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Game Stars Live
So let’s start at the beginning, or at least, where I started.
Ubisoft
Prince of Persia: The Warrior Within
I got the original Prince of Persia on Gameboy for Christmas back in 1992. Beat it sitting underneath the dining room light, cricking my neck and speeding up my need for glasses with green screen blur. I would be willing to go through the same discomfort just to play Sands of Time again. It literally made me feel like an eleven year-old playing a brand new game at Christmas, the skill, effort and love you could see the developers had put into it.
In Sands of Time, the Prince spends almost the entire game fretting about a servant girl he could just order to do whatever he said. After all, he’s a prince.
In The Warrior Within, he calls a woman a bitch.
Fair enough that she’s trying to kill him – that she looks like someone saw Ivy from Soul Caliber through a window when passing an arcade and decided to copy her slavishly doesn’t seem so fair. The Games Stars demo, devoid of platforming and stuffed with gory violence, with a ridiculous, gothic Prince… It’s like they stripped the game of everything beautiful and laid it out in front of me. I’m sure it can’t be that bad, though… Can it?
Also on show from Ubisoft were Splinter Cell 3, notable for being another Splinter Cell game, and having a ridiculous looking Sam Fisher model over the screens, looking like it was ready to topple over at any minute, in a remarkably unstealthy fashion, though it never did. Playboy, which, though I didn’t get a picture, was playable from a four-poster bed. Joining a group of fat sweaty dorks on a four poster bed seemed a most un-Hefnerish thing to do, so I didn’t bother. And Ubisoft are releasing Star Ocean 3 in Europe, the image of which sums up my feelings on Japanese RPGs, and their future, in a deliciously ironic fashion. Maybe.
Codemasters
Only showing one game, Second Sight, which was hidden away in the unnecessarily red light district seeming ‘adult zone’ despite being roughly as violent and disturbing as the new, hardcore Prince of Persia. When I dropped into the booth, I had the good fortune to bump into Martin Hollis, CEO of Zoonami, whose talk, ‘Making Of GoldenEye 007' at the EDF I had watched only that morning. Cutting a dashing figure in a (presumably humorously intended) tuxedo, he’d ended his speech with a plug for Second Sight, because the staff are his friends. I watched some responsible over-eighteens play Second Sight with him, and he revealed he’d only actually played it for about ten minutes himself (at E3) but that he really liked the idea of the psychic abilities, and the ability to wear disguises. I told him to keep his eye open for Spy Fiction from Sammy (not on show, sadly), as it seems to be all about the disguises. “I’ll be sure to,” he said, before confiding in me “I toyed with the idea of disguises in Goldeneye, but it didn’t seem like it would work.”
Second Sight itself, well. It’s got a horrible story. If I have to play another game in which I play someone with amnesia I think I’m going to batter my head off the wall till I myself have amnesia, allowing me to at once experience the story as new, and experience a story in a videogame which I can empathise with, for a change. It’s summed up to me, in many ways, by the line of dialogue where the character states “I’ve got to get out of here… Whoever I am!”. Clunky.
The gameplay itself seems pretty good, though. Like Martin Hollis, my 10 minutes or so were enough to say ‘I’m intrigued’ and ‘the psychic abilities are fun’.
Midway
Mortal Kombat Deception
Or, as I imagine the title should be, “Mortal Kombat: We’re really just taking the piss, now.” Yes, finally, a Mortal Kombat game in which I can play chess. Uh, chess where the taking of each piece is decided by a round of Mortal Kombat, thus making things like, you know, playing chess properly more or less impossible.
Also Puzzle Kombat, which is exactly what you’d expect if someone remade Puzzle Fighter, but removed all the charm. It’s bad enough you’d imagine Capcom could sue, if they really cared.
The fighting game is still Mortal Kombat. Like Madden, you know what you’re getting. Unlike Madden, you don’t get at least a decent soundtrack for your $40.
Vivendi Universal
Vivendi are shipping Half Life 2, right?
You wouldn’t be able to tell it from what they had on show. In fact, I think other than one small image of Gordon on a wall at their booth in EGN, I doubt I saw a whisper of it. I really don’t know if that means anything at all, but maybe it did, considering the other ‘big’ games they had on show were monumentally dire.
Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude
This was being really heavily promoted. I would like to bring your attention to this image. I doubt I have to say more, other than possibly everyone involved in this game I would like to kick to death.
Fight Club
Perhaps only as preparation for kicking everyone involved in the making of this game to death. Okay, so maybe they’ve tried to be clever. The menu seemed very… Fight Club. They call Norton’s character “Jack” in quotations marks. However this all wraps up an incredibly mediocre fighting game that appears not even as deep as Golden Axe. That this turned out to not be some incredibly elaborate joke may be the best joke of all.
Eidos
Get on Da Mic
Anything, anything, which allows me to realise I have no rhythm while rapping along with ‘Baby Got Back’ by Sir Mixalot gets a million points from me straight off. The fact that the list of old school rap classics on the song list is (currently) a paltry 3 in my opinion (Baby Got Back, Don’t Believe the Hype, and Rappers Delight) stops this possibly being the greatest game of all time, but even something as retarded as ‘X gonna get you’ can be joyful as you try and keep time and realise that probably, you never will.
Silly, disposable, but glorious.
Lego Star Wars
Has there been a Star Wars game since Tie Fighter that hasn’t sucked? Seriously. Before you start to protest, I’ve played Knights of the Old Republic, and it takes hours of playing to get a damn lightsaber. Just give me a damn lightsaber! I’m running around on an alien planet fighting dudes with guns holding a sword?
What the hell, people.
But this, well, god knows. The version on show had (as is traditional for anything third person, ever) the worst camera ever. The gameplay was mostly running about, randomly changing character (which makes the game feel like you’re running it with a ‘change model’ cheat enabled) and hitting things with a lightsaber. It looks cool as hell. But I really can’t see what the game is supposed to be – it smells too much of Jedi Power Battles for my liking.
Konami
Where is MGS3? This stand seemed to concentrate entirely on Pro Evolution 5, admittedly the best football game money can buy, and Dance Dance Revolution (I hate to call it ‘Dancing Stage’, the European title). Almost as devoid of interest as…
EA
Who appeared to have nothing but a list of 2005s. Despite the fact they’re publishing Burnout 3, they pushed (what surely, even within the company, must be considered pointless competition) Need For Speed Underground 2 mercilessly, with the revelation that low rent celebrity and Smallville, uh, ‘star’ Kelly Brook is to be in the game. That’s her scary rendered representation. Lovely.
Burnout 3 is wonderful, but it’s… Burnout. Again. The same way that Pro Evolution 5 is Pro Evolution Soccer (or, if you’re a purist, Winning Eleven) again.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if we got yearly updates of films?
Atari
Atari have released Ribbit King in the UK with an RRP for £19.99. It’s been out in the US for a while, now. It was the only game worth mentioning on Atari’s stand. If you don’t already have it, a gleeful, deranged frog golfing extravaganza, you, my friend, are a fool.
Run out and pick it up. You won’t be sorry.
Activision
Tony Hawk’s Underground 2
Tony Hawks Underground 2 is Tony Hawks for the… 6th time? It remains amazingly playable. But they continue to throw more and more stuff into it, thinking that a kitchen sink philosophy somehow keeps the game interesting. I’m sorry, Activision, but the ability to drive a rocket powered Segway does nothing for me.
Nintendo
Nintendo blew everyone else out of the water with their stand. They really put in some crazy effort. You know… For the kids. If it smelled of industrial sewage and the wind was constantly stinging your eyes, you’d really have believed you were in Morecambe, or Blackpool, or any other sad, dying British seaside town.
As it was, you were in a brightly lit exhibition hall, which maybe did smell faintly of sweat and the less said about wind the better. And there were loads of games to play!
Paper Mario 2
Beautiful. Just… Beautiful. If you’ve played the original Paper Mario, in which Princess Peach stumbles into a game show where all the answers were related to where Mario had to go next, and Luigi reveals himself to be the bitterest game character possible, then just the fact that this is clearly more of the same in fantastic, high definition graphics should be enough to make your heart fill up with joy. It’s not simply the amount of characters that can be thrown about on screen (hundreds) or the gameplay – it’s the love put in to it, shown by all the little touches. Characters in the background during cut-scenes actually have moments of completely unrelated (and always amusing) dialogue. It’s not going to win over any new converts… And neither should it. Like… Say… The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s track, ‘Maps’ – if you don’t like it, you probably don’t have a soul.
