office in India. Or any bank in India. Or… Never mind. India is crowded everywhere. Back to the Order. Was this the game GAF keeps criticizing for bad marketing? However bad it was, it sure as hell didn't stop people from wanting to check it out. But I had no plans to throw away the day getting behind that line. I took a glance at the Bloodborne queue and that was pretty damn long as well. So I kept moving.
Mortal Kombat
I did not play this game, but I stood pretty damn close to a bunch of guys who were playing it. A bit too creepily close, in fact. But they were too into it to notice. And my oh my, this is the first fighting game that made me think it has truly stepped up to the new generation in visuals. It looked astonishingly good. The character models, lighting, the background, water effects, particle effects, they all looked absolutely breathtaking. Seemed to be running at solid 60 fps as well. It was still not as good as the CGI reveal trailer but it was pretty damn close. Goodbye vaseline models! The flow, character design, brutality of the action, those bone shattering X-ray moves, the fatalities were all super exciting. Pretty sure I'll suck at this game, but I sure as hell want to give it a go.
Journey
Didn't play this either, but did my creepy hover over shoulder routine again. Definitely has that new lick of paint. Buttery smooth and the lighting seemed much improved. Couldn't notice any aliasing at all. Isn't this thing cross buy? If so, I'm getting it for free! Yay!
Around this time is when I realized neither NMS nor Arkham knight had playable demoes. Total WTF moment for me
Tomorrow Children
This was a game that I truly believe is unfit for short demoes. The developer gave us a quick background of who we are and what we are supposed to do and just let us loose on a city. I had absolutely no clue where to start and what my objectives were. So I took a pick axe, looked for a cave and started digging, like in all those videos. A bunch of counters kept increasing. I picked up some gold. Ran around aimlessly for a while until flying monsters started dropping bombs on the city. Found an anti aircraft cannon and started target practicing. Before I could shoot a couple of rockets, I got bombed and the cannon disappeared. Then it reappeared after a bit but another player got on it. When he did, he dropped one of those Russian dolls, which were supposed to restore humanity. So I picked it up and installed it on one of those designated red drop pads. Some counters went up. Was humanity restored? Dunno. A couple of buildings were on fire and there was a "press left, left, right right, up, up, down down" type of mini-game to fix it on time. Once it was fixed, some more counters went up. By then the bomber birds were gone. Then I ran around for a bit, fell into a void and died. Really intrigued by the game, but I'm gonna need a lot more time to get to grips with the core concepts, the extensive inventory and the activities that I can perform. Visually speaking, it's as stunning as the videos we have seen, so no complaints there. Seemed really well polished and the art style sure looked one of a kind. I just felt totally lost.
Miegakure
I was impressed by the game before I played the demo. I didn't really enjoy it at all. The concept of a 4D puzzle platformer was really cool, and the puzzles were nice (albeit a little easy). But the game looked really rough. The controls were terrible. You play as this dimension swapping ninja and yet everything felt so laggy and floaty. Sackboy from LBP 1 felt tight in comparison. Promising concept, but it needs quite a bit of work to be a good game. The fact that nobody was really attending this booth was an additional minus. For someone with a lot of experience doing this kind of thing, here's my 2 cents to whoever this dev is: you NEVER leave your booth unattended. Might as well not bother setting it up if you are that busy.
Gang beasts
I really really wanted to play this game because it was incredibly cool. Loved the trailer at the keynote and loads and loads of people were going crazy over it at the booth. But everyone had their little group and didn't want to play with me. Sad face.
Project Cars
There was a queue for this game, but I wasn't really keen on playing it since I'm not into pure sims. I really couldn't distinguish it from Gran Turismo 6 on PS3 from the standpoint of both gameplay and visuals. It wasn't remotely as good looking as the PC versions I've seen online, so it seems like the consoles are second class citizens here (and understandably so). If you are into simulators, this game is meant to be played on a high end PC.
Grim Fandango
I have memories of this game. Memories of reading about it and wanting to play it as a kid. I finally did. And holy shit, the narrative and sense of humor got me hooked instantly. Most of the original assets are intact, including the aspect ratio. They've cleaned up the jaggies, improved the lighting and audio, added shadows and mapped the controls to something more contemporary for consoles. And they've done a pretty good job at it! The gameplay looks slightly better than the cutscenes, which are presumably the original version. Controls were very responsive, which I was pleasantly surprised with. It's not much of a looker, but hey, who cares? It's Grim fucking fandango. I didn't want to spoil too much of the story for myself right now so I decided to move along. I'm DEFINITELY getting this when it's out.
It was time to attend the Bloodborne panel and come back to play that beautiful indie game I had bailed out on. The new version should have been rolled out by now.
(To be continued)
Part II
The Playstation Experience - Part III
After playing these games, I thought of getting back on track with the Witness, but alas, the queue was MUCH longer than the last one. So I checked on The Order and was taken aback by the enthusiasm for that game. The only 2 places I've seen a queue like that are at an amusement park anywhere in the world or a Hindu temple back in India. Or the passport office in India. Or any bank in India. Or… Never mind. India is crowded everywhere. Back to the Order. Was this the game GAF keeps criticizing for bad marketing? However bad it was, it sure as hell didn't stop people from wanting to check it out. But I had no plans to throw away the day getting behind that line. I took a glance at the Bloodborne queue and that was pretty damn long as well. So I kept moving.
