E3 Day 1 Impressions: Stupendous Edition

Supreme Commander
Developer: Gas Powered Games; Publisher: THQ
PC

I approached the theater showing Supreme Commander footage with a bit of trepidation. The RTS genre, at least to me, seems to not have evolved that much since it picked up steam in the mid-90s. You've got your base building, your resource gathering, your unit grouping.... You play one, you've played ‘em all. But I held a little bit of faith due to the developer: Gas Powered Games. Their track record may be short, but Dungeon Siege speaks for itself. I sat down, waited for the lights to dim, and the walls to shake (which they did). And although the movie was far too short, and nothing playable was on hand, what I did see looked pretty cool.

The emphasis is on large scale, all-out war in Supreme Commander. More specifically, the emphasis is on managing the war. One of the main attractions of the game is the zoom range. When zoomed in, the units look absolutely amazing. You can see burn marks on your mechs, individual nuts and bolts, logos, scorch marks on the ground, rippling water with glinting sunlights... it's just sexy to look at.

But of course, zooming too far in on the battle can quickly get you killed, because in most RTSs, you have a lot to look after. You know the drill: your eyes drift to the mini-map, you curse, your eyes move back to the battlefield, then to the mini-map... it's exhausting, and usually quite stressful. But in Supreme Commander, there is no mini-map, so don't worry about it. Yeah, that's right: no mini-map. So whatcha gonna do? Zoom out, of course. In an effort to decrease the copious amounts of micro-management in most RTS games, the decision was made to allow the player to choose their own view of the map, whether in close or far away. The farther you zoom out, the smaller your units become (obviously), and they'll eventually just turn into colored squares (just like they would look on a mini-map, but remember, it technically doesn't exist) so you can get a nice view of the entire map.

I personally am not yet convinced as to how effective this will really be. Will having to zoom out, then back in, then out, then in really be that much more efficient than darting my eyes from the bottom corner of the screen and back again a few times? I worry that while I'm busy enlarging and shrinking my units, they'll like, be getting slaughtered and stuff, because I keep having to, you know, flick back and forth on the mouse wheel (at least that's how I'm assuming it'll be done). Time will tell, I suppose.

The projected release date for Supreme Commander is Quarter Whenever, 2007. I'd imagine that SC will be back again at next year's E3, though in playable form. Shacknews will bring you more developments on this zoom-filled RTS as it surfaces.

Titan Quest
Developer: Iron Lore; Publisher: THQ
PC

Everybody knows it. The gaming community knows it, I know it, you know it, and even the Iron Lore rep that demoed Titan Quest for me knows it: there has not been a great dungeon crawler like Diablo II—since Diablo II. So basically, the choice has come down to this: either keep the 6-year-old classic game installed on your hard drive, or hope for a developer to have enough balls to attempt to dethrone the king. Titan Quest, developed by Iron Lore, is an attempt to replace the Dark Lord. Will it succeed? We'll know for sure in late June, but in the meantime, I had the chance to take a crack at the #1 contender for hack-n-slash champion.

The character generation system in TQ is perhaps the most simplistic yet involved I've ever used. You start out by choosing a gender and what color you'd like your tunic to be. That's it. Boy or girl. Red or blue (or purple, or whatever). And then you start playing. The complexity comes in choosing the Masteries you'd like for your character to use and using them effectively. This process begins the first time you level up. I decided to go with Earth, due to the powerful golem and earth spells, in addition to fire. Looove the fire. Now here's the cool thing: I accidentally clicked on a spell I had no intention of ever using. Terrible flashbacks to putting more than 1 skill point in Charged Bolt during my Diablo II days came rearing back. However, there are two efficient ways of dealing with this problem. Firstly, as long as you don't close the screen, you can click an undo button that retracts your spent skill point(s). Very, very nice feature. Second, there are NPCs known as Mystics who, for the right price, will retract skill points for you. So if you decide that Earth or Storm (or whatever Mastery) just isn't for you—well, no problem. It's nothing permanent.

When you gain a new skill point, you can choose to further your overall understanding of your Mastery, which will give you benefits like access to higher skills, attribute boosts, and more; or you can upgrade the skills you already use. The benefit of this comes from the fact that no skill becomes useless. Most of the skills in every Mastery tie neatly together with Synergies, so your level 6 spell gets damage upgrades (or whatever) for every point you drop into your level 20 skill. And again, if you find you don't like a particular skill—or heck, even an entire skill tree—just go to a Mystic, but be prepared to pay lots of gold.

