Shockingly, this games show is showing a lot of games. Weird, eh? I’ll take a look at : Gran Turismo 5, XCOM, Lionheart : King’s Crusade, Homefront, NeverDead, Guitar Hero : Warriors of Rock, Rock Band 3, EA Sports MMA, HAWX 2, True Crime : Hong Kong & R.A.G.E..
Gran Turismo 5 – This has been in development so long that it was originally a PS2 game. It has apparently cost more than $80 million in development already. The GT series used to own the racing market, but it’s been a looooong time. Anyway, the fucking graphics are insane. Subtle things like dust particles in the air and slight reflective light effects on the front window from the setting sun. Lol…nice BP billboard. Is there an oil slick level where you just can’t get a grip on the road surface? Woah, the game is basically going to have a PS3 version of TrackIR, where your head movements are tracked, and moving it one way or another will move the view on screen. Absolutely no explanation of HOW that’s going to work, of course. And they have finally realized that those wacky people like that there multiplayer racing…astounding! They can learns!
XCOM – Yes, it’s XCOM…kinda. This is a first person shooter set in the 1950’s. Yeah, I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in.
Ready? If not, you’re a puss. You’re an FBI agent that’s part of an anti-alien task force…and you’re hunting the space variety, not Mexicans sneaking across the border to steal those oh so lucrative gardening jobs. You’ll be sent out to the locations of strange activity as calls regarding ‘strange occurrences’ are overheard as frantic housewives call up police departments. Fight aliens, but also know when to run (which you can do at any time). You also need to collect samples and data, which are taken back to the base (now explored in a first person viewpoint) to learn more about the off world menace. A variety of enemy types were spoken of, but only 2 were shown…a sort of monolith thing eating energy, and…sentient tar balls? Maybe this game got BP ad money, too…
It isn’t classic XCOM, but if the missions are as open ended as they claim and the research part is done well, it might work. I was actually prepared to HATE this game, but now I’m curious to see more.
Lionheart : King’s Crusade – Two reasons I’ve been looking forward to seeing more about this. 1. It’s published by Paradox Interactive. 2. It’s developed by NeoCore, the guys who made the King Arthur game I’m playing. This takes place during…hold on to your hat…the Crusades! Woah! You can play as the Crusaders or as the warriors of Saladin, fighting for control of the Holy Land and the entire Middle East. It’s a hybrid strategic/tactical game, much like King Arthur or the Total War series. In the strategic map you recruit and rebuild units, build up land under your control, and upgrade existing units as they load up on experience. Some of the additions are authentic, while others delve more towards the fantasy realm with things like horns that, when blown by a battle leader, can motivate an entire field army to run through Hell if their General commands it. The French, Templars, Holy Roman Empire and Papal Court are also in this area, and you can ally with them AND fight them (probably doing a lot of both) as well as fighting either the Crusaders or Saladin. Dozens or hundreds of units on large battlefields, all under your command in real time…sieges, ambushes, castle defences, field battles. The game looks good, but I’m not certain it does enough to really differentiate itself from the Total War series to be worthy of a purchase.
Homefront – This game’s premise is ridiculous. Imagine Red Dawn set in the near future. Now imagine the invader is North Korea. Um…yeah. North Korea doesn’t have the capability of invading a supermarket. Okay, it’s actually being explained now since the host of the show was mocking it. Korea unites in 2012, fuel prices force the US military to pull back from Asia, and Japan and SouthEast Asia are taken by threat of nuclear annihilation. Oh, and they use a satellite based EMP device to disable tech based US defence forces. That’s…it’s out there, but it makes more sense than “Good morning sweety, would you like some…HOLY SHIT! NORTH KOREAN PARATROOPERS!”
Anyway, they have taken San Fran and some of the West coast. You’re a civilian freedom fighter. Not only does this give you the chance to shout “WOLVERINES!’” on a frequent basis, it also means that you’re constantly out gunned and out manned (which I like). LOL…the dev player just blew away a couple of US Navy SEALs. Nice work, dumbass. Anyway, there are squads of freedom fighters, all of them with their own troops and gear and available equipment. It looks like you also spend a lot of time blending in with the non-militia civilian population, and that could make for an interesting game mechanic. I need to see more to know if it’s going to work or not.
NeverDead – How to describe this one. Okay, you’re the hero, some guy named Bryce who frequently gets smashed to pieces. Yet you never die…you have to wait until your various parts reform again, then you’re back to whupping ass. Apparently you’ve existed for quite some time, since the promo video has Bryce talking about being mistaken for Louis XVI. I really flat out don’t know what to make of this one…I love the rather obvious Bruce Campbell style main character, and it’s an interesting concept. On the other hand, how is this going to be challenging if you flat out can’t die? Why would the player give a damn about running in to every situation like a kamikaze if failure just means a 30 second wait for your limbs to re-attach themselves to your torso? I can’t believe I actually just typed that last sentence. I’m going to include a video just to illustrate how obvious the Bruce Campbell characterization is.