Mortal Kombat
I did not play this game, but I stood pretty damn close to a bunch of guys who were playing it. A bit too creepily close, in fact. But they were too into it to notice. And my oh my, this is the first fighting game that made me think it has truly stepped up to the new generation in visuals. It looked astonishingly good. The character models, lighting, the background, water effects, particle effects, they all looked absolutely breathtaking. Seemed to be running at solid 60 fps as well. It was still not as good as the CGI reveal trailer but it was pretty damn close. Goodbye vaseline models! The flow, character design, brutality of the action, those bone shattering X-ray moves, the fatalities were all super exciting. Pretty sure I'll suck at this game, but I sure as hell want to give it a go.
Journey
Didn't play this either, but did my creepy hover over shoulder routine again. Definitely has that new lick of paint. Buttery smooth and the lighting seemed much improved. Couldn't notice any aliasing at all. Isn't this thing cross buy? If so, I'm getting it for free! Yay!
Around this time is when I realized neither NMS nor Arkham knight had playable demoes. Total WTF moment for me
Tomorrow Children
This was a game that I truly believe is unfit for short demoes. The developer gave us a quick background of who we are and what we are supposed to do and just let us loose on a city. I had absolutely no clue where to start and what my objectives were. So I took a pick axe, looked for a cave and started digging, like in all those videos. A bunch of counters kept increasing. I picked up some gold. Ran around aimlessly for a while until flying monsters started dropping bombs on the city. Found an anti aircraft cannon and started target practicing. Before I could shoot a couple of rockets, I got bombed and the cannon disappeared. Then it reappeared after a bit but another player got on it. When he did, he dropped one of those Russian dolls, which were supposed to restore humanity. So I picked it up and installed it on one of those designated red drop pads. Some counters went up. Was humanity restored? Dunno. A couple of buildings were on fire and there was a "press left, left, right right, up, up, down down" type of mini-game to fix it on time. Once it was fixed, some more counters went up. By then the bomber birds were gone. Then I ran around for a bit, fell into a void and died. Really intrigued by the game, but I'm gonna need a lot more time to get to grips with the core concepts, the extensive inventory and the activities that I can perform. Visually speaking, it's as stunning as the videos we have seen, so no complaints there. Seemed really well polished and the art style sure looked one of a kind. I just felt totally lost.
Miegakure
I was impressed by the game before I played the demo. I didn't really enjoy it at all. The concept of a 4D puzzle platformer was really cool, and the puzzles were nice (albeit a little easy). But the game looked really rough. The controls were terrible. You play as this dimension swapping ninja and yet everything felt so laggy and floaty. Sackboy from LBP 1 felt tight in comparison. Promising concept, but it needs quite a bit of work to be a good game. The fact that nobody was really attending this booth was an additional minus. For someone with a lot of experience doing this kind of thing, here's my 2 cents to whoever this dev is: you NEVER leave your booth unattended. Might as well not bother setting it up if you are that busy.
Gang beasts
I really really wanted to play this game because it was incredibly cool. Loved the trailer at the keynote and loads and loads of people were going crazy over it at the booth. But everyone had their little group and didn't want to play with me. Sad face.
Project Cars
There was a queue for this game, but I wasn't really keen on playing it since I'm not into pure sims. I really couldn't distinguish it from Gran Turismo 6 on PS3 from the standpoint of both gameplay and visuals. It wasn't remotely as good looking as the PC versions I've seen online, so it seems like the consoles are second class citizens here (and understandably so). If you are into simulators, this game is meant to be played on a high end PC.
Grim Fandango
I have memories of this game. Memories of reading about it and wanting to play it as a kid. I finally did. And holy shit, the narrative and sense of humor got me hooked instantly. Most of the original assets are intact, including the aspect ratio. They've cleaned up the jaggies, improved the lighting and audio, added shadows and mapped the controls to something more contemporary for consoles. And they've done a pretty good job at it! The gameplay looks slightly better than the cutscenes, which are presumably the original version. Controls were very responsive, which I was pleasantly surprised with. It's not much of a looker, but hey, who cares? It's Grim fucking fandango. I didn't want to spoil too much of the story for myself right now so I decided to move along. I'm DEFINITELY getting this when it's out.
It was time to attend the Bloodborne panel and come back to play that beautiful indie game I had bailed out on. The new version should have been rolled out by now.
(To be continued)
LookAtMeGo
Member
Awww, you shouldn't have. Thanks.
Good read. Thanks for writing this all up for us. I'm excited to hear your The Order impressions.
Edit: i hope you got to play it at some point :-(
Afhhdsljgrjafhsd the suspense! But great impressions.
tearsintherain
Member
nope, wasn't Freelancer either, completely new game from what looked like a small game studio. Never heard of the name before.
I think it was Rebel Galaxy, yup based on the artwork I see on their twitter feed. Dang I wish I had bought one of their t-shirts now it looks really cool. Heres the only article I could find, but I got to play a few minutes in their booth and it was really fun.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...s-in-double-damage-games-39-rebel-galaxy.aspx
Kinda mixed on the single player offline idea, while it definitely hearkens back to the Freelancer/Elite days, I've kinda gotten used to the always online multiplayer idea of modern games too.
I legit want to know why the insiders where hyping the event too much. What game announcement were they alluding to? People made banners with tlg,ff7 and shenmue 3.
It was a great show, don't get me wrong, but it didn't have that much mind blowing megaton, or the overwatch like announcement.
