Console Gaming – What to expect in 2012

The Last Guardian – PS3 TBA 2012

This game follows the story of a young boy (yet to be named) who is trying to escape from the ruins of an expansive castle. The game revolves around developing a friendship with a giant creature named Trico, which appears to be a griffin of some sort, although I think it looks like a dog with feathers, I’ll let you be the judge of that. From what we know of the game so far, you will be trying to build a relationship with the creature, which is initially chained up and hostile, but later grows to trust you as you assist each other in a bid for freedom.

Developed by the legendary Team Ico who developed the critically acclaimed titles “Ico” and “Shadow of the Colossus” and given the developers determination to make the games they want, the way they want to, un-phased by the fact this game is not likely to hit the top of the charts, this game holds a lot of promise to be something special and it would be a shame if it gets trampled under seasonal updates of already well-trodden franchises.

Fumito Ueda – Game Creator “Trico is driven by animal instincts and it is up to the player to guide the creature, taking advantage of his natural behaviour, in order to complete puzzles”.

The Last of Us – PS3 Q4 2012

Developed by Naught Dog and clearly taking off the experience they have with the brilliant Uncharted trilogy, The Last of Us is shaping up nicely to be one of the new big hitters, while I don’t doubt the play style will be somewhat similar to Uncharted, the story takes place in a post apocalypse world, caused by a parasitic fungus that infects humans brains.  It sounds like a stereotypical zombie setup, but the team are focusing more on emotion rather than horror, enlisting the help of two-time Oscar winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla (everyone’s heard of Mr Santaolalla, right?) to provide the score for the game.

The games two main protagonists are Joel, a ruthless survivor and Ellie, a 14 year old girl, who has no memory of the world pre-apocalypse.  The game focuses more on the love story and circumstance of a father-daughter-like relationship, which hopefully won’t pull too much at the old heart strings, I haven’t cried at a game since Aeris died, I’d like to keep it that way.

Evan Walls (Naughty Dog co-president): “The Last of Us is a genre-defining experience that blends survival and action elements to tell a character driven tale about a modern plague decimating mankind. Nature encroaches upon civilization, forcing remaining survivors to kill for food, weapons and whatever they can find. Joel, a ruthless survivor, and Ellie, a brave young teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together to survive their journey across what remains of the United States”.

Starhawk – PS3 May 2012

The long awaited follow up to one of the most robust and exciting multiplayer experiences for this console generation is finally upon us, with support of 4 player local co-op, 32 player online battles and for the first time in the series a single player story mode, something they intended for the original but was later removed to keep the game more focused.

Starhawk is a fast paced third-person shooter, utilising battle mechanics from CQC to dog fights in space, and it’s ”Build n’ Battle” system that allows you to build from a vast array of defensive and offensive structures, that drop down from an orbiting drop ship in real-time while you fight, allows you to turn the tide anywhere on the battlefield, giving the game a style that is somewhere between Gears of War, Halo, Battlefield & Command & Conquer.  Epic!