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.
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.