Monday, March 3, 2008
Review: Drakes Fortune
- GameSpot Score 8.0
Incredible production values and plenty of thrilling moments help make Uncharted an action-packed adventure, in spite of some slightly uneven gameplay.
- Lush jungle environments are stunningly realized
- Drake's animations are nuanced and naturalistic.
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is not a game about new ideas. The gameplay can and has been summed up as "Tomb Raider meets Gears of War," and the story plays almost like an unfilmed National Treasure script, which is another way of saying that the Indiana Jones influence on the story is palpable. Keep in mind that "derivative" isn't the same as "bad." Developer Naughty Dog has assembled its borrowed parts with great proficiency to create an action adventure game with momentum, one that is filled with exciting set pieces, a real cinematic scope, and some of the most gorgeous visuals you'll see in a game.
;)
That Uncharted: Drake's Fortune is a game that trades in archetypes is apparent throughout the story. You'll play as Nathan Drake, an independent adventurer with a wry sense of humor who claims to be a descendent of Sir Francis Drake. That fact figures prominently in the narrative as you go hunting for an ancient relic believed to be hidden somewhere on an uncharted tropical island. The supporting cast includes your friend Sully, who's a cigar-chomping, affable cad with a taste for trouble, and Elena, a confident TV reporter who splits her time between being your sidekick and your damsel in distress. There are villains as well, including Nathan's dry British counterpart as well as a belligerent pirate captain, though you'll likely find their minions far more threatening. The game attempts to add some twists and turns to the plot, but they never really pan out. Nevertheless, the story generally moves with efficiency, as well as some occasionally snappy dialog.
Even if what's happening during the in-engine cutscenes isn't significant, it always looks great. Much of the game takes place in dense jungle environments and a variety of ancient ruins, which the game renders with a nearly photorealistic level of detail. Plants sway, water trickles, and the textures really look like they've got texture. There are a few moments when the game goes outside its wheelhouse with some murky industrial environments that look flat and drab by comparison, but these sequences are rare.
Nathan himself isn't a particularly flashy-looking character in his dirty gray shirt and jeans, but the subtlety of his animation conveys more about him than any outfit would. He'll do a stumbled half-step when traversing uneven terrain, and you'll see him wince when a bullet gets too close to comfort during a firefight. Likewise, his arms will flail spastically during a big jump, and afterward he'll dangle precariously by one hand on the edge he was aiming for. When he gets into a fistfight, half the time it's surprising he makes it out alive. Even when he's performing seemingly impossible acrobatic tasks with ease, the quality of the animation gives him a real sense of fallibility. There's also some terrific facial animation, of which you'll see plenty during cutscenes, though you'll catch glimpses of it during gameplay as well. When a grenade lands near Nathan's feet, you can see the fear in his eyes. The technical feats required to produce what you see on the screen in Uncharted boggle the mind, and the end results make it hard to look away.
The same terrific attention to detail in the graphics is paid to the way Uncharted sounds. The dynamic score is appropriately big and sweeping, the weapon fire has a real clap to it, and the voice cast really nails its characterizations. There are plenty of little touches that fill things out nicely as well, such as the way you'll hear Nathan mutter to himself as he tries to calm his own nerves, or the muffled ring you'll hear everything filtered through when an explosive goes off nearby.
Uncharted ultimately uses all of this glimmer to deliver a gameplay experience that is fast-paced and intermittently spectacular, but also really familiar and a little inconsistent. There are two significant concepts in Uncharted that make up most of the game's running time, though they very rarely intersect. There's environment traversal, which will have you leaping across chasms, scrambling up ledges, and swinging on vines to progress through the game. As good as Uncharted is at making this stuff look harrowing, the game gives you a lot of direction as to where you need to go next, as well as a lot of leeway in the accuracy of your controls. It's easy fun to scrabble your way across these occasionally contrived environments, but other games have done it more elegantly.
