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[dLMN8R]

Mirror's Edge

Got some hands-on time with Mirror's Edge. Feels pretty nice, seems like it'll be pretty addictive going back and trying for the fastest time at time trials.

The game has full online leaderboards for time trials, including ghost-racing to help you compete for the best. Gun combat still sucks, and even though it's not the focus of the game, it shouldn't suck if it's there at all.


Crysis Warhead

Seems to run very well, plays great, fun boss battle.

Game was running on a Core 2 Duo, 8800GT, 2GB of ram. Got around 25-30fps at Very High details, 40+FPS at High, at 1280x1024 resolution. In other words, much better than the original game, and this was on an ice-covered level too which killed performance in the first game.


Harmonix

They talked for an hour and a half about their entire history of games and such, amazing that they have 280 working there now. Two Rock Band announcements:

* "Ultimate Bladder mode" in Rock Band 2 - play through all 84 songs in the game......without pausing or failing.
* DLC for next week (don't remember what songs) will be priced at 99 cents a piece, all of Harmonix's proceeds go directly to Child's Play.


Far Cry 2

So much potential, but so far pretty disappointing. The "immersive" aspects of the game - digging out bullets, repairing cars, etc. - happen far too often and are much more of an annoyance than anything.

Collectathon - looks like there are diamonds hidden everywhere that you use to buy guns with, but we're talking 150+ of them throughout the world. Could be tied into the game nicely, could be tedious to go hunting for all of them.

AI - absolutely terrible. Yeah, we've seen the deception video where you shoot a patrol guard, his friend comes out to help, and you take both down, but normal, close-to-mid-range combat is terrible. Enemies just stand there for 20+ seconds no matter what. No dodging, no flanking, no ducking behind cover, none of that at all. Even with the lack of this dynamic AI, they still found themselves getting stuck on trees while initially running towards me. Hopefully this is a pre-release issue that gets a massive upgrade

Graphics - running on the 360, of course it won't match Crysis. Still looked pretty good for the system, though driving around displayed massive amounts of pop-up, level of detail scaling,and more. Looked about on par with Crysis set to Medium settings.

Which is interesting, because the guy there said that the 360/PS3 run Far Cry 2 at details similar to the PC version's High settings (though there's Very High, and "DX10 Ultra High" too). So I imagine many people will be saying how much more optimized Far Cry 2 is, even though Far Cry 2 on High looks about the same as Crysis does on medium. We shall see when the game comes out!

In the end - so much promise with Far Cry 2, hopefully they make some massive tweaks to these "immersion" features and AI. Because right now, the AI kills any immersion that was there to begin with.


Gameworks meetup

Plainly and simply, the guys/girls at 1UP fucking rock. Everyone was so cool to talk to - Shane, Garnett, David, Bryan, Andrew, Shawn, and more. Massive thanks to you all for being so dedicated to, and appreciative of, your community.



Anyway, I'll hopefully get to play more games tomorrow seeing as it should be the least busy day. I'll also post some pics tomorrow for those who are interested.

 

[soco]

the rock band songs i seem to recall were from bands that performed at PAX or something...

 

[Awntawn]

Crysis Warhead

Seems to run very well, plays great, fun boss battle.

Game was running on a Core 2 Duo, 8800GT, 2GB of ram. Got around 25-30fps at Very High details, 40+FPS at High, at 1280x1024 resolution. In other words, much better than the original game, and this was on an ice-covered level too which killed performance in the first game.

Nice to hear. The original game ran relatively the same as well when all was going good, but like you mentioned it dropped dramatically on ice levels and would occasionally start slowing down massively almost at random. I literally started out the game on Very High running at an almost constant 30fps, and by the time I finished I was Medium/High running at like 15-20. I suppose they managed to iron out the kinks and make it more consistent.

 

[Coen]

Shame about Far Cry 2.
Third game this fall I'd been looking forward too that fails to impress. Force Unleashed and Mercs 2 were the other two.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

Sad to hear about Far Cry and Mirror's Edge. As much as people rag on Halos SP, its still the benchmark for gunplay and AI for consoles, more devs should be striving for that..

 

[Haunted]

Crysis Warhead

Seems to run very well, plays great, fun boss battle.

Game was running on a Core 2 Duo, 8800GT, 2GB of ram. Got around 25-30fps at Very High details, 40+FPS at High, at 1280x1024 resolution. In other words, much better than the original game, and this was on an ice-covered level too which killed performance in the first game.

fuckyeah.gif


Shame about Far Cry 2, while I hope (expect) the PC version to remedy some of the graphics complaints, the shitty A.I. doesn't sound too promising.

