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NVIDIA
For some reason, Monolith’s Tron 2.0 (PC) was on show at the NVIDIA/Intel stand rather than anywhere else. I guess because it’s beautiful. The glowing polygons truly are something spectacular to behold when you see them moving. It’s a terrible shame that the game is so…
Abstract, though.
Now, I know the first thing to your mind is to complain that I’m missing the point, but I don’t think I am. I skipped the training levels and from that point on was repeatedly punished for doing things that I had no idea of the consequences of. For example – If I attack anyone or anything other than an enemy with my disc? UNLAWFUL PROGRAM TERMINATION, and back to the last quicksave. When that happens on firing my disc at a door’s abstract looking ‘lock’ - Not cool. The game is wonderful looking, but unless they tighten up the gameplay and make it more user friendly, it’s not going to be enjoyable. An oft-quoted game design tenant is ‘Never punish the player’. Well, playing Tron 2.0, I was punished.
Ubi Soft
Ubi Soft’s stand kept its trend from last year by being one of the busiest and hardest to get on a machine. In fact, many of the times I was there, the games seemed to be being played only by the game demonstrators. Maybe they’re so good they couldn’t stop. I don’t remember a demonstrator at the Playstation Experience doing anything except standing around sullen faced.
XIII (PC) I watched the trailer of this game before playing it. It evoked feelings in a way much stronger and clearer than my confused feelings on MGS3.
I hated it.
Having already played XIII in demo form on my PC at home and even at last years ECTS, on watching the trailer, my only thought was – Oh man! I really want to play that game! Not the game they’ve given us…
It shows XIII performing a whole variety of athletic manoeuvres to a stirring soundtrack, with some superb animation. It ends with an iconic ‘leap from a cliff onto a helicopter ladder’ scene – clichéd, but stirring. I can’t remember ever being allowed to do that in a game.
Haven’t you always wanted to do that? (In a game, at least.)
I actually really like the style and concept of XIII. Taking influence from an original French comic book is an interesting use of an external IP, and one that has clearly worked, on a visual level. It’s a terrible shame to say that XIII falls into all the pitfalls available to a FPS – completely linear, uninteresting levels, foolish enemies, and a missing sense of character (entirely the fault of the FPS viewpoint.)
It’s still an acceptable FPS, or even, quite a good one. But the trailer offered so much more. I feel the game’s shortcomings could be balanced out by the wonderful cut-scenes, but that’s still watching, not playing, and not, in my mind, what games should be about.
Beyond Good and Evil (PS2) I observed this being played by a demonstrator during a boss battle. I love the look of the game – like XIII, it manages to define an asctetic style for itself without reverting to poorly ripping off the Japanese or going for super realisim. During the boss battle the main character’s uncle (oddly, a pigman) requests that she ‘aim for the weak point’. (I can’t remember what the weak point was). I think she had to hit it 3 times, though. I wonder if there will come a time when game design will have evolved past every 3d action adventure having bosses with obvious weakpoints that can only be damaged by the weapon you most recently aquired. Curious.
Vivendi Universal (PC)
The Simpsons: Hit and Run (Xbox) On X-box, this seemed to get Kojima’s son’s approval, but is it okay with me?
Well, on PS2 it just looks and feels horrible. But on Xbox… Damn. I should hate it, what with it being a lazy use of IP and a rip off of GTA. But, like True Crime: Streets of LA, I just can’t hate it, because it’s too fun.
The 3d representation of Springfield, while better than seen in Road Rage, still has that slightly… False feel about it. It’s not accurate enough – some kind of cel-shading technology with the fat fuzzy lines that Groeing does so well needs to be invented.
But the car handling is just so similar to GTA it’s hard not to enjoy driving around. The novelty would wear off quickly (the missions seem really quite uninspired) and the game has an unusual approach to the ‘car theft’ issues of the genre.
For one, you never see Homer enter a car. The screen does a cartoon tunnel fade and then suddenly, Homer is in a car. It’s really off-putting, as you can be entering and exiting cars very often. The fade to black is used in television because it represents a sensible end to a scene, akin to closing your eyes for a second. That’s why it doesn’t do it every time they change cameras. It would just be disorientating.
Weirder still than the fade is that if you ‘steal’ a car, Homer is only the passenger, and the original driver is somehow doing Homer the favour of ferrying him about. I know car theft isn’t cool, but it just seems kind of stupid.
And you can’t run over enemies. Anyone who remembers the Simpson’s arcade game will remember the weird ‘waving arms and legs’ death animation of all the enemies – well, on being hit by a car, a pedestrian performs the animation while pinging about the landscape like a pinball. Compared to the car physics (pleasingly unrealistic) this just seems… Odd.
Like the whole game, I guess. Jarring, ugly, but… Okay.
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System (Xbox) I really don’t know if Kojima was enjoying this or not. His wasn’t exactly glowing with pleasure, but, maybe he was just concentrating.
