Hands-On: Uncharted Maps Safe Route For Sony's Slick NGP Handheld

Sony's new handheld gaming stage will be complicated on large franchises but light on new ideas when it debuts at the E3 Expo next week.

Wired.com tested the new device, codenamed NGP for "next-generation portable," at an E3 preview eventuality final month in Santa Monica, California. Boasting an form of high-tech features centered on a dazzling 5-inch OLED manifestation , the NGP is the Rolls-Royce of slot diversion machines. Then again, many players are determining they'd rsther than have the Honda Civic of diversion machines, that is because Sony is investing heavily in PlayStation-branded cellphones and tablets.

With NGP, the firm is going after the hard-core throng that demands something similar to a minuscule PlayStation 3 in their pocket. To that end, Sony is heading with a chronicle of , its blockbuster cinematic action diversion franchise, together with other proven sellers similar to and for NGP.

A surprisingly resourceful song diversion from the author of Everyday Shooter showed the many promise, but nothing of the demos felt indeed new. While there were of course a few appealing ideas on display, Sony's NGP lineup felt more similar to type over substance.

Here are Wired.com's impressions of the games you attempted out.

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To expostulate home the indicate that NGP is similar to a diversion console that goes with you, what could be improved than Sony's egotistic summer-blockbuster action diversion series, ? In the stability adventures of mausoleum ravisher Nathan Drake, he'll fire it out with upset rivals and ascend into, on and around very old wreck in his query for buried treasure.

In , a great treat of that will be completed by the NGP's two hold interfaces, one on the OLED shade and one on the retreat of the unit. The demo enclosed lots of touching. Things kicked off with a fistfight in that fist and arrow icons appeared on the screen, and I could daub the shade to punch an challenger or appropriate ceiling to flog him in the crotch.

Once that was over, it was time to explore. I could draw towards my finger opposite a set of bars to ascend over them; appropriate my fingers on the back touchpad to gantry Nathan up over a stone wall; lean the network to pitch on a rope; appropriate ceiling to safe over rocks; and on and on.

None of this was particularly necessary, that is good, given hold controls that mount in for elementary button-presses aren't unequivocally the way to do touchpad gaming. has been written so that all you can do with hold you can moreover do with the NGP's joysticks and buttons. is graphically splendid and plays well, but the hold controls as demonstrated didn't increase anything.