The folks over at JustJared have the first pics of Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia. He’s certainly buff enough, but I don’t know what to think of the hair.
And Latino Review has released the 2nd of 5 pieces of concept art from what they think will be the Halo movie…
Click the below link for a high-res version of the Spartan Babies.
http://www.latinoreview.com//images/upload/movieimages/full_movieimage_18037.jpg
It’s been awhile since I last put up anything, leaving some promised content hanging and ultimately cut. During the midst of E3 I decided I didn’t want to do this whole report on stuff that I’m not actually participating in, thing. So I dropped it. I should have updated you all sooner but hey, life intervened.
So I’v decided it’s in the best interest of both me and my readership (Whoever that may be) that a paradigm shift was in order. So from this day on I will be focusing on reviewing games I’m currently playing, I will not be going out of my way to play a game that I do not want to play, this is not a job for me and thus I’m not being paid, I don’t have an endless supply of money like that. I will also be doing articles from time to time on topics that interest me, not topics I feel you must be informed on. There are other, better sites for that (Joystiq… Kotaku… Destructoid… et cetera) and so consider this shift a more casual one.
This will lighten the burden that CBx was becoming and help me have more creative freedom with the site.
So look for me in the coming days as I impliment this shift in content with my review of Geometry Wars 2.
As I arrived for the final day of the con, I was simayed to see that the street fighter set-up had been reserved for tournaments, and since my flight was at 4, I didn’t have too much time to look around anyway. What I did see was very crisp graphics and smooth gameplay, which is to be expected from a next-gen fighting game.
So that’s pretty much it. Overall a pretty cool Con, but man, so many people. I’ve heard rumblings that Comic-Con has been thinking about changing locations, and there’s no better time than now. Especially near all of the videogame and movie studio’s booth. It would be so much nicer to move to an even bigger location (and the SD Convention Center is ENORMOUS), or have the companies make sure to bring enough console setups to accommodate the number of people that show up.
So I hope you enjoyed the coverage. Hopefully I’ll be able to do it again next year!
Sadly, upon arriving at the convention center today, it appeared that both Little Big Planet and SOCOM were no longer being demoed. It may have been poor timing, but when I walked by, it was just the developers playing and talking to the onlookers. I had a nice long look at LBP, and let me tell you, for a simple side-scrolling game, it looks incredibly fun. The graphics are as clear and as crisp as you could have hoped, the animations run smoothly and the little characters are just adorable. Street Fighter was still as congested as ever. The short time that I have at the convention center tomorrow will be devoted to somehow playing that game. But let’s get to the one game that I did get to try today. A pleasant little surprise called…
•Dead Space
I remember seeing some early info on Dead Space, and I wasn’t impressed. The story line of a distress call from an abandoned spaceship, we’ve seen it a million times. But I had heard that the game was genuinely scary, so when word got around that the demo was playable at the con, I was sure to get in line.
The demo kiosk was in a small dark room with a netted ceiling that let only a little light in. The developer set up the controls so that the game would play like a typical shooter, a gametype to which I am well accustomed. I started out in some kind of green room. The computer display said that there was an anomaly detected, and I got to set to check it out. The weapons are controlled by the D-Pad, identical to the Gears of War system, although I couldn’t tell if there were any limits to which type of weapons you can carry (pistols, light, heavy). In any event, I had a small nail gun pistol, a larger nail gun rifle, some sort of electric gun, and of course, the trusty flamethrower.
I came down a lift and walked into another green room, where I saw this…this thing. This thing looked like a little baby, only the baby sprouted enormous tentacles that flailed wildly in the air. This thing was absolutely horrifying. This thing made the Flood from Halo look like a bunch of teletubbies.
The developer was very clear that when shooting at enemies in Dead Space, one should aim to dismember the enemy. Shoot at the arms, legs, tentacles, whatever is sticking out, not the torso. I did so, and seeing these creatures writhe on the ground, soaked in their own blood is both horrifying at gratifying at the same time.
When playing Dead Space, be sure not to get cornered by your enemy. They will come at you fast, and there will be more than one. It is imperative that you always give yourself room to back up, as I learned quickly. I got cornered once, but was lucky enough to fight my way out with a combination of my flamethrower and Stasis. Stasis is a limited power your character has, and it enables you to freeze the grotesque aliens in suspended animation for a short time. While they’re frozen, you can shoot them, burn them, stomp them, and enjoy the spectacle of seeing them dismember in slow motion.
