Swords

Swords pit you against enemy combatants in the vein of games like Punch-Out! and Wii Sports boxing with the exception of weapons. It offers realistic combat play through the inclusion of Wii MotionPlus to gauge sword movement, time blocks, and unleash combos. The demo we saw of Swords placed the player against Rognir, a fierce Viking warrior dude that specializes in high offense and damage but handicapped by poor speed. Keeping in mind this, we braced for Rognir’s imminent attacks and activated a special parry based on timing. The timed block allowed a brief window to unleash a devastating combo that chipped away at a good chunk of the opponent’s health bar.

Aside from the combat, the time traveling story is pretty humorous. You go back in time to various periods of history to fight foes like Sir Lancealot or a samurai. Each victory gains a special ability and a new sword to fight against the next adversary. It even includes a zombie minigame designed to hone your skills. If you’re starving for a light saber type game for the Wii, you should give this one a try.

Crafting & Babysitting Mama

With the success of the Mama franchise, Majesco looks to capitalize on its gains and introduce two entries that offer a “natural progression of the series” by putting Mama in crafting and parenting scenarios that lends itself to an addictive but qualifying experience.

Immediately in Crafting Mama, the classic formula that has defined the series has been left intact. Players will go through the process of creating items that made its games so oddly fascinating and addicting. Might we also mention that this will be the first Mama game to feature two player multiplayer through wireless. If you’re into Mama-ing it up with others. In a demo, we were tasked with fashioning a mug from scratch, quite literally. First, we molded a wet ball of clay into the shape of a cup, attached a handle with glue, fired up the kin, and customized the finished product with a coat of paint. There are other crafts and tools to use but you’ll have to wait until October 26th to get your hands on Crafting Mama.

Babysitting Mama may be the most interesting Mama game to date; its bundled with an actual baby accessory. The Wii remote is placed into the back of the doll with the nunchuck acting as the control for menu navigation. Sounds are even emitted from the baby through the speakers on the Wii remote. Minigames are played with the baby, moving it around as prompted by the game. If you shake the baby too hard, the game will freeze and warn you against shaking. That’s real parenting advice. We were tasked with making the baby laugh and utilize the nunchuck in a roulette style minigame in order to make the face it wanted. Another has you rocking the baby to sleep by slowly cradling the doll in ones arms, remarking that “aww” moment. These are the sort of activities you will encounter, all designed for an interactive time with the doll accessory. There is even an option to conduct yourself in a “who’s the better baby scenario” with two player baby races. Of course that will mean getting another person to buy Babysitting Mama. Younger girls will likely eat this up for Christmas, just in time for the game’s release.

Monster Tale

From the folks that brought you Henry Hatsworth and the Puzzling Adventure, Dreamrift newest game is Monster Tale featuring a virtual pet sim named Chomp coupled with an action style platformer gameplay. The basic jist of the story has you fighting monsters corrupted by evil kids and the last good monster becomes your companion. Throughout the game, Chomp levels up through the actions of the top screen – players familiar with Henry Hatsworth will feel at home here, though the difficulty has been pegged down a notch.

Ellie, the main character, is tasked with saving the world run by delinquents and has a melee and ranged projectile weapon that is upgradable. The actual gameplay itself gives homage to Castlevania and Metroid with the option of going back and forth through the various levels. Anytime Ellie’s in danger, she can call on Chomp to perform special attacks and a shield move but drains health in the process, at that point, Chomp returns back to the bottom screen to reenergize.

When hanging out on the bottom screen, Chomp responds to the top screen, in particular the food dropped by defeating enemies. Eventually these items raise stats which in turn allow Chomp to transform into a more formidable monster with improved health and abilities. It becomes particularly helpful in boss fights, where it becomes a whole another level of challenge. Majesco is aiming for a December 2010 release date, so check back for it then.