By comparison, the combat can be devilish at times in its difficulty. The combat consists mostly of gunplay, and you'll be brandishing a variety of handguns, assault rifles, shotguns, and grenade launchers over the course of the game. Nathan's a pretty fragile dude, and it takes only one or two shots before the color starts draining out of the screen, which makes it important to find and use cover intelligently. By comparison, the pirates and mercenaries that you'll face through most of the game are remarkably sturdy, and can regularly absorb half a clip before going down. Headshots help move things along, though oddly, we found pistols to be far more effective for this than anything other than the sniper rifle, even at several hundred yards.
Enemies are also pretty smart, and if you stay in one position for too long during a firefight, they'll flank you. Dealing with half a dozen cagey enemies who can take roughly as much damage as you isn't impossible, but it can often take multiple tries, which can be fist-clenchingly frustrating when dealing with wave after wave of enemies. There are portions of the game where it seems like you're just moving from one infuriating firefight to the next, and it creates a weird contrast to the easygoing platforming stuff. If you can get close enough to an enemy without getting perforated, which is a rarity, there's some simple hand-to-hand combat. It looks more dynamic than it really is in terms of gameplay, which is both a credit to how hard-hitting the fisticuffs look and a slight against their simplicity.
;)
Amidst all the jumping and shooting, the game includes some straightforward environmental puzzles, as well as some really entertaining vehicle sequences, including a lengthy chase sequence where you man a gun on the back of a jeep, and another that has you piloting a personal watercraft up a raging river. The game is also fond of those little interactive cutscenes that every God of War and Resident Evil seems to be brimming with these days, and though the novelty wears a little thinner every time they crop up in a game, they still work well enough in Uncharted. There's a little bit of motion control wedged into a few spots, but their pretty halfhearted, which makes it a bit of a relief that they don't show up that often. Interestingly, Uncharted uses a performance-based reward system very similar to the Xbox 360 achievements to dole out making-of featurettes, concept art, alternate costumes, and the like. It's a minor touch, but it's a smart and proven way to enhance replay value.
It took us about eight hours to get through Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, and it was an action-packed eight hours, without much in the ways of load times or informational status screens to break it up. The imbalance between the gunplay and the platforming is jarring but forgivable--but the platforming itself works pretty well and looks fantastic thanks to the game's excellent motion-captured animation. If nothing else, Uncharted is a graphical showcase for the PlayStation 3, and it dazzles the senses at nearly every opportunity.
TGS '07: Metal Gear Solid 4 Hands-On
(Gamespot: Brad Shoemaker)
TOKYO--You may have heard of Metal Gear Solid 4 by now. It's one of the PlayStation 3's most important exclusive games in the race for next-generation dominance. It is also creator/director Hideo Kojima's purported last outing with his seminal stealth series. And it's playable here at the Tokyo Game Show. We were lucky enough to sit down with illustrious Kojima Productions producer Ryan Payton for an all-too-brief 90 minutes with the game, during which we found that many familiar mechanics have changed. But the heart of Metal Gear Solid is definitely still beating here.
First, it's worth pointing out that the demo of the game we played is essentially the same one Kojima Productions began demonstrating publicly back in July. So if you haven't seen that video yet, take a look to see everything we're talking about here. Luckily, Payton contextualized the action we played in the demo and filled us in on the initial story of the game. As it turns out, that gameplay demo is set only about 15 minutes into Metal Gear Solid 4, so you'll basically watch the intro sequence and play a very brief section. Then you'll end up right in that dusty village setting that we've seen so much of during the past two years. Payton confirmed during our demo that this Middle Eastern area is just one of the locales you'll visit throughout the course of the game. Just because that's all we've seen of MGS4 so far, don't think the entire game--or even the majority of it--takes place there. Payton let slip that you'll also travel to South America later in the game, among other places.
Before we jumped into the demo, we stepped back and got the scoop on the storyline at the outset of MGS4. The game will begin with Col. Campbell contacting Solid Snake to deliver the disturbing intelligence that Liquid Snake is alive and running Outer Heaven. This is a dummy corporation that oversees and controls private military companies all over the world. The PMCs will essentially act as Liquid's private army throughout the game, so they'll be the on-the-ground enemy forces you'll be fighting against. The PMCs will also vary between areas. For instance, the company in the Middle East was called Praying Mantis, but the one in South America will have a different name and appearance.