A lot of the fear factor in the game comes from when your enemies get close and latch on to you. When this happens, you rapidly tap A to get them off a perform a finishing killing move. When a tentacle baby tried to bite my face off, I managed to remove and stomp him to death.
The trouble came for me when I went into the third of many zero oxygen chambers. When in these chambers, you only have about a minute to live, and you must find the alien that is poisoning the air and kill it in order to be able to breathe again. I managed to find the alien, but after I killed him, several alien corpses on the floor came to life and began to attack me. That’s when I realized that I was out of ammo. I frantically searched my weapons and got three of the four aliens with the few rounds I had left in my nail gun, but that still meant there was one more to go. I tried stomping it and beating the crap out of it with my empty nail gun, but it overcame me and put a tentacle through my chest. Demo over.
All in all, the demo was fantastic. The gameplay was fast-paced and genuinely frightening, and even though some of the monster design wasn’t completely original, it was more than effective. Dead Space has made my list. I almost got a Dead Space t-shirt, but they were all out. The developer I talked to said that they handed out 300 shirts in 3 minutes. Wow.
Maybe…maybe I’ll be able to get to Street Fighter tomorrow. Hopefully.
The Tank.
Unfortunately, my coverage of Day 3 of the ‘Con is like recent Bungie Weekly Updates: Devoid of very much useful information. Most of my morning was spent getting into the fantastic Watchmen panel, about 4 hours altogether, but the free T-Shirt was worth it. I got a few decent tidbits, but I’m going to try and spend all Saturday getting to demo the games I haven’t been able to get to yet. In case you’re wondering, the pictures I’m adding are random, they have no correlation to what I’m talking about.
I've seen this guy somewhere before...
I got into the Halo Panel early, and another panel was going on. I was too busy trying to get in and find a seat to actually examine my surroundings and see who was talking, but I looked up and saw a familiar face, a face that had been in every Marvel movie made as of yet.
It was Stan Lee!
I hadn’t even heard of this panel, but it was apparently discussing the future of Superhero video games. I had inadvertently hit the jackpot. The main games discussed were Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion, and Spider Man: Web of Shadows. A few of the developers were chatting with Stan the Man about where the games were going, and how much of a mark they were going to make. Here are the major points…
•In Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, you’ll be able to fuse together different Heroes’ superpowers, and EVERYONE will have a combo…
•In Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, you won’t be able to PLAY as other heroes (It is a Spider-Man game after all), but you will meet several familiar faces along the way, and according to one of the developers, “Wolverine will be in Web of Shadows”
WHO Watches?
Those were really the major points of the panel, it seemed like both of the projects weren’t quite ready to start divulging secrets yet.
I got to look at a lot of games, but I don’t want to give write-ups unless I actually play them, so hopefully I’ll have more tomorrow. Games I’m going to try to get to…
•Street Fighter IV
•Dead Space
Awesome...
•Little Big Planet
•Socom: Confrontation
Now there will probably be over hours of line waiting to get to those games, but I’m going to try to play as many as I can get my hands on.
The Tank
After rising early and taking advantage of my hotel’s complimentary breakfast buffet, I headed off for another day of “conning”. My first demo played…
•Afro Samurai
I’ve heard a lot of interesting things about Samuel L. Jackson’s Afro Samurai, all positive. It’s supposed to wonderfully violent, so my interest was sparked when I saw the Afro Samurai demo kiosk.
I believe this is a new Dragonball Game...
When the demo began, I was in a small Asian village at twilight. I few militia-type warriors slowly circled in around me. As is typical in hack ‘n slash games, X and Y were used to attack. X was used for horizontal slashing, and Y was used for a vertical slice. I easily defeated the first round of enemies, and the ground was stained with their cartoon blood.
Time for round 2. More of the same type of enemies began to trickle in from the village. I was going to kill them the same way I had the first, but I noticed a prompter on screen saying “Hold LT to enter focus mode”. I thought I’d try it out. As I pulled LT, The world turned black and white and entered slomo. Then I was prompted to “Hold X or Y for slice”. I did so, and my enemy was cut clear in half, separated right where my blade had cut him. No pre-packaged arm falling off animations here. I was intrigued.
About 20 enemies surround me. 5 or 6 are nearly touching me, within attacking range. I go into focus mode and drag my hot blade through the closest of them, killing 5 with a single stroke. This makes me enter into a higher level of power. Everything is in focus mode. I wave my blade with fury, animated corpses litter the ground, gushing blood all the while. In no time, I cleared the village square of all enemies.