254,000 visitors (up from 245K in 2009), 18,900 were industry visitors, 4,400 media visitors from 49 countries, and 505 companies in attendance from 33 countries. In contrast, the only exposition that comes close is the Tokyo Game Show (at 185,030) and E3 (at 45,000 – industry only).

Maybe we should be attending next year eh?

Source: Play.de

As I entered the room I was given a choice of classes which ranged from fast melee types to magic based Sorcerers. We could choose between Berserkers, (melee, axes, unpredictable) Warrior, (melee, fast, swords) Sorcerer, (magic, long ranged) Slayer (melee, big arse sword) and our guide was a Priest. (magic, useless saves your arse) I have a habit of playing it safe and without fail always go for a sword wielder, so I picked the Warrior. What can I say I’m unoriginal. As a set-up we were given the choice between using the standard mouse and keyboard or a Xbox 360 controller. For the sake of testing it out and the fact I’m pretty much useless with a mouse, I used the controller.

Our mission was simple, get to the top of the hill and beat the boss. First we were shown how to fight by facing a giant enemy crab. The main draw TERA has up it’s sleeve was it’s action RPG elements. While standard MMO’s use a turn based/ATB style system, TERA instead uses a more fast paced approach. You are given the ablity to run, dodge and attack at will during combat. A Kingdom Hearts to your Final Fantasy. As far as I know only the melee based characters can dodge since it’s a certain skill you have to obtain. But the main idea of attacking enemies is to time your attack based on what your enemy does, basically Action Game 101. How well you do is based on your skill rather than statistics. Sure you can be a Level 50 warrior but if you aren’t any good at dodging you might as well be Level 5. To ensure it isn’t spammed, dodging requires MP. Your MP recharges faster when you attack enemies making a nice balance between offensive and defence. Along with the standard attack you are given many different skills which range from combos to stun attacks. I didn’t get much chance to look around the room but other classes work in similar ways, except for Sorcerers who stay at the back casting spell as you normally would. Only difference is magic can be casted faster than in most MMO’s. The Priest of the other hand uses healing circles, the more concentrated and smaller the circle the more it will heal, so you can choose to do a wide area small heal that will get everyone or focus on one player. The circle won’t follow you once casted so a level of communication must be high. During the boss battle I wasn’t paying attention to our Priest and dodged out of the way of a heal by mistake, wasting his precious mana in the process.

The game had a heavy focus on team work, being a higher level mission meant that we needed to be in a team in order to survive. a well communicated team will obviously win, something the group before us didn’t do very well, which lead to their demise during the boss fight. Our alertness needed to be high, even our first enemy took 5 people what seemed like an eternity. Which was probably closer to 5 minutes in retrospect. Thankfully our other enemies went down like flies with our 3 brawlers charging in and our Sorcerer and Priest for support on the sidelines. What really stood out was how fast paced combat was, everyone quickly dodging out the way and counter-attacking in an instant. This need to be alert made for a more interesting experience, and from a personal standpoint it made for a better game. One thing that bored me in most MMO’s was the lack of doing something during combat, after doing all your buffs there is very little you can do other than wait to use items. TERA will at least make the combat aspect of MMO’s a little more exciting.

Our demo only covered combat, but from the looks of things TERA will be a pretty standard MMO affair only with an added action RPG element. Chances are you won’t be swayed to trying this out if you aren’t a fan of the typical MMO tropes, but those looking for something slightly different in combat, TERA is something to look out for. TERA is set to come out in 2011 on the PC.

The story takes place 50 years after the events of Fable II. You play the son or daughter of the now deceased hero of Fable II. Your brother is the king of the land. You discover he isn’t exactly a good chap and try to overrule him. Once you become King the real choices start to appear, you can rule the kingdom in anyway you want. In between missions you are given options at your castle to change the way you run your kingdom. These vary from taxes to crime for example, you may actually to go into the field yourself and protect your town from crime if you wish. The representative really pushed the idea of choices and how slowly overtime your actions will change the world. Something Fable has boasted before. We will have to wait until the final product to see if this actually holds true.

