The second day of the Electronic Three has come to an end. Day two was cooler, calmer and just more relaxed in general because I knew where things were and what I wanted to see. Unfortunately, thanks to mandatory ID check at EVERY entrance, I missed my Call of Duty Advance Warfare hands on meeting. Fortunately I have a pretty good idea what a COD game will play like, and I was able to get hands on with a larger variety. My first goal of the second day was to secure a ticket for Sony’s virtual reality device, Project Morpheus. The traffic was bad, the lines were long, the nerds were plenty but I still was early enough to get a fast pass to come back to Sony at another time. With that secured, it was time to play some games.
Velocity 2X
A 2D side scrolling platformer where sometimes you are also playing as a ship in a shoot em up game. The art is crisp, and the game play is fast paced and makes use of a teleportation mechanic that both the ship and the human character take advantage of. There is a lot of shooting, a lot of jumping and a lot of bright colors and stylized explosion. It’s coiming to Vita, It’s coming to PS4 and I want to see more of it.
Valiant Hearts
I have never felt more feelings from a game at a convention than Valiant Hearts. The music matches perfecetly with the sad tone and mood, conveying the seriousness of trench warfare. The story revolves around a select group of people that are all connected by a cute wartime dog. The game makes a point to show the serious aspects of war, and provides seemingly historically accurate information along the way. Another thing that Valiant Hearts has going for it is the fact that it runs of the UbiArt Framework. The same engine that the most current Rayman games run on, and most recently Child of Light. This engine produces absolutely gorgeous games and will always earn my attention.
Sunset Overdrive
Yeah. This game is a great win for Xbox One owners. Every surface and every object within the environment is just there to facilitate the movement of the player. The demo they were showing at the Microsoft booth was a 4 player cooperative mission. Basically a horde mode with awesome traversal. Players grind on EVERYTHING, Jet Set Radio style while using a variety of insane weapons to fight off energy drink crazed zombies. Things were so fast paced it was difficult to feel comfortable with the jumping and grinding. Luckily the game’s controls are very simple. Jump, melee, shoot and a traversal button. Things were crazy with three other players all shooting wacky weapons and placing traps while bouncing, hooking and grinding on everything in site. The frame rate became pretty choppy at times when too many explosions were happening at once, but it never detracted from the experience. If you have an Xbox One you need to check this out. If you don’t have an Xbox One this might a game to consider buying a system for.
PlayStation TV
The Vita TV is final making it’s way out of Asia and getting a re-brand as PlayStation TV. You can use it to play Vita games on your TV. You can use it to remote play games from your PS4 sitting in another room. You can probably figure out a way to capture video through the HDMI port. There wasn’t much I could do with it on the show floor, but I did play Vita Minecraft. By play Minecraft I mean I held the dig button with one hand while I finished drinking my Sunset Overdrive energy drink with the other until I hit the bottom of the level and left. I don’t have much of a use for the PlayStation TV but I am still excited to grab one, especially at the $99 price point.
Axiom Verge
A Metroidvania game has never looked this much like an actual Metroid game. Since Nintendo failed to deliver a new Metroid, I was glad that someone was taking things into their own hands. Seriously. The art, and enemy types, even enemy movement is nearly identical to Metroid. Axiom Verge givers player a gun that glitches the game. These glitches allow players to get to secret rooms and defeat or transform enemies in unique ways. This is a PS4 and Vita Cross buy game coming in early 2015 and might be the closest we will get to an actual Metroid game for a while to come.
Project Morpheus: Luge
Getting in line early to get myself a fast pass paid off. When my time came up there was virtually no wait. I came to find that the reason there was no wait is because the demo was extremely short. I think the time it took to get all of the equipment strapped to my body. The first thing I noticed with the Morpheus strapped on was how light weight it felt. I could see myself forgetting it was on if the game experience was convincing enough. The Second thing I noticed was how blurry the screen looked and how I was unable to get things to look as clear as a regular display. The demo I found myself in was just laying on a luge rolling down a street trying to go as fast as possible. Tilting my head left and right to lean in either direction was not the way I would have liked to control that game. Despite the controls, and the blurry screen I still felt very immersed in the game world. This is incredible technology and with future iterations things will only get better. I can’t wait to see what Sony does next with VR.
Destiny
Yes. The game from the studio that created Halo is finally read to release their new series. The money Activision has shoveled into Destiny has paid off because this game is great. If I had to compare it to existing games, I’d say it’s like if Halo and Borderlands had a baby, but this child was better at distributing meaningful loot and actually plays like a shooter should. I played both cooperative and competitive game modes and both left me wanting to play more. Destiny is something I can see myself exploring every area, playing every mission and competing with friends for months on end. The coop they showed me was called a “Strike Force” mission, a 3-player raid. In this we were giving an objective marker and told to kill things along the way. Different enemies blocked our path and at some point we had to hold a position and fight off waves of enemies while our floating robot hacked the lasers blocking the way. The mission also had a mini boss fight of a robot spider thing, and a main boss fight of a giant laser shooting sphere. The shooting felt great, the team work was fun and rewarding and the levels were well designed. If you have a PS4 you can play the alpha for a few days as long as you singed up before June 12. Either way Destiny’s will be out in just a few months. You aren’t going to want to miss this one.