For the most part, if you've played Diablo II, you've played Titan Quest. It's just got a fancier, more up-to-date shine. You don't walk, you always run, and not having a stamina bar is a good thing. Let's you focus on moving around as quickly as possible. You hold alt to highlight items dropped by foes, which brings me to another cool tidbit: if an enemy uses a torch, that enemy will drop the torch. You'll no longer have to laugh at little goblins dropping Godly Plate of the Whale. That's not to say every creature has a drop, but that the drops are more logical.

In a somewhat odd and controversial move, you will be allowed to take your single player characters online. If you get stuck at a certain part, you can log on with a buddy, fight your way out of trouble, say "thanks and so long," then continue on your merry, single player way. So what's odd and controversial about that? Well, quite simply, Diablo II and even moreso its predecessor were infamous for the ease with which characters could be hacked. The closed Realms in Diablo II helped the situation somewhat, but it was still an occurrence.

So how does Iron Lore plan to keep the hackers at bay? Simple: there will be no point to making your character an awesome "player killer," because Titan Quest will not allow support for PvP. It's PvE (or PvM; pick your acronym) only, and unless modders work their magic with the available editing kit, it will likely stay that way.

TQ is also quite graphically impressive. You can zoom in and out via the mouse wheel, and the attention to detail your characters and NPCs, monsters, etc. contain is striking. Other niceties such as watching stalks of wheat bend over then back into place as you walk through a field add to the immersion. On that note, the rep talking me through the demo told me that many spell effects will note only light up the environment with their special fx; they'll also affect it. If you cast a spell that makes use of a huge gust of wind, that wind will send the wheat field a-ripplin'.

Titan Quest stands to offer an updated version of Diablo II, and while there isn't much that's really all that different... well, that's okay. The formula is tried and true, and Iron Lore seems to know that. I had a good time with the demo, and am eager to see how the full version turns out. You can try it out for yourself if you'd like; just hop on over to FileShack.

God of War 2
Developer: SCEA; Publisher: SCEA
PlayStation 2

You know why I'm not going to buy a PS3 until at least 2008? I mean besides the $600 price tag. Here's why: because God of War 2 is going to be on PS2. And as long as Kratos remains a pissed off, god-killing, double sword-chain-thingy wielding piece of awesomeness, my PS2 will suit me just fine, thank you very much. I had a chance to play with the God of War 2 demo on the show floor for a little while today—we'll have HD footage of yours truly getting his pasty-white balls handed to him soon—and thus far, I think the game is shaping up to offer more of what God of War gave its multitude of fans in abundance: gory, grisly fun.

The first thing I realized about GoW2 is that it pretty much expects you to have played the first game. Not that the difficulty ever really let up in the original, but in 2, you're expected to know what you're doing from the get-go. Kratos' dual chain swords are as effective and fun to use as ever, and combos came together in a breeze. It's been a while since I played through the original, but even button mashing, I was able to string together quite a few sweet looking sets. The controls were easy to jump back into: ^ for hard attack, X for jump, O for grab, and [] for light attack. You can still pop enemies into the air, grab them, slam them to the ground, and continue with the beating from there. In fact, the combo system still seems tightly woven, yet very free-form. I didn't have too much trouble pulling off a few 30+ hit combos, and as any GoW fan will tell you, that's small potatoes once you really know what you're doing.

The deaths that our gentle, misunderstood Kratos inflicts upon his enemies are just as devastating—and freakin' awesome—to watch as they were in the first game. After grabbing an enemy, stabbing repeatedly, then slamming him into the ground, I crushed his head. It was fun, and I'd like to do it again some time. Also making their triumphant return are the combination kills. The coolest I saw was watching the player in front of me stun a giant, one-eyed creature, then proceed to leap all about it, pressing the appropriate button at the appropriate time, maiming and rending the beast all the while, before finally finishing it off with Kratos burying his sword in the creature's eye. Just as in the original, the chain kills are extremely rewarding, much more so than simply doing standard moves until the creature(s) die. Not that that's not fun; it's just not as fun, nor as awesome.

