Something like an E3 recap... -- Oddfellow's FFVII & Z-Files Discussion Board

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Date Posted: 11:08:21 05/23/01 Wed
Author: Saint Faucet
Author Host/IP: slip-32-101-147-209.ca.us.prserv.net / 32.101.147.209
Subject: Something like an E3 recap...

Hi all.

Thanks to a few real life distractions (don't you hate those?), I'm a little late on bringing you my impressions of this year's show-of-shows for our industry. Sorry about that.

Anyways, this year I was able to attend E3 for 5 hours on Saturday. Checking the chart, that's up 2 hours from last year's timelog. Maybe next year I'll actually be able to wander for a whole day! Grumble grumble... Usual disclaimer of "I didn't have much time to check out everything" applies.

1) I HATE SEGA.

I never thought I'd let those words escape my mouth. Anyone who knows me, knows I've supported them since the 8-bit days of the Sega Master System. But not anymore. Aside from the obvious reasons (no more Dreamcast console production as of this year and no more Dreamcast game production as of March 2002), Sega decided to go the extra distance and build the world's most expensive fort to keep the general tradeshow attendees out of their booth. Yes, Sega had their own version of the Thunderdrome surrounding their booth. The outside had flatscreen monitors showing upcoming games. The inside had... I don't know, because I wasn't allowed in. It could have been a lawnchair sitting in the middle of a wide-open space for all I know. Needless to say, I was quite ticked off. I really wanted to see the games they will be producing for the next year (Toejam and Earl 3 and PSO v2.0 in particular)! Sigh. Oh well... least I still have Capcom.

2) CAPCOM VS SNK 2

I like the changes they made to the system. No longer do I have to lament the fact that King is stuck in the Hell that is level 1. After you choose your 1-3 characters from up-to 44 choices, you select the power ratio of the selected fighters. If you have two characters, you can either let them both be level 2s or you can alter the ratio so that one character is a level 1 and one is a level 3. It's a great update to the system. There are also now 6 different grooves to choose from (though only the traditional Capcom and SNK ones were active when I got the chance to play) and I'm happy to announce that the Samurai Shodown characters have officially joined the ranks of starting, playable characters (at least Haohmaru and Nakaruru were available on the machine I used... sadly I didn't see my favorite umbrella-toting character, Hisame Shizumaru). Bad news for me: Capcom vs SNK 2 is only announced for PS2 thus far. Sigh. Mayhaps I'll have to break down and buy one afterall. :-(

3) X-BOX? WHAT X-BOX?

So I wandered around Microsoft's booth looking for the promised machine. No dice. Sure, there were a lot of the games on display, but the actual, physical X-box was not visible. At all. According to one of my friends, the people at the MS Info counter were not helpful in pointing him towards a display model either (and actually deflected him off onto other people to talk with who further passed him off to others). He said he finally found 1 display model sitting inside a glass case inside the Microsoft store at the center of their booth. When I checked the store out, it was closed to the general public and I wasn't able to get in.

4) X-BOX: I DON'T REALLY SUCK AT TONY HAWK, DO I?

I hate the X-box controller. It's like the oversized, bastard spawn of a Dreamcast controller and a Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad (the old boomerang style one). To make matters worse, the ABXY buttons on the right side are too close together. I was barely able to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2x. I could do a ton of "No Complies", but that was about it. I was never able to get a grind off nor was I able to complete any sort of grab trick. Everytime I thought I was pressing one of the buttons on the controller, it turned out my finger had slipped to a different button and I'd bail. Much blood was spilled over that nightclub level's floor and unfortunately, I didn't have a single cool-looking trick to show for it. Sigh. I fear ever having to play something like SSX on that damn controller.
Final Score: X-Box controller - 1 Aaron - 0

5) SUPER-HERO SHOWDOWN

I played the upcoming "Freedom Force" PC game. It's a realtime strategy game where you control a team of superheroes trying to protect a city. The game was a lot of fun. You could toss off a ton of spells, blasts and powers at the bad guys. If that didn't work, you could pick up a car and toss that! The environment was completely usable and destructible. I'm definitely keeping an eye out for this one.

6) I MISSED WHAT?

Twas a sad day when I realized on the car trip home that I had in fact completely missed the Konami booth. I deserve any ridicule you can toss at me.

7) SQUARED CIRCLE

I wanted to go into Square's booth, but I couldn't. In a stroke of genius on someone's part (I say sarcastically), Square decided to show some footage of the upcoming Final Fantasy movie. The problem? The footage was only going to be shown at 3:00pm, 3:20pm and 3:40pm on Saturday. The show runs from about 9:00am to 4:00pm. This meant that a ton of fanboys and fangirls were lined up three hours early to see less than 20 minutes of footage. This also meant that a wall of people was wrapped around the Square booth, making it difficult for anyone to get in. I did see the character designs for that upcoming joint Square-Disney RPG (and no, it doesn't feature the Mouse) which do look interesting. After about two minutes at the outer edge of the booth, I finally shrugged, grabbed the Maxim cover poster of Final Fantasy the movie's Aki in swimsuit, and headed elsewhere.

8) YOU WANT THE GAMECUBE? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE GAMECUBE!