Further intelligence indicates that Liquid is currently operating in the Middle East, so Campbell essentially hires Snake to travel there to perform a contract hit on Liquid and put an end to his machinations. It's important to note that the villain we're talking about here is actually Liquid Ocelot--Revolver Ocelot's body with Liquid Snake's attached arm and consciousness. So the bad guy will look like Ocelot, but there's nothing of Ocelot left in there: The personality is 100 percent Liquid Snake. However, you'll hear Ocelot's voice actor delivering the English voice-over in the forthcoming TGS trailer and in the final game, so no more Cam Clarke here (sorry Ninja Turtles fans).
At any rate, Snake's first objective on the ground in the Middle East was to meet up with a group of informants that have been tracking Liquid's movements, which we found out through a dialogue scene with longstanding support character Otacon via codec transmission. The codec interface has come a long way since the minimal, 2D talking heads in the first MGS. Now, it's been overhauled to show a video window of the speaker that takes up a much larger portion of the screen (though you don't see Snake during codec scenes anymore). Otacon was sitting in a fully 3D-modeled room that we could move the camera around in a limited fashion, so you'll get some visual context on where your codec buddies are physically located every time you talk to them. Another nice feature is that you can fast-forward by hitting the triangle button--complete with superfast dialogue delivery and sped-up animation. Then you can let off the button to let the conversation resume with full spoken dialogue. Payton confirmed that the lips will be synced to the audio in MGS4 rather than tuned by hand, so the lip sync should be much more believable in the English and other localized versions of the game.
To find the informants, we had to move down a length of streets and nearly demolished houses to reach the rendezvous point. You can watch that gameplay demo from July to essentially track our progress through the area, although like much of the game, this section had more than one path. For instance, in the starting area, we could move down the street itself on the left, but that route was blocked by a number of Praying Mantis soldiers and a large armored vehicle with a top-mounted gun turret (which Payton said will replace the security cameras of previous games). So we chose to break to the right to cut through some ruined buildings, which afforded us a number of crawlspaces and blast holes. In these areas, we could slink through and avoid most of the soldiers in the area.
So how does the game play? As mentioned, it's different yet the same, in that the actions you perform--things like taking cover and pulling close-quarters combat moves on unsuspecting soldiers--are still in here. But the control methods you use to perform them are different and largely streamlined over past games. The "action" interface--that is, anything you make Snake do that isn't combat-related--is now assigned solely to the triangle button. That ranges from climbing up ladders and vaulting over low barriers to simply walking up to a wall and taking cover against it (which you used to do by running Snake headfirst into the wall). Anytime there's an available contextual action, you'll get a small icon at the bottom indicating what you can do by hitting the triangle button. We saw one exception to this rule when Snake climbed into a garbage container, which puts you into first-person view: You'll have to flick the Sixaxis upward forcefully to push the lid open and climb back out.
Crouching is less awkward than it used to be, as well. Previously, you had to tap the X button multiple times--first to crouch and then to go prone--which as often as not made you end up in a position other than the one you wanted. Now you can hit X once to drop to a crouch or hold X to go straight to prone, which ought to eliminate the confusion. Better, you can now move around in the crouch position, instead of dropping to a crawl as soon as you started moving forward. This will make Snake less visible and make less noise as you move around. It didn't seem like he moved much more slowly than in a full running position, so this will probably be the default stance for many players as they move around the game.
From what we could tell, the biggest changes to MGS4's gameplay are in the shooting controls, which have never been the strongest point in the MGS series. The game uses a low third-person camera like the one first seen in MGS3: Subsistence, so it's already more like a third-person shooter than the previous, predominantly stealth-oriented outings. Furthermore, you'll have an auto-aim setting that you can turn on, which will essentially lock your aim to the enemy most directly in Snake's line of sight. (You'll see a small hovering icon indicating which enemy you're locked on to.) Then you'll hold L1 to engage the lock so that you can fire at and strafe around that enemy while you're running around.