It was a great show, don't get me wrong, but it didn't have that much mind blowing megaton, or the overwatch like announcement.
Part I
Part II
Part III
The Playstation Experience - Part IV
The Bloodborne Panel
The Bloodborne panel was one of 2 panels that I promised myself to attend. Watching Miyazaki san present and field questions wasn't something I would get to witness often. The presentation itself was practically the same as the keynote, but since we had ample time, we got an extended demo where he took the time to describe the design philosophy behind the Chalice dungeons and each level within the multi-tiered procedural underground. There was one detour that took us to this ugly looking beast with a crocodile's body, Half Life 2 Barnacle's head and Professor Zoidberg's mouth, except with much longer tentacles. They promptly turned around after killing it. They also showed the ranged attack with that staff that transformed into a long spiky whip. This thread has pretty much covered the other details, so I won't regurgitate all that. His passion and thoughtfulness really showed and his enthusiasm was infectious. The way he handled tough questions was really humble and classy. There were a couple of sweet moments like when one attendee asked him for an autograph (he was the only one to get it because they were afraid everyone would follow suit), another told his story about proposing to his girlfriend while she was playing Demon's souls, and another went ahead and proposed to Miyazaki himself. Everyone broke into fits of laughter. Was really glad I attended this session.
The Witness: Retried Edition
When I returned to the show floor, I went straight to The Witness booth. The queue was just as long as it was before, but I was going to go all the way this time. I probably waited for 45 minutes since people took their own sweet time to play the game. When I did get my chance, I almost instantly fell in love with it. The vibrant art style, non existent HUD and minimalist design immediately resonated with me. The game is a hybrid of exploration and line drawing puzzles. The line drawing puzzles are the locks that you need to open to get to the next area. The clues can be anywhere. The earlier puzzles had clues within the puzzle itself, but after the first set of tutorial puzzles, I unlocked a door that opened up the whole island for exploration. And then the puzzles eventually start requiring you to use environmental clues around you, like the shape of the branches on a tree, or the reflections in the water, and none of those are explicitly spelt out to you. You reach a point where there is no way you can brute force the puzzle as the patterns become very cryptic and would reject anything you throw at it (unless you get REALLY lucky). And the environmental clues aren't all the obvious so you really need to pay attention. Was quite challenging and I enjoyed every bit of it. After such a long day, my brain got fried after a solid 30 minutes of play. I could've gone all night if they'd allow me to relax a bit and come back. The game still requires some polishing, like clipping issues, aliasing etc. There were some noticeable drops in framerate as well, but it seemed to hold 60 for the most part. Had a little chat with the devs after and we discussed the rationale behind some of the puzzles, themes in each area, number of puzzles (660 or so), certain dynamic puzzles, others that aren't based on line drawing panels, as well as the story (there is one). Apparently you will discover it through audio logs scattered around, which helps you get a sense of how the island came to be and what you are doing there. This continues to be one of my most wanted games, but their release window is still "whenever it's ready next year". It's like they have an unlimited budget to keep it in perpetual almost-completedness. Grrr…
I went back to check on The Order. The queue was really small, so I tried to join at the end. The dev promptly informed me that they closed the queue 2 hours ago so that they can wrap up by 8 PM which was 30 minutes away. I went to see if I would get any love at the Bloodborne booth.
Bloodborne: Dequeued Edition
There was a queue with exactly 1 person there. So I joined it half convinced that they would throw me out as well. The one in front of me was let in, and the dev said they are closing and will not permit anymore. As I sadly turned around, he called me back and said he was kidding and they somehow hit a lean patch and I got lucky. As I started playing I realized that the demo was the exact same alpha build that people have been talking about for ages. I played it for a while since I've only seen videos and I immediately noticed how incredibly responsive the controls were. Every move and weapon is designed around proactive offense. The game was jaggy as fuck, especially while viewing that close to the screen. But I could definitely tell that the keynote and panel build was much improved. Didn't notice any framerate issues. Beyond that, I'm sure everybody knows the demo by heart now, so I won't bore with the details. When I got out, the queue had grown pretty long again. So I definitely lucked out there.
A night under No Man's Sky:
It was 8:30 PM and all the food trucks had closed. I was famished but the NMS/65 days of static concert was about to start . I'd managed to survive this long so I thought I'll eat after the show. Hall A was filling up. The crowd was significantly smaller than the keynote, but still a sizable audience. Somewhere in the 800-1000 range, if you go by my totally unscientific approximation. Sean Murray entered the stage and spoke without a script. He always sounds like he is speaking without a script. And I love him for that. Going by the way people were cheering him, they all shared that sentiment. He has turned into an Indie hero since the NMS reveal. There are only 2 personalities in my mind that have reached that status. Phil Fish, who everyone either loved or hated and Jonathan Blow, who everyone either respected or hated. And now Sean Murray. Everyone loves Sean. Something about him is so... unpretentious. He has that "developer next door" attitude, if you know what I mean. What? You don't know what I mean? Well then.
The band came on stage and started playing song after beautiful song. Extremely energetic and emotional music. I had never imagined a video game to work well as visualization for music, but it was so damn good. Everyone expected a lot of brand new footage, but there was probably a few seconds here and there. It was edited so well to be in sync with the rhythm that it felt transcendental. My feet hurt badly and I was hungry beyond words, but I stayed. The band finished and left the stage, but we all screamed for an encore. Even late at night around 500 remained, all cheering for more. So they came back and played another beautiful number. Sean Murray is a genius for pitching this idea to Sony. One of the highlights of this weekend!
