Thoughts on E3 (Part V)

Looking at Sony’s offerings at E3, I wasn’t all too enthused with everything – but the two games I drooled over the most were over in their camp.

Starting with the obvious, God of War 3 will simply be the coolest action game ever. The series may not be as hardcore as the Ninja Gaiden series, but in terms of sheer visceral fun, it simply can NOT be beat. I don’t even know where to begin in talking about this game – at the end of the second game, Kratos and the Titans were climbing Olympus to fight the Gods. Well, it’s war, and it’s war on the appropriate epic scale. Don’t believe me?

Watch this, but then remember to wipe the drool off the ground before you slip on it and hurt yourself.

Video Game - E3 2009 - Videogames

But even that wasn’t as titillating as The Last Guardian. Team Ico, the developers behind Ico and the other-worldly Shadow of the Colossus (one of my absolute favorite games ever), showed off the trailer for their new game – and it looks just as epic and soaring as I hoped it would. Even more than GoW3, this looks to me like it will be the number 1 reason to own a Playstation 3 when it releases.

Video Games - E3 2009 - Video Game Trailers

- Goodchild

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Thoughts on E3 (Part III)

Moving on, Ubisoft, WHAT THE HELL?!?! When I saw what SPLINTER CELL: CONVICTION looks like, I had to get a crank to pick my jaw off the floor. Now, I’ve always been a fan of the Splinter Cell games (Chaos Theory FTW!!!!). I love the stealthy nature of the game engine – the way they use natural and dynamic lighting to help and hinder you makes each level a giant puzzle, and the games are always fun as hell. And, let’s be straight here – I’m talking about the single player campaigns in the games, and not even the multiplayer. The co-op levels are always awesome, and the spies vs. mercenaries multiplayer is so radically different than other games it’s amazing. But the one thing I’ve heard other people complain about is the pace – too slow. Personally, I like the methodical slow pace – it gives you time to strategize and is a welcome break from the frantic shooters I play a lot of. But now – Sam is moving a lot faster, deftly climbing across ledges, rushing silently through the shadows, and brutally attacking his enemies head on.

While all this looks incredible, there’s one part of the trailer above that I’m really interested in – the way the story unfolds, almost in real time around you as you play. Mission objectives display themselves largely against objects in the game – kind of like the way the title of each episode appears in HEROES. Flashbacks and whispers are seen and heard against the walls as Sam moves through the levels – this new way of telling the story of the game shows that developers are really trying to break away from the “cinema, gameplay, cinema, gameplay” structure games have been stuck in for far too long. Games, while similar to movies, are NOT movies and thusly need to find their own voice as an artistic medium. Ubisoft has tried something like this before – in the previous generation of hardware, they put out a pretty cool trilogy for the Prince of Persia series. While you (as the prince) ran around the levels, the female lead in the game would talk to you, and this was how most of the story and character development was learned – not through cinema. It was a cool experience, and this looks to take that to even greater heights.

- Goodchild

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Thoughts on E3 (Part II)

Sticking with the Microsoft announcements, how about we take a few moments to discuss some other big guns they showed at their E3 conference?

First, ALAN WAKE. I’ve been hearing about this game for quite some time, but all I really knew was that it was a huge budgeted title falling somewhere in the survival/horror genre. Now that the trailers are out, I’m stoked. It looks like someone was playing the Silent Hill games and said: “Hey, this game is atmospheric and creepy as hell. You know what movie was like that? In The Mouth of Madness. Maybe we should make a game that is like a cross between the two.” You play as Alan (a writer) himself, and you and your special gal take a trip to a sleepy town … when suddenly she disappears, and a terrifying “darkness” envelopes everyone and everything in the town. Weird, though – it’s straight out of your next novel. To find your love, you have to drive the darkness out of the town, and find the pieces of your manuscript to catch up with the forces at play. Or, are there forces at play? The whole thing could be Alan going insane – these fears will play into the game.

Great graphics, interesting gameplay, and an odd (but intriguing) story to boot – sign me up.

- Goodchild

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Thoughts on E3 (Part I)

Now that E3 is over and my wasn’t-able-to-get-there ass has had ample time to go over all the news about it I could find, I wanted to share some of my favorite things from the show.

First off, I’ll just get the Bungie announcements out of the way. Everyone knows I’m a huge HALO freak, so I was stoked on hearing all the new info about Bungie’s upcoming game, Halo 3: ODST (click on that link to go to the project page). The gameplay they showed was awesome, seeming to perfectly blend new elements into the traditional HALO gameplay – since you don’t play a “super soldier” in this game, you don’t have regenerating shields, the big enemies are now much larger than you, and there is a greater emphasis on “stealth” over running and gunning. The best looking part of the game, however, was the new co-op mode – Firefight. Think of it like Horde mode for Gears of War 2, but longer and more extensive. Players jump into levels where they face off cooperatively against wave after increasingly difficult wave of enemies. This just sounds awesome, especially since it will be over Xbox Live, and with split screen (so my brother and I can play together on my set up!).

What really came as a surprise – and I mean REALLY – was Bungie’s announcement of a whole separate game, due out next year! It’s called Halo: Reach, and unlike ODST, it has you playing as Spartans (the super soldiers akin to the main character in the HALO trilogy). Not much is known about the gameplay for this game, except that a code that will allow access into the beta testing for its multiplayer will be included on the disc for ODST. As for the story of the game, it is based on the novel The Fall of Reach, by Eric Nylund. It is a pretty darn cool book, and it tells the story that leads directly up to the events of the first HALO game. Here’s a link to the project page where you can watch the announce trailer!

It’s a good time to be a HALO fan …

- Goodchild

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