|MaguS|
05-22-05, 03:26 AM
Ok, Well I just got back from E3 and I must say I was pretty impressed with the alot of the showings but some did leave me disappointed. I apologize ahead of time for my poor grammar and spelling, I just got off my flight about 2 hours ago and still have a killer headache from the drinking contest me and a girl had on the flight.
Here are my impressions of key items...
Xbox 360:
Well, The console in person still looks like complete crap IMO, I do not like the toyish look it has. It gives off the impression that its not worth much or even "High Tech", more like a childrens toy.
The games on show were decent, alot looked better inperson then the videos on the net showed them to be. Condemed actually looked really good even and animated even better. Some enemies looked amazing in motion, the game still needs work though. All the characters have a high gloss giving them a plastic like look.
Dead or Alive 4 was a disappointment, If I wasn't told it was running on the Xbox 360 I would have thought it to be on the Original Xbox again. The models and the world lacked detail for a next-gen title, water looked fake and didn't feature many of the realistic properties that we are use to in current titles. The only thing that impressed me was the cloth simulation which looked very good.
Need 4 Speed looked decent, had some nice texture work here and there but also many low res ones aswell. The game also suffered from alot of aliasing (jaggies) and suffered from framerate issues sometimes (rarely)
Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360 did impress me alot though, The game ran very smooth (didn't see it dip once) and the game looked really good, comparable to a PC title. No jaggies or lowres textures in sight from what I seen, I was truly impressed.
All the other titles really aren't worth speaking, I didn't see anything from Ghost Recon other then the same trailer that was shown at the Press Conference and Full Auto looked "meh". What I do have to comment on is the HORRIBLE performance with the Unreal Engine 3 based game, Gears of War. It was shown in a video form on the big screen and it was disappointing to see. It looked good graphically but the performance was horrendous. The framerate was just unstable, While some will claim it could be due to an early beta build I do not believe this to be the case, I think we are seeing the limitations of the Xbox 360 Hardware. I saw the same demo ran in REALTIME on an SLI rig flawlessly (aswell as UT2K7 on a Single 6800Ultra), this game is suppose to be a launch title for the Xbox 360 and its running worse then on current technology.
Playstation 3:
Other then seeing the hardware in person, there's really nothing to talk about. The only thing shown were the same videos we all saw at the press conference but shorter. I will say that after seeing the videos in person in HD I was able to tell that some of the games were actually rendered in realtime. Warhawk and (IMO) Killzone 2 were both in realtime. I am saying that Killzone 2 is in realtime because at one point of the video (when you get off teh drop ship) you can see poor texture filtering off in the distance, this leads me to believe it was done in realtime... but again it could have been a really good fake...
Closing comment on the PS3.... Kojima is back for Metal Gear Solid 4! :D
Nintendo Revolution:
It was at E3?
PC Gaming:
There was no knews on the Hardware side of things but on the software side of things it was exploding!
First off let me start by saying, F.E.A.R. is going to ****ing own every game this year! After playing through the singleplayer demo at E3 I can say I am ****ing hyped for this game. It was even able to scare me at the shown even with all the loud noises of the show and crap going on! The AI is probably some of the best I have ever seen, guards will crawl under a knocked over shelf thats blocking thier path, armored soldiers will protect themselves from gernades while thier friends scamper off. They all react realistically and brutally, the game is going to be hard even on normal and I like it. I still beat the demo though even though Jackup couldn't. :p
Prey is looking to be a winner aswell, it has some nice graphics thanks to the Doom 3 engine. I would have liked to see more outdoors but the great texture work and original game ideas will make me forget that im indoors the whole time. The enemies look to be very creative even though I didn't see much of an AI example at the show.
Battlefield 2 was fun, it actually didn't feel too much like the other Battlefields, which I like since I never got into the previous ones. I always sucked at flying and in BF2 its alot easier, very simple but hard to master. The graphics were awsome, everything looked true to life and played very smooth even on a 6800GT (thats what I was told it was on).