Guitar Hero : Warriors of Rock – This one is just weird. Basically, you’re now playing music to rescue the metal from the clutches of evil…except metal is supposed to be evil, so maybe you’re slapping angels off of double necked guitars or something. Anyway, I guess Activision decided that since they couldn’t sue to have Brutal Legend left unreleased they’d just rip that game off. So they’ve slapped on a new premise, but the game looks EXACTLY…THE…SAME. This is my big problem with this series…while Rock Band seems to keep adding things to the game to shake it up, Guitar Hero does nothing. While Rock Band adds a constant flow of new songs available to buy online, Guitar Hero just releases yet another game. This is will be the FOURTEENTH Guitar Hero game to come out when it releases! It’s done, it’s played out, bury it in the ground and come up with something new (ELECTRIC DRUM HERO!).
Rock Band 3 – Seemed an appropriate place to put this one. First off, keyboards. Not just a keyboard, but one that can be wielded as…A KEYTAR! Yes indeed, you too can sling a keytar like a true early 80’s badass with a perm. Beyond that, the drums actually have cymbals now. The guitars have strings. They’ve also added a Pro mode where things like chord progressions come in to play. If you can actually read music, you’ll be able to play the next section simply be looking at the chord names as they pop up. Did I mention KEYTAR?! Oh and as usual, they have the good sense to let you import any and all tracks you’ve picked up for the earlier games in to this one. Players can drop out and join in to the game at any time at all without having to restart or anything, too. While the whole music game category is getting a bit boring, these guys at least seem to get it.
EA Sports MMA – As an MMA freak, I’m curious to see how this compares to the UFC games THQ has been putting out. The whole striking system is analog, with the triggers used to change whether you’re throwing punches or kicks, body or head shots, and the right stick throwing the strike. The grappling system is based on face buttons…this led to some obvious problems in the demo I saw. The ground fighting part of the game is obviously a bit of a mess, with the need to drive back and forth between face buttons and the sticks. I’m most curious about the online tournament system with hype videos and fights broadcast on the server system and the like, but there were no real bits of info on that. It looks okay, but the need to keep switching from stick to button to stick to button is either going to snap fingers or minds.
HAWX 2 – Yes, the game that nobody played is getting a sequel that nobody will play. Did Ubisoft have their collective brains consumed by zombies at some point? It would explain their E3 performance thus far. They keep sinking serious development dollars in to games that didn’t sell the first time around, then complain about shitty sales for games nobody wants. As for the game, it’s pretty and it does seem well made, I just don’t really see where the sales are coming from.
True Crime : Hong Kong – First True Crime game in awhile. Frankly, the previous ones weren’t anything all that stellar, but this one is big. The entire island of Hong Kong is open and they’ve tried to sort of ‘John Woo’ this motherfucker up. Not only is it a complete open world game, the combat is also open world. So in other words, everything in the environment can be used. Throw a guy head first in to a jukebox, drown him in a fish tank or throw him out in to traffic. Lots of little minigames including everything from surveillance to safe cracking to karaoke. All of the ingredients are there for a good game, but we’ll have to see how it comes together.
R.A.G.E. – Hey everyone, id Software still exists! Oh wonderful…so far, the id guy is just showing off the game engine. “Hey, look at them purty hills!” Yes, it looks amazing…is it a game or a fucking tech demo? Hey, it’s a game! Okay then. A post apocalyptic future…you came out of one of many ‘arks’ that were underground shelters as the asteroid smashed in to Earth. So, we’re completely ripping off Fallout and Borderlands here. The world looks big, and it’s open to run around in as well as doing missions. They’re calling the game play ‘open but directed’…so you can do missions and run around to do extra things. How is that anything different from every other big RPG/shooter? I don’t know. I like the fact that the environment comes in to play…guy standing in water? Hit that water with an electrical bolt. The game is beautiful, and the sound is also great. It does look fun, but it also doesn’t really seem like anything massively unique at the moment.
That does it for me with games. I’m going to do one more post tonight or tomorrow where I’ll kind of rank the ‘Big 5’ press events (Sony, Nintendo, Ubisoft, EA & Microsoft) and get in to some of the positives they had since my initial write-ups were quite scathing. I’ll probably also add a few more notes, and that will be that…you’ll be free of the E3 yoke that I’ve hooked all y’all motherfuckers to.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.