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Archive of "Preview" Category
Quick and Dirty Hands-On at E3: PixelJunk Shooter 2
PixelJunk Junkie that I am, early on in E3 I nabbed myself a slot in front of PixelJunk Shooter 2 to demo the two available stages. The unassuming 2D beauty builds on the first game, luring unsuspecting players into its clutches and then crushing them with surprising and challenging gameplay.
That it feels like a robust expansion and not a sequel is more compliment than criticism. The good news for those that didn’t play through the first one is that you can always pick up here, guiding your spaceship through caverns and monster viscera on an elaborate rescue mission. Left stick steers, right aims, and use your hook to save those trapped miners.
Enemies and environment alike are pitted against you as clusters of the former open fire and the latter pours on acid. Acid, the bile of the beast whose innards you’re navigating in “Inner Space”, is one of the additions in Shooter 2. Never forget that water is your friend, cooling your ship and hardening lava into destructible stone. Even more fascinating to me was “Lights Out”, a foray through light and dark. The shadows prevent you from rescuing miners, and traveling through prolonged darkness puts you at risk of being swarmed by strange new enemies. You have to locate light sources and funnel them to the right areas, or even carry glowing orbs with your grappling hook.
Shooter 2 features that same multiplayer co-op as the first, as well as an arena mode that was not available for demo at E3.
It’s easy to write 2D off as merely “retro”. Q-Games excels at showing remarkable restraint in their design, and Shooter 2 is no exception. A beautifully crafted 2D wonder, the sights and sounds of Shooter 2 show yet again what Q-Games is capable of.
Quick and Dirty Hands-On at E3: LittleBigPlanet 2
Snuggle up with Sackboy, it’s time to get cute. While the little guy isn’t required for his own sequel (that’s right, you can play and create without the bundle of adorable), there’s still a whole lot of fun squished into the title from Media Molecule.
The big change from the first game, however, is the ability to make more than your own level: instead of a platforming game, LittleBigPLanet 2 is a platform for games. You can now craft your own games, and rather than having to tweak components into game-like features within levels, you actually get to make games with scores and AI. Or, for those like me that prefer to reap the fruits of others LBP labor, you get to play games with scores and AI, from shooters to strategy games.
The hands-on play featured two of these games, the same they showed at the conference. One was a hand-eye speed test against three other players that has you tapping sequences of buttons. The other was a collection of mini-games. In the first each player is sporting a deadly hat that fires missiles in fixed directions and another has them trying to bump each other into the perimeter.
Want more? There’s a movie mode in which you get to cast Sackfolks, give them lines and shoot. It strikes me that Media Molecule has put in a lot of thought and effort to make the sequel something entirely new. LBP 2 goes to great lengths to enhance the toolsets, making environment and mechanical creations more accessible to the creatively challenged, so much so that I actually think I might be able to make a functioning level this time around.
Kinect Demo
Microsoft has been demoing a little thing called “Kinect” this week. I don’t want to waste your time, so here it is: underwhelming. If this is the final product, if this is what we get on ship date, then gamer types like me will be disappointed. Who won’t be disappointed? Kids.
While Kinect is less precise than the Wii controls and suffers from latency issues, it will be far easier for young kids to play than the Wii. My niece and nephews struggle to play with the WiiMote (but excel at using a mouse for PC games), and they will have a blast playing Kinect. Similarly, anyone you just wants to goof around but won’t be frustrated by the motion-result disconnect will enjoy the freedom Kinect offers.
As the game works better for certain gamer types, it also works better with certain games. Dance Central, for example, makes good use of the product by focusing on broader movements instead of specific gesture tracking, which is where Kinectimals failed. It was a truly disastrous demonstration, with our guides telling us what to do and what the little lion cub’s response should be. The low point was when they instructed one of our companions, a good sport from EA, to lie on the floor on his back, hands and feet in the air so that the cub would “play dead”. Which it did. Eventually. In the meantime I was in a room with a guy lying on the floor limbs extended wondering how long this was going to go on, and really feeling for him.