Hellgate:London is another one of the games I needed to play and was happy I had the chance to play. Its basically Diablo 2 in a first person enviroment. The combat feels solid and the graphics are thier to match. One thing that really impressed me is the RPG elements, they were deep, Alot deeper then Diablo 2's. The random level generator was also really good, especially considering that the levels were never close to the others. The games engine uses a hiarchy of prefabs to create the levels. So insted of just randomly placing objects anywhere it places them properly and acturatly depending on the area that was created. So if it created a city block that had a hospital, expect to see things related to it... don't expect to see bar stools or a gunrack lying near by.
I also got a chance to try Serious Sam 2 and im sorry to report that in its current form its a big letdown. Not only were the graphics looking very dated (VERY) the animations that were so original and stylish in the original were just lacking in the demo. Many of the enemies animated very stiff and had poor attack animations (can a hand slightly shacking when firing a saw blade be considered an attack animation?). I really hope that the game was in a very early stage because its not what I was expecting...
Gothic 3 was also at the show in playable form but it should have been removed. Not only did it performane like absolute crap in low graphics mode (looked nothing like the movie released) but it was way to buggy to be at the show. I know it was in Pre Alpha form but thats a good reason NOT to have it there, it crashed to the desktop on me during play and locked up multiple times. The Wildlife AI was competly missing (they stood there and ignored me) and the bandits that were there just stood around broken after appearing out of nowhere, after being killed they stood back up and continued to attack. I don't know what the developers thought when they put the game on display but it really hurt them more then helped them... It was pretty pathetic...
The next MMORPGs to be released were aswell at the show, with D&DOnline looking to be the furthest and most complete version on the floor. It looked graphically decent but saddly I didn't get onhands with it. I didn't get to play LOTROnline either but considering that it was missing the attack feature (had to repeatly press the skills to attack) im kinda glad I didn't try to play it. Vanguards was fully playable at the show but saddly the day I wanted to give it a go the router was down (dam you comcast!), I did though get a chance to speak with Brad McQuaid who was very insightful on the game. Hes a great guy and we had alot of laughs (some at SOEs expense), I hope to speak with him again. I will go more indepth on our conversation later....
Age of Conan was at the shown and I even got acouple mins of play with it... saddly its performance was way too low for me to even try to get anything done. It did look good though and hope the performance issue can get fixed to allow it to play as good as it looked.
On the RTS side of things, I got a chance to see Rise and Fall and Age of Empires 3, and while still shots might say AOE3 is the superior one, I think Rise and Fall will top it out. While seeing the dev play the game just amazed me. The models of the smallest troop was so well detailed and animated. Everything about it just shouted detail, the key feature that grabbed me though was the heros. Unlike other RTS titles, Heroes aren't just uber soldiers... You are them, You can at any time jump into an action 3rd person view of the hero and control him like it was an action slash and hack game. This offers alot more depth to the gameplay because now not only do you command your army but you are the leader in its world aswell.
I am saddened that I did not get a chance to see Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2 on the PC but I was not willing to wait over 3 hours for it. Sorry but no matter how good those titles are going to be a 3 hour wait is not worth it for 20mins of gameplay footage (that we couldn't even record or take pictures of).
Last... Unreal Tournament 2007... It was awsome... I couldn't believe how well it ran on a single 6800U. The level of graphics it was able to produce at the performance is unmatched.... Doom 3s engine blows chunks compared to the Unreal Engine 3... I don't care what you ID fanboys say, after seeing it played inperson I don't think you can convince me otherwise...
Now onto the pics!
E3 Booth Babes (Im in some and so is wshadow)
http://img274.echo.cx/img274/8534/p51800112nc.th.jpg (http://img274.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800112nc.jpg) http://img274.echo.cx/img274/2185/p51800134rf.th.jpg (http://img274.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800134rf.jpg) http://img274.echo.cx/img274/9892/p51800160uo.th.jpg (http://img274.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800160uo.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/4062/p51800179ir.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800179ir.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/9272/p51800182xp.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800182xp.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/5944/p51800199ol.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800199ol.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/3268/p51800371io.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800371io.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/5765/p51800460xs.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800460xs.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/3389/p51800505fk.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800505fk.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/7820/p51800515dr.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800515dr.jpg)
Here are my impressions of key items...
