- Jan 12, 2004
- 11,078
- 11
- 81
I spent the last two days seeing a lot of fantastic things while having a blast. I hope that comes across in my impressions here while remaining grounded. Everything I saw below was real gameplay and not prerendered video. Hope you enjoy!
Mass Effect 3
Going into this demo I was worried. Not necessarily for the game as a whole--it's safe to say the running & gunning would be great--but I was concerned about the RPG aspect. I'm a HUGE fan of ME1. In fact it's my favorite in the series, despite my adoration for ME2. But in recent interviews Bioware Executive Producer Casey Hudson sorta breezed over questions regarding the RPG elements of ME3.
Well my friends, I'm happy to say in the middle of the demo the character screen was brought up for just a few seconds and I can confirm deeper RPG elements have returned. I saw additional skill/powers available to Shepard, one of which was "Fortitude". There also appeared to be a few disciplines of sorts to choose from near the bottom of the screen. Shepard could focus on social skills, weapon damage or Biotics. It looked great and made me smile!
In the demo it was really apparent that Bioware is going for massive scale with ME3. There were HUGE set-pieces which really conveyed how large the scale of destruction is in the game. The graphics were surprisingly improved over ME2 in terms of texture quality and post-processing effects.
The Omni-blade is awesome! It's a melee weapon that hits hard & fast, and it looks like it feels great to use. But most importantly it will add an effective melee mechanic to the game.
At the end of the demo I ran up to Casey to ask him a few questions despite some PR folks shushing me out:
So a new composer? "It's Mansell, yes."
Will there be an inventory in ME3 similar to ME1? "It's going to be more like ME2."
Will the player accumulate XP and have the ability to level up in the middle of a mission a la ME1? "It's going to be more like ME2, that's what we're going for there."
One of my biggest gripes about ME2 were the "Level Complete" screens at the end of missions. They were abrupt andI felt sorta unnecessary. "Yeah, I think we're going to have something similar to that but it's probably going to be more subtle."
I shook his hand, wished him luck and ran out.
Aliens Colonial Marines
I have to admit, though I'm a big fan of both Alien and Aliens, I'm a little fatigued with the franchise, so going into the demo I had low expectations. Surprisingly the game looks pretty good, but I don't know if it's going to be enjoyed by anyone that's not a die-hard fan of the movies (and hey, that might be ok with Gearbox too).
Randy Pichford (President of Gearbox Software) stated the tech for the game was built from the ground up for the title because they needed an engine that rendered lighting really well. It seems to have paided off too! The lighting looked fantastic and the models of the Aliens were essentially the best I've seen. Unfortunately the environments paled in comparison to these two things and stuck out to me. I mean, it's not that the game looked particularly bad, it's just there are a lot of other great shooters out there.
Why have a great burger when you walk next door and get a great steak for the same price right? But who knows, maybe you love burgers more than me.
Bioshock Infinite
Amazing. AMAZING! Loved the combat, the choices Elizabeth's abilities offers the player, the graphics, the animations, the art style, the engine, the Skyline, the plot, the mystery of it all--man it all looks really good!
The only negative thing I'll say about Infinite is I'm worried the game could suffocate itself with its own scripting. There is a lot of it, at least the part that I saw, and I just hope it doesn't get in the way of itself.
XCOM
I saw this last year and liked what I saw. This year it looks even better as they showed off a new gameplay mechanic, and what's cool is it's actually related to the original XCOM series--Battle Points.
During realtime FPS combat you can pull a trigger to pause the combat and issue commands to your squadmates (like Mass Effect). These commands "cost" a certain amount of points, some more than others. It was conveyed to me that just running and gunning in XCOM will get you killed--period. It's essential to the gameplay, and it appears to add a thick layer to tactics to the combat. It looks like a hell of a lot of fun.
While in the field you can repurpose captured alien technology to your benefit, either back at the base for upgrades or on the field. During the demo a turret was captured by the team and the tech sucked up by some cool looking orb-thing. Later in the same level the team re-issued the turret to kill a bunch of attacking aliens.
