Comic Con: Preview Night

 

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 fishtank5 on July 25, 2008.