More-skilled players will be able to toggle the auto-aim with a tap of the square button, which makes Snake unable to fire from the hip. Why would you want to do that? Because with auto-aim off, holding L1 will bring the camera down to a Gears of War-style over-the-shoulder firing mode that lets you aim precisely for headshots and the like. You can also switch which of Snake's shoulders you're looking over, depending on the surrounding cover. You lose the advantage of being able to kill enemies on the run with the auto-aim turned off, but we found the manual-aim mode let us kill enemies much more quickly by aiming for the head. You'll also get quite a satisfying rag doll effect when you take troops down this way; they look like they go down hard with the impact of your bullets.
That's when you actually want to shoot at your foes, anyway. It will still behoove you to remain hidden and neutralize your enemies silently--or it wouldn't be a Metal Gear game. We gained a better understanding of Metal Gear's new threat warning indicators as we played. Kojima Productions has done away with the alert levels in previous games; now, the intensity with which enemies are searching for you will primarily be indicated by contextual means, such as the background music. You'll also have a translucent ring around Snake that will act as a combination of the old radar and alert indicator. The ring will be still when you're not in danger at all, but it will become rippled and turn red when enemies are gunning for you. Each ripple will point in the direction of a nearby enemy, and the size of the ripple will indicate how close they are to you. Payton said this change was made to keep your eyes focused directly on the action, rather than making you stare at a small radar map in the corner of the screen to avoid pursuit.
There will be more battlefield influences on Snake for you to contend with in MGS4, though we only got the bare overview of them in our demo (Payton said the team doesn't want to give too much away about these mechanics yet). Directly underneath the health bar is your psych meter, which is broken into four segments. Your psych meter will diminish in extreme heat or other adverse weather conditions (temperature, weather, and wind direction are indicated in the map screen). It can even go down due to the stench when you climb into a dumpster. To raise your psych once it's gone down...why, you whip out your favorite nudie magazine, of course. This process is surprisingly involved. You'll bring the magazine up in first-person view to see the lovely, mostly bikini-clad ladies within, and each new picture will rapidly replenish your psych for a few seconds. The rub (ahem) is Snake will quickly tire of each picture, so you'll have to keep flipping through the issue to keep getting psych back. We're sure committed players (cough) will make a point of recovering all the magazines in the game. Alas, Payton didn't talk much about what psych will influence, other than to say that Snake can pass out when the meter is fully depleted.
Then there's the stress indicator, which is expressed as a percentage underneath the psych bar. This one is influenced more directly by battle conditions. When you're safely hidden in the shadows, it will sit at zero. When you're being pursued, it may go up a few points. When you're running down a street in a hail of gunfire with bombs exploding around you, your stress level will soar. It's at these times that you'll achieve a sort of "combat high," which will increase your firing accuracy and halve the damage you take from enemies. This boon only lasts for about 15 seconds, though, after which you'll crash from the high. Then your accuracy and such will actually go down. It's not clear yet whether you'll be able to control the use of this effect, or whether it will simply kick in when the conditions are right.
Close-quarters combat has also been enhanced for MGS4. You'll be able to do a basic melee move when you get up close to an enemy, and you have a two-handed weapon--like a rifle--equipped, but you'll get the best close-quarters combat moves when you're using a pistol or the new stun knife. As before, you can throw an enemy or cut his throat after you grapple with him, but there will be more complex moves available for advanced players. We pulled off a fairly difficult submission hold move of sorts that required us to first grapple, then crouch, then let off the hold button briefly, flick the analog stick to the side, and then press the hold button again. This forced the enemy onto the ground, where Snake quickly rendered him unconscious. It seems these advanced moves will be most useful for neutralizing enemies quickly and in a nonlethal way.
Sure, Metal Gear is all about sneaking, but some sections of MGS4 will actually encourage you to go nuts with all the those military toys you find in a Metal Gear Solid game. Payton referred to these sections as "warfare" levels, where you won't even have to worry about stealth; you'll just run straight into the fray and let loose with all your weapons. In the demo, we had access to a number of rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, pistols, sniper rifles (which you can now fire from the hip, rather than being locked into the scope view), and even the antitank javelin weapon, which we used to obliterate a couple of those turret-equipped armored vehicles.
