The Top 5 Moments from Sony’s PlayStation E3 2018 Showcase

Hoo-boy. Prefacing the Top 5 of the Xbox press conference, I said I was going into this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo with zero hype, and while I was quite pleased with Microsoft’s offering, Sony’s was bordering on painful.

Their presentation apparently centered on cramming more attendees into a room than they had room for, showing something off, and then shuffling said attendees off into another room for another game. In-between, we got more of the type of commentary which perforated their showing last year, along with other strange interstitials.

But I persisted, and here’s what I came up with to fulfill the yearly tradition that I’m beginning to regret starting.

The Top 5

Control

This looks kinda neat. It’s from Remedy Entertainment, who are the folks behind Quantum Break for the Xbox One, which is a game I enjoyed watching but kind of sucked at playing.

That one was neat and different in that much of the story of the protagonist is where the gameplay was involved, while video not unlike a television or Netflix show shared other perspectives, providing a sort of middle-ground between interactive entertainment and Hollywood that video game developers have been chasing almost since the medium began.

I have no idea if this will take a similar approach, but it was enough to catch my eye.

Kingdom Hearts III

God, if this is on here, then things must be bad.

I’m not much a fan of Kingdom Hearts, as you might surmise — it had my interest when it came out in 2002, but I didn’t get around to playing it or its sequel. That proved to be a mercy as it seemed like Square Enix had little interest in finishing the story they started telling, instead chasing their own tail from one side-story to the next with more and more contrived names and crawling so far up its own backside story-wise that what it had for breakfast yesterday became a fourth-dimensional concept.

But hey, they finally got around to announcing a sequel, and hey, we got to see some stuff from it this year. And I’ll be honest, the Disney worlds they’re showing off this time have grabbed my interest more than usual. Toy Story? Tangled? Frozen? Wreck-It Ralph? Hell yes!

Problem being that before the Sony conference aired, they’d already shown two maybe slightly different trailers for this, so a third time seemed almost eyeroll-worthy — except this one was different.

This one heavily featured a nigh-realistic Pirates of the Caribbean world, where Sora, Donald, and Goofy look particularly out of place. But I liked the first movie, and the contrast is neat, and I honestly have nothing else to put in this spot, so #4 it is!

Resident Evil 2

I’ve not been much good at the early Resident Evil games, but I did enjoy the characters and story, and Resident Evil 2‘s were my favorite of the lot. Finally seeing this remake in action lands it a spot here.

I was hesitant about placing it this high on the list, though — that bit with the rat/mouse (I didn’t quite get to make out which) getting crushed under a shelf with its head sticking out was a major turn-off for me. Fortunately, we’re spared that in the trailer above.

Claire’s outfit seems a bit different than her original Resident Evil 2 outfit, though, which gives me some concern — I hope they’re not going to modernize it in terms of when it took place. One thing I’ve always enjoyed about Resident Evil is the persistent timeline that lines up (more or less) with when the games are released in the real world.

Spider-Man

No Miles this year. Boo.

But the possible formation of a new Sinister Six? I am intrigued.

Gameplay looks good, and maybe a little less QuickTime Event-y than last year? If so, that’s a plus.

Ghost of Tsushima

Whenever Square Enix is about to reveal something, I usually half-jokingly ask about it being either one of two games: Rad Racer and Bushido Blade.

This clearly isn’t Rad Racer, and it’s not even Square Enix — it’s Sucker Punch Entertainment and Sony, and while it may not technically be Bushido Blade, the combat looks like it may just be close enough. So naturally, it gets the top spot.

Biggest Letdown

No Ratchet & Clank

Any year without a new Ratchet & Clank announcement is a letdown, but this year could have really used one. Even bringing the HD collection to PlayStation 4 would have been nice.

Honourable Mentions

Yeah, right. I had to stretch things just to make five items.

Honorable mention goes to all the people who had to deal with this thing live.

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And that’s that. I’ll have Nintendo’s up soon, but if you for some reason want to experience Sony’s E3 2018 Showcase for yourself, here’s a video that I’ve gone ahead and set ahead to when the thing starts (over an hour and 16 minutes in). Enjoy if you can, survive if they let you, and see you back here in a bit.

At least they provided a really nice graphic for the show. I might even put that into my desktop wallpaper rotation.

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David Oxford is a freelance writer of many varied interests. If you’re interested in hiring him, please drop him a line at david.oxford (at) nyteworks.net.