Even though God of War 2 is not due out until the first or second quarter of 2007, the visuals, even at this early stage, are proof positive that the PS2 is still capable of producing the goods. Massive cliffs, detailed enemies, glowing chests... it's all quite pretty, and even better, the experience was uninterrupted by load times, just as in the original.

It's looking like God of War 2 is going to be worth holding on to your PS2 for. But don't take my words for it; see for yourself! As mentioned above, we'll be bringing you over 5 minutes of in-game action over on FileShack, so keep an eye out for it.

Alone in the Dark
Developer: Eden Studios; Publisher: Atari
PC, Xbox 360

For being the true match the struck the flame of survival horror, Alone in the Dark sure has fallen from grace. Fallen far, and hard. The last game wasn't so hot, nor was Uwe Boll's "vision" of how the movie should go. So what choices do Atari and Eden Studios have? They can give up, or go back to the drawing board. Well, they decided to redraw, and the vision they've come up with looks to be quite scary.

The first thing you absolutely must know about AitD is that it's latched on to this new fangled gaming fad: episodes. The game is episodic, which means that you'll be experiencing chunks of the adventure a little at a time instead of the entire thing. Now me? I'm not completely sold on episodic content. Call me old-fashioned, but it feels too much like paying for a demo. I want the whole game, and I want it now. The reason the Atari rep gave for this decision was that releasing episodes will make the game accessible to gamers who may not have a lot of time. Screw that, I say; that's what saving is for. Fortunately, it doesn't seem like you'll have to worry about paying $5 bucks or so for 20 minutes of gameplay. You'll actually be able to purchase all the episodes on a disc. Think of it, stated the Atari rep, like buying a DVD season: you get a bunch of 30-60 minute episodes. Alone in the Dark is slated to run about 10 episodes as of this writing, with the possibility of more in the future.

The core of AitD is two-fold: next-gen graphics and next-gen gameplay. Eden Studios, thankfully, knows it takes more than graphics to properly qualify as "next generation." So let's explore both facets of this truly next-gen game, shall we?

The graphics are very impressive. One thing the Atari rep made clear over and over again was that the lighting is rendered in real-time, and this feature greatly enhances the creepy factor that is so necessary in survival horror. Lights flicker, causing your shadow to wink in and out of existence. Parking lots are dimly lit, and if something happens to disturb the lamps, the way the light swings across parked cars and highlights things you really wish you wouldn't have seen... cool stuff. One interesting-yet-could-be-nothing-but-a-gimmick feature is blinking. You know, like with your eyes. See, the game will occasionally shift to first-person view, and your vision will become distorted when you're doing stuff like walking through a fire-laded room. So, you press a button on the controller to blink. The screen goes black for the briefest of moments, and when the game returns, your vision has cleared. Now, I don't know exactly how this will be useful, but there it is.

So okay, the graphics are pretty, blah blah blah. Let's talk about gameplay. Alone in the Dark looks to change the way we're used to doing things in survival horror games, or almost any genre, for that matter. Let's take the inventory system for starters. In most games, you press a key/button to bring up your stock, maybe switch some stuff around, do some equipping and un-equipping, then get back to the action. Not so in AitD. Let's say you find a pistol and stick it in your inside trench coat pocket. Cool. To draw that weapon, you have to look down and actually reach into your coat to equip it. It's not too hard; the idea is to reinvent a system without impeding upon the game itself. What's more, this all happens in real-time. So if you get attacked, you'd better act all sorts of fast. If this proves to be too much for you, there is a quick draw feature that will allow you to quickly draw a weapon.

Vehicles also factor heavily into the new and improved game play. When you jump into a car, the perspective again changes to first-person, and you can then proceed to do quite a wide array of things. If you're being chased by something freaking and scary, lock the doors. Open the glove compartment to check for handy items, including weapons. If the windows are iced over, turn the defroster on. Fiddle with the radio stations so you can catch snatches of police reports. No car keys? Hey, this isn't GTA; you're gonna have to manually hot wire your ride. Holding a set of cables in each hand, you'll use the two analog sticks to fiddle around until you've finally got the right combination to start the ride.

If the quirkier features (such as blinking. I mean, really!) are used correctly, Alone in the Dark could very well mount a nice comeback against Resident Evil, Silent Hill and others. If, that is. If. Look for the "first season" of Alone in the Dark some time in 2007.