Nintendo's booth was a madhouse. It was nearly impossible to walk through thanks to the hordes of people in there. I barely caught a glimpse of the games as I tried to navigate through. The new Smash Brothers game looked surprising like the old Smash Brothers game (take that as you will). The new Star Fox game looked awesome (lots of dinos). Star Wars: Rogue Leader was looking good until I got bumped out of the way. If the booth crowd was any indication, I'd say Nintendo has a hit on their hands (as I predicted). (This is non-E3 news, but the rumour mill says Nintendo will announce the street price of the Cube tomorrow at $199.99US. That puts it $100US under both the X-box and the PS2 (saying that Sony doesn't drop the price as expected).)

9) NO NEVERWINTER NIGHTS FOR YOU!

Taking a cue from Sega, Interplay decided to squirrel themselves away into some dark chamber of a conference room and stick a friendly group of bouncers outside their doors. As such, aside from a video screen running a loop of their game previews, there was nothing playable and no one to talk to. Blah. Least the footage of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance looked good.

10) CRASH AND BURN, BABY!

So I wandered into Acclaim's small, upstairs room and saddled up in front of a console to check out their upcoming "Shadowman 2" game. I selected "Start Game" and proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. The load time was worse than Quake 3: Revolution on the PS2. One of the company reps explained it away as the game being an early, early alpha build. So after 5 minutes of waiting, the game level loads. I was in control of Shadowman's 'monster' form and I was beating the crap out of the other 2-3 creatures in the room... until everything above the status bar went black. Again the rep made the excuse that the game was really early in its life cycle. I guess it's an understandable excuse (and from my experience as a game tester, a valid one). The thing is that I left wondering why they'd be trying to show a playable version at the show if it wasn't really playable. They probably would have been better off with a video demo.

11) ALL DUKE, ALL THE TIME

So I now have in my possession a DVD from GODgames containing footage of both Duke Nukem Forever and Max Payne. Duke looks like its going to be a blast. The footage mostly showed off the vehicles rather than the guns. From what I saw, you'll be riding a boat, an airfighter and a donkey at various points in the game. The voice acting wasn't bad and lots of stuff blew up very nicely (which for a first-person shooter is always a necessity).

12) APTLY NAMED

The Max Payne footage became very annoying, very quickly. It seems the game makes use of the bullet-time Matrix effect where everything stops/slows down while the camera pans around and the bullets leave trails in the air as they move. This game seems to use the effect everytime the main character fires his gun. I decided to look into the future to see what my final take on this game would be. Apparentally, I pick the game up off the shelf, time freezes to a crawl, the camera spins around in front of me before time resumes and I put the game back on the shelf.

13) GUNDAM GONE BAD

I stopped at the Bandai booth to check for Digimon stuff and instead found a new Gundam game for the PS2. Unfortunately, the game controls are bad. Really bad. I had a hard time doing even the simple tasks (like walking) with the protoganist's mech. Fighting was a nightmare. I'm not sure if the person who was playing before me used up all the major ammo or if the weaponry just plain sucked, but all I was left to fight with were a plasma sword and a small vulcan machinegun (that seemed to do nothing more than annoy enemies rather than damage them). I kept trying to use the right analog stick to aim, but it just seemed to move the external camera around my Gundam. I killed off two enemies with a lot of difficulty before setting the controller down and walking away. This is one title I will not be purchasing should I finally pick up the PS2.

14) FINAL FANTASY X

If I could read Japanese, I'd let you know what happened. Instead, I'll just say that the Guardian Force summons look cool. Unfortunately, I think it's made by the same team that did FF8, so I'm not setting my expectations of it that high.

15) STOP SIGNS ARE RED TOO

I was able to play a multiplayer game of THQ/Volition's upcoming "Red Faction" on the PS2. Initially, I was impressed. The level I played was pretty large and sort of reminded me of some boards from the N64's "Goldeneye" game. The graphics weren't overwhelming, but I've always been more into gameplay anyway. The controls were easy to use and the weapon selection seemed quite large. I thought I was having fun until I was hit by the railgun. So I respawned and immediately died again... to the railgun. Unfortunately, I found out very quickly that he who controls the railgun wins the game. The gun is one of the few weapons that makes use of the new "Geo-Mod technology" that allows for destructible 3D environments. You can use a heat sensor on the railgun to track enemies and shoot them through walls. While that feature is pretty cool the first few times you use it, it gets cheap and old very quickly. On top of that, I don't think I really used the other weapons (traditional machineguns, sniper rifle, etc.) more than for a few seconds each. I failed to notice any real difference in the accuracy or power between each gun. Unless the weapons get balanced out or the single-player game is revealed to be the most phenomenal storyline ever, I'm going to have to recommend this one as (at most) a rental.

16) LEFTOVERS

Not much else left to report, so here are a few quick takes:
- "Simpsons Road Rage": Could it be as good as "Mario Kart" or as bad as "Southpark Rally"? I hope it's the former.
- "Batman: Gotham": I hope it plays as great as it looks.
- "Simsville": The evil, addictive, waste-of-time moves online. Fear it.
- "Mechcommander 2": Looked good. Didn't get to play it thanks to the line.
- "Empire Earth": I think this is going to be a must-buy for us Age of Empires fans (since it was made by the same lead designer).

That's about it for now. I'm probably forgetting a lot of stuff. Ah well. Questions, comments, ridicules for missing the Konami booth are expected and welcome.

- Aaron (is still ticked he didn't win the limited edition "Lunar" Nall UFO plush doll from the Working Designs prize-grab-machine)

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Replies:

Observations -- Achilles, 12:14:59 05/23/01 Wed
- Answers -- Saint Faucet, 16:25:28 05/29/01 Tue