It's in these warfare sections that you'll best be able to prove your mettle to the local militia fighting against Liquid's PMCs. To win their trust, you'll simply have to avoid killing them and focus on killing the PMC soldiers. You can also approach militiamen and use the triangle button to hand them healing items, such as rations. They'll verbally thank you and otherwise indicate that they're impressed with your help. Afterward, they'll refrain from attacking you and simply help you fight against Liquid's soldiers instead.
When you're fighting through the all-out warfare areas, you'll get to rely on the most diverse array of weaponry yet in a Metal Gear game. This is because you can now modify your weapons extensively as you acquire new gear for them. Each weapon will have multiple mount points, and you can attach new equipment to those points. In the example we saw, the M4 rifle had a top mount where we could stick a scope and a bottom mount that would accept a flashlight, grenade launcher, or several other pieces of gear. Almost every weapon will now have an alternate fire mode in the game, which is also how you'll use that interesting stun knife we mentioned earlier. Primarily, you'll slash with it, but it also has a taser integrated, so you can zap an enemy with the alt-fire instead if you want.
We also received a couple of entertaining toys from Otacon toward the end of the demo. The Metal Gear Mark II can be seen in the gameplay demo video, which you can use for battlefield recon and to zap unsuspecting enemies with its included taser weapon. The Mk. II can only go so far before it loses signal, though, and enemies can still take it out if they see it. We also got the "solid eye" eyepiece, which gives you a tactical battlefield readout that identifies other soldiers as either militia or PMC members, as well as shows you the location of weapons you can pick up in the field. The solid eye will also offer a zoom mode like the old scope, which will let you read this information from a distance, and an infrared mode that shows you highlighted human beings, as well as important battlefield features, set against a background of green video noise.
At the end of the demo, we finally reached the rendezvous point to find none other than redheaded Meryl Silverburgh and her new unit, Rat Patrol. This group is apparently a UN-sanctioned strike force tasked with keeping tabs on Liquid Ocelot's movements around the world. Meryl's Rat Patrol unit consists of the two burly characters (one bald, one with a Mohawk) that you can see in the latest trailer, as well as Johnny, the inept soldier with the weak stomach who's been showing up throughout the Metal Gear Solid series as comic relief. Too bad the demo ended there because we're really curious now to see where the story is going.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that we played MGS4 with the just-announced-this-morning Dual Shock 3, Sony's vibration-equipped PS3 controller. The thing looks just like the Sixaxis and from what we could tell, it weighs about the same as the old PlayStation 2 version of the Dual Shock. The rumble effects in the demo were also appropriate for the combat and traversal actions we were taking. There's really not much of a story here--it's just traditional force feedback that works like you'd expect--but we're glad all the same that Sony was able to integrate it into the PS3's controls before MGS4 ships because this is the sort of game that would really benefit from the inclusion of force feedback.
Frankly, an hour and a half felt like far too short a time with a demo we probably could have spent all day mining for details. There are even more mechanics at work in MGS4 that bear description. For instance, we learned that you'll be able to save patterns that you've acquired for Snake's octo-camouflage suit for later use in the game. We'll just have to wait until Konami opts to show more of the game to the press. Or if we're really unlucky, we'll have to wait until it ships to retail before we can report more of the new gameplay, as well as story details, that Kojima and its 200-strong team have poured into Metal Gear Solid 4.
MGS4 solidifying in June, Dual Shock 3 rumbling in April
Konami's stealth-actioner to be available stand-alone, bundled with 80GB PS3, rumble-equipped controller; Retailers list ship date as June 12; New Sixaxis arriving two months earlier for $55.
By Tom Magrino (Gamespot)
As Hideo Kojima's "final" installment in the Metal Gear Solid series, Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is uniquely positioned as one of the most heavily anticipated PlayStation 3 titles from a dying breed of third-party console exclusives. Today, Sony revealed via its PlayStation Blog that Metal Gear Solid 4 would arrive on the PS3 in late Q2 2008, which runs until June 30. The news comes as part of the Destination PlayStation retailer conference, which is currently under way in Arizona.
