E3 2013: Day 1 round-up

So, everyone enjoying E3 so far? I’ve spent my first day on the show floor and alongside the heady musk of sweaty games industry workers, there’s a palpable buzz in the air for all things PlayStation. There are a huge number of titles on show for PS Vita, PS3 and, of course, PS4 – over for the next three days I’ll bring you a quick daily round-up of everything I manage to get my hands on.

First up this morning was Media Molecule’s irresistibly lovely PS Vita adventure Tearaway. It looked great when we last checked in with the game in February , but Rex Crowle and his team have spent the last four months adding layer upon layer of charm and whimsy, really elevating it to the next level. It’s now a game overflowing with bright ideas, eccentric distractions and pure, freewheeling fun.

Following February’s Sogport reveal, this time Rex was showing off the Valley Fold area. We fashioned a papercraft crown for a friendly squirrel, dispatched boxy beasts with our own god-like fingertips via the back touch panel, channelled our inner DJ and remixed the level’s soundtrack to open up new areas, and transposed our faces onto the game’s sun so we could look down on our kingdom and cheer iota along.

Sound mad? It is, and brilliantly so. Check out the new trailer below for a closer look, and come back next week for a full interview with Rex himself.

Next, I quickly checked in with the Suckerpunch team for a look at inFAMOUS: Second Son. And what a thing of beauty it is. The studio are really putting the PS4 through its paces, packing extraordinary detail into the world, butter-smooth fluidity to player movement and, crucially, lightning-fast action.

inFAMOUS 2 was no slouch but Second Son moves at astonishing pace, with new protagonist Delsin Rowe zipping around Seattle with flea-like agility. This is about as pure an action game as you can get – with Rowe flinging balls of fire around with reckless abandon; disappearing in puffs of smoke, Nightcrawler-style; pulling off outrageous special moves, and generally administering chaos on an epic scale. Take a look at the trailer below for more.

Next up, Call of Duty: Ghosts. At this stage in the franchise’s life cycle, you might think you know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised by the imagination on display here. The first stage I was shown, titled No-Man’s Land, offered a compelling showcase for the various new gameplay possibilities the addition of canine companions open up.

The real star of the show, however, was Federation Day, which played out almost entirely on the exterior of a skyscraper, as your squad abseiled down its side. It was a lovely bit of level design, and immediately brought to mind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s classic All Ghillied Up stage – not in that it’s a sniper level, but in that’s a clever change of place from your regular COD combat.

On the way out of the Activision booth, I found 10 minutes to talk Destiny with Bungie COO Pete Parsons. You don’t need me to tell you the game looks fantastic – see for yourself in the trailer below, and check back next week for some fascinating insight into universe-building from the Bungie exec.

Final stop of the day? Transistor, the beguiling follow-up to Bastion, the 2011 action RPG from prodigiously talented indie studio Supergiant Games. It might be made by a team of just 10, but it was the most beautiful thing I got my hands on today.

Supergiant has done a fantastic job of retaining the unique atmosphere and feel of its debut release (the narration and wonderful soundtrack are both immediately familiar) while also creating something entirely new. The biggest difference this time is the combat, with the fast-paced ranged-combat of Bastion replaced by more strategic encounters in which you can freeze time to plan out intricate manoeuvres and attack combos.

We’ll be speaking much more about this one on PlayStation Blog over the coming months, starting with an interview with Creative Director Greg Kasavin next week. He’s one of the most thoughtful designers in the business and has a really interesting take on the role of independent games in the future of PS4.

That’s it for now – see you back here same time tomorrow for another batch of bite-sized impressions from the show floor. Sound off in the comments below if there are any titles in particular you’d like to hear more about, and remember to follow us on Instagram and Twitter  for minute to minute coverage of the show.