It controls like an FPS in 3rd person, actually very responsive, and aiming and shooting is effortless. However, on the first level of the game I was unable to find a single enemy, and then chanced upon a hill that had many gaps to be jumped – each time you fell, you had to start again at the bottom – this, with FPS controls, is just about the worst thing ever. I had to concentrate, and my face wasn’t glowing with pleasure. If the jumping puzzles take a back seat, this game could be pretty cool. I doubt they do, though.
Vodaphone Live Arcade
Oh, goodness. This was dire. In this picture you will see the stage they had set up, very oddly around the corner and then down a short corridor from the N-Gage stand. It was a weird inflatable/steel unit with this guy doing his best impression of a fairground gypsy (or, as they're called in the US, a ‘Carnie’) yelling in an attempt to stir excitement to the crowd watching.
This is the crowd watching – here.
Now, I’m pretty sure that this was actually on tour around the UK, and in town centres, it would probably be a draw to the kind of people who hang around town centres. But, just outside of ECTS, it was dead. Not because what Vodaphone had on show was particularly poor – the company were showing a variety of simple arcade classics from Namco such as Galaxian (which were all acceptably converted) but because no one seemed to know about it. I remember while sitting in the Capcom meeting room with Tom Sekine, thinking that the ‘Scream if you wanna go faster!’ yelling was coming from the Playstation Experience. I’d have never found the place if some girls hadn’t hustled us there after we left the meeting room.
ECTS Best of Year Awards
I wasn’t actually at the awards, what with them being held on this rubbishy looking stage at the back of the hall, and probably presented by a Z-list celebrity of such monumental dullness the audience was probably as large as that for the Vodaphone Live Arcade. Anyway, the Molneux/Penn Deathmatch was on. So I’ll freely admit to this being cribbed from the press release.
Voted for by readers or the editorial teams:
Game of the Year UK, in conjunction with Gamer.tv - Pro Evolution Soccer 2, Konami
Game of the Year France, in conjunction with JDLI - Battlefield 1942, Electronic Arts
Game of the Year Germany, in conjunction with Gamigo.de - Splinter Cell, Ubi Soft Entertainment
Game of the Year Italy, in conjunction with Multiplayer.it - Mafia, Gathering
Game of the Year Spain, in conjunction with Game Live - GTA: Vice City, Rockstar Games
Game of the Year Scandinavia, in conjunction with Manual - Battlefield 1942, Electronic Arts
What an odd selection, eh readers? Really should, I guess, clue you into the differences between our cultures here in jolly old Europe. To summarise – Britain loves footy, France has a complex about being rubbish at war, Germany has confused me by not making the game of the year a hex based strategy, all Italians are Mafioso, Spanish people steal cars and listen to Flock of Seagulls, and Scandinavians have a complex about never having any wars.
Voted for by the editorial teams:
The PC Gamer Best PC Games Developer Award - Creative Assembly
The Edge Award - Viewtiful Joe, Capcom
The Loaded Award - GTA: Vice City, Rockstar Games
The Times Award - Sony EyeToy
Our dear friends Edge stick their nose in to give Viewtiful Joe an award for, uh, a game they liked recently. Loaded are a famous ‘Lad mag’ in the UK, which is basically like a more loutish Maxim. The Times is a prestigious news paper which I would be frankly surprised if anyone on the editorial team had flapped their arms like a loony in an attempt to kill imaginary ninjas, but you never know.
Voted for on www.ects.com:
Best Console of the Year - Microsoft Xbox
Best Publisher of the Year - Nintendo
Best PC Hardware of the Year - ATI 9800 Pro
Gosh, if only Xbox 2 has an ATI card and Nintendo get on board, eh? THEY’LL BE UNSTOPPABLE!
Voted for by a press panel on day one of ECTS:
Best PC Game of the Show - Far Cry, Ubi Soft Entertainment
Best Console Game of the Show - XIII, Ubi Soft Entertainment
Best Handheld Game of the Show - Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising - Nintendo
Best Online Game of the Show - Everquest II, Ubi Soft Entertainment
Overall Best Game of the Show - XIII, Ubi Soft Entertainment
The London Games Week Award - Half Life 2, Vivendi Universal Games
Jeez, Ubisoft cleaned up on that one, then. No wonder the stand was so busy. I like to imagine Everquest II won’t have the level of ‘timestinks’ that the original had, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. And, the London Games Week Award was awarded to a game that wasn’t even in playable form at the show! But then, everyone knows that it’s going to be great! So that’s alright then.
I can’t actually think if anyone actually cares about the ECTS awards, or not, to tell the truth. I saw a Bastion PR rep with someone’s award – which had happened to break into two pieces. From that, I don’t actually think it’s that prestigious, then.
And that was all there was to ECTS, I guess. Unlike the display at Nintendo and even that in the Playstation Experience, there wasn’t that much on show that was very exciting.
But each year, at least, ECTS gets better as a trade show with more to offer and more to see. Even if it's not very good. The content created each year doesn’t seem to be getting any better, and it’s a worrying sign.
--Mathew Kumar has no obvious weakpoints.
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