E3 Day 2

So today I actually spent most of my time trying out games. I'll skip any extra talk and get right to my impressions.

Fable III: One of the first demos I played and one that really stuck with me throughout the day. I'm not a huge fan of the Fable series, having only played through part of the first game on the PC, but Fable III as shown today was very entertaining. There were two different demos, split evenly among several stations. I played the non-combat version taking place in town, but I got a really good look at the combat version while waiting in line. I also was playing while one of the Lionhead reps was demoing the game for some journalists at the adjacent console, so I got a peek at some extra features like the character customization.

What I played was a quest involving rounding up chickens for a very dramatic farmer, who rambled on about how dangerous the chickens were, and gave me a special (and hilarious looking) chicken suit to aid in my quest. I teleported back to my house to put on the suit, and was greeted by my John Cleese-voiced butler, who was more than happy to show me around. The first room was the map room, where I assume like the first game you'll be able to travel using the big map. There were halls leading off to new rooms, and I followed them off into brief loading screen oblivion to find rooms for weapon, armor, and clothing selection, complete with mannequin previews, similar to Assassin's Creed 2. I donned my suit of walking hilarity and went back out to town. Rounding up the chickens was a simple matter... find a group of three chickens, approach said chickens, and press A to do a chicken dance, complete with sound effects, to convince the birds to follow me back to the coop. Once that was done, the farmer was overjoyed that I had just saved the world from feathery doom, and was about to reward me when his wife appeared, upset that the chickens were back. Evidently she's a bit of a tree-hugger... well chicken hugger in this case, and hates to see the chickens cooped up. In the end the choice was left with me, to either set the chickens free for good or allow the farmer to end their plots at world domination... with a shotgun. I, of course, opted for the free chicken dinner, and that was that. All in all, a potentially boring step and fetch quest was presented in an original and humorous manner. Here's hoping the rest of the game is in keeping with the same style.

The combat I saw looked like generally more of the same stuff I remember from the first game, with a few small-ish differences. First of all, instead of bows, you now get a gun. Yes, a gun. It looked like a colonial-period flintlock pistol... except it fired semi-automatic and had infinite ammo. Okay, sometimes we have to bend the rules. Second, instead of direct spells, it seemed like you bought "gauntlets" which had a spell contained in them. The generic one given in the demo was lightning, and it seemed that you could make it single target or area-of-effect depending on how long you held down the button. Also, you have a dog (which I hear was also in Fable II) and it was very good looking and nicely animated. Seemed to have pretty good AI too.

The Lord of the Rings: The War in the North: I sat in on a demo of this that had three developers from Snowblind playing through the game side-by-side on three computers. I'm a big fan of Tolkien's writing and the LOTR trilogy in particular, and so this game was definitely on my radar. The game was obviously built for co-op... three player co-op to be precise. That's right, not two player or four player, but three players. Odd, right? But it seemed to work quite well.

The game has the players playing as a Man, a Dwarf, and a female elf. If this sounds familiar, that's because it's meant to evoke the famed Aragorn-Legolas-Gimli trio. There are some differences, however. The man is actually a wizard, or demi-wizard who can cast spells which benefit the entire party, as well as get in close and fight with his staff (and please please please an unlockable off-hand sword later on!) in melee. The dwarf was pretty standard, as all Tolkien dwarves are very similar. Then there was the elf-chick Legolas, basically a standard hunter with a bow and some melee skills. All in all you had your basic "holy trinity" in MMO-speak.

Combat seemed pretty tactical and cooperative, and actually reminded me a bit of the old hack n' slash movie tie in games from the last generation. However there was evidence of all three classes having combat skills, and ranged combat (via xbow for dwarf, staff bolts for man, and bow for elf) involved physically aiming at the target with a crosshair, which was a nice way to mix it up some more. The enemies were varied and seemed pretty competent. They were more than happy to use their own magical spells against you. There was one prominent example where the players came across an enemy group several times their size, clustered around an enemy caster who had a shield up. This spell, which was used by the players as well, is pretty standard for RPGs, being a big dome shaped shield that protects anyone inside of it from missile attacks. The players used their shield to get in close to the enemy save from archers and spells, then moved into melee to take out the caster. With the caster down, the hunter took out the enemy archers while the dwarf and man took down the other melees.

