The Murder Report tallies the onscreen kills in the console makers’ E3 press events.
Ah, poor Sony, the perennial bridesmaid on our E3 kill scorecard. It’s not that Sony is bad at killing—the game demos at the company’s keynote always manage to stack up an admirable pile of corpses that have been stabbed, shot, incinerated, or otherwise mutilated beyond recognition. But you always get the sense that Sony’s heart isn’t in it quite as much as the bloodthirsty butchers who roam the halls of Microsoft. Did Sony manage to change the narrative this year? Watch the video to find out.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s installment of the Murder Report, Sam Barsanti is running the numbers for the feature this year, and he once again passes along some of his notes:
The big offender was the Devolver Digital (or whatever) montage, which had Broforce and other stuff like that, with 35 deaths. Far Cry 4 was second with 24 kills. Next up was the free-to-play montage and Dead Island 2 with 11 apiece.
Batman had 10 kills, all of them with a gun, which they explained by saying, “Don’t worry, those are all drones!” I counted “drone” as a robot, so it’s still a murder. The Magicka 2 trailer had a wacky live-action bit with a cat exploding, which was fun to count. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain only had two, and even Disney Infinity Marvel Whatever showed the Hulk killing a guy. Bloodborne, the new game from From Software, was also really light—only three deaths. The Order had zero kills, which is surprising for a shooter, but it was all about a guy running away from a monster.
Favorite deaths: LittleBigPlanet 3, which had the players’ characters die a bunch of times. That’s rare for an E3 demo, and you could tell that the onstage players were getting a bit nervous as they played. Far Cry 4 also had some good ones, like an elephant trampling a bunch of people.
Thanks, Sam! Stay tuned for the final E3 2014 Murder Report, in which cute, scrappy underdog Nintendo tries to kill like the big boys.