Xbox 360:
Well, The console in person still looks like complete crap IMO, I do not like the toyish look it has. It gives off the impression that its not worth much or even "High Tech", more like a childrens toy.
The games on show were decent, alot looked better inperson then the videos on the net showed them to be. Condemed actually looked really good even and animated even better. Some enemies looked amazing in motion, the game still needs work though. All the characters have a high gloss giving them a plastic like look.
Dead or Alive 4 was a disappointment, If I wasn't told it was running on the Xbox 360 I would have thought it to be on the Original Xbox again. The models and the world lacked detail for a next-gen title, water looked fake and didn't feature many of the realistic properties that we are use to in current titles. The only thing that impressed me was the cloth simulation which looked very good.
Need 4 Speed looked decent, had some nice texture work here and there but also many low res ones aswell. The game also suffered from alot of aliasing (jaggies) and suffered from framerate issues sometimes (rarely)
Call of Duty 2 on the Xbox 360 did impress me alot though, The game ran very smooth (didn't see it dip once) and the game looked really good, comparable to a PC title. No jaggies or lowres textures in sight from what I seen, I was truly impressed.
All the other titles really aren't worth speaking, I didn't see anything from Ghost Recon other then the same trailer that was shown at the Press Conference and Full Auto looked "meh". What I do have to comment on is the HORRIBLE performance with the Unreal Engine 3 based game, Gears of War. It was shown in a video form on the big screen and it was disappointing to see. It looked good graphically but the performance was horrendous. The framerate was just unstable, While some will claim it could be due to an early beta build I do not believe this to be the case, I think we are seeing the limitations of the Xbox 360 Hardware. I saw the same demo ran in REALTIME on an SLI rig flawlessly (aswell as UT2K7 on a Single 6800Ultra), this game is suppose to be a launch title for the Xbox 360 and its running worse then on current technology.
Playstation 3:
Other then seeing the hardware in person, there's really nothing to talk about. The only thing shown were the same videos we all saw at the press conference but shorter. I will say that after seeing the videos in person in HD I was able to tell that some of the games were actually rendered in realtime. Warhawk and (IMO) Killzone 2 were both in realtime. I am saying that Killzone 2 is in realtime because at one point of the video (when you get off teh drop ship) you can see poor texture filtering off in the distance, this leads me to believe it was done in realtime... but again it could have been a really good fake...
Closing comment on the PS3.... Kojima is back for Metal Gear Solid 4! :D
Nintendo Revolution:
It was at E3?
PC Gaming:
There was no knews on the Hardware side of things but on the software side of things it was exploding!
First off let me start by saying, F.E.A.R. is going to ****ing own every game this year! After playing through the singleplayer demo at E3 I can say I am ****ing hyped for this game. It was even able to scare me at the shown even with all the loud noises of the show and crap going on! The AI is probably some of the best I have ever seen, guards will crawl under a knocked over shelf thats blocking thier path, armored soldiers will protect themselves from gernades while thier friends scamper off. They all react realistically and brutally, the game is going to be hard even on normal and I like it. I still beat the demo though even though Jackup couldn't. :p
Prey is looking to be a winner aswell, it has some nice graphics thanks to the Doom 3 engine. I would have liked to see more outdoors but the great texture work and original game ideas will make me forget that im indoors the whole time. The enemies look to be very creative even though I didn't see much of an AI example at the show.
Battlefield 2 was fun, it actually didn't feel too much like the other Battlefields, which I like since I never got into the previous ones. I always sucked at flying and in BF2 its alot easier, very simple but hard to master. The graphics were awsome, everything looked true to life and played very smooth even on a 6800GT (thats what I was told it was on).