And that, folks, was my first day at PSX
(To be continued)
Part II
Part III
The Playstation Experience - Part IV
The Bloodborne Panel
The Bloodborne panel was one of 2 panels that I promised myself to attend. Watching Miyazaki san present and field questions wasn't something I would get to witness often. The presentation itself was practically the same as the keynote, but since we had ample time, we got an extended demo where he took the time to describe the design philosophy behind the Chalice dungeons and each level within the multi-tiered procedural underground. There was one detour that took us to this ugly looking beast with a crocodile's body, Half Life 2 Barnacle's head and Professor Zoidberg's mouth, except with much longer tentacles. They promptly turned around after killing it. They also showed the ranged attack with that staff that transformed into a long spiky whip. This thread has pretty much covered the other details, so I won't regurgitate all that. His passion and thoughtfulness really showed and his enthusiasm was infectious. The way he handled tough questions was really humble and classy. There were a couple of sweet moments like when one attendee asked him for an autograph (he was the only one to get it because they were afraid everyone would follow suit), another told his story about proposing to his girlfriend while she was playing Demon's souls, and another went ahead and proposed to Miyazaki himself. Everyone broke into fits of laughter. Was really glad I attended this session.
The Witness: Retried Edition
When I returned to the show floor, I went straight to The Witness booth. The queue was just as long as it was before, but I was going to go all the way this time. I probably waited for 45 minutes since people took their own sweet time to play the game. When I did get my chance, I almost instantly fell in love with it. The vibrant art style, non existent HUD and minimalist design immediately resonated with me. The game is a hybrid of exploration and line drawing puzzles. The line drawing puzzles are the locks that you need to open to get to the next area. The clues can be anywhere. The earlier puzzles had clues within the puzzle itself, but after the first set of tutorial puzzles, I unlocked a door that opened up the whole island for exploration. And then the puzzles eventually start requiring you to use environmental clues around you, like the shape of the branches on a tree, or the reflections in the water, and none of those are explicitly spelt out to you. You reach a point where there is no way you can brute force the puzzle as the patterns become very cryptic and would reject anything you throw at it (unless you get REALLY lucky). And the environmental clues aren't all the obvious so you really need to pay attention. Was quite challenging and I enjoyed every bit of it. After such a long day, my brain got fried after a solid 30 minutes of play. I could've gone all night if they'd allow me to relax a bit and come back. The game still requires some polishing, like clipping issues, aliasing etc. There were some noticeable drops in framerate as well, but it seemed to hold 60 for the most part. Had a little chat with the devs after and we discussed the rationale behind some of the puzzles, themes in each area, number of puzzles (660 or so), certain dynamic puzzles, others that aren't based on line drawing panels, as well as the story (there is one). Apparently you will discover it through audio logs scattered around, which helps you get a sense of how the island came to be and what you are doing there. This continues to be one of my most wanted games, but their release window is still "whenever it's ready next year". It's like they have an unlimited budget to keep it in perpetual almost-completedness. Grrr…
I went back to check on The Order. The queue was really small, so I tried to join at the end. The dev promptly informed me that they closed the queue 2 hours ago so that they can wrap up by 8 PM which was 30 minutes away. I went to see if I would get any love at the Bloodborne booth.
Bloodborne: Dequeued Edition
There was a queue with exactly 1 person there. So I joined it half convinced that they would throw me out as well. The one in front of me was let in, and the dev said they are closing and will not permit anymore. As I sadly turned around, he called me back and said he was kidding and they somehow hit a lean patch and I got lucky. As I started playing I realized that the demo was the exact same alpha build that people have been talking about for ages. I played it for a while since I've only seen videos and I immediately noticed how incredibly responsive the controls were. Every move and weapon is designed around proactive offense. The game was jaggy as fuck, especially while viewing that close to the screen. But I could definitely tell that the keynote and panel build was much improved. Didn't notice any framerate issues. Beyond that, I'm sure everybody knows the demo by heart now, so I won't bore with the details. When I got out, the queue had grown pretty long again. So I definitely lucked out there.
A night under No Man's Sky:
It was 8:30 PM and all the food trucks had closed. I was famished but the NMS/65 days of static concert was about to start . I'd managed to survive this long so I thought I'll eat after the show. Hall A was filling up. The crowd was significantly smaller than the keynote, but still a sizable audience. Somewhere in the 800-1000 range, if you go by my totally unscientific approximation. Sean Murray entered the stage and spoke without a script. He always sounds like he is speaking without a script. And I love him for that. Going by the way people were cheering him, they all shared that sentiment. He has turned into an Indie hero since the NMS reveal. There are only 2 personalities in my mind that have reached that status. Phil Fish, who everyone either loved or hated and Jonathan Blow, who everyone either respected or hated. And now Sean Murray. Everyone loves Sean. Something about him is so... unpretentious. He has that "developer next door" attitude, if you know what I mean. What? You don't know what I mean? Well then.
The band came on stage and started playing song after beautiful song. Extremely energetic and emotional music. I had never imagined a video game to work well as visualization for music, but it was so damn good. Everyone expected a lot of brand new footage, but there was probably a few seconds here and there. It was edited so well to be in sync with the rhythm that it felt transcendental. My feet hurt badly and I was hungry beyond words, but I stayed. The band finished and left the stage, but we all screamed for an encore. Even late at night around 500 remained, all cheering for more. So they came back and played another beautiful number. Sean Murray is a genius for pitching this idea to Sony. One of the highlights of this weekend!