The gameplay was very good. I noticed that when you are about to cut an enemy in focus mode, a white line goes across the enemies’ body to indicate where you’ll be slicing them. Also, a lot of the enemies are able to dodge your focus mode attacks, so you’ll have to learn other moves to beat the game. Overall, I was surprised and very impressed.
•DC Universe online
I never once have been jealous of any PS3 exclusive. As a proud owner of a 360, I’ve always been fine with the selection of games available to me. Not even for MGS4, not for Resistance, and definitely not for Haze. But when I heard Sony was getting an exclusive MMO set in the DC universe, I was as green as a lantern with envy. At least I got to play a pre-alpha demo.
The demo began with the game already in progress. I was playing as a custom character whose look was criminally close to Spider-Man, only this unnamed hero traded web-slinging for super speed. I ran around with my aforementioned speed, which was activated by clicking the right stick. I think I was in Metropolis, and it was under siege by Brainiac and his army of evil robots. I destroyed a few of Brainiac’s minions, and I’m thrilled to say that the combat system is close to that of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, a game that I love dearly and have been playing through again recently. You hold RT to activate your super powers, which are controlled by the four main buttons. I went back into the fray and tried to hand another beatdown to Brainiac’s goons, but it didn’t go so well this time. That is to say…I died.
I didn’t get a whole lot of time with this game, but what I did see was very cool. Superman and Supergirl were helping out with the fight, and it’s always great to see those iconic figures in battle. I hope the PS3 owners are happy, they finally have an exclusive that to me, looks really good.
Fantastic...just...fantastic...
•Halo Universe Panel
The Halo Universe Panel had such household names as Eric Nylund, Joseph Staten, and Frank O’Connor. Also present were two reps from McFarlane, Graeme Devine from Ensemble Studios (Developers of Halo Wars) and Tobias Buckell, author of the upcoming Halo novel “The Cole Protocol”.
The room filled with groans when Joe Staten said they wouldn’t be unveiling the Bungie project that got nixed at E3, and most of the rest of the panel were just hypothetical questions from the fanboys, who were rewarded generously by goodies from McFarlane.
The biggest announcement probably came when Graeme Devine from Ensemble was asked if the Flood would be playable in Halo Wars. His response-
“Let me put it this way…Halo Wars is a COMPLETE Halo game.”
Awesome.
That wraps up the highlights for Thursday. Hopefully I’ll have the willpower to stand in the Street Fighter IV line for an hour tomorrow. See you then.
The Tank
The promotional Pineapple Express car gets towed. One of the funniest moments so far.
The stale scent of B.O. and newsprint permeates the air around me. It must be Comic-Con…
Comic-Con ‘08 officially kicked off today, but as a four day pass holder, I was also able to attend preview night last night. I was able to get my hands on quite a few games in a very short time. Here’s what I have so far…
Lego Batman...made out of legos.
•Star Wars:The Force Unleashed
I’ve really been anticipating this one. As a fan of the Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy titles, The Force Unleashed was naturally on the top of my list. The demo began with our dark apprentice rising up an elevator to a long bridge with a battle taking place between Rebel soldiers and Stormtroopers. I was hundreds of feet in the air, and the hanger around me was huge. So even though I was only on a small platform, the scale of the map still felt enormous. Excellent.
The guy from LucasArts gave me a quick overview of the controls, and I was soon ready to go. Remember, the Secret Apprentice’s natural enemy would be the Rebels, but he’s also a secret from the Empire, so the stormtroopers are gonna have to go too. Three rebel soldiers had their back to me, and I quickly dispatched them with my lightsaber. Now that I have the stormtrooper’s attention, I lift a crate and send two of them flying back with it. When you kill an enemy, small green crosses emanate from their body and restore your health. I lifted a stormtrooper and mercilessly speared him with my saber. All enemies neutralized.
At the other end of the platform, a large elevator slowly rises to my level that has a handful of stormtrooper’s and an AT-ST walker on it. The walker begins immediately firing, but I’m already charging forward. I unleash a burst of lightning, injuring a few stormtroopers and disabling the walker. I jump to the walker’s level and hack madly at it while floating in the air. I do some damage, but not enough to destroy the walker. The walker comes back to life and begins firing. Seeing my health a little low, I take care of a few more stormtroopers to replenish my health. I start hacking again at the walker, but it’s much harder to do without disabling it first. Injured again, I take care of the last of the stormtroopers and go in for my final strike against the walker. After almost getting it’s health bar all the way down, I enter a button pressing sequence prompted on screen. After a few tries, I jump up and slice the walker in two, and the dead stormtroopers inside spill out. Now I [i]should[/i] mention that out of all of the people waiting in line, I was the only one to destroy the walker, but that kind of egotistic rambling just isn’t healthy.