Mortal Kombat: Armageddon
Developer: Midway; Publisher: Midway
PS2, Xbox

Due out this fall is Mortal Kombat Armageddon, the final installment of MK that will be available on the current generation of consoles(Xbox 1, PS2). Earlier this year I was able to conduct an interview with Ed Boon, co-creator of the series. Today, I got a chance to play the game at Midway's massive E3 arcade-like setup, and I'm happy to report that the game is shaping up quite nicely.

In case you aren't "in the know," MK Armageddon is, like the subtitle would apply, a wrap-up to all the current MK storylines that have been going on since back in '93 when the series debuted. Because of this, every single character (except for Motaro, the Centaur boss from MK3) is represented. Fighters not seen for almost ten years such as Jarek, Sheeva, and Stryker have been re-animated to jump into the fray with classics like Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Goro. The version I played today featured roughly 12 playable characters. The other icons were darkened, though I'm not certain as to whether or not that represented the fact that this is, in fact, a demo, or that many characters will have to be unlocked, as is typical in the MK franchise.

For my first match, I took Sub-Zero for a spin. One thing I noticed is that the design team didn't get lazy between now and 2004's MK: Deception. A nearby Midway rep informed me that all recurring characters have been reworked, so even if you were a Sub-Zero master in Deception, you'll have new combos, etc. to learn in Armageddon. Each character I tried had 2 fighting styles: 1 melee, 1 weapon. The Midway rep was not clear on whether or not their would be a third style (an additional melee) available in the full game, as was the case in Deadly Alliance and Deception.

All stages have "death traps," glowing areas that, if you happen to be attacked within the sweet spot, result in an instant death. Classics such as MK3's subway stage (knock opponent onto tracks, watch him/her/it get splattered by a speeding train car) and the pit tower (knock opponent through wooden floor onto jagged spikes below) have been included. What's more, there are other interactive areas in stages you can use to your advantage in kombat. For example, in the subway there are large flickering florescent lights on the ceiling. You can knock your opponent into the light to give him a jolt and then attack him on the way back down. Some stages are multi-tiered: knock your opponent through the floor, wall, ceiling, whatever and continue the assault.

One of the two best new features in Armageddon is the air combo system. Any move that pops your opponent into the air (including the klassic MK uppercut) can now be immediately followed by thrashing an opponent while airborne. The kool part is, while there are long strings of midair combos you can memorize (just like there are for ground combos) you can attempt to memorize, the air combo system is surprisingly open-ended. After knocking Sheeva into the air, I just jumped next to her and jammed on punch buttons. Like five seconds later, I had a 9-hit combo. Cool! You can even combine attacks: punch-punch-throw(they bounce to the ground then spring back up)-another throw-punch.

Finally, the Create-a-Fatality system was introduced, and I must say, it's appropriately killer. Here's how it works: When "FINISH HIM/HER!" appears, a bar appears at the top of the screen representing how many seconds you have remaining to pull off a move. You do a move, the bar reappears, and you can keep the fatality going. You are rated on how long you can keep the fatality in progress before you either kill the opponent, or lose steam and end up letting the opponent drop to the ground. I saw Ed Boon himself pull off the following: punch to the gut, elbow to the head, turn opponent around, break arms, pull off head. He got a 5-star rating, and deservedly so! This feature is pretty cool, as I mentioned, but I worry that it might get a bit gimmicky if all the characters have relatively the same types of fatality moves (punches to the gut, face, breaking arms, etc.)

All in all, the game was a lot of fun to play. While not radically different from Deadly Alliance or Deception, there's enough to keep any fighting enthusiast occupied until MK makes its next-gen debut. Look for this one during fall 2006.

Mortal Kombat: Unchained
Developer: Midway; Publisher: Midway
PS2, Xbox

You let a fighter disappear for 5 years, and suddenly it's available on every platform under the sun. With the portable versions of MK: Deadly Alliance doing (surprisingly) moderately well, it was only inevitable that Deception saw similar treatment. However, unlike the admittedly crappy GBA versions of Deadly Alliance, Deception gets the VIP treatment in Mortal Kombat: Unchained, a complete port of Deception that contains all the bells and whistles from the console versions.

