The Verge - Sony at E3 2012: 'Beyond Two Souls,' Call of Duty on Vita, and PlayStation comes to HTC

'Portal 2 In Motion' blurs the line between your Portal gun and you

2012-06-12T15:28:37Z

Down the right-hand side of Sony's E3 booth were waves of wrist-flapping and bicep-jerking while E3 attendees tested Portal 2's motion controls.

This is the new iteration of the game as imagined by developer Sixense, which results in one of the better uses of the Move controller as a whole - a literal interpretation of the Portal gun that begins to break down the divide between the controller and the game's puzzle solving weapon.

We learned one week before E3 hit that Portal 2 would be getting Move support and a level pack later on in the year. The Move DLC, which was christened Portal 2 In Motion is ostensibly a second look at the content available to PC users as part of Razer's exclusive Hydra DLC made available last year. The result...

The Last of Us (E3 2012 gallery)

2012-06-08T02:22:55Z

View this gallery here.

The Last of Us isn't about monsters but humanity

2012-06-07T23:08:42Z

There was an Uncharted 2 commercial that featured a couple sitting down to watch the game, the conceit being that the player's significant other didn't realize it was a video game. While the ad was intended to play up the cinematic nature of the game, it also spoke to the maturity of the subject matter. It said, "Uncharted 2 is a game that you don't have to be embarrassed to play when your non-gaming husband and/or wife enters the room."

Naughty Dog's latest game, The Last of Us, makes the Uncharted series look like Saturday morning cartoons.

"We took great efforts in making Ellie capable."

After seeing the trailer for The Last of Us during Sony's presentation last night (you should really watch it if you haven't!) we had to get...

Ellen Page in 'Beyond: Two Souls': casting for the next generation of motion capture

2012-06-07T23:00:08Z

Back in March, we had our first glimpse at Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream's new "performance capture" technology — one that, unlike many current methods, lets you capture facial, voice, and body animations simultaneously. "Kara," as the tech demo was called, was an impressive and emotionally-engaging leap forward from Heavy Rain. But it wasn't until this week at E3 that we saw the fruits of this technological labor in Beyond: Two Souls, the next full Quantic Dream game for PlayStation 3 starring a stunningly lifelike representation of Ellen Page. And the results are impressive.

Speaking at a presentation of Beyond: Two Souls in action, QD founder David Cage explained how Page became involved in the game — before even she knew...

The Amazing Spider-Man may just earn the name

2012-06-07T10:00:18Z

After Spider-Man 3 was panned by film critics and crucified by fans, Sony went back to the start, retelling Spidey's origin story with a completely new director (500 Days of Summer's Marc Webb) and a new lead (Andrew Garfield of The Social Network).

The last Spider-Man game wasn't bad enough to require a reboot of that scale, but with scores averaging in the mid-50s for Spider-Man: Edge of Time it wasn't far off.

It makes sense that studio head Dee Brown was perhaps a little over-enthusiastic as he presented his team's new project. Beenox has something to prove.

One of the clearest signs of Beenox's confidence in its nearly-finished product is in the opening minutes of the game's E3 presentation when Brown focuses our attention on a...

Video: Dyad, an insane racing game that's 'pure hyperbole'

2012-06-06T20:31:33Z

Imagine: You've just entered the E3 show floor and you're instantly awash in lights and sound. From every corner of the cavernous West Hall, bass pounds and strobes flash. Finally you make it from the carnival of stimulation to the relative calm of the PlayStation booth only to find that your first appointment is the absurdly colorful, hallucinatory madness of PSN exclusive trip-racer Dyad.

"It's a bizarre, insane, strange racing game with the weirdest music and most awesome gameplay ever," said developer Shawn McGrath. Big talk, but is he sure the game can back it up? "Absolutely. The game is pure hyperbole."

From where we were standing (with more-than-a-little baffled grins on our faces) Dyad seemed to be living up to McGrath's hype....

LittleBigPlanet 2 with Vita cross-play is Sony's answer to Wii U and SmartGlass

2012-06-05T23:55:50Z

LittleBigPlanet 2's upcoming Vita Cross-Play DLC pack made its appearance in Sony's E3 press conference, but it didn't have the impact that the update may deserve. The presentation made it sound like any other Remote Play title on the console — in all actuality, it's much, much more than that.

With the Cross-Play DLC, you'll be able to use the Vita as a controller for Media Molecule's PS3 platformer, but that's the least interesting of its functions. As you build a level in the PS3 version of the game, you'll also be able to build a corresponding level on your Vita using touch controls reminiscent of Tarsier's upcoming, Vita-based LBP. Using a surprisingly simple catalog of tools, you can connect switches and prompts between the two...

HTC One phones running PlayStation Mobile spotted at Sony's E3 booth

2012-06-05T20:29:19Z

Yesterday at E3 Sony announced a partnership to bring PlayStation Mobile — previously known as PlayStation Suite — to HTC's phones. While no specific devices were mentioned at the event, the HTC One X on stage gave us an decent idea of what to expect. Sony has since revealed that HTC's One series will be the first third-party products to don the PlayStation Certified moniker, specifically, the HTC One X, One S, and One V.

Sony wasted no time showing off its new relationship with HTC. We spotted the HTC One X, One S, and One V running what's purported to be PlayStation Mobile (née PlayStation Suite) behind glass at Sony's E3 booth. Unfortunately we couldn't play with the units, and the screens shown were more proof of concept with...