It just looked like a lot of fun! I like the tactical combat, the 60's aesthetic, the unique look and sounds of the aliens and the idea of stealing the their technology and re-purposing it for weapons and upgrades.
Tomb Raider
Hoooooo boy did the conference demo scare the crap outta me. Though it looks absolutely gorgeous graphically, the idea of of TR being heavily influenced by Heavy Rain's QTEs just seems like a bad idea. What I saw consisted of the stage demo and then a section of the game that was much more traditional TR stuff. A young Lara running, jumping, climbing and solving environmental puzzles--just as we know her.
Since it's Lara's origin story, you're learning a bunch of new things and given new tools as your progress. Some guy who was on the ship with you before it wreck broke his leg, so you're on your own as he teaches you stuff. So it appears he stays at the basecamp while roam around the island trying to find a way off.
It looked more like what we all want in a proper TR reboot and basically made up for the first section of the demo. Lets hope they keep the key TR elements alive and minimize the QTE sections.
Bodycount
I'm not really sure what to say about Bodycount. The demonstration started out with "We wanted to make a game that was serious about it's guns!"
I'm probably being a bit too cynical here, but it wasn't the most intriguing way to start a demo at an E3 that's filled with games with guns.
Look. Bodycount looks like it could be fun. You run, you gun, you duck, you accumulate skulls (points) to upgrade weapons and abilities a la Bulletstorm depending on how well you do, but it was missing a hook to stand out. To be fair The demo I saw was a little early so the shooting wasn't as accurate as it should have been, the tech looked just ok, the AI was a little wonky, but they showed it and I've gotta be honest with what I saw.
Torchlight 2
Loved it! I played 2 of the 4 classes (The Outlander who uses ranged weapons & the Berserker who uses quick attacks and animal-themed magic) with another player, and its...well exactly what you would expect it to be--awesome. The graphics a little better, the art is a little more detailed, the level design is more interesting both indoors and outdoors, multi makes it even more fun to play and it looks like they're pretty much redesigning the entire GUI.
It's more Torchlight and it's going to be rad.
Skyrim
I don't even know where to begin with this game. Hrm, forgive as this will probably be a rambling of thoughts.
Lets start with the GUI ok? The map looks awesome! You hit a button and the camera shoots out to a birds-eye view of your surroundings, in-engine, showing you where you are (yes fast travel is still in). The inventory now makes sense as items are put into their respective categories like armor and clothes in "apparel" and edibles into "food". Magic and weapons have a "favorites" section for quick access that acts much like your web browser. The skill/perks dotting the galaxy was as AWESOME as you've heard!
We walked into the first town and though it looked good overall, some of the people models were a bit blah. The kids looked wooden and out of place in the beautifully modeled environments. I hope these were temporaries. The city looked more functional and realistic than the ones in Oblivion.
Horses are in! In the demo he jumped onto one and rode it up a mountain towards a dungeon (there are 150 unique dungeons in the game). The ride looks much much better than the tank-like horses in Oblivion, and looked to be more on par with what we had in Red Dead Redemption. As he approached it he forced two orcs to fight each other by casting "Enrage" on one of the guys.
Once we were in the dungeon I was blown away. It just looked like nothing I've ever seen in an RPG. The look of dark, wet cave with vines crawling around the walls were just stunningly detailed.
This was easily one of the best games I saw at the show.
Rage
I played Rage for 10 minutes on the PS3 and another 10 minutes on the X360, mainly because I knew some of you would ask for a comparisons. So yes they both run at a very smooth 60 frames per second, however the PS3 version was slightly less impressive. This was mainly due to the texture pop-in being slightly worse, but keep in mind it wasn't that big of a difference--I was really really looking.