 

[Sean]

Far Cry 2

So much potential, but so far pretty disappointing. The "immersive" aspects of the game - digging out bullets, repairing cars, etc. - happen far too often and are much more of an annoyance than anything.

I was watching a FC2 video on gamersyde the other day and became worried about this. The developer was talking about all their "immersion features" in marketing speak and all I could do was shake my head.

The gun becomes rusty and jams (sometimes breaks in half) as you're firing it or something, sometimes you need to repair engines in the vehicles before you can drive them, give yourself first aid by taking bullets out with tweezers, etc. That stuff might be cool for a five minute demo but I don't want to be doing it over and over again.

 

[Russian Steve]

Sorry if this has been asked already, but was Crysis Warhead running on XP or Vista?

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

I was watching a FC2 video on gamersyde the other day and became worried about this. The developer was talking about all their "immersion features" in marketing speak and all I could do was shake my head.

The gun becomes rusty and jams (sometimes breaks in half) as you're firing it or something, sometimes you need to repair engines in the vehicles before you can drive them, give yourself first aid by taking bullets out with tweezers, etc. That stuff might be cool for a five minute demo but I don't want to be doing it over and over again.

In an ideal world, FPS devs will eventually give us damage sliders for such things, which are already offered in racing, sports, and fighting games.

 

[element]

Come and check out Project Origin tomorrow in the Microsoft booth

 

[Pop On Arrival]

Oh crap, I'm already getting 25-30 FPS on Crysis playing 1440x900, everything on high, AA turned off and I'm not even on the ice-levels yet.

Running on an overclocked 8800GT, Quad core CPU and 4gigs of ram. Balls.

Anyway, I hope I can at least get a stable 30fps on Warhead because the sporadic framerate drops are annoying as all hell.

 

[Yixian]

Oh crap, I'm already getting 25-30 FPS on Crysis playing 1440x900, everything on high, AA turned off and I'm not even on the ice-levels yet.

Running on an overclocked 8800GT, Quad core CPU and 4gigs of ram. Balls.

Anyway, I hope I can at least get a stable 30fps on Warhead because the sporadic framerate drops are annoying as all hell.

What the hell dude, I get 25fps on my mobility X1600 128mb on OC'd medium :lol


And..

NOOOOOOOO FARY CRY 2, PLEASE DON'T LETME DOWNN!!

 

[Pop On Arrival]

What the hell dude, I get 25fps on my mobility X1600 128mb on OC'd medium :lol


And..

NOOOOOOOO FARY CRY 2, PLEASE DON'T LETME DOWNN!!

I've got a friend with the exact same setup and he gets the same results. =/

 

[CAVE343]

thanks for the impressions! Really good to hear about Crysis, thats awesome.

 

[Visualante]

Pretty evident Far Cry 2 has a lot of work to be done in the next 2 months, failing that it'll get delayed to early 09.

I think it's hard to judge the 150 diamonds until you've spent time in the World. Can't you steal other people's weapons and get free ones from different alliances? I'd liken them more to hidden packages in GTA rather than a mandatory currency.

Sucks for people with OCD though.

 

[Brimstone]

I thought only the Far Cry 2 map editor was on display at PAX?

 

[Yoshichan]

Great, now I don't have to buy Far Cry 2.

 

[otake]

not surprised about far cry 2. thanks for the warhead update.

 

[Brimstone]

Great, now I don't have to buy Far Cry 2.

Yeah, Far Cry 2 is coming across as a total disaster. Non-existant A.I., muddy textures, and pop-up everywhere.



Just more money to spend on the Wii.



The Conduit is the most exciting upcomming FPS now.

 

[nelsonroyale]

cant wait for crysis warhead...


far cry 2 looks like crysis on medium.....thats pretty disappointing...crysis on medium doesnt impress me that much anymore....there are better looking games on both consoles

 

[Ptaaty]

I have plenty to report on PAX, but most will be later.

Resistance PSP pretty much blew me away...extremely impressed.

Left4Dead is going to huge...massive. That game pulled in the lines, everyone wanted to play. 4 player coop = win.

Mirror's Edge I am not so sure....it is very sterile, and seems pretty Crackdown esque without the super powers and explosions. I hope I am wrong. I know I must have been in mentally the wrong place, as I know this isn't the point.

 

[Struct09]

Far Cry 2 was a PAX surprise. An Ubi guy told us on Friday that it wasn't going to be at the show, but sure enough on Saturday there was a 360 kiosk set up with the game.

