One of the parties that I attended at this years E3 was hosted by Riot Games to show off their new online multiplayer action RPG, League of Legends: Clash of Fates.  Here you play as Summoners with an avatar tied to the player’s account that will advance and level up over time.  You can play as over 40 champions as well as choose from hundreds of items for your avatar.  What is great is that there are no monthly subscription fees so you can play online as  well as get frequent updates for the game.

Riot Games is a Los Angeles based game developer and publisher made up of about 40 employees, many of them veteran game developers.  They set out to create this MMO PvP title and have introduced some fun and unique characters like Nunu, the Yeti Rider – who looks like a little boy riding on the back of an intimidating yeti and throws snowballs at his enemies; Twisted Fate, the Cardmaster – who leaves fate to a deck of cards; and my personal favorite, Annie, the Dark Child who can summon a ferocious, humongous teddy bear to wreak havoc and destruction to her foes.  Hell yah!

I got a chance to play the game with other people at the party, so with my Red Bull and vodka in had, I sat down to play this PC MMO.  It took a little while to get everyone all set up – it was a party in a bowling alley, so some delay is only natural.  I chose my summoner – Annie, the Dark Child, of course – and we were divided into two teams.  I jumped right into the in game chat and said hello to my fellow gamers.  The objective of our game was to protect our base while taking over the opponents base.  You have minions that basically do your combat for you so you want to make sure that you follow them so that the can take the brunt of the initial wave of combat damage. You will constantly be leveling up so you need to pay attention so that you can level up your skills which will affect the power of your spells and how much mana will be used.  You can even warp back to your home base to heal up or to go to the store to buy and upgrade your weapons and equipment.  To move, you simply click the left click on the mouse and your character will move to your mouse pointer’s location.  To attack, you left click the mouse and you will start to attack using whichever spell you have selected. If you build enough power, you can use your special attack which in my case was the ability to summon my bad ass freakishly scary awesome teddy bear!  I can’t tell you how many time I summoned him….because how awesome is it to wipe out an army of minions with a teddy bear?!?

As a gamer that sticks mostly to consoles, I needed a few minutes to get used to the control – you know, W A S D and using the mouse.  Once I got that, it was onto learning the mechanics of the game which I think will be easy for anyone to pick up in just one to two games.

The game was a lot of fun and my team ended up winning which was even cooler – can you say ferocious teddy bear.  So awesome. 

The game will launch in September 2009 and I may have to load Windows on my Mac so that I can play it.  It looks like it will be fun and addicting and with the play being free, what more can you ask for?

I had a chance to sit in a demo of Supreme Commander 2 developed by Gas Powered Games.  Supreme Commander 2 is set 25 years after the original game, beginning with the assassination of the newly elected president of the Colonial Defense Coalition (CDC).  The members of the CDC including the United Earth Federation (UEF), the Order of the Illuminate, and the Cybran Nation all deny any involvement and point the fingers at each other which results in a massive galactic war.

This sequel is published by Square Enix and with this partnership they hope to take the RTS genre to the next level by integrating more story elements and characters to the game.  A comparison of the History Channel vs Saving Private Ryan was named as an example – by going more into their lives but still keeping the focus on the strategy and the military.

I have to admit, I’ve not played a lot of strategy games…ok…I’ve not played any, unless Civilization Revolution counts and from what most people say, it doesn’t.  As the demo moved on, I understood why.  First off, even though the game is not polished and is in its earlier stages of development, the game looks magnificent.  They’ve introduced a brand new rendering engine for the game with massive verticality.  Typical RTS games have a rather awkward boundary where you can’t really get a feel for the world around you and here, you have access to all of it. You can zoom into battle right away – as you could in the original game.

They really focused intensely on performance. The demo was run on a computer that was over 2 years old and it looked and performed great.  One of the reasons why I don’t PC game was that I could never keep up with the never ending costs of upgrading my PC which is why I stick to the console.  With Supreme Commander 2, they wanted you to be able to play the game on a 3, 4 or even a 5 year old computer with out too many issues – we all know that there is always something!

We were shown one of the new units in the game – the NOAH Unit Cannon.  You can build units in it and fire them clear across the map.  Another unit was the UEF Armored Command Unit – which is like a giant robot that can be upgraded with jump jets, torpedos, anti-aircraft guns, shoulder artillery, and more.  You can upgrade the head to detach and become an escape pod to fly back to the base to rebuild your Commander.  You can also add Core Dump so that your commander doesn’t become a nuclear bomb in your own base.

