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E3 - Day 3 (Finally, Some Games)

I’ve been able to spend most of the morning taking advantage of my media pass to get extra access to game displays. Most of the information is in digital press kits that I won’t be able to dive into until I get back home, but read on for a short precise of each game I’ve seen so far.

Update: more games added.

Tomb Raider - finally, the real Lara is back. I don’t know what they did with her awkwardly large breast implants which steadily grew over the last two versions, but they are a welcome subtraction. Lara is now back to her athletic self, with all her old moves and silky animations, and I’m sure she finds it all more comfortable now. The E3 demo doesn’t expose very much of the new game’s dark, troubled storyline which for me is the main interest, but it does show off some very moody lighting and shadow effects. There was evidence of some slightly uneven texturing, but overall the new engine looks and feels solid.

EverQuest 2 - a surly press agent reluctantly handed me a press kit after skeptically checking my media pass and informing me viewings were by invitation only (honestly, SOE are such wankers - it seems to be a company wide phenomena). As a result I can’t report on how the game is looking. I can say the company making it seems to be as arrogant and unfriendly as ever. Anyone who plays EQ will understand what that likely means for EQ2.

Deus Ex 2: Invisible War - I only got to see the XBox version of the DE2 demo, and will be much more interested in playing it on the PC. It’s looking very nice on the MS console, though it will no doubt look even better at higher resolution on a monitor. It seems to contain basically the same sort of stealthy, edgy gameplay the last one did (unless you like to go in guns blazing of course, in which case the death animation is smooth enough not to jar after many watchings), and they have done really well translating the fairly complex FPS controls to the console. Even I could live with a controller for this game. I did however manage to break the demo by EMPing a sort of constructor droid, picking it up, and then dropping it, thereby locking myself within the droid’s geometry. I didn’t tell anyone, and left quietly.

Prince of Persia - This game is a real surprise. It’s combination of cartoon style and realism looks very good, and the new game engine is capable of some stunning lighting and particle effects. The best part though is the silky smooth animations, fluid movement, new action moves (including wall walking) and gameplay additions such as a manual slowdown that lets you watch yourself in bullet time - and some of the fighting movements are worth watching. It’s possible to land an initial strike, somersault over an enemy by using their body to ‘wall walk’, and finish them off from behind. All of which looks flawlessly impressive in slow motion. I had a chat to one of the programmers (a girl, the first female programmer I’ve met) who told me the engine uses realtime cloth simulation and some scene IK. That means the Prince’s clothes respond realistically to his movement, and his movement animations adjust subtley to small irregularities in the environment. She also showed me a new rewind feature which allows the player to ‘rewind’ back past mistakes a limited number of times. It’s a very useful feature, and looks very cool to watch. Even if you’ve never really been into previous versions of the game, Prince will be worth considering when it ships at the end of the year.

Starcraft Ghost - I’ll have to wait to dig into the press kit to get all the details on how this game is going. The demo looks very nice of course (it’s Blizzard after all), and showed off some polished effects. The main character going into invis/stealth and switching to infra red mode looked particularly effective. Movement and animation were also top notch. My favourite moment was when the character flipped upside down and hung from the roof by her feet as enemies passed beneath.

Gran Turismo 4 - I found GT2 prohibitively difficult for my dip-play level of interest (that international licence killed me), and didn’t ever see more than the demo of GT3, so anything I said about GT4 would be passe. From what little I got to see while racing three others for my T-shirt, the guard rails and fences look pretty much the same. I spent a lot of time facing them, and thought, oh yeah, I remember this game. The background environments to some of the tracks were impressively realistic, as were the car models and physics. I didn’t see much different to GT3 visually, but what do I know, I spend most of the time spinning my wheels against the barriers.

Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance 2 - this looks pretty much the same as it’s predecesser, which will please anyone who liked it. It doesn’t look as if they have changed anything they didn’t need to, though I think I saw a few more character abilities in operation.

Lineage 2 - Unbeknownst to most of the West, Lineage is easily the biggest MMORPG in the world. The game has 4 million subscribers in Korea alone, which is 10 times that of EQ. It never really took root over here, though they tried to break into the US market with the help of Ultima’s Richard Garrett. The heavily cooperative style of play didn’t translate well to the western preference for independent and open gameplay. Lineage 2 is a determined effort to redress that difference, and though I know I’m going to cop some flak for saying this, it is for my money the best looking MMORPG to date. It really does look that good. When a company representative gets back to me via email and I pull the screenshots from the press kit, I’ll post more.

Metal Gear Solid 3 - The tech demo for this game drew increasingly massive crowds in the main hall each time it played, to the point the entrance to the pavilion was all but blocked for 10 minutes. Visually it is impressive and is getting to the point of photo realism. For instance, a soldier in the demo steps into a pool of water, leaving footprints in the mud beneath, while the water pools around the changed surface. Very cool.

Eye Toy - This is not a game but a new piece of technology for the PS2. A camera attached to the console captures images of the player, and puts them on screen ingame. Demonstration games had players punching and kicking air in front of the camera, while onscreen their movements broke boards, killed enemies, and variously affected other objects. The potential for the new technology is immense, and it opens the way for true visual fighting games where players can fight each other virtually in real time using their own bodies instead of ingame characters (imagine getting fit from a video game, or pullin a muscle!) I had the opportunity to speak with Eric Matthews of Sony Europe R&D earlier, and he mentioned the ability for the Eyetoy to map player faces onto their ingame characters. Of all the things I’ve seen at E3, this has the most potential to take gaming in a new direction.

Rise To Honor - A third person fighting story game starring Jet Lee. There were many fighting style titles at E3, but the realistic movements and impressive combinations of this game caught my eye. Visually it is not really anything special, though it is sound. Gameplay-wise it looks very fun.

Thief 3 - the hall was way too loud for me to get anything but the barest impression from the demo of this story driven title. I can say the engine looks sweet, with lots of nice lighting and shadow effects, and the movement is responsive and crisp. I’ll know more once I get to the press kit.

  posted by monty · at 6:43 am · filed under News