While Sony wasn't more forthright with an exact date, retailers, which sometimes leak release dates through online listings prior to publishers' actual announcements, seem to be under the impression that the game will surface in mid-June. According to listings on Amazon and GameFly, MGS4 will take to the streets on Thursday, June 12, while GameStop has the game slated for Tuesday, June 17. Publishers typically choose to release high-profile titles on Tuesday in the US.
To promote Metal Gear Solid 4's release, Sony also revealed the game will be available as part of an 80GB PS3 bundle. In addition to the game and system, the bundle will include a Dual Shock 3 controller and will retail for $499.99. Presumably, the Dual Shock 3 will replace the Sixaxis controller currently available in the $499.99 80GB SKU.
Similar to Microsoft's use of Realtime World's Crackdown to hand out keys for the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, Sony also said it will be guaranteeing access to Metal Gear Online's multiplayer beta test for those who preorder the game. The test is expected to commence in late April.
The Destination PlayStation conference also yielded an update on the Dual Shock 3, which Sony officially took the wraps off of during 2007's Tokyo Game Show. The much-requested rumble-equipped, motion-sensing wireless controller will arrive in North America in April at the price of $54.99. According to Sony, more than 100 PS3 games will be compatible with the controller, including Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank Future, and MGS4.
Grand Theft Auto IV Hands-On
(Source Gamespot: Guy cocker)
Grand Theft Auto IV is looking superb. Perhaps even more importantly, it's looking finished. The millions of eager fans who were disappointed by the game's postponement can rest easy, because bar a major catastrophe, the game should make its planned April release date. Having played it for two and a half hours at Rockstar's London offices, we can report that the game is running smoothly, has relatively few bugs, and is as intricately detailed as we'd hope a GTA game would be. In fact, playing five missions and exploring two of the game's massive districts was almost too much to digest in one sitting, and we left intoxicated by the amount of new characters, areas, and gameplay that it has to offer.
;)
Our demo kicked off at the beginning of the game itself in a mission called Jamaican Heat. Niko has traveled to Liberty City on the back of a promise of wealth and opportunity from his cousin Roman. Once Niko arrives, he finds the truth to be very different, and we join them both in the office of Roman's taxi firm. Roman is fielding phone calls from angry customers while Niko is pacing up and down the room. Niko is then tasked with going to meet a character called Little Jacob, a Jamaican stoner whose main interests lie in the acquisition and use of drugs.
The voice-over work is pretty much finished at this stage, and it's of the same high quality that we've come to expect from the Grand Theft Auto series. Little Jacob's vocal style makes him pretty hard to understand, but there are subtitles available should you need them. The incidental conversations still help to flesh out the characters in GTAIV, and they've become even more well-rounded thanks to a multitude of dialogue recordings. Conversations change depending on how you approach missions, so if you have to repeat them, you're unlikely to hear the same exchange the second time. We played one assassination mission that took place on a train platform, and the preceding cutscene changed completely when we approached the target from a different angle.
GTA: San Andreas really upped the ante in terms of character customisation, given that it let you completely change your appearance through exercise, diet, and clothing. GTAIV ditches the role-playing game elements, but you'll still be able to customise Niko as well as take him for a bite to eat. During some of our downtime in Liberty City, we dropped by a discount-clothing store and swapped his standard jeans-and-jacket combo for a more sportswear-oriented look. We were able to buy sweatpants, a sports jacket, boots, and sunglasses during our visit, and although it was hardly appropriate attire for an Eastern European crook, we liked being able to go into a shop and change clothes before a mission. After that we headed to a local diner, and in another nice touch, the staff and customers put their hands in the air. Apparently everybody thinks you're about to rob them when you forget to put your weapon away.
