Did anybody see this?
Tech Tv Live covered the Pre-E3 conferences from 6 am to 2 pm today. First of all I must say they did a very bad job with the coverage. They wouldn\'t show the entire confrences, they had a lot of features on the show that were completely unrelated to E3 and they repeated several of their news pieces more than 1 time. And worst of all they did not cover Sony\'s conference! That means that after watching the show from 7 am to 2 pm I didn\'t even get to see the reportedly awesome animations of Jak and Daxter. But anyways on with the impressions.
Microsoft:
Unfortunately Microsoft failed to impress anyone with the contents of their conference. They announced the price of the machine as well as the launch date, but no specifics on online gaming were mentioned, save for details on a microphone (dubbed "THE Communicator") that microsoft intends to be used for communication between players during online play.
Then they showed some footage of Munch\'s Oddyssey which was looking very sharp indeed. The environments had a very organic feel to them and the animations of the characters were fairly amusing. There seemed to be some fogging going on (I\'m not sure if it\'s the hardware or if it was an environmental effect) and the pre-determined camera angles I personaly didn\'t like, but the gameplay definitely looked solid.
The next demo was of Halo. The lighting, textures, and effects in this game were extremely well done. The opening scene in the demo had a lot of stuff going on, it was comarable to a minature Normandy invasion, with grenades flying, entrenched enemy troops, and lots of other cool stuff going on. The actual gameplay looked like alot of fun, if not particularly inovative. Getting in and out of the vehicle in the demo (an all terrain vehicle) was seamless, and the vehicle seemed to have an arcade like physics model. The indoor environments were also very well done with excellent texture maps. Now the ugly. The frame rate was very choppy. Especially in the first person mode, the vechicle mode didn\'t stutter so bad. If they can get this game at a solid 30 fps it will definitely be one to watch.
The last thing I saw (not the end of the conference mind you, Tech Tv had a knack for cutting most of the conferences off halfway through) was a game by Eidos titled "Mad Dash". The game featured cartoony animal characters racing each other on their feet (there were no sort of vehicles involved). The characters could slide, jump, fly and hover to get to the end of the course. Graphically this game was the least impressive of the three, but still quite nice nontheless. There were some nice shadows and particle effects, but it didn\'t manage to look much better that SSX (I\'m comparing it to SSX because much of the demo took place on a snowy mountain). Still the game looked fun. The characters ran really fast and it looked like you needed some quick reflexes and good timing to come in first.
Overall, nothing mindlowing, but what I saw all seemed like good fun to be had.
Nintendo:
This was good, this was definitely very good stuff. I saw very little of Nintendo\'s conference (I had to sit through Peter Main\'s boring ass speech), once agin because of Tech TV\'s idiotic features on the new Palm CVVIIIX that can now read PDF\'s cutting it off, but I was very impressed graphically speaking.
The first game I got to see was video reel of Super Smash Brothers: Melee. Miyamoto himself came out and spoke to the audience. He was quite a charming fellow. The footage showed the intros for alot of the characters (like the intros in the original game) only they were far more beatuiful than ever before. I managed to catch a glimpse of something like 7 new characters, including: Bowser, Princess Toadstool, that wierd chick (that looks like Raziel) from Zelda, the Ice brothers (kinda little esquimo dudes, I have no idea where they came from), and some others that I can\'t seem to recall at the moment. The gameplay looked the same as in the original, which is not a bad thing, only it seemed you could pull off some combo moves. As for the environments they were absolutely gorgeous, with glossy texture maps up the wazoo and tons of detail. They were also far larger than in previous games and more creative in their layout (I always thought the maps in SSB 1 seemed to have very little effort put into them), of course there were also some more straightfoward maps for some direct competition, without all the jumping and chasing around.
Next Miyamoto demoed Luigi\'s Mansion for everyone using the Game Cube controller. The storyline for the game is as follows: Lugi wins a mansion in a contest but on arrival finds out it\'s haunted, and Mario, who should have been there first is nowhere to be found. Not only that, a creepy scientist inside the mansion tells Luigi he has to clear the manison of ghosts to save Mario. The graphics were once again beautiful. The lighting effects from Luigi\'s flashlight, as well as the transparencies on the ghosts and the mist effects in some areas (comming form a fridge and from Luigi\'s mouth as he breathes in the gold environment) were very realistic. The game controled using the left analog joystick to point Luigi in whichever direction you want and then using the right stick to move him. The top L and R buttons were used for sucking (vaccuming) and there was also a move were you could spray water (don\'t know what for) which had some amazing water effects. The basic gameplay consisted of walking around and, upon noticing a ghost quickly flashing him with your flash light to stun him, after which you could vaccum him up in Ghost Busters fashion. If you flashed the light on them to late the Ghosts would give Luigi a good scare which resulted in a very funny animation from the main character. Most of the objects in the house reacted to Luigi\'s vaccum in a realistic manner, and you could also use it to suck up stuff like mice and coins. Personally, I dind\'t think the game looked fun. Sure the graphics were stunning but the actual catching ghosts appeared fairly boring.
The last game I saw demoed for the NGC was a very original new title by Miyamoto entitled "Pikmin". In the title you are an alien that has crashlanded on a strange planet, were you find these animals called Pikmins which require your help, and which you can also use to your advantage. In the game you are aproximately the size of a small species of ant, and you encounter larger bugs, as well as birds, killer plants and other large obstacles to overcome. This was one of the most outstanding games I saw in the graphics and gameplay department. The grass textures had a real depth and feel to them that I dind\'t imagine was possible, you could actually see its softness, and the individual blades of grass. The gameplay could best be equated to lemmings in 3-d. The Pikmins are little telletubbies if you will, although not so nauseauatinly cute and they are normally buried in the ground with just a small leaf on top of their head showing. You can either pull them out of the ground or use a command to call them all to you. Once you call them to you they join your character and follow you around. What you do with these critters is basically make themwork for you. You aim them with the c-stick at whatever object you want them to interact with and then throw them at it, and they will react appropriatley. In what was demoed the first thing that Collin (one of the programers on the game who was playing the demo) did was throw his little Pikmin at a tablet whith a 1 inscribed on the top(the number is how many pikmin you need to carry it). The Pikmin then proceeded to lift it and carry it back to the nest. When the tablet was absorbed into the nest 5 more pikmin came out, these you could add to your party. Further north in the level there was another nest with 20 more pikmin. Now the character had something like 30 pikmin following him and this was certainly impressive. Collin took his pikmin and decided to leave the area, but the way was blocked by a wall, so he started throwing pikmin at it and they immediately got to work tearing it to pieces. Once the wall was down Collin crossed to the other side where he foud one of the Pikmins natural predators. Because it will eat your pikmin at night fall it is neccessary for you to takeit out during the day. At first Collin threw some ten pikimin at the creature form the fron, but they were instantly gobbeled up like cornflakes (this managed to get a laugh out of the crowd), so Collin took a new approach and attacked the creature from behind using pikmin. The pikmin started pulling on the giant bug and punding on its backuntil it was dead. That was all I got to see of the demo but it looked hella fun and I am really looking foward to this one.
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Overall I\'d personally say that Nintendo made good on its promises and had a very strong showing, better that Microsoft\'s offering which was very lacking in real inovation.
Please keepin mind that this is only based on the parts of the conference that Tech TV broadcast so my conclusions are not really all inclusive.
As I mentioned the idiots at Tech Tv skipped Sony\'s conference, hence no impressions on my part.
Topic: Pre- E3 conferences impressions (based on Tech TV\'s live coverage) (Read 1606 times)