On the E3 trail: 1st day roundup part 1
It’s been a long slog to get up to date with all the 1st day happennings at E3 but the new PC is up & running like a new PC should be.
If you find any blanks in Sweet Flag’s E3 coverage be sure to put things straight & leave a comment!
Let’s look over some of the highlights from the numerous press conferences of the 1st day…
Anyway games has write ups for both the Sony press conference & Microsoft’s press conference both of which were missed here due to a lack of a working PC.
EA
Buzz words: SimAnimals, Spore, Sims³, Dead Space, Mirror’s Edge, Left for Dead, Rage.
Non appearence: Warhammer Online
One title that really looks much better than I expected(& better than it’s name!) is Dead Space. The no HUD display with health being indicated on the player’s backpack, really aids the immersion level of the gaming experience. Graphically it looks awesome with some excellent use of lighting & plenty of detail in the environments. The effects of zero gravity were hinted at being a in-game mechanic but this wasn’t highlighted in the following demo:
Dead Space – released 21st October on PS3/PC & XBOX360 formats
UBISOFT
Buzz words: Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, Prince of Persia, Tom Clancy’s End War, Farcry 2.
Farcry 2 boasts a fully open world covering around 50 km², allowing a player to mastermind their own plans to achieve objectives in the game. I haven’t played the first Farcry & so can’t comment on that past title but Ubisoft look to have a very good looking franchise here in Farcry. The new game engine, Dunia, looks very striking & is a departure from the original CryENGINE.
Prince of Persia…what can I say?! Majestic in style & scope, this debut on the next gen. consoles will hopefully take the innovation of Assassins Creed to the next evolutionary step.
E3 demo walkthrough
The Save Me mechanic that allows seamless gameplay even after death, is a real break from the die=respawn/do you wish to continue? game mechanic used in just about every game you can think of.
With the introduction of Elika as an active gaming partner to the Prince, the player gains a number of benefits during gameplay. One of these is the fore-mentioned, Save Me, as Elika will be the active ingredient that makes this workable in Prince of Persia. A close up will be shown of Elika coming to the Princes aid, each time he succumbs to one of the games destructive elements. Never too far behind, Elika will also be on hand to aid the Prince in other ways: via combat moves or the intricate acrobatics that are needed to be performed to get around in the now non-linear world.
Personally, Prince of Persia was the game that fueled my excitement the most from what I have seen in the E3 press conferences & so to round things off nicely, here’s probably the best game trailer I have seen so far at the event:
July 16, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Warhammer did release a new trailer.
The end of that Dead Space demo is awesome. From that and other videos I’ve seen, I get the impression that whenever you die in that game, you’ll die dramatically. I don’t normally play horror games, so I’m sure I’ll die a lot.
From the way the dev described Prince of Persia’s climbing and acrobatics, it sounds like they tried to make it more similar to Assassin’s Creed. I never liked trying over and over to get the perfect jumps and all. I’d probably pass on this game if it didn’t have an open world. I’m a stickler for replayability.
July 16, 2008 at 11:44 pm
The dev’s made it clear that Prince of Persia will not need a hardcore approach to the game just to get the best from it, so I think you’ll be safe Aaron.
Man, everytime I feel convinced about Warhammer Online one of those types of trailers gets released. They really do nothing to enhance the game to the player…from that trailer it may as well have been a WoW promo video!