Somewhere between Dance Central and Kinectimals is Kinect Adventures. In the mini-game River Run you lean, jump and crouch to raft through an obstacle course. Originally instructed to “lean” to steer, the guides told us about midway through the course that stepping to the side is actually more effective.
Here’s a video for Kinect Adventures, River Run. There is, as you will see, a lot more jumping than I’d like…
One interesting feature not seen in the video is how Kinect handles the absence of buttons. While swipes will progress you through a menu, selecting a menu option entails hovering your extended palm over a specific space to charge a wheel. Once charged, the menu progresses with that selection.
The titles we were shown are relatively simple, and I think there’s still a lot to be seen from games and what they can do with the technology.
Trauma Team Preview: Forensics Mode
Earlier this week Atlus treated me to a look at Trauma Team’s new forensics mode. One of six disciplines featured in the Wii title, Forensics lets the player out of the lab. Playing as Dr. Naomi Kimishima you examine the body, search the crime scene for evidence, interview witnesses and ultimately piece together the clues to reveal how the crime was committed. It’s a lot of fun, particularly for any CSI, Bones or other forensic types. (more…)
ZTGD Review Wrap-Up 13
This week I return after a long winter’s nap with the latest video review wrap-up including recently released games such as Bayonetta, Darksiders and Sky Crawlers.
Hands-on with Dream.Build.Play
Sometimes technology lets us down. I’m not talking about red rings, yellow lights or even the great white unicorn of failure sightings: a busted Wii. No, this time it’s my recording of my time at the XNA booth at PAX. After spending one great big jam-packed hour with the reps, six games and one of the game finalist developers, the whole thing is lost to the tech ether. My time there, however, was way too much fun to not relive, even if it lacks the punch of quotes and footage. Indie games just rock too hard to be confined by such things. The Dream.Build.Play Challenge is for independent and hobbyist devs, and gamers dreaming of bring a game to life. Using XNA Game Studio they create a game for the chance at a piece of the $75,000 cash prize and having their game published on XBLA. This year’s competition saw over 350 entries spanning over 100 countries, and I can hardly imagine the depth of quality in that submission pool after seeing what the finalists delivered.
Age of Conan: Rise of the Godslayer Preview
While at PAX I got a second chance to visit the most ill-conceived meeting booth of all time – you know, the one next to the Harmonix booth. This time Funcom’s Craig Morrison, Executive Producer, soldiered on to tell me about the Age of Conan expansion, Rise of the Godslayer. Godslayer is set in Khitai, a Far East location from the imagination of Robert E. Howard, though Howard didn’t leave much to go on. The Tower of the Elephant survives as a very memorable tale, however, and so the framework for Godslayer was born. The story goes that the young, thieving Conan went in search of the Elepahnt’s Heart, a fabled gem kept in an ivory tower. He discovers not a gem but an alien, Yag-Kosha, controlled and bound by a sorcerer. Imprisoned for several hundred years, Yag-Kosha has been worshipped in the jungles of Khitai as a protective and beneficial deity but the creature is suffering and begs Conan to put it out of its misery. When Conan (rather uncharacteristically) obliges Khitai spirals into chaos and he earns the hatred of the residents of Khitai and the shiny new title of Godslayer. Basically, lots of people are very cheesed off at King Conan. (more…)
Hands-on with Fairytale Fights
Fairytales, the cleverly disguised horror stories that kept kids of yore in line is the stuff Fairytale Fights makes comedic fodder of. In a land of fairy stories gone awry, the game emulates the Adult Swim side of things with a saccharine paint job over some Naked Emperor carnage. At first reluctant to view Fairytale Fights as more than a game caught in the wake of Fat Princess fervor, it didn’t take much gameplay to convince me that the cheeky title carves out its own turf. (more…)
Hands-on with Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
In the Sony room at PAX, a man tries to introduce himself to me. That man is Brian Allgeier, and it’s all I can do to keep from stuttering as I less than gracefully blurt out “I know who you are.” I love Ratchet and Clank, more than most games, so I was practically shaking with geek excitement that not only was I playing Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, I was playing it with Brian Allgeier. Actually, the whole thing still makes me geek out. For my fellow fans, I really want to keep this spoiler-free so I will address plot points only in the broadest of terms and instead focus on the game’s other elements. (more…)
Hands-On at PAX with Sony’s Digital Comic Reader
Unveiled at Gamescom just over a month ago, I got a chance at PAX to try out Sony’s Digital Comic Reader for the PSP and PSPgo. The DCR allows users to purchase and download comics from the PlayStation Store and read them on their handheld. Since I’m not much of a fan of reading anything in digital format (yeah, I know) and way too nostalgic about the whole holding a book/mange/comic in your grubby little hands experience, I was skeptically interested in how exactly Sony could make this a pleasant experience. Spoiler: they managed it, and I want it now.
