E3 2004 Day 3
Posted by Hengst June 15, 2004
E3 for the PC day 3 by HengstDay
3 marked my final trip through the busy streets of downtown LA, moving
with and sometimes around the hundreds and hundreds of fellow gamers
that had flocked to my city for the event. While not the busiest of the
3 days, it was productive none the less.
At the EA booth, I finally got my chance to see the Battle For Middle Earth
game demo. In an odd twist, the second attempt at a Middle Earth RTS
game proved to be not only better, but more true to the beautiful
vision that Peter Jackson created with his film trilogy. It's apparent
that this game was made to not only breathe new life into the ailing
RTS genre, but to add new twists such as emotion and intelligent AI
into the gaming mix.
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The
gorgeous graphics of this game cannot be discounted by anyone. The
level of detail shown for the city of Minas Tirith, or the wild lands
separating Gondor from Mordor were unprecedented for an RTS game.
However it was the game units which truly took me by surprise. The
amount of emotions shown by units, from orcs banging their shields to
taunt their enemies before charging, to the massive Oliphaunt getting
scared and charging through a group of soldiers in an attempt to get
them to stop harming it. The other interesting twist was watching some
Gondor infantrymen begin backing up when the recognized a troll
approaching them. I was quite satisfied when I saw the troll grab a
nearby tree and begin smashing through the ranks of the soldiers. |
This
satisfaction, however, did not prepare me for what was to follow. I
watched as the battle for Minas Tirith was repeated. I watched a
mounted flying Nazgul pick up King Theoden and then drop him onto the
ground, killing him quite nicely. What followed though was nothing
short of amazing. I watched in utter shock as a Balrog was summoned
onto the battlefield towards the end of the battle. I saw the course of
history for Middle Earth changed in an instant as the Balrog proceeded
to bring down total destruction to the capitol of Gondor. This time the
bad guys were the ones triumphant in the end.
It was mentioned
that the playable armies would include Rohan, Gondor, Isengard and of
course the forces of Mordor. No mention was made regarding the
multiplayer portion of this game, but certainly more will follow on
this as EA releases it.
After completing this, I made my way over to the Sony Online Entertainment booth, where I was shown the demo for Everquest 2,
as well as given the chance to make a character and play through a half
hour of the game. The first thing I must mention is how amazing the
graphics engine for Everquest 2 is. From the amount of detail
shown in my Cat man fighter, to even the way he moved across the deck
of the ship I was on, I knew that a lot of work had been put into this
game.
Unlike the original Everquest, this game benefits
from a host of improvements. For starters, this game will include over
100 hours of voice work, meaning no more tiny text boxes for your
character to read through. While much of the voices I heard today were
merely parts of the staff who had chosen to fill in for voice actors, I
could already see how this game was going to be much more accessible to
the casual gamer. |
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Sony
Online Entertainment acknowledged how difficult and sometimes daunting
it can be to play this type of game as a new player. In an effort to
increase accessibility, this game now includes a very thorough tutorial
to help assist you in learning how to play the game properly. As a
matter of fact, at the beginning of the game you actually don't have a
career path. It's not until you move past the tutorial that you are
given the chance to choose one of 4 beginning career paths. The game is
done in this way so as to help give you time to decide what type of
character you actually want to travel with.
The game interface
was both familiar and somewhat different from the original game as
well. It still involves heavy use of mouse clicking, but the menus have
been redone, and the new interface was intuitive enough for me to pick
it up rather quickly. The use of a better designed quest journal,
accessible by the convenient letter ''J'' hotkey, makes it very clear
not only what your quest is, but it also gives you some indication of
what is actually required of you in order to complete these tasks. The
combat is activated through double clicking the left mouse button while
highlighting an enemy. It will still be possible to gauge your enemies
as well. A great tool that helps prevent you from biting off more than
you could possibly chew. The new combat animations also looked much
more realistic. Your character has many different class specific
movements, like your monk doing some creative martial art posing in
battle, as well as some nice looking defensive movements.
Perhaps
the one area I liked most was the sheer amount of options available to
helping set your character apart from other characters. Using the
randomize button I created a tiger looking cat man who had piercing all
over his face. But you can do anything from give your character fierce
tattoo patterns, to a Jay Leno looking chin. In these types of games,
it is crucial, at least to me, to be able to set my character apart
from everybody else that I see. For a pre-beta build, this game ran and
looked amazing. If you haven't signed up to beta test this game, then I
recommend you do so now as they will likely have multiple phases to
their beta to help ensure a great release. While the game is slated to
be released this fall, I was told that it wouldn't be released until it
was ''completely ready for public play''. I must make mention that at
the time of release this game will not include any Player vs. Player
functionality. It was also mentioned to be watching as they were going
to have some events where people playing Everquest and Everquest 2 would be able to influence one another, although they refused to elaborate further on this.
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Sony Online Entertainment has also been hard at work on Jump to Lightspeed, the forthcoming expansion to the very popular Star Wars Galaxies: an Empire Divided.
First off, as I have said more than once regarding the E3 titles shown
to me, this game looked amazing. I was able to step into the cockpit of
an X-Wing and engage imperial tie fighters in nice dogfight. Using a
Logitech flight controller and feeling great about a space sim for the
first time since the Freespace games, I took off into battle. This game
is very far along and features some of the best graphics I have seen
since Freelancer came out a while back. The controls on my
X-Wing were fairly responsive, but make no bones about it, this is more
of a space sim than an action title like the Rogue Squadron series. You
can play from a cockpit view, or if you prefer a 3rd person
perspective, similar again to that shown in Freelancer. |
While
they weren't shown to me at the time, this game will allow players to
lad up a Corellian Freighter will 25 passengers, as well as to have
some of those characters manning the separate weapons terminals in the
ship. They advised that Imperial Star Destroyers would also make an
appearance in the future of this game. In essence, this almost looked
like a completely separate game to play from the Galaxies ground game
as they referred to it.
Contrary to what many may think, you
can actually create a character for this expansion and find yourself in
space right away. They are not going to require you to wait until you
have enough money and experience from the ground game to make your way
to the stars. This feature will be great as I, like many, haven't been
playing the game long enough to invest that many man hours into the
ground game. Overall, this game promises to complete the entire Star Wars Galaxies
game plan and create what they are referring to as more of a game
platform than a game itself. This game should see the light of day this
Fall, likely after a short beta period.
| The final game that I got the chance to play for a while was the self-described ''Battlefield Killer'' SÖLDNER.
This game, which is already out in Germany, boasts a massive
multiplayer experience for the discerning war gamer. I was told that
the final version of this game will include hundred of weapons and 70
vehicles (yes 70) to choose from, including various flying craft and
ground craft. I spent some time today playing through a capture the
flag map with both a tank, and a small helicopter. While somewhat
arcade-like, the flying still managed to be tough enough that it became
obvious it would require some skill to master. The tanks, however, were
a different story. I saw the power of this beauty, when I lobbed a
shell through a window and blew out the back wall of the house. |
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This
game also allows you to choose to play from the ground, utilizing your
choice of a 1st or 3rd person perceptive. For some reason the game felt
better in the 3rd person. In this mode you can see how interactive the
environments are, as your character will scale fences or even jump
through windows (something I have always wanted to try). Should you
decide to plow through a window, make sure you don't have any long arms
as they likely won't make it through the window that you did. There is
a beta demo for this game that is available for download right now, so
if you love immersive online war games, then feel free to check this
hot title out.
That is all for today, but check in this
weekend as I will have up my final E3 recap including the 2404.org best
of show awards, as well as my final thoughts on this year's E3.