Your hero can now be customisable, the demo offered the choice between a good or evil, male or female, each one looking completely different to the other in both appearance and clothing. Gone are skill points, gone are the ability customisation options. Everything is now dynamic and streamlined, weapons and magic level up depending on how much you use them. Don’t use guns much? Your gun skills will reflect this. There aren’t many weapons in the game but instead weapons will change depending on what you kill. If you kill enough skeletons with your sword and it will become a skeleton sword. Kill enough civilians with your gun and blood will drip from it adding many potential options. This I hope will be selectable and unlocked instead of changing automatically. Another option added to the game are followers. The more followers you have the more powerful you become along with your overall influence in the world. Also you will lose followers for dying adding more penalties for death this time around. If your character decides to be evil your physical appearance won’t seem so drastically. Horns, halos and markings for example will only appear when in combat. So wondering around town you will look relatively normal, though an evil character will look noticeably paler.

I got to play a quest in a dark cave with your mentor where you have to find a way out after becoming ship-wreaked, but something isn’t quite right. Gameplay wise nothing has changed, X to attack, Y to use a gun and B to use magic, all of which can be charged to become more powerful. Your magic has also been streamlined. Magic is now used with the power of rings, allowing you to only equip 2 at a time. But the 2 spells can be combined to make a more power attack. Unfortunately only the lightning spell was playable so I wasn’t able to experiment with this mechanic. When the quest took me outside I noticed how much the background visuals have improved. Fable II looked nice but didn’t really pull me in. While they only showed off a small part of the desert area, what I saw (other than all the dark tunnels) looked better, though character animations haven’t changed much.

One thing that stood out to me was the fact your character will talk. Granted that during the whole quest he only said 2 or 3 lines. I hope you can pick dialogue options or else I will see a disconnect between my character in-game and in cut-scenes. But from what I saw, it’s not looking hopeful that will be implemented. Stephen Fry will return and Jonathan Ross will be lending his voice as Reaver’s Butler. It’s also looking like the rumour of Charlie Brooker lending his voice won’t be happening. Which will make 5 people (including myself) sad.

Fable III isn’t looking to be a game to change your mind about the series. But if you enjoyed Fable II you will feel right a home. We will have to wait until October 26th to find out if it’s more streamlined approach will benefit this overambitious series.

In the time I had in the Wasteland, it became apparent that the atmosphere is set on a basis of urgency. An urgency that only Mickey Mouse can address. Warren Specter explains the storyline as a struggle for redemption among his fellow Disney friends. Mickey finally goes too far in his mischievous ways and it ultimately causes the misfortune of Disney characters by transplanting them from their home worlds into a cartoon reject Wasteland. The Wasteland draws upon the rich history of past Disney characters, specifically those who were unable to stand the test of time as popular, iconographic mascots of the company. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is a product of such circumstances and in Epic Mickey, he serves as the ruler of the Wasteland and the antagonist to hinder Mickey Mouse’s quest to restore the status quo and return everything back to normal.

For Mickey to address his overwhelming disparity, he must utilize the magical intrinsic powers of paint to transform the environment around him. This is integral to the gameplay because it will be up to the player to decide their “playstyle” and how one will interact with the situation when confronted with a dilemma. Epic Mickey takes into account the utilization of the paint spray and thinner. Spray allows the player to color the world and reveal platforming devices previously not available. Thinner dissipates the environment, causing objects to disappear to reveal hidden secrets or people to become blobs. I was confronted with two levels. The first was the Wasteland hub where Mickey can undertake quests and talk to various characters in need of help. The second was the Steamboat Willie level where it plays homage to a classic Disney short but also showcasing a traditional 2D style of platforming. However, the action adventure level titled Skull Island (loosely based off Peter Pan and Skull Rock) is where the game starts to unravel itself.