I thought the game was pretty, but I had a hard time gauging the gameplay. It had the Crysis/Far Cry vibe going for it at least.

There was one funny bug - someone shot a rocket at a truck, and the rocket started to spin around the truck. It eventually broke away from it's spiral and exploded, but it was definitely a WTF kind of moment.

As for L4D, the lines were still ridiculous. I didn't expect the game to be as popular as it was at the show.

Mirror's Edge I am not so sure....it is very sterile, and seems pretty Crackdown esque without the super powers and explosions. I hope I am wrong. I know I must have been in mentally the wrong place, as I know this isn't the point.

I didn't get a Crackdown vibe from Mirror's Edge at all. If anything, it felt more like a first person Assassin's Creed.

 

[dLMN8R]

Sorry if this has been asked already, but was Crysis Warhead running on XP or Vista?

It was running on XP, but don't forget that since Vista SP1 came out, game performance in Vista has been equal to or better than XP:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302500,00.asp

 

[sikkinixx]

shit i didn;t know the 1up dudes/gals were at Gameworks. Weak I would have went...

 

[Bliddo]

The gun becomes rusty and jams (sometimes breaks in half) as you're firing it or something, sometimes you need to repair engines in the vehicles before you can drive them, give yourself first aid by taking bullets out with tweezers, etc. That stuff might be cool for a five minute demo but I don't want to be doing it over and over again.

The weapons that get rusty on your hands.... come on... :lol :lol :lol
What were they thinking? :lol

 

[squicken]

Is Ubisoft aware that not a single game they've ever developed has had good AI? I'm having trouble thinking of a game they've done that didn't have shitty AI. And the Waggle future of Wii Music doesn't inspire hope that they'll ever do anything about.

 

[WHOAguitarninja]

Great news about Warhead. Can't wait...hopefully it doesn't suck on ATI this time around.

 

[JBuccCP]

I really want Far Cry 2 to be good, but I can't say I'm surprised about the shitty AI, unfortunately. I also wonder what exactly there is to do in the game besides shooting up random villages.

 

[Kibbles]

As for Far Cry 2, I only really care about the Multiplayer and Map Editor. All I'll be playing is MP with a little bit of Single Player here and there to explore.

 

[bee]

the bad a.i in far cry 2 is certainly no surprise its looked awful in every single video i've ever seen of it, do they still shoot you from 5 miles away through 16 bushes like in the original far cry?

 

[Yoshichan]

the bad a.i in far cry 2 is certainly no surprise its looked awful in every single video i've ever seen of it, do they still shoot you from 5 miles away through 16 bushes like in the original far cry?

:lol

 

[Ptaaty]

I can't seem to find a decent PAX 08 impressions thread so I will use this one. This is a combo of some posts I made on another forum...

Some more impressions:

So I went to PAX this year for the first time. Apparently the biggest game related thing in the western hemisphere. I only went to Friday and Saturday. The event has massive freeplay areas for PC and Console, and board games, speakers, forums, display kiosks, etc.

Later today I will post some more thoughts from my weekent, along with pics, but I wanted to get the ball rolling.

Most suprising game for me: Resistance Retribution for the PSP. I had no interest, didn't even know it was coming. It ran perfectly, looked awesome, and I could actually control it pretty well. Siphon Filter type controls.

Gears 2 in some ways was the most disappointing. It might be the awesomest thing ever but at the kiosk it was just an old map on a local game. The biggest thing setting it apart were the chainsaw animations. I would have liked them to limit to two maps or had some kiosks for coop.

Left4Dead will be an absolutely huge game. HUGE. Nothing touched this for getting interest. Lines would close over an hour before the end of the day....HUGE lines, everyone wanted to play. It looks pretty good, but people were having a blast, 4 player coop and zombie=win. It is a higher speed crazy experience. You are fighting for your life with friends as zombies are overwhelming you...it seems you can see damage on your characters as well. I watched someone trying to get out from the subway with an auto shotgun just mowing through crazed zombies coming right for him...everyone was like "awesome!!!!" I went from...meh don't care to...top three for this year at least. My friend works in the same building as Valve and did a half day play test and he has been on and on about how much fun it was. I can get into a multiday playtest on a near final...but I am going to Wash DC in two weeks and can't participate now.

Resistance 2 for PS3 was even more disappointing that Gears 2. It didn't run quite smooth, didn't look that great, and the kiosks were rarely full.