And that, folks, was my first day at PSX
(To be continued)
Nightengale
Member
Viveks, doing a way better job than the games media.
Was annoyed at how little coverage was there on the panels. Seems like the only thing that mattered to them from the panels was Barlog's loose tongue.
Was annoyed at how little coverage was there on the panels. Seems like the only thing that mattered to them from the panels was Barlog's loose tongue.
bananafactory
Banned
Viveks these write ups are amazing.
Is part V coming tonight? wondering if I should stay up...
Is part V coming tonight?
wondering if I should stay up...fallen_dawn
Member
Awesome impressions Viveks. So much stuff that I totally forgot this was only the first day until you mentioned the concert.
Can't wait to hear your detailed Morpheus/Order impressions!
Can't wait to hear your detailed Morpheus/Order impressions!
Viveks these write ups are amazing.
Is part V coming tonight?
I'm considering it. But I have't even started yet. It's probably gonna take me an hour at least.
LookAtMeGo
Member
Thats a pretty damn good first day.
So
the guy who proposed to his girlfriend over Demon's souls
That was Morty! Didn't recognize him. lol
https://twitter.com/atPeteDodd/status/541414379187490816
https://twitter.com/atPeteDodd/status/541414379187490816
gotstrangepowers
Banned
There were far more prople there than I imagined there'd be. The keynote was full and the lines were long. At one point, I counted over 120 people in line for The Order. Adam said they had room to expand next year but any more attendees would have made the lines really unbearable.
The Xtortionist
Member
My favorite part was when the black hunter bowed to us at the start of the demo and everyone started cheering him on. That was just magical.
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
The Playstation Experience - Part WTF-man-wrap-it-up-already
It was day 2. The day when people either chill out or don't show up. I was at the main door at 8:15 AM. There were 157 people. Yes. I counted. Really.
I had enough time on my hands. So I sat down to write my impressions on day 1. I had an idea for a start
"There was a line for people with wrist bands…"
The security guy ordered us to get closer to the main entrance. So I closed my laptop and stood up. That first sentence was all I managed to squeeze in. I stood around for the next hour and 45 minutes. Talked to a couple of strangers and they all had great things to say about The Order 1886.
"So... looks like a lot of the initial skepticism has now been addressed. Can't wait to play it."
"What skepticism?"
"You know, there has been very little gameplay shown, and they have all been basic tutorial sections. So people on GAF haven't really been very optimistic about it."
"GAF? What's that?"
"NeoGAF. A gaming forum. I post a lot there"
"Ohhh. So that's what Adam Boyes was joking about during the SFV announcement..."
I was shocked to realize that so many well informed gamers have no idea about GAF. Makes me wonder if we are in some kind of bubble in which we assume our opinions matter in the grand scheme of things. Well, at least Adam Boyes wrote us a poem. That's something…
As the giant doors slid open, we literally ran for the 2 booths that were seemingly impossible to conquer. Project Morpheus and The Order 1886. Project Morpheus needed you to reserve first thing in the morning. They issue a time card and let you come back at the allotted time so that you don't have to wait in a big line. The problem is, you have to wait in a big line to get the time card. But that was the only way, so I went for it. Luckily I got a slot for 1:22 PM. I had all the time in the world now. Or so I thought.
The Order 1886
The queue wasn't just long. It was longer than the previous day! It was so long that it wasn't even a line. It wound inside the booth, around the booth, and coiled like a snake all the way to the next hall! My indisputable, totally accurate estimate was close to 250 people! When I joined that line, still processing what that meant, one of the devs walked to us and said the wait time was expected to be 5 hours! They were planning to give out collectible playing cards to those in line so that anyone just looking for those can leave and those who really wanted to play the game can stay. But the estimate was still 5 hours. And I was standing there clueless if I should stay. Thought I'll stick around for 30 minutes and find out more. Fortunately, a LOT of people either chickened out, or left when they got the collectible cards. The 5 hour ETA became 3 hours and then 1.5 hours in a span of 1 hour. After that, nobody left, so my total wait time was 2.5 hours. The booth was modeled like a red brick chapel decorated with ancient lights, real steam rising up from steam pipes, a life size wax model of Galahad, life size thermite rifle and lightning gun - stuff people totally geeked out over. They must have spent quite a bit of money in building this elaborate set. I gradually progressed through the serpentine trail until I was next up for playing the game. Finally!
The different gameplay sections are very well detailed here, so I'll stick to my thoughts on it. Firstly, the game is a thing of beauty. After playing it, I'm certain this is what the ND devs were drooling over. The game does look better than UC4 in its current state. May be not Drake's model per se, but everything else. There is just so much post processing going on that, from a reasonable viewing distance, it is near indistinguishable from CG. Unfortunately, I couldn't appreciate it at the distance I was sitting at. I could see the pixel boundaries on the TV at that distance, so nothing was going to look really good. The game has copious amounts of film grain and at that distance, it looked pretty excessive. So I stepped away from my chair just to see how it held up from a couple of feet away. It looked exponentially better, so I didn't count that as a negative. It really is remarkable that they pulled this off. The IQ is almost flawless with nary a jaggy in sight. The 4x MSAA was working wonders and it held up at extreme close distance.