The demo ends. It was a little short, but just enough to whet my appetite. The combat was incredibly fun and made Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy look primitive. The rep from LucasArts assured me that as you progressed, your already insane force powers would become even more powerful. I was pretty impressed. A great way to kick off the show.
•Mercenaries 2:World in Flames
I only got a little time with this one. I was given a menu of different missions, and I unknowingly picked a weapons training mission. I would have rather done a regular mission, but there were too many people in line for me to go back.
The first part of the mission required me to knock down a whole field of pedestals with a turret. The turret was hard to control. It felt like the turret was very heavy, which made it harder to aim, but I’m sure that’s how it is in real life. Realism is always a plus.
After that, I headed over to a rocket turret. My objective was to destroy cars that were being launched out of a forest. I got the first few, and the explosions looked pretty good, but I wasn’t really blown away by this segment as of yet. Then I decided to fire at the car while it was still flying through the forest. I hit a tree, and the ENTIRE forest caught on fire. I couldn’t help but let out a soft “whoa” as the whole of my screen glowed orange.
I stopped after this part. The demo was alright. It was my fault for choosing a training mission, but the graphics were still pretty good and the gameplay kept me interested for a while. Maybe I’ll get back to this game before the show ends.
So ended Wednesday Night preview night. I’ll post my Thursday experience tonight, hopefully. Afro Samurai and D.C. Universe online demoed.
The Tank
by: ~samuel w.
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With the Nintendo Press Conference behind us, the last of the big three has their chance to one-up the competition. I’m not going to do what I had done for Nintendo or Microsoft however. I will instead be re-capping the proceedings after they happen. So stay tuned later in the day when I will re-cap what dropped at Sony.
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by: ~samuel w.
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We’re here “Live” Blogging the Nintendo Press Conference which will soon be followed by the Sony Press Conference. But right now it’s all about Nintendo. So without any long introductions, coverage follows as presented, most updated at the top.
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~most recent.
• That’s a wrap folks. Once again, this seemed to be completely underwhelming, no Kid Icarus, no big games announced, no Metroid, no Mario, no Zelda, nothing. WiiMusic looks cool and Animal Crossing looks totally like Animal Crossing. WiiSports Resort is a natural progression of the original game but nothing too surprising.
Sorry folks but every press conference can’t be as big as past years.
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• This appears to be the end of Press Conference, ultimately it was quite underwhelming. Nintendo knows they need to appeal to it’s hardcore audience and nothing present seemed to do that. Quite possibly they could pull a “one more thing” but the Conference sure seems to over.
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• That wraps up the presentation for the game. WiiMusic will arrive this holiday.
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• They’re now demonstrating a 6 player band playing the Mario Theme with a host of instruments. Each instrument individually didn’t seem too impressive but this is pretty awesome I have to admit.
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• The orchestra game we saw demonstrated 2 years ago by Miyamoto himself will make an appearance in the game. You will be able to record videos of your performances and mix and match them to make up a music video.
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• The drum set will include an entire separate mode for learning the drums if that’s your thing, seeing as the entire drumset is rendered on-screen, it seems this could make you a more proficient player than say Rock Band.
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• They also demoed Violin, Guitar and now Miyamoto is beating on Taiko Drums. Nothing seems too precise or high quality sounding but the typical Nintendo philosophy seems to be applied here as it has with WiiSports.
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• 50 different instruments will be included with WiiMusic, including a piano, it seems odd that something that precise would be included in a Wii game.
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• There appears to be no onscreen menus to match like in Guitar Hero or Rock Band, everything that is done is done up to the player simply by holding the Wiimote in the way you would hold that specific instrument.
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• WiiMusic officially announced. When you look back at the previous titles, it makes sense this game is coming out alongside WiiSports, WiiPlay and WiiFit.
Continue reading ‘E308 • Nintendo Press Conference “Live” Blogging’
Gears 2 doesn’t need an introduction nor why I’m here talking about it. So I’m going to leave you with these two amazing videos and the screenshots after the jump.
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• Videos
Announcement Trailer & Stage Demo
—>Hit the Jump for the Media<—
