Sony’s showing

Sony’s booth has been one of the largest over these past few E3’s. Big does not necessarily mean good, though, as Sony’s booth was one of the most underwhelming (considering its massive size) for E3 2002. Would E3 2003 be any different? With new hardware announcements such as the PlayStation Portable (PSP) and the first showing of Gran Turismo 4, things looked a lot better already.

Jet Li’s got game

Let’s start off with the games shown at Sony’s booth. The first game we saw was Rise of Honor, a new action game featuring Jet Li. This game is an original creation and not based on a movie. Rise to Honor was originally in development at Sony’s Foster City Studio as a pure action game. Meanwhile, Jet Li became interested in the idea of being in a videogame. The two parties got together, and decided that adapting Rise of Honor’s development to include Jet Li would be the ideal situation.

Rise to Honor features a 360-degree fighting system. Controlling Jet Li with the Dual Shock 2 was a rather interesting experience. From what we played of the E3 demo, all the face buttons on the controller had no functionality attached to them. All the input for the game was in the two analog sticks and the shoulder buttons. The left analog stick was used for moving Jet Li around and the right stick was used to direct his attacks. Punching and kicking your opponents was as simple as just flicking the stick into the direction of your foe. Each individual attack movement would require its own stick movement, so a sequence of three punches/kicks would require three taps. This felt quite awkward to us, but we were told that things get easier as you get into a “rhythm.”

Blockstylez

Kicking high