All the E3 frenziness is beginning to happen. What things are you looking forward to that have been revealed at E3 (and any other comments you'd like to give on the games that shown there).
It feels like the game industry is getting closer, and closer tied to the movie industry, with Shannon Elizabeth signed on to voice and get modelled for another Bond game, by EA.. John Woo is starting a game development company with close ties to Sega, called Tiger Hill Entertainment. and the Matrix game was practically made with the movie. Oh, I've noticed that David Braben (creator of Elite, Elite 2:Frontier) is making some dog simulator or some game.. that should be interesting.
And yes, we have another freakin Tony Hawk game.. they're not settling with calling it "Tony Hawk #5" though, but "Tony Hawk Underground". Tony will now be able to get off his skateboard, and get into vehicles.. and climb ladders and do a whole lot of third person type acts. plus there will be environmental effects, and time passing (day to night etc).. sounds like another GTA3 to me.
I'm not gonna mention the huge titles like Half Life 2, Doom 3, Gran Turismo 4, because you're probably all sick to death of hearing about them. [:)] There are tonnes of other interesting titles too, like Deus Ex 2, Thief 3.. this has got to be the biggest E3 so far.
Sony's revealed the specs for a pretty kick-ass handheld system. Nintendo says they're not worried, but I sure as heck would be. I can see Sony doing all their marketing tricks, and persuading developers to move from the GBA to the PSP.. And poor old [url="http://gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?section_name=new&aid=1664"]Nokia N-Gage[/url] - it's pretty much considered dead before production.
And hey, no mention of a BMX-XXX sequel.. darn! [:)]
I've just finished downloading Half Life 2 ingame footage.. http://users.pandora.be/vanhoef/HL2/halflife2_pce32003_2dn_qt.zip
It's quite impressive. [:)]
HL2 does indeed look spiffy. Some lovely scripted sequences there (love the one at the end with the blue tentacle things @:-) Have also gotten the Doom 3 trailer, which has peaked my interest a bit more for it, as the screenshots weren't doing alot for me. Grabbed the World of Warcraft trailer, and it still has me begging for more. I want it nooowwwww!
The Star Wars Galaxies trailer's also raised my interest. Sure, it's Star Wars and all, but that last gameplay flick I saw kinda left me not caring much. Now... where was I? *starts downloading the new Legacy of Kain trailer*
That movie you mention is from the pc.ign teaser. The one I linked is much better though! It really shows off some of the physics in the game. Pushing a clump of bed matresses and objects off a ledge inside (you see it fall off convincingly), lifting a heater with the gravity gun and throwing it at an enemy, who crashes into a soda machine (you get to see soda cans spit out and roll down the steps) etc.. Blowing up the wooden foundation under a metal container, to have it fall on the enemy below etrc.. pretty cool stuff!
Here's a whole heap of [url="http://users.pandora.be/vanhoef/HL2/index.html"]Half-Life 2 cam shots[/url].. 75 total, I think..
Here's 8 [url="http://mostlycloudy.net/~dnl2ba/multimedia/video/Video%20game-related/"]Half Life 2 tech demos[/url] (the same as what Malus posted), and a whole lot of other E3 stuff too!!! (I wish I had cable!!)
I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but I've downloaded 35mbs of a Half Life .mov file on dialup, only to have an "invalid sample number" error when opening the file. You might think I'm nuts, but I've started downloading the 520mb "everything" version now. Why would I be doing this? Because from what I've seen so far, it's really worth it. Seriously. :)
I've seen the E3 Doom 3 footage, and it feels like your typical old indoor fragging FPS game (strafe and spray) that I've played many times before, whereas Half Life 2 is like nothing I've ever seen. You can really feel your adrenaline rush during some of the firefights in the tech demos, they're that intense.
The attention to detail in HL2 is incredible. The lighting, and little things like glare from the road or pavements, depending on the position you are with the Sun (this effect you usually see in racing games like Gran Turismo, Grand Prix Challenge). The reflections of glass and windows look so "right" too and all add up to the believability of the environment.. there are some parts of the city which I thought looked so realistic.
Valve have mentioned somewhere that they spent a considerable amount of attention on lighting for the engine - I've seen some screenshots of the Hammer editor, and whilst the texture work isn't much different from what I've seen in the past, it looks incredible in-game.
Anyway, I've got about 40 hours left on that download. :P :)
I was totally blown away by Alex from the HL2 trailers. Full facial morphs, soft shadowing and her skin shaders just looks amazing!!
Halo2 looked pretty damn sweet too, though it's kind of hard not to compare everything to Halflife now.
I'm dissapointed there wasn't any ingame footage of the new Theif game though :(
I liked when he blocked the door with the table to excape the AI guy after him, the guy couldn't get through the door, so he went up to the window and started shooting through that :)
I think the friendly AI has definately improved. In one of the street fighting scenes, the AI gave you cover fire to move forward, and then they bunnyhopped with you etc. which was cool. Just gonna have to wait and see.
CYer, Blitz
Waiting (hoping) on a big Citizen Zero announcement...Time to break radio silence!!!
CYer, Blitz