Ok, some impressions. Please bear in mind, these are just impressions of these games. The majority of the time, I had only a short time to play and get a feel for it. A lot of stuff was going on that week, but I was able to try out everything I wanted to.

Here’s what I was able to see:

At the NCsoft booth, Tabula Rasa was the main attraction. I finally got my hands on this, and was able to play through an instanced tutorial level. The main difference between this and other MMOs you notice right away is that the combat plays a lot more like a 3rd person action/shooter, and is more fast-paced than the traditional stand and slash RPG. You have an actual targeting reticle, and you can actually miss!

There are the typical MMO components, such as experience, character development, and quests to complete. Why would you get rid of those things? In that sense, the game is familiar enough to pick up and get right into it if you have any RPG experience.

The different flavor of the game offers promise, but for those who are tired of the current MMO selection, I’m not sure this will be enough to reinvigorate the genre. But no NCsoft reps really seemed to know much about the game itself – I think most of them were focused on helping people figure out the tutorial rather than answering questions about the game itself.

Wow. If you liked UT04, you will LOVE UT3. It feels the same, it plays the same, it kicks your ass the same. It’s the same, but newer, prettier, and better. All your favorite weapons are back (Redeemer, Shock Rifle, Flack Cannon), and your least favorites (BIO RIFLE ARGGHH). The Midway guys shared a large presentation area with K2 Games, TopWare, Maximum PC, and Alien Ware, and demo’d the game only by having first-to-20-frag tournaments every hour or so. I got there early on Thursday in order to get into the first one, and it was worth it. I got 2nd place, but I lost to an Asian guy, so I’m ok with that.

Warmonger

Netdevil’s FPS seems to have been kept more or less under the radar, and I think it may stay that way for a bit. This game was set up on a “high-end” Alien Ware system to supposedly show off its gaming prowess.

The problem was that even on this system, the framerate was terrible. I don’t think it was the game, but something with the system, as later in the week I saw a different system running the game a lot smoother. I just thought it was funny that Alien Ware’s demo was having FR problems. Needless to say, I was playing it, but I was frustrated. FR issues irritate me enough to not want to play a game, but I felt like I should check it out. Warmonger could end up being good, or even great, but I couldn’t tell.

TopWare was showing off it’s version of Oblivion on some Alien Ware systems, and I got a chance to check it out for a bit. At first glance, it looks pretty much the same as your typical next-gen action RPG. Oblivion, maybe even Dungeon Seige, where you kill these goblins, loot this chest, open that door, get a quest. That’s all well and good, but I really felt that the controls were awkward and difficult. Camera angles are controlled by the player, but often you end up turning your character around unintentionally and going the wrong way. This sucks when you are running for your life. Something just didn’t flow.

The rep I talked to tried to convince me that this was an MMO, but with a single player game (and co-op?) mode. Seems to me that’s just a single player RPG with an online side to it. I would not define that as an MMO. Half-Life has online play, but I would not consider that an MMO. Two Worlds is scheduled for a simultaneous PC and 360 release “soon.”

K2 Network’s free* MMO offers a unique gameplay idea. You play a family, rather than a single player. At any given time, you have active control of 3 characters at once (all part of your family) that you develop to make an effective group. Each player has a class, and within that class, there are different stances that further refine the class. These stances range from high defense to high offense, or even a healing stance. Your typical family outing will feel and look similar to a Final Fantasy group, but closer to an MMO.

I talked to Phil, a K2 rep, and he told me that the level of class/family customization is very high, and your total family pool of characters in queue can reach up to 32 possible characters. If I understand that right, he means that you actually can have up to 32 characters to choose from when forming your 3 person party. That is a lot of choices.

In my mind, Mythic’s Warhammer Online looked to be possibly the one MMO that could get me to play MMOs again. I know we have quite a while before WO: AoR is released, but after getting my hands on what I hoped would be a great step in MMO development, but I was not impressed. The graphics looked not as good as WoW, things were choppy, and the combat was just the same as you see in any other MMO. I know enough about this game from reading the site, watching the developer videocasts, and getting the newsletter to feel ok about giving it time to develop more, but I must be honest and say that my expectations for this game were most definitely not met.

Think he caught me looking at his girl?

THQ’s Conan is a nice enough looking game, until you get to the horrible engine-generated cut scenes. Mouths move like alien components on a plastic face, and the entire character looks like an akwardly controlled puppet. The actual gameplay was good enough, though (which is what really matters). This game is gory, and it involves a lot of kicking ass. It was fun, and when I cut off a guys head for the first time, it was satisfying. Not really sure what this game has to offer over other games in the 3rd person action genre, but it could do well.

This may be the reason to buy a PS3. Folklore offers a fantasy that feels real. It’s a 3rd person action game, but it’s more than that. It’s pretty, the animations are smooth, and the gameplay is intuitive and fun. As you play the game and defeat certain enemies, called “Folks,” you gain their special powers. These special powers are equippable in the 4 slots represented by Square, Triangle, X and Circle. The strategy comes into play when deciding which powers to equip for which encounters. All of these can be changed on the fly, and in the middle of a battle. Look for this title in the fall.

Liked God of War? God of War 2? Good. You will like Heavenly Sword. You may even love it. Ninja Theory has developed what I deem to be the Spiritual Successor to GoW. Now I know God of War 3 will be the [i]actual[/i] successor to GoW2, but for now, this will do me just fine. No doubt many of us saw the playable demo at E3, and I was finally able to play it myself at Comic Con. It has the familiar (albiet lazy) context sensitive speed response button controls (like a giant X button flashing on the screen means press X right away) in order to flow naturally through beautifully interactive battles scenes. This does make the game feel like an interactive movie experience, and with the likes of super realistic capture technology and great acting (so I’m told), this should become more immersive as you play more. I was also glad to see that the enemies were actually semi difficult. They don’t simply bend over and let you destroy them, they actually defend.

I’m going out on a limb to say that DMC4 will be a hit. Yeah, real hard to imagine, isn’t it? It looks beautiful, feels smooth and Nero is a fucking ninja. I got to play for 5 minutes until they kicked me out (actually I died on a boss – which is always a good sign), but it felt a lot like the previous DMC incarnations, but with some new twists. All I can say is that if you liked DMC2 or 3, you will love DMC4.

I was really looking forward to trying this game out for a long time. I thought that it looked great, but there is only so much you can guess about a game without playing it. I had a feeling that the gameplay and controls could easily make this game a failure, so I wanted to see for myself.

While the game looks good, it doesn’t look great. With the PS3, you come to expect amazing graphics, and Lair really didn’t have that. It looked only slightly better than what the PS2 could do. That being said, I understand that intense requirements that a game like Lair has (huge numbers of enemies on screen, etc), and how only the PS3 could handle it, but still, I expected a bit more.

The flying takes a bit getting used to, since you control your turns and elevation with motion-controls. Tilt the controller to the left to turn left, tilt it up to go up, thrust it forward to speed boost, jerk it left to turn 180 degrees, etc. Personally, I hate these types of controls. You end up doing nothing but overcompensating your turns and trying to get your aim right, only to underestimate the speed at which your target was moving.

Don’t get me wrong, it was not nearly impossible, just annoying enough for me to dislike it. Feels like they are forcing this imprecise method of control over the much more precise double thumbstick configuration (that works perfectly, by the way) just so they can use their super-cool motion control capability. Also the camera logic was akward, and changed often during a typical flight that it could easily leave you feeling disoriented. If I have a PS3 when Lair comes out in September, I will pick it up. I do feel that if I power through and practice more, the game will become worth it.

And that concludes my impression of the upcoming games releasing in the future. Enjoy!!!