The gameplay was fun. It wasn't blowing my mind, but it was solid. The weapons packed quite a bit of punch. The cover system was pretty smart. It seemed like a hybrid between TLOU and GoW. There is a button that lets you enter soft cover mode, after which, you move in an out of cover automatically. It worked really well and felt like the character knew when I wanted to go into cover and when I just wanted to skirt around it. The health regen system is a hybrid as well. There are a certain number of hits from which you can recover by simply hiding from sight. But if you cross that threshold, you will go down on all fours. The only way then is to crawl slowly to cover and use blackwater, which works like a medkit. You can easily get killed once you have been downed, so you need to crawl to the nearest cover ASAP. There is a QTE to rapidly press X to bring him back up after healing, which also works well, because the situation is tense as it is. It really added that sense of urgency.
Black sight works like bullet time (it has a limit, but I didn't get to push it) and sort of auto locks on to enemies and you flick with the analog stick. But it still gives you freedom to do head shots by aiming post lock-on. Helps conserve bullets, I suppose. From the demo it seemed like it was limited to pistols.
Speaking of bullets, I was able to down almost all enemies with 3 shots to the body with the pistol and auto rifle or 1 headshot with either. Sniper shots were all 1 shot. So they weren't really bullet spongy. Hit reactions have been vastly improved, so enemies do react to every bullet. Their collapsing animations are very believable with appropriate reactions to where they have been shot. Hats do fly off their heads if shot at.
Run and gun is possible so you can strategically use it to rush enemies and melee attack the ones that survived. Melee is super satisfying and it seemed different every single time. There must be a heck of a lot of contextual take down animations.
Throughout these 2 major sections, I was rarely ever pulled out of action, so all those concerns about "shoot, cutscene, shoot" didn't really apply here. It followed the more standard format of a longer cut scene at the end of a skirmish.
The pots and pans section in the kitchen was mighty impressive, with the physics shining quite nicely. Utensils, food, limbs flew around amidst the chaos. Enemy AI was decent. They flanked, moved from cover to cover, lobbed grenades, retreated, charged forward etc. But I didn't come across any noteworthy nuanced behavior.
I liked the cool down section where Galahad looks out from the airship deck and then just walks around, picking up your weapons of choice and talking to Percival. Combo rifle and triple barreled shotguns were my favorite. The alt fire came in handy a couple of times.
Controls were very responsive and the frame rate was smooth. I have no idea why all their videos look so choppy, especially in the combat scenes. Looks just fine while playing it.
So I'm pretty low on complaints, except a MAJOR one. The game suffered from terrible audio sync issues for ALL conversations. The animations always played out 5 to 15 seconds before the audio cut in. This was limited to conversations/commands only in both gameplay and cut scenes. Rest of the in-game sounds were fine. They better sort that out. It completely turned me off and I stopped paying attention to the conversations altogether.
The other complaint was that no Lycans made any appearance. I understand that Ru doesn't want any spoilers, but Lycan combat seems to differentiate this game quite a bit and I'd really like my hands on one of those encounters. Or even hands off would do. And no, that rushed little snippet of melee combat didn't really give me any idea how it worked. They really need to open up a little more and sell us on those mechanics.
This demo has turned me from neutral to positive. I do believe RAD has what it takes to pull off good gameplay with a great story and setting. The visual excellence is just icing on the cake. It was 1:20 PM when I finished my session. Just in time for my Project Morpheus appointment. I got lucky again.
(To be continued.. Because it's 3:20 AM and I have this thing called work on Monday)
Part II
Part III
Part IV
The Playstation Experience - Part WTF-man-wrap-it-up-already
It was day 2. The day when people either chill out or don't show up. I was at the main door at 8:15 AM. There were 157 people. Yes. I counted. Really.
I had enough time on my hands. So I sat down to write my impressions on day 1. I had an idea for a start
"There was a line for people with wrist bands…"
The security guy ordered us to get closer to the main entrance. So I closed my laptop and stood up. That first sentence was all I managed to squeeze in. I stood around for the next hour and 45 minutes. Talked to a couple of strangers and they all had great things to say about The Order 1886.
"So... looks like a lot of the initial skepticism has now been addressed. Can't wait to play it."
"What skepticism?"
"You know, there has been very little gameplay shown, and they have all been basic tutorial sections. So people on GAF haven't really been very optimistic about it."
"GAF? What's that?"
"NeoGAF. A gaming forum. I post a lot there"
"Ohhh. So that's what Adam Boyes was joking about during the SFV announcement..."
I was shocked to realize that so many well informed gamers have no idea about GAF. Makes me wonder if we are in some kind of bubble in which we assume our opinions matter in the grand scheme of things. Well, at least Adam Boyes wrote us a poem. That's something…
As the giant doors slid open, we literally ran for the 2 booths that were seemingly impossible to conquer. Project Morpheus and The Order 1886. Project Morpheus needed you to reserve first thing in the morning. They issue a time card and let you come back at the allotted time so that you don't have to wait in a big line. The problem is, you have to wait in a big line to get the time card. But that was the only way, so I went for it. Luckily I got a slot for 1:22 PM. I had all the time in the world now. Or so I thought.