One wonderful thing that really stood out was the architecture of the world. It's refreshingly different and well done! Things were laying around like they had a purpose. This is nitpicking but I feel worth mentioning: Some things in the environments were not as interactive as I had hoped. I walked up to some junk laying next to a building (gas cans and tires, that kind of thing) and tried to disturb them. I swung my fists and nothing happened. I shot them and nothing moved. I mean, Half-Life 2 had this kind of thing many years ago. It was kinda odd, but in the end doesn't really matter in terms of gameplay.
I'm just worried about this game. Though the gunplay and movement of the character in the environments are traditional id-great, there was just something kinda...meh about it all. In the end I don't know if it's going to be able keep us entertained beyond a few hours.
Prey 2
Shockingly interesting, however I'm not sold yet! I'm still not sure why it's tied to the Prey franchise at all. It was made clear you'll run into Tommy (protagonist from the first game) at some point.
The demo consisted of you, a bounty hunter, traversing the cyberpunk city's environments a la Mirrors Edge/Brink mechanics. Your goal is to earn credits by hunting down bounties. Each bounty can be approached in different ways. You can walk through the front door of a bar with guns blazing, sneak through the back door, take one of the target's friends hostage, or maybe even try to chat and reason with him.
I have to say, it looked better than I thought it would. The graphics were average at best, but I think it has potential.
Starhawk
One of my favorites at the show! I sat down with Dylan Jobe (President of Lightbox Studios) and we spent 30 minutes checking out the MP and SP portions of the game. The majority of the time spent checking out the SP campaign and it looks like this brilliant fusion of 3rd person shooter mechanics and Tower Defense gameplay.
The short of it past the narrative: In SP you capture a Rift (a blowhole of energy) from defending mercenaries, then call down a mining machine from one of your ships orbiting the planet (as it SLAMS down), then the mine converts the Rift energy into resource points. These points are used by you to built a defense against the onslaught of enemies. These enemies come at you in waves. You can build walls with turrets, a barracks to produce AIs for you, bunkers for you guys to populate and Hawks (think transformer).
You're alerted of the enemies heading your way very much like in a traditional Tower Defense game. This allows you to modify your defenses strategy.
Seriously looking forward to this title. It looks like a TON of fun! Oh, and there is 4 player coop in this mode too.)
Journey
I'm reluctant to give my impressions of this game, but only because I don't think the explosions of sounds & light in environments of E3 lead to a good demo of Journey. I'm very interested in sitting down in a quiet room and checking it out.
For whatever it's worth, I do like the premise. Making this sort of journey into the unknown, through the desert (and other unconfirmed environments that are NOT the desert) with another unknown person sounds interesting (however there is no local coop support). Yes your partner will come from the mystical Internet, and the only way you two will be able to communicate is by letting out a little chirpy noise (that also accompanied by graphical sonar effect.)
If you wish to play alone (IE: No internets), you would simple log out of PSN.
Uncharted (Vita)
It an Uncharted game on an awesome portable gaming system. The graphics look almost PS3 quality. Yup, I'm just not sure if I want that personally but for those that do--it looks good.
[/b]Ruin[/b] (PS3 & Vita)
It's Torchlight with destructible environments. The guys behind this game also made Pain on the PS3. These guys wanted to pull that physics engine into this game and make something different for the dungeon crawling genre.
When I asked what specifically this would do to differentiate itself with the use of the physics engine, I was told mostly environmental destruction and some puzzles.
I played it and it seemed fun. I was successfully able to play a game on the PS3, save it, pick the Vita, load the save and continue on from where I left off. It was kinda cool. When asked about the cloud saving process and if the players would need a Playstation Premium account, the guy said it wasn't necessarily and would all be handled by Sony.
I moved on to comparisons to Torchlight and Diablo and he stated Ruin is being made from the ground up to be playable and optimized on the console.
Shadow of Colossus HD
Played it in 3D and hated it. It was flickery and ineffective, but this could have been the TVs fault. So I turned off the 3D in the game, took the glasses off (pissing off the PR guy) and then played it at a very smooth framerate. It felt great! Reeeeeally looking forward to this release.
Pixeljunk Sidescroller
Very fun! Loved the retro look. Will buy day 1.
