E3 2009 Wednesday Summary

Wednesday at the Electronic Entertainment Expo was filled with appointments with various developers and publishers. I was able to see some titles behind closed doors, though a lot of them were demo only, meaning I wasn’t able to get a hands on feel for some of the titles.

It is looking like the rest of the year and early next year’s titles are looking solid, though finding out the amount of time between a lot of these titles (meaning now until release) is going to be a difficult one.

My first appointment of the day was with Sega. I was guided into a room to watch the Marines demo of the Aliens vs Predator, developed by Rebellion, developers of the Jaguar and PC versions of the titles from back in the past.

The game takes 30 years after Alien 3. The story is about a colony on a remote planet that disappears from contact. It turns out there is a Predator pyramid on the same planet, complete with Alien eggs, much like the first Aliens vs Predator movie. When the colony can’t be raised, they send in the Space Marines.

The demo was still a work in progress using a proprietary engine dubbed Rebellion. The hud has the motion tracker from Aliens as a radar, showing the pulses just like the movie. The pulse rifle is recreated exactly how it was in Aliens 2, where most of the reference comes from.

Tim Jones, Head of Art and Design, mentioned that 20th Century Fox opened the vaults and gave the team the sound effects from the movies. Dynamic lighting was present, throwing flares under a stairwell showed the streams of orange light showing through the steps.

The title is a FPS, and the Aliens move with a janky swiftness, so keeping them targeted was difficult, but combat was solid. Acid from the Aliens affect the environment and can also kill you if you dispatch them too close.

The game is to be released in early 2010, with three single player campaigns opened from the start. Key events cross between all three races and the overlap is during those big events.

The title is coming out for PC, PS3, and Xbox360.

The second title I saw was Alpha Protocol. It appears to be a RPG with a spy theme. Most character customization takes place on a PDA, which controls all aspects of character modification. The character model can be changed at anytime during the game, creating disguises or just strange character models. The weapons can be modified as well using the dollars earned on missions to customize accessories or visual look.

There is a dynamic dialogue system which effects character interactions and the mission structure is open, so completing missions in different orders create different events. The alpha build I saw was good, though combat was a bit too straightforward. It bordered on ten percent cover, ninety percent run-and-gun. The game was still in alpha so there is a lot of time to polish this part of the game.

I went to Activision next. The first game I saw was Singularity, a sci-fi fps. The UI of the game is similar to BioShock, to the point where the time mechanic animations almost copy the hand animations from BioShock.

The story is an island during Stalin’s reign was a place of experimentation. A catastrophic event occurred on the island, and the island was written off. The main character of the game, who looked like the stereotypical military grunt complete with hoarse, scratchy voice. The main feature is the use of time, shifting objects from the 1950 setting to the future setting.

The combat was interesting, with enemies using the time function. The other enemy is the standard military combatant. I wasn’t too impressed yet, but it looks like there is some potential.

The next game was Blur, car combat racing, somewhat like a more mature Mario Kart. There are different weapons that can be used, but each car has a shield that can be activated and recharges after each use. I played a 16 car match (cars are licensed, and show damage), and it was a lot of fun. Blur is solid, to the point where it reminds me of Burnout Revenge in the racing and Mario Kart in the weapons. I’m looking forward to playing it when it releases.

Tony Hawk: Ride. My excitement for this title is around thirty percent. Considering I used to skateboard, I thought it would be a smaller learning curve, but also I was playing on a thick carpet, which basically defeated the curve on the bottom of the board.

The sensors on the game worked pretty well, though the simple ollie became a chore. I think if I was playing on a flatter surface, it would have been a better experience. I don’t know what to think honestly.

DJ Z-Trip was playing when I came out from the demo, but I couldn’t stay to watch the DJ Hero demo.

I did see Wolfenstein really quickly. Simply beautiful. Gameplay was solid, animations were solid, I want to play this game now. During the short demo, I saw a lot of different weapons, the Tesla cannon is basically an electric gun which will chain through enemies if they’re standing close. I couldn’t stay to ask questions, but it already looks pretty much complete.

My third appointment was with Tecmo to play Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, but then I saw Quantum. Producer Yasuo Egawa was there showing the game, and through a translator explained the game.

Egawa actually had a playable demo, but wouldn’t let me give it a try. Though he was extremely apologetic about it, and I asked around three or four tries, promising I wouldn’t talk about the gameplay at that point in development.

Quantum is being compared to Gears of War, and on the surface from pictures, I would agree. But seeing the title in motion, there are a lot of differences in the art style, including the main characters. Also from watching the demo, Egawa explained where the development team was aiming to go with the title, this being one of the first Western-influenced games that they were developing.

The title is 40% complete at this point. PS3 exclusive, and actually tells the story of two characters. They both want to get to the top of a tower, but the reasons behind the two stories are different and Egawa hinted that when the pair get to the top, there could a huge conflict between the two.

There wasn’t a lot of information on the title, the story was still being kept quiet, but just the small demo proved to be very attractive.

Undead Knights is a PSP title that is the story of two brothers and the fiance of one of the brothers who are killed. They make a deal with a demon to come back to get revenge. In effect, they are given the powers of the demon who can create zombies from defeated warriors.

Once you lower the health of enemies you can convert them to zombies that you can control to fight, use as shields, throw at other enemies, or just kill again. Seeing the game live, I saw zombies’ heads get cut off and they still attacked enemies. I asked about the new PSP Go digital distribution and was told that they found out about it, but wasn’t sure whose lap that would fall on, Tecmo or Sony.

Finally, I got to play a demo of Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 as Ayane. I remember Ninja Gaiden on Xbox and thinking that game was fast. NGS2 played 100 times faster than that. Running at 60 frames per second, it takes a couple minutes to get used to the combat system, though if you played NGS, there shouldn’t be a big problem other than getting used to new play styles of the new characters.

After that, I met with The Retronyms, an iPhone developer who released Seek ‘n Spell which uses the GPS function of the iPhone 3G. Playing outdoor in a field, letters will appear and using the GPS, players can run around and collect letters to create words for points. The game logs into a server so other players appear on your screen too.

The last meeting I had was The Beatles Rock Band at the MTV Harmonix. I’m not a huge fan of Rock Band mainly because the drum set peripheral. All 45 tracks will be open for quick play, but the story is chronological. So players will go through the career of the band. Many people already know, but the instrument peripheral’s are all designed after The Beatles iconic instruments and will be shipped as a new bundle.

Old controllers will work with the game as well.

The Abbey Road album will be released as DLC soon after the game ships and the rumblings I heard is that all albums will eventually be DLC content.

I had meetings every hour on Wednesday and had to run from back and forth between the two halls where E3 was taking place. I didn’t have a chance to get a lot of pictures, mainly I was talking to developers and publishers and seeing demos of the titles that they were releasing.

While I wished I could have played more titles at the event, just seeing hundreds of titles throughout two days was almost enough for me.