There are 8 more characters in Unchained than there are in the PS2 and Xbox versions of Deception—6 more than in the GameCube version. Reason being, Nintendo's cubed console saw the addition of Goro and Shao Kahn as playable characters when Deception finally showed up on the system, and they've been included in Unchained as well. In addition, Jax, Tanya, and 4 others (not revealed) will make appearances, making for quite a large cast of characters.

Besides the extra characters, everything is the same in Unchained as it was in Deception. All the stages, all the bonus modes (Konquest, Puzzle, Chess), and online play are included, though it should be noted that, somewhat disappointingly, the online is limited to only PSP-to-PSP play; you can't take it online. I couldn't help but wonder why not, but it is what it is, I guess.

Graphically, Unchained suffers only slightly from its port to a handheld system. The PSP is obviously capable of producing PS2-like visuals—sometimes even better than its older brother—and in most cases, Unchained shines. Some of the backgrounds are a bit blurry, but I didn't find it at all distracting. The controls are also very well done: L changes fighting style, R blocks, the 4 face buttons are the attacks, and Select is the "special" button: grab and throw/pound/whatever a close opponent, or procure the special weapon that many stages include. The game is very responsive, just as much so as the console versions. The loading is actually a few seconds longer, but again, nothing that detracted from the experience.

From what I could tell, there wasn't enough new material to pre-order Unchained since I already own Deception. If you're after the extra characters, just wait for MK: Armageddon on PS2 and Xbox. However, for fighting fans who haven't had anything fun since Darkstalkers, Unchained should be considered worth the wait. While this isn't a review by any means, I give this opinion based on the fact that it is a port of a game that has been out a year and a half, and a good game at that.

Look for Mortal Kombat to be Unchained this September.

Test Drive Unlimited
Developer: Eden Studios; Publisher: Atari
PC, PS2, PSP, Xbox 360

The first racing game I ever played on PC was Test Drive 3. This was back in the day when anti-piracy "devices" consisted of you being forced to find the third word of the second line in the fifth paragraph on page twelve. Except TD3 required you to use a wheel to match up certain types of car keys or... something, I don't exactly remember. It was equally annoying, I do remember that. To be honest with all of you, I haven't played a Test Drive game since the third. Not because I think they all sucked, but because I just don't get into racing games that much. So it was with a sense of nostalgia that I sat down and tried Test Drive Unlimited at Atari's E3 booth yesterday to see how the first PC racer I ever played had evolved over time—and onto consoles, no less.

Racing enthusiasts will be pleased to find out that TDU features 100 licensed vehicles. Cars, motorcycles... the choice is yours! They're all represented, and they're all official. Handling all these hunks of metal falls somewhere in between an arcade style racer and a sim: realistic handling, but not realistic to the point where Burnout and Need for Speed enthusiasts will get bored. Also, each vehicle handles uniquely compared to all the others, which should give players plenty of reason to earn each and every car available.

It doesn't take much to please me, which might be why the following feature makes me giggle like a little girl: when you get knocked off course, you can press Back to instantly get set back down in the right direction, all ready to go. No more having to reverse yourself out of a ruined tree trunk back onto the road, only to get an annoying "WRONG WAY!" banner flashing across the screen. Just press Back, and the game will do the rest. Now that's what I call a good example of eliminating busy work.

The setting for TDU is a vast island where quite a bit is happening at all times. You can cruise around in the car of your choice, soaking in the scenery (which is pretty good looking, but the foliage needs work, and the pop-up needs to go bye-bye) or participating in time trials. In multiplayer, up to 1000 other people will be roaming the island at a time, and you can race with up to 7 of them for a total of 8. Instead of going through a deep set of menus to start a race against another player, all you have to do is drive around looking for them, or even let them find you. Issue a challenge or accept one, and the race is on.

You can also buy a house on the island where you'll be able to store all the sweet outfits you purchased with the mountains of cash you won from your races. Much of the gear is official, so you can suit up as one or more of your favorite racers if you so desire. There are country clubs strewn across the island as well, many of which allow only the best racers to compete. If none of them are to your liking, you can always create your own, and set your own credentials as well.

Test Drive Unlimited looks to be shaping up rather well. Some minor graphic details need attention, but this is, of course, only a demo. I'm certain they'll be addressed in the final game—or at least I hope so. They weren't distracting enough to detract from the gameplay, but really, pop-up on Xbox 360? For shame.

Look for TDU in September of this year on Xbox 360, PS2, PSP and PC.