E3 doesn’t kick off until tomorrow, but that hasn’t stopped publishers showing off several shiny new games prematurely. It’s hard to imagine that the PR people were worried about them being ignored at the show – some quite big name titles have been bandied about over the past few days.
A handful of journalist have already been treated to first play on the NGP, or whatever Sony ends up calling it. Those lucky people include T3 Magazine, who were kind enough to drop a hands-on video into our inbox. We now know that the handheld plays PSP games through emulation; visuals will be improved and in some instances (such as Resistance: Retribution) support for the NGP’s second analogue stick will feature. Amongst the first wave of titles will be augmented reality brawler Reality Fighters (from the developers behind Invizimals), Wipeout 2048 (set four years before the PSone original and features cross format play with PlayStation 3 owners) and Uncharted Golden Abyss. There’s also Sound Shapes – a rhythmical platformer that supports user-generated levels – pool sim Hustle Kings, the WarioWare-alike Little Deviants, Super Stardust Delta and Everybody’s Golf. As you can see over on Eurogamer, Wipeout 2048 is looking quite lovely.
Sony haven’t forgotten about the PlayStation 3 either as a duo of new PSN titles have been revealed. Papo & Yo – due out in 2012 – is the most interesting of the two, starring a boy named Quico who lives in a South American slum with a pink monster. Sony’s Pub Fund helped the game get the green light. The trailer shows some ICO-style teamwork and also a slightly worrying amount of block pushing. The second title is Payday: The Heist from new Swedish studio Overkill, headed by the former boss of GRIN. It’s a four-player co-op shooter featuring six different heists such as bank jobs and prison breaks. We’ll just ignore the fact that GRIN made the rubbish Terminator: Salvation tie-in, shall we?
Over in the world of multi-format a big surprise came in the form of a co-op Star Trek shooter from Digital Extremes starring Kirk and Spock. Digital Extreme are also hard at work on The Darkness II so don’t be surprised if it uses the same engine and whatnot. US publication Game Informer has an exclusive on it this month; the screenshots are very…citrusy.
Then there was a new Tomb Raider trailer which managed to get Twitter in a tizzy on Friday. As you can see for yourself above, the incredibly detailed trailer shows Lara taking a journey on a large navy ship, which then gets ripped in half during a storm. Lara finds herself waking up on an island surrounded by wrecked sea vessels. No in-game footage has been shown but if you’re egar for more information EDGE magazine has an exclusive on it this month. It should be good; Lara lovers Crystal Dynamics are behind it.
And because we’re not ones to ignore the smaller publishers and developers out there, Deep Silver has revealed the snow-covered sports package Winter Stars for Kinect and PlayStation Move. The Wii version meanwhile is compatible with the balance board. Up to four players can partake in 11 different sports online including “curling”.
We’ll be covering the E3 conferences in full tomorrow and Tuesday. If you don’t follow us on Twitter already, now is as good as time as any.