Yesterday I had the pleasure of being sent to GAMEfest, a fairly large games expo held at the Birmingham N.E.C., to get my hands on some of the releases coming up in the near future.
From what I can gather, GAMEfest is an annual event, hosted by the UK chain of GAME stores, and this year sponsored by Microsoft & Sony, amongst other. What this meant for me, was that I got to play on some amazing upcoming releases before any of you! What this means for you, is that you get to read a first hand, hopefully unbiased account of what’s hot and what’s not for Christmas 2011!
The Good:
RAGE – ID Software’s latest offering. I have to admit that this game practically came out of nowhere! I’ve heard next to nothing about it, but I decided to queue for it anyway, and it’s now gone from being a game I’d never heard of, straight to the top of my ‘to buy’ list!
RAGE reminded me a lot of Bioshock, which is no bad thing. It’s a first person action/adventure game that’s extremely gritty in tone, and very well presented. There are some interesting weapons, all of which have various forms of ammunition, and all of which can be carried at once (an equipped to a rotary menu via the inventory). Along with this, there are some interesting & unusual gadgets which can be picked up and used, and some pretty damn sinister enemies to unleash your arsenal on! I can’t really comment much on the story, because there wasn’t much I could pick up on in 15 minutes, but this is definitely one to watch!
Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – I’m sure you’re all familiar with this game, so I won’t insult you by explaining the premise. I got to play a co-op game in a new horde style mode, where the 2 players have to defeat waves of enemies in order to earn points to buy weapons, explosives, and perks. Other than obviously new maps, a couple of additional gametypes, and some new weapons, not much has changed about this game.
More of the same isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it felt more like downloadable content on a disk. This will be one for the fans of the series I guess.
Gears of War 3 – This is where I have to try not to be biased. Like MW3, GoW 3 offered more of the same, but I honestly enjoyed playing it more. That could definitely have been down to the fact that I was playing a different gametype to MW3, but I think the main thing is that I know that the Gears of War series is mainly built for the single player/co-op campaign, with the multiplayer being a secondary aspect, whereas the CoD series has seemed to have had the opposite focus since the beginning of the Modern Warfare series.
Batman: Arkham City – I was very lucky that I got to play this at all, as there were only 3 machines running it, which once the doors opened to the public, were swarmed all day!
This seems to be a recurring theme, but not much has really been changed in this game either. I honestly loved Arkham Asylum, it was refreshingly different to find a comic book game that some level of effort had been put into, and it was extremely immersive! However I did feel that the game’s engine did a little too much for the player, as you could simply cruise through in ‘Detective Mode’ and see everything that presented any possible threat from a safe distance. This still seems to be the case in Arkham City, which is a shame, but it’s still definitely a game worth buying.
Battlefield 3 – I had to queue for 2 and a half hours to play this, which speaks of the level of anticipation surrounding the long awaited sequel to Battlefield 2, and I have to say, it’s exactly what I expected it to be.
The Battlefield games I have played previously have always managed to find a good balance between being enjoyable, and being realistic. This was no exception, and I really enjoyed the game once I got into the swing of it. The loadout menu was far more complicated than I could have understood within the 15 minutes game time I had, and I didn’t get to try any vehicles, but this will definitely be a big player this Christmas.
All Zombies Must Die – This was another one that I hadn’t heard anything about, and probably with good reason. AZMD is an XBLA/PSN game, which presents 4 players the challenge of surviving/killing an infinite number of zombies while trying to get across the map. This is presented in a top down, cartoony style, and will undoubtedly be great fun for kids & adults alike. There are numerous weapons, and at the end of every area the player will have to complete a challenge in order to advance (kill a certain number of zombies with a certain weapon, find a certain item etc…). I had great fun playing this, and would definitely recommend it, even though I’m sure it won’t be a major title this Christmas.
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – Sadly I didn’t actually get to play this, I just watched a presentation on it, but nevertheless, it was the kind of game that made me wish I owned a wii. Skyward Sword is a platforming/adventure game set as a prequel to Ocarina of Time, and while I don’t really know much about the story, it seems to make great use of the console, and the new Wii MotionPlus peripheral, and seems to have some really varied gameplay elements, lots of interesting puzzles to solve, and being a Zelda game, I’m sure the story will be solid.