Space Marine
The feel of the protagonist is heavy and powerful. I kinda felt like an agile tank. The shooting felt precise, the enemies were tough to take down, the melee was rewarding to use and the pacing of the action fast.
The graphics were a little bland, but the framerate was solid.
Here are the games I either watched someone else play or saw video of gameplay:
Saint's Row The Third
Goddamn I'm excited for this game! The demo showed off one of the missions in the game where you're robbing a bank, and the banter between the characters was surprisingly funny and well acted--in a slap-stick sort of way.
The graphics are better and the framerate more solid. The series has now been elevated to a level of extreme absurdity--and I mean that in a good way. At one point the guy grabbed a purple dildo and attacked a bunch of homeless people, then hopped into a car called the Man-cannon sucking up a bunch of pedestrians and shooting them across the city. Finally he hopped into a jet, flew around the city firing missles and cars--it was awesome.
Because the tone of gaming in 2011 appears to be leaning on a more serious note--and that's fine for the most part--I think we're in need of a game to bring some levity to the atmosphere.
An open world with LOTS of wacky, crazy stuff to do!
Dragon's Dogma
I'm not sure about this one either. I saw the trailers and it looked pretty cool (hate the name though!), but something seemed off. I think it was the action. It lacked the impact and furious pacing I was kind of expecting. Frankly it looked a little boring.
But to be fair I didn't see enough of the game to really give it a fair shot so please take it with a grain of salt.
Dead Island
Saw someone play this game for about 10 minutes and it looks like SO MUCH FUN! An open world zombie game with leveling, drop-in-and-out coop, solid graphics and framerate. It's like the game I've always wanted Dead Rising to be!
Resistance 3
It looks like Resistance...with better graphics.
Batman Arkham City
Oh my god I want this now! The open world is (mostly) available to the player from the beginning (though I did see some restricted areas on the map), lots of hidden goodies to find, more Riddler, all the weapons we had in the first game are immediately available from the beginning and there is NO MP!
Ok, if anyone has any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them. With a newborn and a full time job on top of all this I hope you cut me some slack for the type-o's.
Mass Effect 3
Going into this demo I was worried. Not necessarily for the game as a whole--it's safe to say the running & gunning would be great--but I was concerned about the RPG aspect. I'm a HUGE fan of ME1. In fact it's my favorite in the series, despite my adoration for ME2. But in recent interviews Bioware Executive Producer Casey Hudson sorta breezed over questions regarding the RPG elements of ME3.
Well my friends, I'm happy to say in the middle of the demo the character screen was brought up for just a few seconds and I can confirm deeper RPG elements have returned. I saw additional skill/powers available to Shepard, one of which was "Fortitude". There also appeared to be a few disciplines of sorts to choose from near the bottom of the screen. Shepard could focus on social skills, weapon damage or Biotics. It looked great and made me smile!
In the demo it was really apparent that Bioware is going for massive scale with ME3. There were HUGE set-pieces which really conveyed how large the scale of destruction is in the game. The graphics were surprisingly improved over ME2 in terms of texture quality and post-processing effects.
The Omni-blade is awesome! It's a melee weapon that hits hard & fast, and it looks like it feels great to use. But most importantly it will add an effective melee mechanic to the game.
At the end of the demo I ran up to Casey to ask him a few questions despite some PR folks shushing me out:
So a new composer? "It's Mansell, yes."
Will there be an inventory in ME3 similar to ME1? "It's going to be more like ME2."
Will the player accumulate XP and have the ability to level up in the middle of a mission a la ME1? "It's going to be more like ME2, that's what we're going for there."
One of my biggest gripes about ME2 were the "Level Complete" screens at the end of missions. They were abrupt andI felt sorta unnecessary. "Yeah, I think we're going to have something similar to that but it's probably going to be more subtle."
I shook his hand, wished him luck and ran out.
