Hello Gamers!
Welcome to another wonder week of gaming bliss, or as we like to call it the Got Game Show Podcast for October 10th, 2009. As always you can find the whole podcast in the link below this paragraph.
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During this busy week we take a look at NBA Live, preview a little FIFA 10, bring up some weird Wii news and much much more.
One of those much much more things this week is the Sony Holiday Preview Event that we got to go to. Like the X’09 event that Microsoft put on the week before, this was our chance to look at the upcoming titles holiday titles for Sony. And once you got both feet into their event you could tell that Sony is taking this holiday season very seriously.
The event consisted of about 30 plus TVs (and sofas) lining the white walls of two long rooms, and while the visual look was simple the presence of gaming goodness could not be denied.
The event started (at least for us) with The Saboteur.
A stealth action game that is about an Irish man named Sean Devlin with a nasty case of road rage. According to a developer we found next to the game, the basic plot is that Sean is a race car driver, who is willing to sit on the sidelines of the German occupation of France, until a Nazi cheats during a race. After that happens you decide to start taking down Nazi’s left, right and center. The great part about this game is the fact that you can choose to take them down however you want. Like the game’s title suggests you can sabotage the Nazi’s or you can take the more traditional shooter method of running and gunning (or you can pick somewhere in between). The way they use colour in this game is also amazing. You can truly feel the mood of the game shift over time as the world becomes more colourful. And as we’ve seen before it looks like colour will become a main focus of the game play as things can shift all over the spectrum depending on what happening at the moment. It looks like it is shaping up to be an overall solid title with only 1 flaw. Sean Devlin is a WWII era driver living in Nazi occupied France. However, despite those facts he still feels like he is wearing a giant suit of green Space Marine armour, or a red cape and a yellow S on his chest.
Modnations Racers was our next stop.
It’s a game that the developers were calling,” a modern take on classic cart racing back at E3″. Personally, I just see it as another cart racer in a sub-genre of racing that is already over flowing. It may look all new and shiny, but to be honest all I can see is the over exaggerated drifting and constant missile launching that’s been so common place in pretty much every other cart racer ever created. So what makes this one different? Customization. Pretty much everything in this game can be adjusted to fit your style (think LittleBigPlanet but with cars). The ability to personalize characters, vehicles and race tracks in great detail could possibly be enough to keep cart racing sub-genre fresh for years to come. However, on the other hand this community driven content thing has been tried before with different levels of success; so while it sounds cool on paper there is no guarantee that the masses will buy in. Personally, all I can say is that if this game suffers from the same problem that all cart racers do (i.e. – the on the fly tweaking of engine power so that the slower cars in last place can always catch the leader) then I am not touching it again once I am done reviewing it.
We moved onto Heavy Rain who’s title still reminds me of 80′s pop music.
What can one say about this game other than it seems to be shaping up to be a must have for PS3 owners. The visuals are amazing. The game play is unique and engaging (although in places it feels a little dragged out for no reason). The sheer number of game play options is mind blowing. It looks to have a well thought out and engaging detective story (although little is known about that plot right now). This could be the perfect game. After some hands on time my only fear involving this game is that it could follow its older brother’s footsteps and suffer from something the internet calls Indigo Prophecy Syndrome. This is when a game will start off with a clear and understandable plot, but about halfway through the game takes a turn for the supernatural. Usually introducing conspiracies, black magic, and randomly assigned super powers for no other reason then it can. From what we’ve seen of previews this looks like it could be Sony’s game of the year, but if there was ever a time to wait for a review, this is it. Simply put no one knows how this game will turn out until we our hands on it. It could be great. It could bomb. There is just no predicting this game.
After that we checked out Avatar.
What we could play was just a separate build made for preview events like this. It looks great, but I am concerned about the game play. What I saw was a lot of wandering through a jungle fighting impossible to hit blue aliens, giant man eating plants, and bosses that could be right out of Capcom’s Lost Planet. Other than that it looks like Halo, but plays like that previous mentioned Lost Planet (right down to the fact that both of walking robot suits that control the same). Both the movie and game studios are keeping very tight lips on the secrets of Avatar, so it is hard to guess how things will turn out this early. However, for this game to be worthy of anyone’s time the final version of Avatar needs to have far deeper game play.
Assassin’s Creed 2 looked like a far more interesting upgrade from the original.
The original was a fun concept that really fell through during execution. The only real fun parts in that game were the assassinations. Running around the city had its moments too, but they were hard to enjoy because usually it meant that I was just running off to listen in on someone’s conversation while sitting on a bench, or trying to pick someone’s pocket for clues. Assassin’s Creed 1 was a game that promised a lot but really only delivered half. With far more mobility, the ability to truly interact with average citizen, and even nicer looking environments then the first game; Assassin’s Creed 2 looks like it is going to be the game we were promised the first time around.
We also saw Lego Rockband which is just regular old Rockband but with an easier skill level and a PG-13 song list.
To be honest it is a concept I don’t get because as youtube has already taught us the only people in the world who can play Guitar Hero and Rockband on Expert are children around 4 or 5 years old anyhow.
Army of Two: The 40th Day was also there, but for some reason we were not able to play as an actually army of two.
As Zack put it was could only play as armies of one, side by side. Now neither of us played the first Army of Two, but this sequel seems to be a decent game by itself. It looks good, the controls are tight and responsive, and the childish actions/humour that I heard about in the first game are not present here. This game is never going to be anything to write home about, but if the final games ends up being like this demo we played then it will be a pretty and competent 3rd person shooter.
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