Day 2 impressions

I was lucky enough to see the Lord of the rings trailer, The war in the North, and play the game afterwards. It use the Wii controller and nunchuck so no button mashing, this one involves swinging at anything that gets close to you, 10 minutes of game later and you think that you need a gym membership to play the game for hours at a time. I am on the fence about the controller thing, but Wii and xbox, I am just so used to Joystick, keyboard, but I am trying to get used to the new gadgets.

Vindicus is a game that holds some promise as an Asian Style MMO, Graphics are smooth, movement intuitive, best of all no rats to kill at level 1. People are just going absolutely crazy over the swag at the presentations, their t-shirts are cool an the hats are out of sight. The hat is supposed to be s drop from the demo that they are showing off, but it looks like a fox hat with long ears. The girls giving the stuff away were almost mobbed, well were and people were actually snatching stuff out of each others hands, it was pandemonium. I walked by the booth later in the day and they put up rails to keep people off the stage, it was utter craziness.

BattleStar Galactica, a new MMO on the horizion is keyboard only, that broke my heart, the rep that I was talking to said there is just not a market for joystick support. The same can be said for Black Prophesy. I will be attempting to play both longer tomorrow, just to give more of an idea of what each holds.

Final Fantasy looks sharp, but I could not even get into the booth to try it, even my Jedi mind tricks would not move the Square Enix person at the gate.

SOE is developing a Jedi game, more on that later, it is aimed at the younger generation and thay are banking quite a bit on it developing younger gamers. They are also making a Magic the gathering game, but the line did not allow me to play.

Finally Tera, an RPG that has has me looking closely at it. Graphics are excellent, movement intuitive and very smooth. No auto-attack, no auto aim. When you engage a target you have to aim or you will miss. This in and of itself changes how you look at MMO's, you just dont stand there and hit the attack key and let the slugfest begin. You have to interact with the game and keep the attacks in line with your opponent or you miss. The graphics and spell effects are excellent and there will be a story line that plays into each character and into the world, making it more than a grind or tank and spank.

In talking to a lot of the different company reps it seems as though they are trying to bring the younger generation into gaming, there was even an interactive MMO touting itself for (4) year olds. There is a lot of emphasis and development in getting a gamer hooked when they are very young and carrying the experience through the teen years and onto adulthood. It seems to me that they are going to try and replace television as the social nanny it has become. It was truly amazing to see some of the online games and how young they are trying to start gamers off and getting them hooked.

Tomorrow first off is the JGE brief, I will post what I can when I get back to Las Vegas after the show.