;)
Although Rockstar has often pushed the envelope in terms of story, characterisation, and music, it has been criticised in the past for poor control systems. San Andreas tried to improve things with auto-aim and lock-on, but the combat still felt muddled and imprecise. The controls have evolved once again for this outing, with subtle changes made to the locking system; targeting is handled on the left trigger, and it automatically locks on to the closest enemy in sight. If you fire with the right trigger, you'll shoot at the body of your enemy, but this is nonfatal and it can take more than a few shots to bring your opponent down. However, flick the right analogue stick upward and you'll aim for the head, where it's one shot to kill. Though this takes more dexterity to pull off, it's worth attempting if you want to take successive enemies out in one fell swoop. In addition to the new aiming system, there's also a new cover mechanic that uses the right bumper on the Xbox 360. It's not quite Gears of War in terms of run-and-gun action, but using cover does let you consider your targets from safety before popping out to fire, or even blind firing if you're in real trouble. You can also hold "A" to run between cover, and though it's not done to the same extreme as in John Woo's Stranglehold, you'll see enemies pulling off slides and rolls as they move between cover.
These small adjustments certainly refine the regular combat of GTAIV with respect to its predecessors. However, the biggest improvement has undoubtedly been in drive-by shooting. In previous games, you were limited to firing left and right out of the car at fixed right angles, but now you're able to shoot freely by holding the left bumper and moving the right analogue stick. When you first move to aim, Niko smashes out the window of the vehicle and a targeting reticle appears. It's still slightly fiddly if you're trying to drive and shoot at the same time, but we managed to take down a whole gang of drug dealers on our first attempt.
The GTA series isn't particularly noted for its technically advanced graphics, but powered by the RAGE engine that debuted in Table Tennis, GTAIV is certainly a good-looking game. The city stretches as far as the eye can see, which means that Algonquin's tall buildings and bright lights tease you when you start the game restricted to the Broker district. With that said, the RAGE engine accomplishes this technical feat by blurring out the background image in a necessary but visually distracting act of trickery. Hopefully the team will be able to balance this out once it has optimised the game further to allow for a better mix of fidelity and performance. On the plus side, we were encouraged by the lack of slowdown at this stage, and with hardly any other bugs to be seen during our playing time, it's looking very encouraging for the game's planned April release. There are so many incidental details in GTAIV that it's sometimes easy to take them for granted. You still have a small map in the corner of the screen to help navigate, but more expensive cars also have a GPS system. As you drive a Mercedes-style car around Liberty City, a gentle female voice will tell you where to turn to reach your target. It might not always pick the quickest route, but it is clever enough not to guide you down one-way streets. As with previous GTAs, bridges will initially be closed off to restrict players from entering certain parts of the city, but we were able to skip forward in the game and cross the bridge from Broker to Algonquin. The only problem: tollbooths have been included in the game, and speeding through the barrier resulted in a throng of police cars chasing us over. The next time we tried, we slowed down at the window, paid the toll, and waited for the barrier to open.
;)
Our demonstration ended with an assignment called "Deconstruction for Beginners," an assassination mission in which we had to take out some pesky union leaders for a new character called Playboy X. The first part of the mission required us to scale one of the tallest buildings in the city using a small lift; just ascending the structure took the best part of a minute. We were still a good way off from the heady heights of the Empire State Building, which was visible in the distance, but our building made for a spectacular view across the dock. From our vantage point, we were able to snipe a few henchmen perched on cranes before descending and finishing off the leaders on the ground. This particular mission also serves as a tutorial for using grenades, and you can now blindly toss grenades from behind cover to produce some pretty spectacular explosions. It has to be said that in terms of core gameplay, GTAIV remains pretty much the same as the previous games. You'll be playing the same sort of missions, mixing with unsavoury characters, and pulling off crazy stunts during downtime. But the attraction of GTA was always in its sandbox possibilities, and the new Liberty City is the most intricate playground yet. Rockstar was particularly generous when it came to free time in the city, and whereas the five missions we played were fairly regimented, we were encouraged to explore the surroundings.
