E3 Day 1 Impressions: Awesome Edition

-- May 11, 2006 by: Chris Remo

E3 2006 began yesterday, and with it came those wonderful annual feelings of extreme fatigue and aching feet that only the raging and megalithic Electronic Gaming Expo can truly provide. But hey, I got to play some video games. Here's my first day of impressions from the show floor, which I like to call E3 Day One Impressions: Awesome Edition.

Gears of War
Developer: Epic Games; Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Xbox 360

Gears of War doesn't need much introduction; the project is lead by Epic designer CliffyB, so it's been guaranteed plenty of exposure from the start. Microsoft and Epic have been pretty reluctant in allowing hands on sessions with the single-player campaign, but they did let us play several rounds of eight-player team-based multiplayer. As you probably know, Gears of War is a third person "over the shoulder" shooter with a heavy focus on cover. Obviously, the game looks fantastic--and I was pleasantly surprised not to have to adjust my expectations after the very impressive screenshots--but the best part is the feel. Playing as one of the game's hulking aliens, controlling my character felt like controlling a tank--but in the best possible way. The sort of tank I'm talking about is a hypothetical one which is quite mobile and able to easily duck in and out of cover.

The point is, the game feels solid. The movement, the aiming, the feel of the weapons, the best way to describe it is simply that it's incredibly solid. Gears of War, at least the multiplayer I sampled, feels tactile and focused, designed with a very specific end result in mind. If there was any "playing by ear" going on during development, it sure doesn't show through. I hate the term "next-gen" used to describe anything other than literally the next generation of consoles, and if possible I'd never use at all. But if somebody pointed a gun at my head and forced me to use it as an adjective describing some games, this would be one on which I'd use it.

Weapons available during the session included a pistol, a shotgun, a machine gun, and grenades. All of them work as you would expect, and they are selectable via the d-pad. Control layout is the standard dual analog stick console shooter scheme. To take cover behind a wall or other object, walk up to it and press A; your character will crouch or press up against it in an appropriate way. The left trigger then allows you to aim your crosshairs at enemies beyond the cover. The mechanics are by no means brand new, but they are well executed and feel very smooth. There's also a brutal chainsaw weapon attached to the end of the machine gun. If used at close range, from what I can tell it results in a graphically depicted instant kill.

The setting of the match was a ruined city with muted gray architecture, including a church, a clock tower, plazas, and other buildings. Abandoned cars littered the street. Textures looked very sharp and detailed, even up close, and visually no corners appear to have been cut. Plus, the impressive blood effects seen in the screenshots were actually in the game, somewhat to my surprise. From an art direction standpoint, the game isn't exactly breaking ground with its tried and true "The Future as Portrayed by Video Games" aesthetic, but it's tough to complain when it does such a good with that look to begin with.

All in all, my experience with Gears of War was a whole lot of fun and, again, quite solid. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and bestow upon it my coveted, and made up just seconds ago, Remo's Most Enjoyable Game Played Today At E3 award.

Crackdown
Developer: Real Time Worlds; Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Xbox 360

David Jones is not exactly a household name these days, but that certainly can't be said about his games. As a founder of Scottish developer DMA Design, now known as Rockstar North, Jones created such franchises as Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto. These days, he's working with his new studio Real Time Worlds, and one of his current projects is the impressively enormous Crackdown. We had the chance to check out a demo of the game presented by Jones, and it looks to be shaping up well.

At the most fundamental level, Crackdown can be described as GTA in the future. Considering just about everybody in the industry loves to rip off GTA, we'll cut Jones and his crew a good amount of slack since, you know, he came up with the thing. Crackdown is set in a gang-infested futuristic world where traditional police forces have been replaced by Agents, powerful law enforcement operatives with strength and abilities approaching the superhuman. The city serving as the game's setting is huge--and I mean it's truly enormous, with many different districts, highways, and even small islands located just off the city's craggy coast.

To complete the game, you must take out 21 different crime kingpins throughout the city. There are no discrete missions, no directions, and no hints. Waypoints indicating the location of these bosses will appear on your map, but only if you are within a certain radius of their location. The game is very freeform and non-linear, and Jones promises that there are practically unlimited ways to approach each boss. For example, one crime lord lives in a villa built on a small private island. There are many ways to reach his inner sanctum: bust through the gates with a truck, sneak past the guards on foot, commandeer a boat and enter from the waterway underneath, swim out and scale the island's steep rocks, position yourself outside with a sniper rifle and a clear view of his room, and so on.

There are some light RPG elements in terms of how your character progresses. The more you perform a certain action or use a certain piece of equipment, the more proficient you will become with that action or equipment. So if you're frequently a hand to hand brawler, your fist attacks will gain strength over time and you'll also become stronger in general; eventually you'll be able to easily pick up and throw cars full of people. If you make a habit out of driving cars as often as possible, your driving skill will increase, and cars you drive will actually become faster or more resilient; these changes are reflected by physically altering the car models as well.

Crackdown has a very appealing visual style as well. In general, the game looks fairly realistic, but there are thick outlines around objects, the color palette is bright and high-contrast, and physics are very exaggerated. Overall, there's a lot of potential for this game given its high degree of freedom and exploration. However, its most distinguishing factor--its extremely open-ended nature--has the possibility of making the game overwhelming. Hopefully Real Time Worlds can deliver the polish and focus necessary.