The Order 1886
The queue wasn't just long. It was longer than the previous day! It was so long that it wasn't even a line. It wound inside the booth, around the booth, and coiled like a snake all the way to the next hall! My indisputable, totally accurate estimate was close to 250 people! When I joined that line, still processing what that meant, one of the devs walked to us and said the wait time was expected to be 5 hours! They were planning to give out collectible playing cards to those in line so that anyone just looking for those can leave and those who really wanted to play the game can stay. But the estimate was still 5 hours. And I was standing there clueless if I should stay. Thought I'll stick around for 30 minutes and find out more. Fortunately, a LOT of people either chickened out, or left when they got the collectible cards. The 5 hour ETA became 3 hours and then 1.5 hours in a span of 1 hour. After that, nobody left, so my total wait time was 2.5 hours. The booth was modeled like a red brick chapel decorated with ancient lights, real steam rising up from steam pipes, a life size wax model of Galahad, life size thermite rifle and lightning gun - stuff people totally geeked out over. They must have spent quite a bit of money in building this elaborate set. I gradually progressed through the serpentine trail until I was next up for playing the game. Finally!
The different gameplay sections are very well detailed here, so I'll stick to my thoughts on it. Firstly, the game is a thing of beauty. After playing it, I'm certain this is what the ND devs were drooling over. The game does look better than UC4 in its current state. May be not Drake's model per se, but everything else. There is just so much post processing going on that, from a reasonable viewing distance, it is near indistinguishable from CG. Unfortunately, I couldn't appreciate it at the distance I was sitting at. I could see the pixel boundaries on the TV at that distance, so nothing was going to look really good. The game has copious amounts of film grain and at that distance, it looked pretty excessive. So I stepped away from my chair just to see how it held up from a couple of feet away. It looked exponentially better, so I didn't count that as a negative. It really is remarkable that they pulled this off. The IQ is almost flawless with nary a jaggy in sight. The 4x MSAA was working wonders and it held up at extreme close distance.
The gameplay was fun. It wasn't blowing my mind, but it was solid. The weapons packed quite a bit of punch. The cover system was pretty smart. It seemed like a hybrid between TLOU and GoW. There is a button that lets you enter soft cover mode, after which, you move in an out of cover automatically. It worked really well and felt like the character knew when I wanted to go into cover and when I just wanted to skirt around it. The health regen system is a hybrid as well. There are a certain number of hits from which you can recover by simply hiding from sight. But if you cross that threshold, you will go down on all fours. The only way then is to crawl slowly to cover and use blackwater, which works like a medkit. You can easily get killed once you have been downed, so you need to crawl to the nearest cover ASAP. There is a QTE to rapidly press X to bring him back up after healing, which also works well, because the situation is tense as it is. It really added that sense of urgency.
Black sight works like bullet time (it has a limit, but I didn't get to push it) and sort of auto locks on to enemies and you flick with the analog stick. But it still gives you freedom to do head shots by aiming post lock-on. Helps conserve bullets, I suppose. From the demo it seemed like it was limited to pistols.
Speaking of bullets, I was able to down almost all enemies with 3 shots to the body with the pistol and auto rifle or 1 headshot with either. Sniper shots were all 1 shot. So they weren't really bullet spongy. Hit reactions have been vastly improved, so enemies do react to every bullet. Their collapsing animations are very believable with appropriate reactions to where they have been shot. Hats do fly off their heads if shot at.
Run and gun is possible so you can strategically use it to rush enemies and melee attack the ones that survived. Melee is super satisfying and it seemed different every single time. There must be a heck of a lot of contextual take down animations.
Throughout these 2 major sections, I was rarely ever pulled out of action, so all those concerns about "shoot, cutscene, shoot" didn't really apply here. It followed the more standard format of a longer cut scene at the end of a skirmish.
The pots and pans section in the kitchen was mighty impressive, with the physics shining quite nicely. Utensils, food, limbs flew around amidst the chaos. Enemy AI was decent. They flanked, moved from cover to cover, lobbed grenades, retreated, charged forward etc. But I didn't come across any noteworthy nuanced behavior.
I liked the cool down section where Galahad looks out from the airship deck and then just walks around, picking up your weapons of choice and talking to Percival. Combo rifle and triple barreled shotguns were my favorite. The alt fire came in handy a couple of times.
Controls were very responsive and the frame rate was smooth. I have no idea why all their videos look so choppy, especially in the combat scenes. Looks just fine while playing it.
So I'm pretty low on complaints, except a MAJOR one. The game suffered from terrible audio sync issues for ALL conversations. The animations always played out 5 to 15 seconds before the audio cut in. This was limited to conversations/commands only in both gameplay and cut scenes. Rest of the in-game sounds were fine. They better sort that out. It completely turned me off and I stopped paying attention to the conversations altogether.
The other complaint was that no Lycans made any appearance. I understand that Ru doesn't want any spoilers, but Lycan combat seems to differentiate this game quite a bit and I'd really like my hands on one of those encounters. Or even hands off would do. And no, that rushed little snippet of melee combat didn't really give me any idea how it worked. They really need to open up a little more and sell us on those mechanics.
This demo has turned me from neutral to positive. I do believe RAD has what it takes to pull off good gameplay with a great story and setting. The visual excellence is just icing on the cake. It was 1:20 PM when I finished my session. Just in time for my Project Morpheus appointment. I got lucky again.
(To be continued.. Because it's 3:20 AM and I have this thing called work on Monday)
Well finally just finished watching this in it's entirety. They put on a pretty good show overall. Outside of the SE incident, it wasn't bad. Mostly expected, but I guess a surprise or two.
The show can't be too big to surpass E3 just yet. Sony needs to save any of it's big guns for that event as all forms of media cover that opposed to this new event.