;)
Our final experience in GTAIV came as we got in a car and drove to what may be the geographical highlight of the game. Broadway looks just like the area of New York that it's modeled on, with gaudy neon lights providing illumination for the people and traffic below. Once again, the enjoyment comes from the details, including posters for fake movies and theatre productions that sit alongside the "NAVSAQ" stock-exchange ticker. Driving around, we also found a couple of the 50 stunt jumps that will be featured in the final game. If you get a good run up in a fast car, you can nail massive jumps off of these ramps and clear rivers or barren land in a single bound. The upside of the stunt jumps is that you get recognition (and likely achievement points) for completing them, and you can control the camera to speed up or slow down the action during the jump. The downside is that if you crash into something when you hit the ground, you'll go hurtling through the windscreen.
GTAIV looks magnificent so far. It takes the humour, style, and character of the previous games and wraps them in a sumptuously detailed new city. That said, there's still plenty that we haven't seen from the game--namely the PlayStation 3 version and the multiplayer modes. Although the game is a matter of weeks away, Rockstar has promised us glimpses at both elements ahead of release. In the meantime, consider us psyched up for the planned April release date.
New genre - Mirror's Edge (First Look)
DICE's new first-person action game won't offer any guns, but you'll be able to run up walls. Sounds like a fair trade. (Jason Ocampo)
Though it's widely known for its acclaimed Battlefield games, the Swedish studio DICE does have a proud history of developing for a wide variety of genres. DICE has made racing games, pinball games, and even an equestrian game called Legacy of Rosemond Hill. With that said, Mirror's Edge is unlike anything DICE has made before. Indeed, it's almost unlike anything that we've ever seen before, but it nevertheless looks cool. If you had to describe it in a sentence, it's almost like a first-person parkour game. And if you haven't heard of parkour, then do a search for it on YouTube.
;)
Begun in France, parkour is the practice of maneuvering fluidly around an urban environment, moving almost like a gymnast at times. That's at the heart of Mirror's Edge. You'll play as Faith, a courier in a city where the police state eavesdrops on all electronic communications. This dystopia is utopian in appearance, full of gleaming skyscrapers and roads so clean that you might be able to conduct surgery on them. The price for this orderly world is high, though, and noncomformists are shunned. That's where Faith steps in. She and other couriers navigate around the rooftops of this pristine, sun-drenched metropolis, delivering messages and other items that need to remain secret.
Mirror's Edge is a game about running for your life when the police, security guards, and even news helicopters are shadowing you. In the demonstration that DICE gave, the action included leaping from one rooftop to another, vaulting over fences and other obstacles, sliding under pipes and overhangs, and even engaging in some martial arts combat. (Faith reportedly will not use a firearm, so you won't be shooting in this game.)
Momentum is a key idea in the game. It's not enough that you're jumping around this environment. To perform some moves, you'll need to string together a bunch of maneuvers to build up speed. For instance, you can climb over a fence, which takes a few seconds. But what happens if you jump off a neighboring rooftop, do a parachute roll upon landing (so you don't lose precious momentum), and use the ensuing momentum to vault over the fence in a heartbeat?
If you've played games such as Tomb Raider, you know that you can stop after you maneuver around an obstacle, take a minute to figure out what you have to do next, and then go for it. Judging from the demo of Mirror's Edge, you'll have only seconds to analyze your terrain, partly because of the guys chasing you, but more because of the bullets they'll be sending your way. So the game is meant to be played at full speed, and to help, there's a special "Faith vision" that color-codes the environment, giving you clues about what you need to do. If you're atop a tall skyscraper and seem trapped, look across the street and you might see that the fire escape on the neighboring building is red. Run for it and jump, and hope you grab it on the other side.
;)
The graphics engine for Mirror's Edge looks sharp, and the game really captures the feeling of a built-up urban area. But even more impressive is the drenching sunlight that almost bleaches out the omnipresent concrete in the city. It's so bright and warm that it seems as though you're in Los Angeles at the height of summer, and there's not a single cloud or smog bank in the sky. It's also a contrast to the current fad in gaming, which is to create gritty, run-down urban settings. The fictional city at the heart of Mirror's Edge has a distinctive look and feel, even while it tries to capture the soullessness of a city and a society. It all looks very cool, and also very fresh. Mirror's Edge is planned for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 for sometime this year.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)