There are now three diverse factions – the UEF, the Cybran Nation, and the Illuminate.  They have all been redesigned since the original game.  New designs and enhanced looks along with new tricks that can be unlocked by doing research.  Research is one of the new features in the game to learn more and discover new technology and will offer more playability to the game as well.

The game will be available on the Xbox 360 and the PC and the content between the two will be the same with the exception of the User Interface and they are focusing on making sure that the game will fit for optimal performance.

Seeing that RTS games can go for hours, I was curious if there was a quick play mode and they are working to get games to play on a smaller scale like 30-60 minutes instead of 2 or more hours.  The campaign is run linearly so you play one battle after another.  There is one story and one timeline so that at the end of the third leg of the campaign, you have finished the whole story and have one outcome for the galaxy.

The economy system has been improved so that you will have to have Mass and Energy on hand in order to purchase a unit.  In the previous game, you could purchase units regardless and then there would be a stall in the economy if you didn’t have enough mass and energy.  Now if you purchase something, it is done.

With the improvements to the economy system as well as the readability of the units, the campaign should introduce the player to all the elements of the RTS genre.  The game also features a detailed tutorial for beginners.

They use neural net AI and run hundreds of thousands of simulations in the game and before the game ships , they will do it one last time to educate the neural net with the latest data for balancing and tuning.  The game will have the ability to change strategies on the fly using the neural net versus scripting, as it has been done in the past.

No DLC is planned at this time, although it will be supported, so we will have to keep an out out for new maps possibly.

Multiplayer will follow what was done in the first Supreme Commander.

Supreme Commander 2 will be available in 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PC.

In the second Ben 10 Alien Force game: Vilgax Attacks you’ll play as Ben, in what feels like part 3rd person puzzle game and part role-playing game.  For the first time, players will control Ben and 10 of his Alien forms from the Omnitrix.  You’ll take Ben through an original story created for the game, and be able to experience new alien home planets that haven’t yet been visited on the show.  There will be many familiar creatures from the show that Ben will fight, but there’s also been a handful of new creatures created for the game, that will still keep the spirit of the Ben 10 show.

On October 23rd you’ll have a chance to play the tie-in Astro Boy videogame.  The Astro Boy game look like a classic sidescroller adventure game where you control Astro Boy.  But, there’s a lot of depth hidden within the game, where Astro Boy can move around more than characters usually can in sidescrollers that’s being refered to as 2 1/2d graphics.  In Astro Boy: The Videogame you’ll have the use of all of Astro Boy’s cool gadgets and abilities as he works to save Metro City: the finger-tip lasers, the arm cannons and flight.  There is some flying combat throughout the game which gives it a cool new dimension.  Longtime fans of Astro Boy should definitely check this out, and new fans when the movie comes out on the same day (October 23rd) will hopefully love the game as well.

I think my favorite of the three games D3 has coming out this fall is The Secret Saturdays: Beasts of the 5th Sun, in which you’ll get to play all of the Saturdays in order to fight V.V. Argost’s evil plot to control the Cryptids and rule the world.  There’s thirty new Cryptids that’ve been created just for the game, in a story that feels much like watching the TV show, because it’s been written by show creators and is voiced by the show’s cast.  What makes this game my favorite of the three is the mix of both 2d and 3d gaming.  There are parts of the game that feel like a 2d sidescroller, but the techniques you need to use to make it through have 3d elements, like jumping up over the side of a platform instead of bopping up between platforms like most experienced gamers are used to. This makes watching the special abilities of Zak and The Claw he uses really fun.

And one of the most surprising and sort of revealing parts of the demo is the information that your Commander Shepard is not expected to survive the entire story in Mass Effect 2.  When this sequel hits shelves next year, there’s going to be a new darker, harder edge to the game.  Players will see and understand that characters – including yours, can die.  I don’t want to spoil it for the fans out there, but loyalty plays a large issue in the major turning point of the game, and it’ll definitely keep fans on the edge of their seats trying to figure out what to do next.

If you want to see some of the game, you can watch the trailer below from GameTrailers:

New Super Mario Bros Wii

At E3 this year, April and I teamed up with a Nintendo rep to demo New Super Mario Bros Wii. Instead of doing a writeup, I decided to make a voice-over video. I hope you enjoy it! Hint: We both loved New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

This arcade style on-rails shooter has been upgraded significantly since its debut as The Umbrella Chronicles and features a sub-screen for weapon configuration – allowing for weapons to be upgraded and customized for each scenario – and the use of health recovery items.  In addition to the Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulty settings, the new system will modify the difficulty level according to the player’s skills making the game accessible to the casual and hardcore gamer.

Another feature is the enhanced two player co-op where both players will be able to follow their partners on the same screen and they have improved the conversations and interactions to further enhance the experience.  You will occasionally see the other player’s character on screen which involves you more into the story.