Once again, that SE troll. I specifically looked for the pages corresponding to it's showing of that stupid PC port and I was not disappointed, every emotion a human can experience contained in just a few pages on GAF. I mean, if I was watching the show live I would have fell for it considering they showed off Kingdom Hearts 3 (their game that matters more to them at this point).
I'm shocked still that Sony allowed them to piss all over their fanbase here with that blatant insult, but then again, Kingdom Hearts 3 unveil. Other than that, it was a good show. I would attend it most likely from the sounds of people that were there with the demos and such.
The show can't be too big to surpass E3 just yet. Sony needs to save any of it's big guns for that event as all forms of media cover that opposed to this new event.
Once again, that SE troll. I specifically looked for the pages corresponding to it's showing of that stupid PC port and I was not disappointed, every emotion a human can experience contained in just a few pages on GAF. I mean, if I was watching the show live I would have fell for it considering they showed off Kingdom Hearts 3 (their game that matters more to them at this point).
I'm shocked still that Sony allowed them to piss all over their fanbase here with that blatant insult, but then again, Kingdom Hearts 3 unveil. Other than that, it was a good show. I would attend it most likely from the sounds of people that were there with the demos and such.
Haha agreed.
MulderWasTaken
Member
Thanks for reading, guys. Hope you enjoyed it!
I really did. Will come back for your The Witness report.
Thanks for reading, guys. Hope you enjoyed it!
I was at the show and really enjoyed your impressions! You played a lot of different stuff from me
Thanks. What games did you get to play?
Pretty much every indie game, including the witness and mortal kombat, some of the smaller Sony stuff too, like journey, that music festival sim, some F2P soldier game, snow (also F2P) and citizens of earth (so so good, possibly my game of the show, between that and starwhal)
can you go into some detail about what made Citizens of Earth click with you so much? I'm quite curious about it ever since I heard how heavily inspired by Earthbound it was.
Did anyone play Planetside 2? I walked past it and it look very smooth. Framerate was smooth and it looked pretty damn good. AA could use some work though
Did you play wander? I wanted to try that out and never got to. Missed a whole bunch of indies
Did you play wander? I wanted to try that out and never got to. Missed a whole bunch of indies
LookAtMeGo
Member
Thats the first time I heard about those audio sync issues with The Order. I really hope they get that sorted. I imagine they will, thats a pretty big issue. Other than that it sounds great! Thanks for the impressions viveks. Was very entertaining to read.
bananafactory
Banned
So Viveks if you had to give a final rating to the overall event and experience what would you say?
And what was the "vibe" there, was the atmosphere and sense of community good?
And what was the "vibe" there, was the atmosphere and sense of community good?
Sure!
So its basically earthbound (which I've never actually played, but need to now) so if you like earthbound you'll probably like it even more than I did (actually maybe not playing earthbound made me like it more? Not sure, would love to hear from someone thats tried both)
You play as the VP of the world and its a turn based RPG, but the VP doesn't fight, he recruits others to fight for him, think theres about 40 characters total, you start of with your mom and brother
Full voice acting (as far as I can tell) the story is well done from what I saw and the battle system is actually really complex.
Each move has variations, even the basic attack, so to do elemental damage instead of physical, and you don't really have MP, but these energy orbs that you get either by doing certain attacks or by attacking enemies in the over world instead of them attacking you
The art style is really cool, and you have a number of quests and side quests so you have to do certain things to recruit other characters
The Atlas guy said 40-60 hours for everything, which is way longer than I expected for a game like that
Did anyone play Planetside 2? I walked past it and it look very smooth. Framerate was smooth and it looked pretty damn good. AA could use some work though
Did you play wander? I wanted to try that out and never got to. Missed a whole bunch of indies
Yep played them both, only played Planetside for about 5 minutes, haven't played it on PC so its hard to say what's changed or how consistent it is to the PC version, seems good but I had a hard time figuring out where to go, which I'm sure I would have figured out if I played longer
Wander is weird…its a non-combat MMO about exploration, where you are a shapeshifter and play different creatures, like a walking tree, a gryphon, and a butterfly etc. The tree guy was pretty slow and the flying wasn't all that intuitive, it looks really good though and I'm sure with more players around it could be cool, definitely not a game great for demoing, like Tomorrow Children
Yeah the big difference seems to be the recruitment stuff, since Earthbound just had a few primary characters and you got them through the course of the game like normal. Not 30 characters or whatever.
Yeah Earthbound is rad, I definitely recommend trying it out. Just given what Citizens of Earth is about plot-wise, the themes in play are completely different and thus each are independently valuable I'd say.
I can't wait to try it out now, I'm so glad it turned out well. Heard all the Earthbound comparisons before and was wondering if it was just nostalgia pounding, but given you never played EB that makes me very optimistic.
One issue I had with the Let's Play videos of Citizen Earth is that the music seemed awful, whereas EB has some of the most iconic music in gaming. Is the music bad in your estimation?
ShaoranWright
Member
Yes we are my friend.
I'm definitely gonna get it on VC now
Umm, didn't notice the music, but i could hear the voices so maybe it just wasn't memorable? Honestly didn't bother me, but didn't stand out either
I guess, lots of people i met had no idea what neogaf was, but all the sony guys know, we hung out with adam boyes, gio corsi, john vignocchi (Salt Lake shout out), Dave Lang (he's really tall in person), and Michael Pachter (also really tall)
Would people want a rundown of all the indie games shown at the show?