The objective of Skull Island is to ultimately free an anchor to raise a ship from a sea of paint thinner. Mickey is tasked with releasing the ropes that tether the anchor that will allow him to access the next zone. Yet, in this level, the “playstyle” is broad enough that a player won’t feel confined to a linear gameplay and can utilize the paintbrush mechanics to foster abilities that are unique to your preferences. For example, if you play with the thinner more than the spray, then you’ll unlock abilities that strengthen the experience of the thinner. The enemies that dominate Skull Island are blobs and can be approached in two ways. Mickey can use thinner to quickly dissipate the blobs and perform a spin attack or use the spray to befriend the blob and make it attack its former friend. In one encounter, an item collected in the game called the TV Sketch can be utilized as a distraction (blobs will just lie down and watch the TV, it’s actually pretty hilarious) as Mickey can free the tether that is holding down the anchor. Evidently, the core gameplay mechanics revolve around solving puzzles and combat.

Epic Mickey has a lot to prove amongst the tide of platform mascots but a revival of this magnitude coupled with Disney Interactive’s belief in the ambition of Warren Spector to make it a versatile game is well founded. Look forward to Epic Mickey for the Nintendo Wii this Holiday 2010.

DC Universe is played as an action RPG with an MMO aspect because the hotkeys lends itself to a beat-em-up style of gameplay. I was introduced to an instance where I had to rescue Batman’s sidekick (and the ever useful) Robin from Harley Quinn’s lair. It has since been a while since I’ve encountered an MMO, so I had to re familiarize myself with the standard gameplay mechanics. Luckily, it wasn’t too hard. As Black Eclipse, I ventured right into the foray and fought Quinn’s minions along with dodging the various environmental traps that work against you. However, I soon learned that these environmental objects can also be used as a weapon against foes as I could pick up various balls as playthings and throw them abusively as possible.

Movement can change to enact acrobatic leaps of faith, allowing the player to jump and stick up to walls, integrating a platforming experience to DC Universe. In addition through this feature, I was able to enact a ground smash attack and surprise enemies below. Tactics change per situation as you activate specific powers to take advantage of a difficult encounter. Boss fights take place at the end of an instance and varies, as you may end up fighting alongside or against a famous DC character. In this instance, Harley Quinn is featured as the end boss.

Authenticity remains an integral part of the DC Universe Online experience, exemplified through its permeated storytelling. The game will often transition into comic book style cutscenes that serves to fulfill the rich background of the DC franchise. The end of the demo experience concludes with rescuing Robin and advancing another step into the branching storyline. As of this writing, Metropolis and Gotham City are the only known locales in DC Universe Online with more to be announced later.

The core design philosophy behind the gameplay revolves around the “you are what you wear” principle, as I was introduced to the Recon (sniper) class, a fast mover but hindered by weak vitality. One of the main features allows players the ability to tag and target an enemy player on the battlefield and make them visible to everyone on the team. The Oracle feature can be unlocked after accumulating a certain number of experience which can then pinpoint and detect all the enemy players on the map for a brief period of time. The ability is also shared amongst your teammates. In addition, the Hot Foot Tactical Insertion can utilize a teammate’s position in order to quickly provide cover support, get into the heat of action, and even a tactical revive.

Different game modes include PvP and PvE so far, allowing players to combat either enemy A.I. or people playing the game. Yet, the developers stress that The Agency really excels when playing with a live team. The Agency supports a variety of gameplay tactics and is seen in the diversity of the five different player roles and the structuring of the levels. After playing through a hands-on demonstration, it is evident that this is no longer the same title that appeared last year. I attacked one of the capture-the-point game modes through the PS3 version and the controls feel responsive and intuitive, not one action felt out of place and it was easy to pick up and learn after an accessible learning curve. The genre blend of RPG, shooter, and MMO are intertwined quite nicely. The game occasionally switches to a third person shooter when you enter cover, but the majority of the game is focused through the lens of a first-person perspective.

The Agency is available for PC and PS3 platforms.