Paris Games Week Trailers
In four short years, Paris Games Week has gone from a mere dream of European gamers to one of the biggest trade shows in the entire world.
The show kicked off on Wednesday with an announcement-laden keynote from Sony that debuted a number of trailers and sprinkled in a dash of pants-wettingly exciting news.
In the days since a few more details have slipped out, but before the show ends on Sunday, we wanted to round up the best, most noteworthy demos and trailers before the hype trains rolls out of the station until E3 2016.
1. Detroit
Quantic Dream, Detroit's developer, has a storied history of spinning both heart-breaking and enthralling threads with its previous titles Beyond: Two Souls and Heavy Rain.
Both games afforded players a multitude of options as to how they would get through the games' stories and hitting them with real, palpable consequences depending on which route they went down.
Detroit, the studio's third title, will surely do the everything its predecessors did and more, this time taking place in a near-futuristic city of Detroit. It's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep meets Blade Runner in what is sure to be an emotionally-wrought cinematic joyride.
2. Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
With the single-player all squared away for Uncharted 4's big launch, the only question that remained going into PGW was about the game's multiplayer.
While we're not quite walking away with specifics, the latest trailer has shown us a fair amount of what we can expect from Drake and Co. when we tap into Uncharted's online mode this Spring.
The biggest change so far looks to be the addition of relics - consumable pick-ups that are born out of the single-player campaign. Let's just hope they're more creative than the typical uninspired "you have more health" or "unlimited ammo" power-ups that usually pervade third-person shooting games.
3. Tekken 7
I'll be the first to admit, as much as I love them, fighting games generally don't have very good plotlines. Usually it's straight revenge or something outlandishly supernatural.
The Tekken 7 trailer shown at Paris Games Week incorporates both of those tired plot points into its story, yes, but for the first time in series history we'll see how everything - the fighting tournament, the Mishima Corporation, Kazuya and Jin - all came to be.
If none of those names ring a bell, don't worry. All will be explained when the game comes out. Unfortunately, however, we don't exactly know when that's going to be, as the trailer didn't specify when we can expect to be button-mashing our way to victory as Eddy Gordo on next-gen systems.
4. Dreams
If you haven't seen Dreams before, brace yourself, it's a weird, wacky, but ultimately creative look at how gamers can create their own worlds.
There have been a handful of games that have done this successfully in the past, Minecraft and LittleBigPlanet are two that come to mind, each bringing their players the power to shape and mold the game world to their choosing.
What makes this trailer worth watching (it's over seven minutes long, by the way) is that it gives us our first look at some of the creative tools used to create the worlds that we'll explore when the game comes out.
5. Robinson: The Journey
As a fellow techradar colleague said in her PlayStation VR: 5 things we learned from Sony's Paris event piece that ran earlier this week, Robinson looks good. Really good.
Some might argue that this could be the game that sells PlayStation VR - Sony's virtual reality headset that has been in development for close to three years.
The game, which is being developed by Crytek, borrows a lot of concepts I've seen in earlier PlayStation VR demos: PlayStation Move-supported gestures, an on-rails track that moves the player from point A to point B and a gargantuan dinosaur bearing down on you.
6. Matterfall
While I can't tell you what's going on in the trailer for Matterfall, a new action game from the developer behind Resogun, I can tell you it's awesome.
Resogun, if you haven't played it, pit you against a never-ending stream of enemy ships (similar to Defender on Atari) on a giant circular grid. The idea was to fly around from one side of the grid to the other taking out enemies as you go without taking a bullet from an enemy ship in the process.
The game was one of my favorite titles on Sony's newly launched system which means I have high expectations for this trippy, sci-fi shooter.
7. No Man's Sky
With each trailer I get more excited for No Man's Sky, the open-world (galaxy?) sandbox game that lets you explore an ever-expanding universe and stake your flag on any number of planets.
The Paris Games Week trailer showed the audience a side of the game that hasn't really been talked about as much: player-vs-player combat.
In the short, two-minute clip we get a taste of what it will look like to confront other players out in the darkness of space during white-knuckle dogfights and a glimpse of on-the-ground battles with the controlling player taking down what looks like an AT-ST.
8. Ratchet and Clank
The Ratchet and Clank series has been hit or miss for the last couple of years. It had a pretty big miss with Rachet and Clank: All for One, a multiplayer-centric adventure game that depended heavily on your friends being good sports to be fun to play, and has slowly slid to the backburner for some gamers.
The 2015 revamp of the series aims to draw longtime series veterans and first-time space adventurers into its zany, hilarious and wonderfully voice-acted world.
9. Star Wars Battlefront
Star Wars Battlefront is three painstakingly long weeks away from coming to home consoles and PC, and while I now know what we can expect thanks to the epic five-day beta, I'm hungrier than ever to get the full game in front of me.
This trailer debuted slightly ahead of Paris Games Week, but for its sheer epicness I've decided to include it in this round-up.
The trailer in question shows off many of the unlockable heroes you can play as including Boba Fett, Princess Leia, Luke, Han, Vader and yes, even Palpatine himself.
10. Gran Turismo Sport
DriveClub could never replace Gran Turismo, Sony's legacy racing series that at one time lead the driving genre in innovation and graphics back on the original PlayStation and PS2.
As much as DriveClub wanted to push high-end graphics and an ever-expanding list of cars, wonky driving mechanics and lackluster online play only deepened our desire for the Gran Turismo franchise to come to PS4.
Thankfully, it looks like that wait is over. Gran Turismo Sport will return the series to the forefront of the genre, finally giving its Xbox One rival, Forza Motorsport, a run for its money.