You will even be able to revisit some of the classic Resident Evil levels like Raccoon City from Resident Evil 2 and the hidden Umbrella lab from Resident Evil: Code Veronica.  But there will be plenty of new scenarios in The Darkside Chronicles.

And of course, there will be plenty of collectables in the game like archive items like characters, enemies, old documents, and movies that can all be found in the game!

I got a chance to play the full demo levels for the Darkside as well as a level from Code Veronica and the most noticeable thing was the camera style.  Obviously, an on-rails shooter is a fixed camera but what’s cool here is that it’s shaky and often rather chaotic.  It really adds to the fear and tension of the stressful environment that you find yourself in.  I think that some people will find the spazzed out camera annoying but will hopefully stick with it.  I think that fans of the Resident Evil series will enjoy the game as will fans of the zombie genre and the rail shooter genre.  I sure loved it…I stuck around the Capcom booth playing it for over an hour!

Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles is due for release this winter and will only be available for the Nintendo Wii for $49.99.

In addition to The Darkside Chronicles, the Capcom booth also had a playable demo of the upcoming game, Resident Evil Archives.  Archives is a port of the classic Resident Evil game that was released for the Game Cube in 2002, which was a remake of the classic PSOne game that featured new rooms, items, and creatures previously not released in the original version.  You will use the Wii remote and nunchuck in this game to take control of either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine to relive the horror that started the the survival-horror genre.

Included is a Survival of the Fittest Mode, where you can battle zombies, infected dogs, and the epic bosses.
I was really thrilled to hear that this was being released in the US as originally it was a Japanese only release.  The only thing that I really wished they had updated is the control scheme.  It follows the old forward is always UP and I was having a hell of a time with it.  In fact, I just kept moving around in circles!  No fault of the controller as I also downloaded Resident Evil: Director’s Cut on PSN and had the same issues there!  I’m sure there is a bit of nostalgia with the old Capcom controls and the Capcom camera angle, but if I had one wish, it would be configurable controls for this version.

You can pick up Resident Evil Archives on June 23 only on the Nintendo Wii for $29.99.

I got a chance to play the full demo at the Nintendo booth on the E3 show floor.  The setting is different – you now find yourself in the desert and  you are armed with only a revolver.  Shooting in this game was never easier – although I’m still a little crazy with aiming the remote at the screen.  Because there were so many Wii remotes in the area, we were informed that during the demo we would have to stop and point the Wii remote at the middle of the screen to reset it, in case of interference.  I did have to do this several times during the demo and I will not use that against the game in this review.

The level walked you through the mechanics of shooting and moving through the level and the objective was to find your sword.  Once you found it, it walked you through how to use it to damage foes and how to block their attacks.  The gun was pretty self explanatory – just aim and pull the trigger.  Sword play was also quite intuitive.  You can do light and strong attacks, all gauged by how hard you swing the Wii remote.  You also get a visual reference with a blue slash for a light attack and a red slash for the strong attacks.  Using the sword to block your opponents attacks is key so you will want to master those quickly.  Again, blocking is very easy and intuitive – simply holding the Wii remote vertically or horizontally will block accordingly.  You can even evade attacks at the press of a button.  There is a lot going on but everything feels quite natural.

I went through the level and even got to the boss battle at the end and of course, I whipped his ass.    The controls will take a little getting used to especially if you are not used to playing FPS games with the Wii remote.  As for the rest of the game, the art style is pleasing and uses a cel shaded style which works well on the Wii.

Red Steel 2 will come out exclusively for the Wii later this year and will come bundled with Wii Motion Plus.

I just picked up the controller and jumped in and was engaged in combat with the enemy and to be fair, without the story context and also not knowing the controls, I was having a hard time.  In fact, I died like 10 times.  So I put it down and walked away.  Later, I decided to try it out again.  I decided to quit the current game and start the demo over and that’s when I discovered that there were three playable modes!  So I loaded another mode and started playing that one.  This looked to be a boss battle – again, a bad idea to jump into without being used to the controls.  I quit that after dying about 5 times and started the first demo on the list.

Finally, I got what I was looking for.  This portion of gameplay looked to be the opening level of the game as it walked you through some of the flight controls using the jet pack.  After a few moments of flopping around and NOT dying, I was really enjoying myself.  The controls were air plane controls – or with the inverted y-axis on – which I am not used to.  There wasn’t a way to change that setting in the demo, although I do hope you can change it in the final game.  It took me a bit to get used to it, but once I did, I was having a blast!  The flight mechanic handles great and is a lot of fun.  I was not only able to fly, but I was able to shoot and fly as well.  I have a feeling that the rest of the game will fall into place when playing the full version.

