Comic-Con Day 2 (First Official Day)
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
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