Hellgate:London is another one of the games I needed to play and was happy I had the chance to play. Its basically Diablo 2 in a first person enviroment. The combat feels solid and the graphics are thier to match. One thing that really impressed me is the RPG elements, they were deep, Alot deeper then Diablo 2's. The random level generator was also really good, especially considering that the levels were never close to the others. The games engine uses a hiarchy of prefabs to create the levels. So insted of just randomly placing objects anywhere it places them properly and acturatly depending on the area that was created. So if it created a city block that had a hospital, expect to see things related to it... don't expect to see bar stools or a gunrack lying near by.
I also got a chance to try Serious Sam 2 and im sorry to report that in its current form its a big letdown. Not only were the graphics looking very dated (VERY) the animations that were so original and stylish in the original were just lacking in the demo. Many of the enemies animated very stiff and had poor attack animations (can a hand slightly shacking when firing a saw blade be considered an attack animation?). I really hope that the game was in a very early stage because its not what I was expecting...
Gothic 3 was also at the show in playable form but it should have been removed. Not only did it performane like absolute crap in low graphics mode (looked nothing like the movie released) but it was way to buggy to be at the show. I know it was in Pre Alpha form but thats a good reason NOT to have it there, it crashed to the desktop on me during play and locked up multiple times. The Wildlife AI was competly missing (they stood there and ignored me) and the bandits that were there just stood around broken after appearing out of nowhere, after being killed they stood back up and continued to attack. I don't know what the developers thought when they put the game on display but it really hurt them more then helped them... It was pretty pathetic...
The next MMORPGs to be released were aswell at the show, with D&DOnline looking to be the furthest and most complete version on the floor. It looked graphically decent but saddly I didn't get onhands with it. I didn't get to play LOTROnline either but considering that it was missing the attack feature (had to repeatly press the skills to attack) im kinda glad I didn't try to play it. Vanguards was fully playable at the show but saddly the day I wanted to give it a go the router was down (dam you comcast!), I did though get a chance to speak with Brad McQuaid who was very insightful on the game. Hes a great guy and we had alot of laughs (some at SOEs expense), I hope to speak with him again. I will go more indepth on our conversation later....
Age of Conan was at the shown and I even got acouple mins of play with it... saddly its performance was way too low for me to even try to get anything done. It did look good though and hope the performance issue can get fixed to allow it to play as good as it looked.
On the RTS side of things, I got a chance to see Rise and Fall and Age of Empires 3, and while still shots might say AOE3 is the superior one, I think Rise and Fall will top it out. While seeing the dev play the game just amazed me. The models of the smallest troop was so well detailed and animated. Everything about it just shouted detail, the key feature that grabbed me though was the heros. Unlike other RTS titles, Heroes aren't just uber soldiers... You are them, You can at any time jump into an action 3rd person view of the hero and control him like it was an action slash and hack game. This offers alot more depth to the gameplay because now not only do you command your army but you are the leader in its world aswell.
I am saddened that I did not get a chance to see Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2 on the PC but I was not willing to wait over 3 hours for it. Sorry but no matter how good those titles are going to be a 3 hour wait is not worth it for 20mins of gameplay footage (that we couldn't even record or take pictures of).
Last... Unreal Tournament 2007... It was awsome... I couldn't believe how well it ran on a single 6800U. The level of graphics it was able to produce at the performance is unmatched.... Doom 3s engine blows chunks compared to the Unreal Engine 3... I don't care what you ID fanboys say, after seeing it played inperson I don't think you can convince me otherwise...
Now onto the pics!
E3 Booth Babes (Im in some and so is wshadow)
http://img274.echo.cx/img274/8534/p51800112nc.th.jpg (http://img274.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800112nc.jpg) http://img274.echo.cx/img274/2185/p51800134rf.th.jpg (http://img274.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800134rf.jpg) http://img274.echo.cx/img274/9892/p51800160uo.th.jpg (http://img274.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800160uo.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/4062/p51800179ir.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800179ir.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/9272/p51800182xp.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800182xp.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/5944/p51800199ol.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800199ol.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/3268/p51800371io.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800371io.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/5765/p51800460xs.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800460xs.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/3389/p51800505fk.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800505fk.jpg) http://img269.echo.cx/img269/7820/p51800515dr.th.jpg (http://img269.echo.cx/my.php?image=p51800515dr.jpg)