Super Mario Pinball
Released soon in the US, I’m sorry, Nintendo, but this game sucks. Developed in the UK by Fuse Games, it’s just… Rubbish. The single screen idea means that the ball is just constantly in contact with a wall or an obstacle, and the every screen just feels too crowded and yet, somehow, that there is nothing to do with it. Each table more of a ‘puzzle’ than a level, it’s possible the game is fun taken as a puzzle game rather than a pinball game, or maybe there is more to the whole game experience that doesn’t become clear until far later into the game.
The graphics are horrible, too. Worse, even, than Mario vs. Donkey Kong’s misjudged 3d visuals.
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Every Legend of Zelda game I come to I think, “Another one? It’s not going to be that great.”
I’m pretty much always proven wrong. The Minish Cap is instantly completely adorable. Look at Link talking to his hat! It’s so cute!
(Counterpoint: As long as that hat doesn’t yammer at me constantly like Navi.)
The sequences when you are ‘diminished’ but are still playing on a full size map, with a Link barely 4 pixels wide marked by a pointer, avoiding obstacles and so on, are incredibly amusing.
(Counterpoint: That is just going to give me eyestrain.)
Considering even at this (seemingly quite early stage) the game actually does seem inventive (new items and skills seem apparent) and some great scaling effects, such naysaying seems pointless. Indeed, even, this game makes you wonder if it might not be the sequel to Link’s Awakening that people have been waiting for so long. It would only be fitting.
Metroid Prime 2
It does what it says on the tin. It’s Metroid Prime. Uh, 2.
The graphics are nicer, I guess. Samus looks really shiny.
That multiplayer though… Phew. It’s not horrible by any means, but it’s average. I can’t think of any reason you’d pop this disc in when friends were round unless maybe your Timesplitters 2 disc got broken or something and it’s raining outside. No spark to make it interesting at all.
Animal Crossing
It’s actually getting a release in Europe. I don’t know why, or how, but the Nintendo’s change of heart is like the Grinch deciding to give Christmas back – it’s that touching. It’s only a shame that pretty much everyone in Europe who ever cared already imported it the minute the freeloader came out, and are now sick to death of hearing animals saying the same damn things over and over again. (Though I still love the Kappin’s songs.)
If you don’t have it, kids, run out and buy it. It’ll be some of the most heart warming months of your life. Your Saturday night will revolve around KK Slider. This is the level of support it's gained... That's not a posed picture.
Nintendo were cool enough this year that they were giving away Animal Crossing toys, even, perhaps just out of shame at their cruelty at withholding the game from us so long. Watching the scramble of press practically rape a box in an attempt to get the ones they wanted (Mr Resetti, for example) before the kids were allowed near it was… Interesting, to say the least. Not to say that I myself was exempt from such lust, no.
Final Fantasy I+II: Dawn of Souls
It’s Final Fantasy I, and II, with a funky subtitle, now. Portable, and without any loading pauses… Well, you know, Tim can tell you all you need to know about them. The port and translation is solid, that’s all I can really add.
Star Wars Trilogy: Apprentice of the Force
Please! Stop making shitty Star Wars games! Just… Just stop. This game is Super Star Wars, with the graphics made horrible and all the fun removed. That anyone deems this fit for release into anything but a bin is shocking. Shocking.
Mario Tennis
I didn’t get to play this. I wish I did, but I hate waiting in gigantic queues. One single machine in the entire show was playing this. Uh, well done. It looked fun, over a lot of people’s shoulders, I guess.
Resident Evil 4
As did this. In a hilarious turn of events, there was only one Resident Evil 4 demo unit, too. Even funnier, it was at ECTS, for some reason. I imagine so as not to break the completely family friendly Nintendo Pier atmosphere.
This game looks so brilliant over some guy’s shoulder it is unbelievable.
[Next: ECTS/EGDC]
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