We go hands on with Bulletstorm and Medal of Honor, plus get line cut by an awesome posse of actors...
Electronic Arts had one of the biggest presences at the recent E3 show in LA. The mammoth publisher and developer was showing off a mess of racing and sports games which don't really fit the Atomic bill, but we did manage to shoulder our way into demos and hands on sessions of some of the more interesting titles.
But not without an awesome celebrity run in. While waiting to have a look at Crysis 2, our entire line of sweaty journos was shoved out of the way by some muscle-bound handler types, before an entourage of hat-wearing, sunglass-toting types were rushed into the nearby Medal of Honor booth. It was a little annoying, until we recognised the last man in before the door closed.
It was actor Joshua Gomez, who plays the store clerk Morgan Grimes on spy-geek TV series Chuck. And man... he's short! But once we recognised him, we also realised who the rest of the entourage was, especially the tall dude trying to hide behind his shades - Zach Levi, the titular character himself. In effect, half the cast of Chuck cut in.
Sadly, there was not Yvonne Strahovski, and, even sadder, no Adam Baldwin. Oh well...
Medal of HonorTo be honest, our brief time at the controls at E3 were far less illuminating than what we're already seeing in the current limited beta. But that said, what we did see at E3 - and are continuing to see - is looking promising.
EA was showing off multiplayer for the game, and so far DICE is doing a great job of not only making this a solid military shooter, but also differentiating Medal of Honor not only from the other big EA shooter, Bad Company 2, but also from Modern Warfare 2. The level we fought over was your standard middle-eastern town, bombed to hell and back; trash blew around the streets, burnt out vehicles and roadblocks where everywhere, and the colour palatte was the now ubiquitous Fallujah-yellow you see in any game set in modern middle eastern conflicts.
But what's different is the dedicated, infantry-based focus. This is a much less flashy game than Modern Warfare. The ballistics feel both tighter and punchier, and there are no big game-winning perks or effects to completely unbalance the flow of play. There are three basic classes - Rifleman, Special Ops and Sniper - and as you level you unlock new weapons and gear, but it's all based on real stuff you'd see in the field.
A lot of people really aren't digging on the hyper-gravitas feel of the current crop of trailers, but having played the game now, we're quietly looking forward to this one - especially if DICE delivers on its promise of proper PC multiplayer.
Bulletstorm"It's an orgy of violence, where your condom is a shotgun." What the fuck?
That's just one of the lines from the video demo we saw before our hands-on session with Bulletstorm. It was ostensibly to give us a rundown of how the game and its point-scoring system of skill kills worked, but it also took every opportunity to offend the one or two women in our group that it could.
There's apparently something like a plot in Bulletstorm, but it basically exists as a flimsy excuse for old school shooter shenanigans - do you like your opponents gibbed by grenades? This is the game for you. Think Duke Nukem is one of the greatest characters of all time? Welcome to your new favourite game. It's bombastic, cartoony, and features more over the top violence than an open day at the slaughterhouse.
Annoyingly, the unique weapons and ability to chain kills into a gruesome ballet of pixelated blood is stupidly compelling. We found ourselves not only enjoying the game despite ourselves, but sniggering at every single crotch shot (that's literal crotch shot, by the way).
There were only two guns in the demo level, as well as your electro-whip and your trusty right boot. But the things you could do with just that limited arsenal... for instance, you can just shoot someone. They go down, you get their stuff, and you get some points. But if you work creatively, you can leash them with your whip (which has an incidental time-distortion effect that slows enemies down), then kick them away, then shotgun them somewhere personal. More points, achievements unlocked, and a suitably gruesome death.
And that's before you factor in the ravenous man-eating plants, the explosive garbage bins (and OH&S issue if ever we've seen one!), and double-grenade-on-a-chain weapon.
Over the top? You betcha. Fun? Irritatingly so. Check out the Cliffy B walkthrough video we posted last week.
Crysis 2If you saw the last Crysis 2 trailer we posted, you've essentially seen an edited version of the live demo we saw. We didn't get to go hands on with this one, but it was a good 15 minute chunk of game that EA and Crytek were showing off.
The nanosuit is back, and there are even more abilities to play around with now, but the truth is, the game's still looking more like a fancy tech demo than an actual game. It's hard to define, but there's that same vaguely wishy-washy hit mechanics that make Doom look responsive by comparison, the same array of hard to kill enemies to keep the polygons down, and a whole mess of destructive scenery.
And, again, the demo was on console, so it's hard to say how it's going to look on PC just yet. It's pretty, but looking a lot more linear than the original .That could just be the bit of game we saw, but given how Crytek's pushing the openness and the effect of varying height levels, we're just not seeing it.
We are seeing more of the same emotional cues that the first trailer tried, like at the end of the sequence we're a young man begs you to rescue his girlfriend, while above a large skyscraper threatens to topple. Inevitably, he's left behind and disappears in a vast 9/11 style cloud of dust. Impactful? Certainly, but we're not sure if it's necessary - maybe if you actually end up having a choice to make in game that might make it meaningful one way or another.
But we're not sure, much like we're not sure about Crysis 2 just yet.
Stay tuned for more E3 coverage this week.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012