Aliens Colonial Marines
I have to admit, though I'm a big fan of both Alien and Aliens, I'm a little fatigued with the franchise, so going into the demo I had low expectations. Surprisingly the game looks pretty good, but I don't know if it's going to be enjoyed by anyone that's not a die-hard fan of the movies (and hey, that might be ok with Gearbox too).
Randy Pichford (President of Gearbox Software) stated the tech for the game was built from the ground up for the title because they needed an engine that rendered lighting really well. It seems to have paided off too! The lighting looked fantastic and the models of the Aliens were essentially the best I've seen. Unfortunately the environments paled in comparison to these two things and stuck out to me. I mean, it's not that the game looked particularly bad, it's just there are a lot of other great shooters out there.
Why have a great burger when you walk next door and get a great steak for the same price right? But who knows, maybe you love burgers more than me.
Bioshock Infinite
Amazing. AMAZING! Loved the combat, the choices Elizabeth's abilities offers the player, the graphics, the animations, the art style, the engine, the Skyline, the plot, the mystery of it all--man it all looks really good!
The only negative thing I'll say about Infinite is I'm worried the game could suffocate itself with its own scripting. There is a lot of it, at least the part that I saw, and I just hope it doesn't get in the way of itself.
XCOM
I saw this last year and liked what I saw. This year it looks even better as they showed off a new gameplay mechanic, and what's cool is it's actually related to the original XCOM series--Battle Points.
During realtime FPS combat you can pull a trigger to pause the combat and issue commands to your squadmates (like Mass Effect). These commands "cost" a certain amount of points, some more than others. It was conveyed to me that just running and gunning in XCOM will get you killed--period. It's essential to the gameplay, and it appears to add a thick layer to tactics to the combat. It looks like a hell of a lot of fun.
While in the field you can repurpose captured alien technology to your benefit, either back at the base for upgrades or on the field. During the demo a turret was captured by the team and the tech sucked up by some cool looking orb-thing. Later in the same level the team re-issued the turret to kill a bunch of attacking aliens.
It just looked like a lot of fun! I like the tactical combat, the 60's aesthetic, the unique look and sounds of the aliens and the idea of stealing the their technology and re-purposing it for weapons and upgrades.
Tomb Raider
Hoooooo boy did the conference demo scare the crap outta me. Though it looks absolutely gorgeous graphically, the idea of of TR being heavily influenced by Heavy Rain's QTEs just seems like a bad idea. What I saw consisted of the stage demo and then a section of the game that was much more traditional TR stuff. A young Lara running, jumping, climbing and solving environmental puzzles--just as we know her.
Since it's Lara's origin story, you're learning a bunch of new things and given new tools as your progress. Some guy who was on the ship with you before it wreck broke his leg, so you're on your own as he teaches you stuff. So it appears he stays at the basecamp while roam around the island trying to find a way off.
It looked more like what we all want in a proper TR reboot and basically made up for the first section of the demo. Lets hope they keep the key TR elements alive and minimize the QTE sections.
Bodycount
I'm not really sure what to say about Bodycount. The demonstration started out with "We wanted to make a game that was serious about it's guns!"
I'm probably being a bit too cynical here, but it wasn't the most intriguing way to start a demo at an E3 that's filled with games with guns.
Look. Bodycount looks like it could be fun. You run, you gun, you duck, you accumulate skulls (points) to upgrade weapons and abilities a la Bulletstorm depending on how well you do, but it was missing a hook to stand out. To be fair The demo I saw was a little early so the shooting wasn't as accurate as it should have been, the tech looked just ok, the AI was a little wonky, but they showed it and I've gotta be honest with what I saw.
Torchlight 2
Loved it! I played 2 of the 4 classes (The Outlander who uses ranged weapons & the Berserker who uses quick attacks and animal-themed magic) with another player, and its...well exactly what you would expect it to be--awesome. The graphics a little better, the art is a little more detailed, the level design is more interesting both indoors and outdoors, multi makes it even more fun to play and it looks like they're pretty much redesigning the entire GUI.
It's more Torchlight and it's going to be rad.
