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Two clues that you're at a video-game press event: You hear sentences like, "Throw the mime at the plate-glass window -- move left, more left, now hit the triangle button. Oh, nice mime toss." And the keynote speech, delivered by a top executive of a huge corporation, in this case Jack Tretton of Sony Computer Entertainment America, ends with real U.S. soldiers dropping from the ceiling, their guns trained on the assembled journalists.

I felt like a doomed extra in a James Bond movie, as any negative comments I've made about Sony, the host of this week's Gamer's Day preview event, flashed before my eyes.

Fortunately, Sony executives eventually dismissed the Navy Seals and began showing off new games for their PlayStation machines, which was the point of this whole shebang. Here is an overview and some first impressions of games that grabbed my attention over two days in cloudy, chilly Southern California.

The Gamer's Day premieres and announcements came in the midst of a bad news cycle for the electronics and entertainment conglomerate. Business stories blamed Sony's fourth-quarter dip on the costly PlayStation 3 -- the video-game arm lost almost $2-billion (U.S.) in its last fiscal year -- and mentioned the Nintendo Wii's strong sales, while Microsoft generated positive headlines simply by selecting a release date for Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 (Sept. 25).

Sony attempted to change the cycle of woe here by conducting tours of Home, a three-dimensional interface that will allow PS3 owners to chat and play casual games in a shared online space that looks a lot like Second Life, and by unveiling a new entertainment packaging plan: The Blu-ray disc containing the deluxe PS3 version of Stranglehold, a game being produced by Hong Kong director John Woo, will also include his 1992 film Hard Boiled in high-definition. Sony is definitely playing up the Blu-ray format's extra storage capacity.

But this week was really about new games, primarily PS3 and PlayStation Portable titles aimed at the huge base of PlayStation 2 owners. To that end, many of the games on display, most of them playable for the first time, had connections to PS2 favourites.

The God of War franchise, for example, will move to the PSP with a prequel called Chains of Olympus from Ready at Dawn, the studio behind last year's portable hit Daxter. The Navy Seals series SOCOM (hence the rappelling, disconcerting soldiers) is migrating up the food chain to the PS3 with a new multiplayer squad game called Confrontation; it and another SOCOM spinoff for the PSP are being developed by the Vancouver shop Slant Six. And the Ratchet & Clank franchise stole the show for a day with its PS3 debut: Tools of Destruction, from Insomniac Games, has a highly entertaining disco-ball weapon that forces cartoon enemies to get down.

Aside from these and many more sequels and prequels, some of the original games heading to the PS3 later this year can be best described using their obvious connections to past bestsellers: Heavenly Sword looks and plays like God of War but with a female lead; Uncharted: Drake's Fortune has a Tomb Raider meets Far Cry feel (treasure hunter in a tropical jungle from veteran studio Naughty Dog); and Folklore, an odd role-playing game featuring collectible monsters, merges Kameo with Pokemon in a surprisingly fun way.

That leaves two titles that are difficult to explain, usually a good sign that a game is going to do something new and be potentially amusing.

Pain has the aforementioned mime toss, which is actually a challenge mode. This thing is like an extended video of skateboard spills: You catapult cartoon humans, who fly and crash like almost uncontrollable rag dolls, into a destructible setting and then pick up points as things blow up and fall down. It's a slick, sick mix of two driving hits, FlatOut and Burnout, but its structure is somewhat new: Sony and developer Idol Minds will deliver it as one downloadable level on the PlayStation Network, the PS3's online service. It will contain two blocks of a downtown intersection with a variety of game-play options and characters. If it works -- and it did here -- more levels, at undisclosed prices, will follow.

The other standout was an innovative game called LittleBigPlanet, which is one of the few titles showcased this week that is not scheduled for a 2007 release (other games may slip into 2008 even though they are pencilled in for this holiday season or sooner). It features small stitched dolls, a little like sock monkeys, who can be customized with helmets and capes and all sorts of cute things. Once they enter their 3-D world, up to four players can interact with environments - or make new ones - then help each other surmount obstacles. You can spend half an hour just moving the characters' hands around (do an online video search and you'll find out why).

It's a long road from May to the all-important fall season, but this week proved one thing: Sony and the PlayStation 3 are, at the very least, going to be at the party this year.

scolbourne@globeandmail.com

Two great new games heading to PS3

Pain is like an extended video of skateboard spills: You catapult cartoon humans, who fly and crash like almost uncontrollable rag dolls, into a destructible setting and then pick up points as things blow up and fall down. It's a slick, sick mix of two driving hits, FlatOut and Burnout, but its structure is somewhat new. Sony and developer Idol Minds will deliver it as one downloadable level on the PlayStation Network, the PS3's online service. It will contain two blocks of a downtown intersection with a variety of game-play options and characters. If it works - and it did here - more levels, at undisclosed prices, will follow.

The other standout was an innovative game called LittleBigPlanet, which is not scheduled for a 2007 release (other games may slip into 2008 even though they are pencilled in for this holiday season or sooner). It features small stitched dolls, a little like sock monkeys, who can be customized with helmets and capes and all sorts of cute things. Once they enter their 3-D world, up to four players can interact with environments - or make new ones - then help each other surmount obstacles. You can spend half an hour just moving the characters' hands around.

S.C.