E3 2012

Took a bunch of crappy pictures with my Nikon today...meh the lens was not optimal maybe I'll post later.

Meanwhile, today I saw a few things:

1) The Last of Us "alternative" demo in a Naughty Dog meeting room up stairs. Studio heads and leads/devs were there talking but mainly showing the same 7 minute sequence but played differently. The game really looks even better because the enemies totally respond in a believable way and it doesn't feel as scripted as Uncharted 3 (and I love the Uncharted series as a whole). The characters are really excellent...it's the little moments.

2) Star Wars 1313....another meeting room demo for press/analysts...except this felt more like a powerpoint presentation. The Lucas people talked half the time about how LucasArts and ILM and Skywalker Sound and etc. all collaborated. They actually listed bullet points and showed b-roll of the dev process. WTF? Anyway, they had at least 5 or 6 minutes of b-roll on their mocap and facial mocap like it was groundbreaking tech or something. They said how much emotional engagement this builds with the characters. Finally they played the PC tech demo which they said was essentially preproduction and no where close to alpha let alone beta. And you know what? Aside from nice lighting and decent graphics, it looked liked TURD SANDWICH. Sorry, but the characters felt as flat and poorly acted as the characters in the Star Wars prequel movies. The gameplay wasn't that inspiring. Overall, I was so unimpressed...but at the same time I'm feeling like they know it wasn't that impressive and the final game may actually be better. It was sorta refreshing to see M-rated star wars action, though.

3) Spec Ops: The Line looked good. I didn't get to play it but I'm intrigued though I don't think it will be as awesome as I once was postulating.

4) Aliens CM: MP was actually fun to watch. Tomorrow I hope to actually play it!

5) God of War Ascention. I love God of War so this was fun but if you're not a fan then it's more of the same.

6) WBIE's new LoL knockoff based on Lord of the Rings. Guardians or something. Was actually not bad.

7) LEGO Lord of the Rings...I'm pretty excited about this. My daughter is too young but my 7 year old nephew will go NUTS over this. Has actual movie dialog...a first for these LEGO movie tie ins

More to come...

OH and by the way Sony, thanks for the free Vita (loaner) but how about some fucking GRAN TURISMO FOR THIS THING? FFS!!!!

Quote from ChopperDave

Did you get invited to the South Park demo?

Nope. Anyone else see that? I admit I'm actually intrigued just because I've loved the show for years.

Hmm....

The Last of Us was probably the most exciting from Day 1 since I am a biased fan of the Uncharted series.

Today I saw:

1) The gameplay demo of Beyond: Two Souls from Quantic Dream. Not unlike Naughty Dog, QD has taken its game tech to a similar evolution. Amazing visuals, and Ellen Page seems to be doing a good job acting for the main character from what I can tell. The only issue was there was a lot of Bourne-esque shaky cam but I think playing it is less annoying than watching someone else play it. I think if you liked Heavy Rain you'll probably really like this one.

2) Borderlands 2....and yes I am a very biased Borderlands 1 fan. I have to say, this game was incredibly fun to play. They had a 2 person coop demo of some level in the campaign. Having not actually played the original game in over 8 or 9 months, it took me about 5 seconds to recall how to play this game and it was like putting on comfortable shoes. I really like how it auto loots common items (money, ammo, health) and you only have to actually click on the weapons. A small but nice improvement, though it's not like that system was totally broken in BL1. Anyway, pretty sure this is worth a pre-order.

3) Metal Gear Rising Revengeance...bear with me...but they actually only had a playable tutorial demo. I was skeptical but it was fun. Raiden doesn't feel like douche...in fact he feels pretty badass. The sword play and slicing is incredibly satisfying. There is some stealth but it is primarily an action game. No, he isn't Snake. But it feels waaaaay more accessible than Bayonetta or Devil May Cry simply because it doesn't have all the trippy supernatural stuff.

4) Hawken. The dev team was really cool. They are using Unreal engine and it looks pretty polished for a pretty small team. Playing it was a but tough since I play lefty and was too lazy to reconfigure from righty mouse/kb setup. Anyway, it's slower than Halo MP but faster than say, something like World of Tanks. It's just multiplayer but it's definitely worth checking out the closed beta if you can get in. They said October for that and of course open beta on Dec 12 of this year. Will be interesting to see how F2P model works for them. They also said it should run well on low end / mid tier systems. And I believe it since the visuals weren't the sharpest in the world. However, the art design was very cool with that greenish take on District 9 thing as we all know about by now. They also said most newcomers take about 20 to 30 minutes to really get proficient with it. You can sprint and jump/fly using a limited powersupply that auto recharges when you are not using it. That was the nice (but obvious) way to balance it but it works. I used a mech with a gattling gun and a rocket...standard basic loadout. You also don't auto heal like in Halo or CoD or every other shooter now. Instead you have to find a corner to hide in and run the repair process, but you cant move and you are totally vulnerable again.

Otherwise was stuck in meetings.

Tomorrow I am going to see MSFT, Sony and Nintendo booths up close, as well as bug Mikey to sneak me into the A:CM multiplayer which I watched again for a little while. Looking sharp.

So as of now the most fun I had was definitely playing Borderlands 2. And they gave everyone a free T-shirt! I have been bought with swag!