Skyrim
I don't even know where to begin with this game. Hrm, forgive as this will probably be a rambling of thoughts.
Lets start with the GUI ok? The map looks awesome! You hit a button and the camera shoots out to a birds-eye view of your surroundings, in-engine, showing you where you are (yes fast travel is still in). The inventory now makes sense as items are put into their respective categories like armor and clothes in "apparel" and edibles into "food". Magic and weapons have a "favorites" section for quick access that acts much like your web browser. The skill/perks dotting the galaxy was as AWESOME as you've heard!
We walked into the first town and though it looked good overall, some of the people models were a bit blah. The kids looked wooden and out of place in the beautifully modeled environments. I hope these were temporaries. The city looked more functional and realistic than the ones in Oblivion.
Horses are in! In the demo he jumped onto one and rode it up a mountain towards a dungeon (there are 150 unique dungeons in the game). The ride looks much much better than the tank-like horses in Oblivion, and looked to be more on par with what we had in Red Dead Redemption. As he approached it he forced two orcs to fight each other by casting "Enrage" on one of the guys.
Once we were in the dungeon I was blown away. It just looked like nothing I've ever seen in an RPG. The look of dark, wet cave with vines crawling around the walls were just stunningly detailed.
This was easily one of the best games I saw at the show.
Rage
I played Rage for 10 minutes on the PS3 and another 10 minutes on the X360, mainly because I knew some of you would ask for a comparisons. So yes they both run at a very smooth 60 frames per second, however the PS3 version was slightly less impressive. This was mainly due to the texture pop-in being slightly worse, but keep in mind it wasn't that big of a difference--I was really really looking.
One wonderful thing that really stood out was the architecture of the world. It's refreshingly different and well done! Things were laying around like they had a purpose. This is nitpicking but I feel worth mentioning: Some things in the environments were not as interactive as I had hoped. I walked up to some junk laying next to a building (gas cans and tires, that kind of thing) and tried to disturb them. I swung my fists and nothing happened. I shot them and nothing moved. I mean, Half-Life 2 had this kind of thing many years ago. It was kinda odd, but in the end doesn't really matter in terms of gameplay.
I'm just worried about this game. Though the gunplay and movement of the character in the environments are traditional id-great, there was just something kinda...meh about it all. In the end I don't know if it's going to be able keep us entertained beyond a few hours.
Prey 2
Shockingly interesting, however I'm not sold yet! I'm still not sure why it's tied to the Prey franchise at all. It was made clear you'll run into Tommy (protagonist from the first game) at some point.
The demo consisted of you, a bounty hunter, traversing the cyberpunk city's environments a la Mirrors Edge/Brink mechanics. Your goal is to earn credits by hunting down bounties. Each bounty can be approached in different ways. You can walk through the front door of a bar with guns blazing, sneak through the back door, take one of the target's friends hostage, or maybe even try to chat and reason with him.
I have to say, it looked better than I thought it would. The graphics were average at best, but I think it has potential.
Starhawk
One of my favorites at the show! I sat down with Dylan Jobe (President of Lightbox Studios) and we spent 30 minutes checking out the MP and SP portions of the game. The majority of the time spent checking out the SP campaign and it looks like this brilliant fusion of 3rd person shooter mechanics and Tower Defense gameplay.
The short of it past the narrative: In SP you capture a Rift (a blowhole of energy) from defending mercenaries, then call down a mining machine from one of your ships orbiting the planet (as it SLAMS down), then the mine converts the Rift energy into resource points. These points are used by you to built a defense against the onslaught of enemies. These enemies come at you in waves. You can build walls with turrets, a barracks to produce AIs for you, bunkers for you guys to populate and Hawks (think transformer).
You're alerted of the enemies heading your way very much like in a traditional Tower Defense game. This allows you to modify your defenses strategy.
Seriously looking forward to this title. It looks like a TON of fun! Oh, and there is 4 player coop in this mode too.
