PAX Prime ’11: Sony Wrap Up

I got a chance to check out some upcoming Sony games and the Vita in some hotel conference room down the block from PAX. Here’s what I saw.

Starhawk

This follow-up to Warhawk for the PS3 is a third person action game. The demo level I saw started on foot, eventually building a base to call in reinforcements and then taking control of a large Macross style mech/jet thing.

I looks like they have cleaned up some of the interface problems people complained about in Warhawk as well. This being a demo, some of the online features weren’t working, but it looked a lot easier to get into a game than its predecessor.

And if you’re wondering about the base building stuff, several members of the team previously worked on the Command & Conquer franchise. It shows.

Twisted Metal

About damn time. I’ve been waiting for a follow up to Twisted Metal: Black for years. It looks like this entry in the series will live up to its name.

Varied vehicular combatants, cool weapons and special attacks, cool levels and plenty of dark humor serve to make this one of my most anticipated games in years.

I didn’t get as much time as I wanted with it though, as Giant Bomb butted in to do an interview with David Jaffe at the same time. Stupid Giant Bomb, with their success and cool features and video camera that works.

Anyway, game looks good.

Ico/Shadow of the Colossus HD Remix (or whatever the real title is)

They upconverted it. Oh, and added 3D, but even with the glasses on it was hard to tell if they actually changed anything. How this took longer than a month to get out, I have no idea.

But still, the originals are amazing, so if you never played them I’d check this out.

Little Big Planet Vita

They had a couple of Vita’s on display, and in my time with the system I tried the new Little Big Planet.

The game made good use of the two touch screens. There were a coulpe puzzles where you needed to knock platform into and back out of the background to climb on. Kind of the the shifting sections every platformer since the mid-90s has used, but manually controlled.

The buttons were a little small, but I didn’t have enough time with the system to tell if they would become an issue.

I don’t know how they aren’t going to price themselves out of business with the thing, but the technology is pretty cool.