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos
Developer: Black Hole Games; Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
PC

I used to be a regular player of Games Workshop's various Warhammer tabletop miniatures games. Unfortunately, most of the people I used to play with are scattered across the country now, and no matter what it's always been a time consuming hobby. I remain a passive fan of the games and their rich universes, however, so I'm always interested in their computer game adaptations. Early efforts were largely unremarkable, but in recent years that has started to change. Black Hole Games is the latest developer to step up to the plate with Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, a large scale real-time strategy game based in the Warhammer Fantasy Battles world.

There are two full single-player campaigns, one featuring the human Empire supported by the army of the Elves, and one featuring the demonic hordes of Chaos supported by the ratlike Skaven. All four of those armies are playable both in single-player and online multiplayer modes. For fans of other Warhammer armies, there are mercenary Dogs of War units representing forces such as the Dwarfs and the greenskinned Orcs & Goblins. These troops are not playable as standalone armies, but can be purchased as support units. Like the tabletop games, players start each battle with fully assembled armies. Each unit costs a certain number of points (or, in this case, gold), and armies are constructed by choosing units that add up to a given total point value. The game will have the option for players to choose from "prebuilt" armies, or to customize their own. There's even a utility for dedicated players to individually customize the appearance of each unit in the army.

Mark of Chaos is real-time strategy on a very large scale, with the ability to control a huge army of many regiments, as well as zoom in to watch specific battles unfold. It's possible to zoom in far enough to clearly see individual petals on flowers, and at that level the game looks gorgeous. Character models are authentically and attractively rendered, and the animations are very well done.

When moving units, you can adjust their formation on the fly, choosing between a variety of different configurations into which they can adjust while marching. In keeping with the Warhammer feel, the game is more about macromanaging regiments and formations than it is about micromanaging individual soldiers. For example, units that are flanked or attacked from the rear are at a defensive disadvantage, so it is important to keep an eye on the battlefield as a whole. Units even have musicians and standard bearers, which veteran Warhammer players will appreciate. Musicians help a unit's morale, while the banners carried by standard bearers provide an easy to read graph of the unit's current health and morale.

However, as in the source games, there are still powerful individual hero units. These have special skills that can be chosen from skill trees and leveled up over time. My Chaos army was led by a hulking winged Demon Prince, towering over the battlefield and doing great damage to lesser units. When two heroes meet, they engage in a duel, and standard units back away to let the bosses duke it out. If a major hero falls in battle, it has a detrimental effect on the morale of the rest of the army, making units more likely to flee when taking heavy damage.

Warhammer: Mark of Chaos certainly looks great, and Black Hole has captured a lot of the little touches that will surely appeal to existing Warhammer fans. As with any RTS, balance is crucial, so hopefully extensive testing and tuning is going on. If so, this could be the game I need to reminisce on old tabletop times. For more, check out our interview on the game.

Namco Bandai shooting for a Holiday 2006 release date for Warhammer: Mark of Chaos.

Warhawk
Developer: Incognito Entertainment; Publisher: SCEA
PS3

Warhawk, from developer Incognito Entertainment, is currently the only game Sony had on display that uses the spatial control aspect of the controller. It seems likely that the functionality was added to the controller at least relatively recently (could there have been some inspiration in the past several months, perhaps?). In the case of Warhawk specifically, there have certainly been gameplay demonstrations in the past that used only the standard functions of the iconic PlayStation controller.

Warhawk is an arcadey futuristic flight combat sim, which makes it a good fit for a spatial control mechanism. That control works very much as you would expect it would. You tilt the controller to angle left and right as well as pitch up and down. Other than that, the controls are quite basic, so you don't have to worry about too many different things at once while moving the controller. There's a button to shoot the machine gun, one to lock one and fire missiles, one to switch between "flight mode" and a helicopter-like hover mode. You can also change weapons, of course, but in the demo only the machine gun and missiles were available, which can be used at the same time.

Flying the plane is quite intuitive, and is done entirely by moving the controller. Barrel rolls can also be performed by holding down the R1 button and angling the controller either left or right. The overall steering doesn't feel as precise as it could be, as if there's almost a very brief lag time, or perhaps sensitivity settings that are not quite tuned. This makes accurate aiming and flying in constrained spaces rather difficult, but it might just need some testing and calibration before the game ships. The overall feel, however, is nice. It's actually fun to simply fly around freely.

Interestingly, I found myself frequently just letting go with my left hand, and holding the controller entirely with my right, since the left analog stick wasn't necessary and the left d-pad is only used for changing to my nonexistant additional weapons. This made it significantly easier to make really sharp turns when only using one hand. Obviously it felt a bit awkward only holding it with my right hand, but the controller is noticeably lighter than the DualShock 2, likely because there are no rumble motors, which made one handed operation more feasible.

Sony's demonstration of Warhawk at this year's Game Developers Conference had a huge number of enemies and other objects on the screen at one time. The hands on demo here at E3 never really approached that level of craziness, but nonetheless Warhawk is a nice looking game. Draw distances are nice and high, everything is well-modeled, and the airborne view of the mountainous island is great. The controls, though, could use a fair amount of refinement, whether that's on the hardware side or the software side, to really put the PS3's motion sensing to use.