Dark Void will be available for the the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC when it hits stores in later this year.

There was a lot of excitement at the Microsoft Press Conference when Olivia Harrison, Yoko Ono, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney appeared on stage to talk about The Beatles Rock Band coming out on 09/09 of this year, the same day The Beatles music collection is being rereleased.  For those of us that are fans of The Beatles, imagine the excitement of getting to play the game several months before it’s release.  Trina, April and I had a chance to get our hands on both the Wii and Xbox 360 versions of the game during E3.  We didn’t get a lot of time, just a song on each system, and if you’re a Rock Band fan I don’t need to explain how the game plays, because there isn’t a lot of difference.  What’s really awesome about The Beatles Rock Band experience is the way they’ve integrated the look and feel of the band through the years into the game, and the songs.  It’s a lot of fun to see the idea of the songs, the imagery brought out and made and important part of the game.

If you’re a fan of The Beatles, than it might be exciting to know that Harmonix is making two guitars  and a bass available with the release of the game.  Each one will be made to look like Paul and John’s guitars, or George’s bass.  Also, the drum kit is modled after Ringo’s pearl white set.  The full collection will come with one guitar, the drum set with The Beatles logo, and a mic stand to make singing easier especially for those singers that are also playing guitar.   Which brings me to the one big gameplay change from the Rock Band you might be used to.  In The Beatles Rock Band, there’s 3 part harmony on all the songs, which means that if more people want to sing, they can.  The important part isn’t the harmonies, but that someone is always singing the lead – but I think it’s a pretty cool addition to the game.

I think The Beatles Rock Band is going to be a great addition to your music game collection this fall.  Plus, if you’re like me and my friends, you might be due for an instrument update in the next few months.  This collection will make a great way to replace old drums, or failing guitars.  But, if you’re not looking for the whole group of instruments, singing the songs that have raised several generations is going to be a great way to hone your skills, and hang out with your friends.

Brink is a brand new sci-fi first person shooter (FPS) game.  You find yourself on the Ark which is an artificial floating city.  It’s basically a city in a bubble.  In this game they introduce the SMART button: Smooth Movement Over Random Terrain.  Basically, if you have played any FPS games, you know that you are running, shooting, evading, jumping – anything to kill your enemy without dying yourself!  What SMART does is takes a lot of the thinking and buttons away and gives you more control over what your character can do.  For example, if you want to grab a ledge but you are running and firing, having to press another button can cost you your life.  With SMART, all you do is look up at the ledge and your character will automatically grab the ledge and pull himself up.  This also works in the opposite direction.  Say you want to slide underneath something – instead of pressing a button to do so, all you need to do is look down and you automatically slide.  I assume that this would take some getting used to but it was used a lot in the demo and it looked awesome.  You are able to perform a number of actions – like running and sliding into cover to avoid enemy fire.  It’s looks damn cool.

Another great thing about this game is there are two single player campaigns.  You have the choice to play either the Resistance campaign or the Security campaign.  You can also customize your character, up to a certain point.  In Oblivion, you could almost make your character look like you.  The character customization is not quite as precise in Brink, but there seem to be plenty of options available.  I asked if there were any playable female characters and unfortunately there are none.  The response was that they did look into it but they would have to create a whole new library of assets for the females and it wasn’t something they wanted to spend a lot of time on.  That’s a little disappointing, but as long as the game play is good, it ultimately doesn’t matter if you are playing a male or female character.

In the single player campaign, you are able to choose between four classes: operative, soldier, medic, and engineer.  You are even able to change your class as well as your weapon ammo by accessing the command post, which is a computer, that you can find throughout the cities.  Seems a bit convenient to find a computer lying around, but suspension of disbelief is crucial for gaming.  You are equipped with a PDA that looks suspiciously close to an iPhone that you can use to choose your objective as well as use it as a tazer to interrogate enemies. (Don’t taze me bro!)  The game does use experience points to level up the characters so you will probably want to choose the objectives that carry more XP.

If you are less concerned with XP and just want to blow sh*t up, just find a command post and change your class to something with more oomph!

For those you you that want to play with others, Brink offers co-op multiplayer with up to seven of your friends which translates to eight Security and eight Resistance for full team play.  The great thing is that they can jump in and out of the game at anytime.  You can play offline multiplayer with up to eight people as well.  There will be versus modes available, although no details were given.

At this time, the game is pre-alpha so there have been no discussions regarding DLC so we’ll have to keep an eye out for that.

Brink is aiming for a spring 2010 release for the PC, Xbox 360, and the PS3.