LBP looked great even on giant displays. I didn't watch too much because I can't stand to watch people create levels. Maybe I just missed the good stuff.

Fable 2 looks great and had people playing it really enjoy themselves. It wasn't really as big of an area, but people were having good laughs and enjoying the coop.

Fallout 3. gfx better than I expected. I didn't see if they were on PCs with 360 controllers...or 360s. If they were 360s, big improvement from Oblivion...very smooth, massive draw distance, all great. Pretty gory, and an interesting tme freeze thing when enemies were close...like a plan to target enemies in different areas, then see it cinematically. Not sure how it worked, but it looked awesome (lines too long)

Mortal Kombat vs DC comics was pretty damn awesome. It was fun as hell to play and looked great. Superman vs Sonja? The Flash on Raiden? Way cool.

Wipeout HD was there. It was wipeout in HD. Not sure where the delays are....it is 60 fps of HD, exactly as expected.

Well more later, along with some pics. Sorry for the lack of PC gaming feedback...I am not as into it, although WIC was a blast on free play PCs.

Brothers in Arms: Hells Highway. This had probably the best promotional tool of the whole show. They had free temp tatoos on one half...but the other side had free "haircuts" which was pretty much Full Metal Jacket hack jobs....with "Hell" spray painted on the back of your head. Your prize? A free copy of the game when it ships...lol.

Project Origin (360): Never heard of this game...it looks like very run of the mill FPS from the minute I watched of it. However it looks extremely good graphically. Running at very smooth framerate, no tears, great effects. Shows promise depending on the gameplay.

Jumpgate (PC). Really cool looking space combat MMO. I wish it wasn't an MMO, but regardless I might be back into PC gaming if this turns out good enough. Just looks really cool, with cool real space combat and nice looking space effects.

Sony had some great swag and a nice presence. They were handing out cool flexfit gray Resistance PSP hats, and T shirts I am not embarrased to wear. People weren't as interested in their kiosks though, you could walk up and play most of the games without much of a wait or none (except LBP).

Motorstorm 2 was there. It looks a lot like the first with better lighting effects, more interaction with the environments and it seems some tropical theme more than desert.

Sega's area was weak...weak. They were showing Yakuza 2 (I think?) for what must be the PS2 as it looked like crap. I kinda missed the Sonic demo, but overall just nothing exciting.

Viva Pinata 2. I took about a 3 second glance...it was at the store, which looked exactly the same. Suprised they didn't at least change that interface. I still have it on preorder should be good with coop and all...but seeing the same interface gave me some "expansion pack" vibes.

No Banjo....unless I missed it, and I wouldn't have. (I don't think).

MS in general a bit anemic, they had the prime space at the entrance, good game kiosks, but underutilized and no swag. They had by far the best 3rd party support though...with nearly every xplatform outside Mirror's Edge shown with 360s.

Saints Row 2. Watched some of a jailbreak, with a chick wearing an orange jumpsuit fighting through guards. Honestly this game could go either way. I was concerned mostly with the look, which moved from the more cartoony original toward the realistic GTA flavor. This game should be more over the top, and hopefully the glace I had isn't indicative of the whole thing. It didn't seem to garner too much of a crowd either.

Here is a link to some pics. Apologize that they suck but at least you have an idea what the heck was going on: http://s288.photobucket.com/albums/ll162/ptaaty/

 

[Ptaaty]

Far Cry 2 was a PAX surprise. An Ubi guy told us on Friday that it wasn't going to be at the show, but sure enough on Saturday there was a 360 kiosk set up with the game.

I didn't get a Crackdown vibe from Mirror's Edge at all. If anything, it felt more like a first person Assassin's Creed.

Crap... I missed FC2 as i spend less time on the floor on Sat. How was it?

You are right about Mirror's Edge, I agree, I didn't word my impressions well. I thought the look and jumping from buildings would be more like Crackdown...but it isn't. It doesn't have the "fun". I was severly underwhelmed by it, esp as it was up on my list coming in. It seemed more like a giant first person platformer get to point a to point b. Looks really cool, but it just seemed so sterile, slower and not really that fun. Hope I missed something.

 

[VictimOfGrief]

I highly doubt the AI will be that stupid when the game ships.

Far Cry 2 is still one of my most anticipated games of 2008.

 

[golem]

Project Origin (360): Never heard of this game...it looks like very run of the mill FPS from the minute I watched of it. However it looks extremely good graphically. Running at very smooth framerate, no tears, great effects. Shows promise depending on the gameplay.

FEAR sequel fyi

thanks for the impressions