The Not So Good:
Goldeneye: Reloaded – Another shameless cash-in on the Bond franchise. As a kid, Goldeneye 64 was one of my favourite games, but it seems that the title is continually being soiled by endless remakes, sequels, re-imaginings and general money spinning.
I can’t be confident on this, but the game seems to be mostly based on an older version of the Call of Duty engine, with all of the controls being identical, and weapons handling in much the same way. Sadly though, this is no CoD. Goldeneye was graphically a long way behind current games, was very clunky to play, and suffered continuous glitches, freezes and crashes. You’d think that if you were giving players & members of the press a chance to play one level of your game at an expo, you’d at least have got that one level right!
Saints Row 3 – Don’t get me wrong on this one, the game wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t that great either. I played one level of the story mode of Saints Row 3, and while nothing particularly stood out as being bad (apart from the sub par graphics) it just didn’t grab me or thrill me! I know that the Saints Row games have a lot more to offer than I could experience in 20 minutes game time, so I’ll hold off on giving a judgement on this one, but my first thoughts aren’t particularly positive.
Spyro Skylanders – This is a really interesting concept. ‘Toys for Bob’ are integrating the game (which seems like a fairly boring kiddy friendly adventure game, that won’t present much of a challenge even for younger audiences) with a line of toys that they are making. So with the game, you will get an info reader/portal, and all game data is saved within little figurines that you place on this portal to make the corresponding character appear in the game & become playable. This can be done with up to 2 characters for co-op mode.
This just seems like a bit of a pointless gimmick to me, obviously kids will lose the toys, it’s what they do, and they will also have lost all save data for their character in the g
ame. The game comes with 4 characters, but apparently 30+ will be available on release. I can’t even imagine how much this game could cost some unsuspecting parents in the long run if their kid gets really into it! On top of this, THEY’VE MADE SPYRO BUTT UGLY!!! It genuinely makes me sad to see that this franchise has fallen so far from where it was when I was growing up.
The Weird:
Journey – A literal sandbox PSN game. I started the game and found myself dropped in the middle of a desert, with no idea of what I was doing, where I was going, or what the point of this game was! Things didn’t get better at any point, I wandered around for a few minutes, found a couple of different ‘areas’ and then just gave up.This is a graphically beautiful game, but is there actually an objective? Is there actually any point to it?
Pokémon Rumble Blast – From what I played, this seemed like a hack/slash style pokémon game where you play as a toy pokémon advancing through different areas using your given ability to dispatch other pokémon, and eventually a boss at the end of each area. I did enjoy playing this, but the whole toy pokémon thing seemed a bit weird. This is probably more one for Pokémon fans than casual players.
Honorary mentions:
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim – Why isn’t this on your list I hear you saying! Skyrim was at GAMEfest, but sadly it wasn’t playable. They were just screening the already released 15-minute E3 gameplay trailer, with a commentary from one of the developers. I refused to queue for 2 hours to watch something that’s already available, so you can make your own judgements on it.
Sports/Driving games – Forza 4, F1 2011, WRC 2, Ridge Racer Unbounded, Fifa 12, PES 2012, and several other sports games were all playable at GAMEfest, but honestly, I don’t know enough about driving or many other sports games to be able to distinguish a great game from an awful game, so I mainly stuck with writing about the genres I’m more comfortable with, even though I did briefly play a couple of these games.
Mass Effect 3 & Star Wars: The Old Republic – They were both there, they both had massive queues, and I couldn’t really be bothered to join them. I haven’t played either of the previous mass effect games, and don’t feel particularly inspired to, and with regard to SW:TOW, seriously? Who goes to a games expo to play an MMORPG? Obviously a lot of people, but it’s not really an accurate portrayal of the game when there are 30 players in a small section of a massive world, which will eventually be populated by millions.
My game of show would have to go to RAGE. I honestly loved playing this game, partly for the dark immersive world it had created and partly just because it played really well. I’ll definitely be checking it out in the near future!