After getting in with flipkin and the rest of the crew - we split up a bit and I tackled a lot of West Hall which is Sony and Nintendo. I got to try both Warhawk and Mobile Suit Gundam. Warhawk plays in a neat fashion with the controller being your pitch and yaw - but I don’t know if its a type of neat that will get me to spend $600. Mobile Suit Gundam was very very raw and didn’t use any of the motion sensing of the controller - the animations were rough and there generally didn’t seem to be much too it, but in their defense they’re less then 20% complete. I’m gonna try to find out if the ps3 and the 360 Gundam game announced a bit back are actually the same game or not, because the 360 one seemed much further along then the ps3 demo. It was ‘neat’ but I wasn’t blown away.
I also had a quick chat with someone over at Turbine’s booth. D&D Online will be getting another free content update soon and will feature additional solo play and a new race playable online, the drow. It seems like D&D might be worth checking on a longer term basis and they also told me that there is a plan for a full retail expansion some time next year.
I decided to head to the South hall to check everything else out, but got sidetracked when I saw midway was having demos of both John Woo’s Stranglehold and Unreal Tournament 2007. While neither game really deals with new original gameplay, I was impressed by Strangleholds attention to the destruction of the environment. If it plays as good as it looks, it should be a fun romp.
On the 360, I got to checkout Crackdown for a bit and Ken Lobb at Microsoft walked me through a bit of it. The game’s visual style is pretty interesting and its fun to play. It has a sort of serious cell shaded style for the characters and a kinda of semi-realistic environment. That combined with a wild sort of sandbox GTA style game makes it kinda neat. Its like Mercenaries in terms of the idea that you can go anywhere and do anything - but this seems much more open in terms of the order you can do the missions.
So far I’ve checked out all sorts of stuff like Chromehounds, Super Robot Taisen, Guitar Hero 2 and I’ve just scratched the surface of south hall. I’ve also got a meeting with Warner Bros. Interactive in about 30 minutes, which I’m looking forward to.
If you’ve got a question about a game or want me to most my impressions of something - post a comment and while I make no promises, I’ll attempt to get you answers and post my impressions.