Microsoft 2008 Showcase Wrap Up
While yesterday was more of a report as to what was shown I’ll just wrap up things from this event with some of my thoughts on what I saw. Naturally, I am always in most awe of Peter Molyneux. Even speaking with other people at the event, the guy simply has an indescribable presence. Every developer obviously shows a lot of pride in their work and game at these events. But Molyneux somehow manages to take it to another level for me at least. Every time I see Fable 2 there is some new feature that sounds great or makes total sense. I was very excited for the bread crumb trail because one of the things I do most in games is waste time figuring out where to go next. The interactive cut scenes are something that have been done before, but aren’t something you see all too often in a game and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to mess around with characters in the game during cut scenes but doing the exact opposite of what you would expect to find.
The strangest presentation I’ve ever been apart of yet and I’m not sure why this is belongs to Cliff from Epic regarding Gears of War 2. Nothing was strange about the game itself, but usually during a presentation developers tend to walk you through and narrate as they go along. With Cliff, he gave a brief blurb about the game and then total silence as we sat with our mouths open at Gears of War 2 for the next 20 minutes. He opened up for questions after that but total silence throughout the entire show was strange. Very good show though no doubt.
The game most conspicuous by its absence at such an event was Halo Wars. But for right now I am not going to read too much into it until E3. If it’s missing there, I would expect a delay.
There’s a few games that I think are going to fall into the some people get it and some do not category this coming year. Banjo is a super innovative game that did depart somewhat from its roots but the new design of the game is going to suck a lot of people in. Especially those obsessed with vehicular games since this is the first one I can remember on a console to allow a simple yet powerful means of creating your very own machine.
Too Human is another game I think that is going to garner a very hardcore following but there will be some who do not understand a design decision here and there. The gameplay in game is a little different than what console players are used to especially for this type of game. Also, the visuals do show the length of Too Human’s development cycle and you have to wonder if the issues with the Unreal engine that were reported did have a bit of a negative effect on the game’s visuals. But I am still a huge fan of the art style.
I was most surprised by my level of enjoyment for Ninja Gaiden II. Ninja Gaiden for me has been a painful series. The first one was outright too hard using completely annoying mechanics to create an artificially high difficulty. The new easier modes in Ninja Gaiden are going to make life for those of us who can swallow your gamer pride just a little bit to play on the lower difficulty a lot more enjoyable.
Banjo Kazooie Multiplayer Hands On
Also, be sure to check out a very good friend of 2Op’s, The Xbox Cheater Watch for additional impressions and information from the event!
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