)Journey
I'm reluctant to give my impressions of this game, but only because I don't think the explosions of sounds & light in environments of E3 lead to a good demo of Journey. I'm very interested in sitting down in a quiet room and checking it out.
For whatever it's worth, I do like the premise. Making this sort of journey into the unknown, through the desert (and other unconfirmed environments that are NOT the desert) with another unknown person sounds interesting (however there is no local coop support). Yes your partner will come from the mystical Internet, and the only way you two will be able to communicate is by letting out a little chirpy noise (that also accompanied by graphical sonar effect.)
If you wish to play alone (IE: No internets), you would simple log out of PSN.
Uncharted (Vita)
It an Uncharted game on an awesome portable gaming system. The graphics look almost PS3 quality. Yup, I'm just not sure if I want that personally but for those that do--it looks good.
[/b]Ruin[/b] (PS3 & Vita)
It's Torchlight with destructible environments. The guys behind this game also made Pain on the PS3. These guys wanted to pull that physics engine into this game and make something different for the dungeon crawling genre.
When I asked what specifically this would do to differentiate itself with the use of the physics engine, I was told mostly environmental destruction and some puzzles.
I played it and it seemed fun. I was successfully able to play a game on the PS3, save it, pick the Vita, load the save and continue on from where I left off. It was kinda cool. When asked about the cloud saving process and if the players would need a Playstation Premium account, the guy said it wasn't necessarily and would all be handled by Sony.
I moved on to comparisons to Torchlight and Diablo and he stated Ruin is being made from the ground up to be playable and optimized on the console.
Shadow of Colossus HD
Played it in 3D and hated it. It was flickery and ineffective, but this could have been the TVs fault. So I turned off the 3D in the game, took the glasses off (pissing off the PR guy) and then played it at a very smooth framerate. It felt great! Reeeeeally looking forward to this release.
Pixeljunk Sidescroller
Very fun! Loved the retro look. Will buy day 1.
Space Marine
The feel of the protagonist is heavy and powerful. I kinda felt like an agile tank. The shooting felt precise, the enemies were tough to take down, the melee was rewarding to use and the pacing of the action fast.
The graphics were a little bland, but the framerate was solid.
Here are the games I either watched someone else play or saw video of gameplay:
Saint's Row The Third
Goddamn I'm excited for this game! The demo showed off one of the missions in the game where you're robbing a bank, and the banter between the characters was surprisingly funny and well acted--in a slap-stick sort of way.
The graphics are better and the framerate more solid. The series has now been elevated to a level of extreme absurdity--and I mean that in a good way. At one point the guy grabbed a purple dildo and attacked a bunch of homeless people, then hopped into a car called the Man-cannon sucking up a bunch of pedestrians and shooting them across the city. Finally he hopped into a jet, flew around the city firing missles and cars--it was awesome.
Because the tone of gaming in 2011 appears to be leaning on a more serious note--and that's fine for the most part--I think we're in need of a game to bring some levity to the atmosphere.
An open world with LOTS of wacky, crazy stuff to do!
Dragon's Dogma
I'm not sure about this one either. I saw the trailers and it looked pretty cool (hate the name though!), but something seemed off. I think it was the action. It lacked the impact and furious pacing I was kind of expecting. Frankly it looked a little boring.
But to be fair I didn't see enough of the game to really give it a fair shot so please take it with a grain of salt.
Dead Island
Saw someone play this game for about 10 minutes and it looks like SO MUCH FUN! An open world zombie game with leveling, drop-in-and-out coop, solid graphics and framerate. It's like the game I've always wanted Dead Rising to be!
Resistance 3
It looks like Resistance...with better graphics.
Batman Arkham City
Oh my god I want this now! The open world is (mostly) available to the player from the beginning (though I did see some restricted areas on the map), lots of hidden goodies to find, more Riddler, all the weapons we had in the first game are immediately available from the beginning and there is NO MP!
Ok, if anyone has any questions feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them. With a newborn and a full time job on top of all this I hope you cut me some slack for the type-o's.
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