What really ended up impressing me was the true RPG elements, however. Players could customize the look of their characters at the start, which was a nice touch, even if it seemed a bit limited. There was also lots of loot, and a glance at a character sheet showed that they could equip the full gamut of gear that you might see in an MMO or an RPG like Dragon Age. Gear was color coded like MMOs or Diablo, and there was also silver dropped, hopefully for use in a town somewhere. In terms of story, the developers talked a lot about really trying to evoke the classic story of Lord of the Rings while also breaking new ground at the same time. This likely means that in War in the North, players will be visiting new areas outside of the classic Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor, areas like the location of the demo level: southern Mirkwood. I really like this approach, since it gives Snowblind a chance to come up with some original story material while still staying relevant to the greater story, much like Turbine accomplished with LOTRO. Hopefully there's be a worthy story taking players through varied environments in Middle Earth, and the demo seemed to confirm that, sending the players into Mirkwood on the backs of the Great Eagles in search of Radagast the Brown. Radagast is only encountered once in the books, but is an Istari Wizard just like Gandalf and Saruman, and his lack of involvement in the main LOTR plot means he is fair game for use here.

This looks like a really promising game, and should (along with Hunted from Bethesda) bring some much-needed co-op fun to the action RPG genre.

Super Scribblenauts: I know I mentioned that I played this one yesterday, but today I had some more hands-on time with the game in the company of a very friendly rep from 5th Cell.

Now, don't let the childish presentation of the game fool you. In fact, my fellow E3 attendees, if you never played the original Scribblenauts, you owe it to yourself to check this game out before you leave the show. Yes it's a DS game, and yes it's very casual-friendly (my little sister, who hates most videogames, will steal my DS to play it when I come visit) but it's truly a masterpiece in sheer, dumbfounding scale. The game's premise is simple: you solve puzzles and accomplish basic tasks. However, you are given a massive toolbox with which to do this, and that toolbox contains everything, ever.

This was in the first game too. Type in "elephant" and you got an elephant. But in Super Scribblenauts, you can add adjective modifiers to things as well. So you can type in "pink flying elephant" and that's what you get (trust me I did it). You get extra points for being creative, of course, and there are all sorts of ways to solve the puzzles. Some you can just power through by spawning a "friendly dragon" to ride, a "massive battleaxe" to wield, and freaking "mighty God" to be your sidekick. Others require more specific things, like one I tried that had me feeding some poor test subject potions to give him the powers of a dragon. After feeding him "fire-breathing potion", "scaly potion", and "flying potion", he looked pretty ridiculous and I got my shiny star. (Yes, It Is Always Stars)

With the friendly rep to help me out, I worked through several puzzles, and got a handle on the new, more intuitive interface (which included new options to change the controls, the option to buy hints with "ollars", the in-game points rewarded at the end of levels, and a button to re-center the camera on Maxwell, the hero, in a pinch). There's no way around it, I absolutely love this game. It's really the ultimate DS game, featuring a unique and creative concept, easy accessibility, and bite-sized portions that reward imagination and skill.

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Well it's getting pretty late and I'm running out of steam. Gotta save my energy for the Jumpgate Evolution demo tomorrow, after all! (Not to mention the long drive back to Phoenix.) There were a number of other games I played today, including some MMOs like TERA, DC Universe Online, and Black Prophecy (don't worry NetDevil, the latter only served to get me even more excited for JG:E!). If I get more time I'll write up some more detailed previews for some of the other games I saw.

Until tomorrow!

(Edit: Whew, 1740 words. I think I win for today.)