Hands-On at PAX with Split/Second
At PAX Disney Interactive provided gamers with the opportunity to play through a 360 demo of Split/Second. Lasting fifteen minutes or so my time was brief – but when there’s a line of eager gamers behind you it’s best to hit it and quit it. An arcade racer sharing plenty of commonality with Burnout, the daredevil Split/Second should still manage to carve out a niche for itself in 2010. (more…)
Hands-On at PAX with EyePet
The EyePet, the latest game to make use of the PlayStation Eye, is a virtual pet that puts the Tamigotchi days of digital pets to shame. Targeted to the younger set, there’s no avoiding the draw of the little guy, even as an adult-shaped person. Sony’s Alex Armour was kind enough to take EyePet through his paces in a 1-on-1 presentation at PAX. Prior to PAX, I had no doubt that in concept and polished trailer EyePet is very promising; what I came away from the hands-on experience with is the realization that everything EyePet promises, it delivers.
Torchlight: Hands-On at PAX
Just over a year ago Mythos and its company, Flagship Studios, “crashed and burned in spectacular style”, a demise thus described by co-founder Max Schaefer. Mythos, the second game from the start-up, was lost to South Korean Hanbitsoft and Schaefer, having left Blizzard, Diablo and now Mythos behind, ventured onward with a dozen or so teammates to form Runic Games. One relatively short development cycle later and they are bringing Torchlight to fruition, geared up for an October 27th release of the single-player campaign. Like Diablo with a more playful cartoon flavor and a bit more humor it’s the game’s undeniable personality that makes it so engaging. Torchlight is just a world you want to be part of. Fans of action-RPGs will feel at home here, fans of Diablo even more so, with a familiar control scheme even a relative PC noob like me can latch onto, deftly navigating and firing off spells. (more…)
The Secret World is a Little Less Secret
Last Friday at PAX I was ushered into the most ill-conceived meeting booth ever erected on an Expo floor. Yes, room F, allocated to Norway’s Funcom, was adjacent to the Harmonix booth. Thank goodness those guys had mics. In spite of the auditory hardship, Ragnar and Martin persevered, showing off details of their game and swearing me to secrecy until today. The Secret World is intense, rooted in conspiracy theories and covert power struggles, so I was happy to comply. After all, maybe these guys know something I don’t. (more…)
From Dungeon to Dragon: Nexon America at PAX
While at PAX I made time to stop by the Nexon America booth – how could I not, when they had Dungeon Fighter Online, Dragon Nest and Combat Arms for me to play? Of course, that was the morning that Adam (a.k.a. photographer, camera guy and man in charge of recording) was down for the count, so I was bumming it as an old school reporter. Not only is it mighty hard to mouse and WASD while taking notes, it’s extra hard when the games are fun. Really fun.
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