BODY {;}

Ok - I'm a bad girl. I went away for the weekend, have been dealing with some personal stuff and it's time for kiddies to come back to school so I'm running around like a chicken without a head. I have so much to talk about but there's just not enough hours in the day to get it all out!

Anyway, lame excuses aside, here's part 2!

Day Two - Naughty or Nice

Day two for the New York Press Event was reserved for the "mature" offering of games. This is the GOOD stuff everyone is waiting for. We got to get up close and personal with Crackdown, WWE - Raw vz. Smackdown, Test Drive, Saint's Row, Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Dead Rising, Madden 07, NBA 2K7, WSOP Poker and of course, Gears of effing War!



I sat down with Dead Rising first - of course, it's release date is today so you can see for yourselves how great it is. This game is going to appeal to those who appreciate zombies and the humor that often accompanies their escapades. There is a large amount of carnage caused using anything and everything you can see in the world. Benches, flower pots, shopping carts, lawn mowers, and drills - whatever your heart desires can be used to maim and kill your enemies.

This does not share the same complexity of such games as Silent Hill or Resident Evil but it does have a story. You play a photographer who gets stranded in a mall with an army of blood thirsty zombies. Your objective is to find out what caused all of this in a 72 hour period (12 hours our time). There is the main quest line but there are also side missions that emerge during your time in the shopping mecca. It's completely up to you how you spend your 72 hours and there are different endings based on your completions.

As well as disfiguring the undead, you get to take photographs of your mess. You get points for these photos and the more bizarre, the bigger points. During the demo, the Capcom rep chopped up a bunch of people but an arm was left on the floor. He picked up the arm and shoved it into the mouth of another zombie. Before that one could eat him, he snapped a photo and I'm sure I heard a giggle emerge from the character's lips. This photo earned a rating of "Outtake" and came with a nice bonus.

All in all, this game can be played however you like. You can go on crazy zombie-killing sprees or play the story. The only problem I saw with the entire game was the fact that zombies could be killed anywhere. Now now, Capcom, any true zombie fan know that you can only kill the suckers by destroying their brain.

Great game, good fun.

Addendum: I have since purchased this game and have to say I do still love it but I have a slight issue with the saving system. I have no problem with having to find save points but when you finish killing 500 zombies and accidentally find yourself in a boss fight where you die, it can get just a tad annoying. I haven't screamed at my TV in a long time but this brought all the pent up aggression out and I let it fly.









I also sat down with the THQ rep who showed me the goods on Saint's Row. I saw this game at a press event back in January - let's just say, the developers must have been working overtime because it was far better than it was back then. The graphics stepped up 100% and I actually got to see some missions being completed. Yes, it is a lot like GTA, there's no doubt about it but it is its own beast.

One of the coolest things is that you create your own character from the feet up. I asked about having a female character for the multiplayer portion of the game but he said there wasn't that kind of functionality built in. I told him that there were several women I knew that maybe they should think about adding it. He did tell me that in the main quest you can recruit female members but that was about it. BLAH

Apart from this small oversight, the game seemed to play pretty well. I wish I could give a more detailed account of controls, etc. but the THQ guy seemed to have the controller glued to his hands.





WSOP: Tournament of Champions

This was your usual offering of poker with some added twists. Firstly, you can now make your character look just like you and not by painstakingly going through a million customization screens to get there. All you need to do is buy a vision cam, take a pic of your face add it to your character and BAM there you are with your mug on the TV. Since I came a little late to the party, I didn't get to see the customization in progress but I saw the final piece and it was a little spooky. It did look like Anne-Marie (Xbox rep) but it had a scary polygon freakiness about it.

I jumped into an existing game with Zamees and Jakenbear (both MVPs) and got to watch each of them through the cam as they made their plays. It was very cool. You really have to stop yourself from making the faces that you've so easily been able to do in the privacy of your home. Using this to his advantage, Jaken switched between his regular poker face to putting on a Jar Jar mask and then a goalie mask - Ahh the canadian showing through. Only one person is visible at a time on this game unlike Uno's 4 player cam support.
In speaking with the WSOP rep, the information about the game I found out was that each table has a maximum of 9 players but you can set up tournaments of up to 21 players. Should be a fun game to play and with the cam support it should do very well.



Accessories Galore:

The accessories on hand were the vision cam, the wireless steering wheel, wireless headset and the HD-DVD. The only functional items were the cameras - one was on WSOP poker while the other was set up as a video chat station.

Vision Cam:
The cam was demonstrated not only on WSOP but also on Uno and it looked pretty damn good. It has several different modes that you can apply that change the look of the stream. PMS Tart was on hand from Texas showing the capabilities. She had her pet skunk help her out, too. The quality of the one-on-one chat was phenomenal. That scares me somewhat because we all know how people love to share their parts online. Parents who take an interest will be able to use parental controls to disallow cam access.

Something everyone has been asking for is the ability to take personal photos and use them for your gamercard - well, guess what? This is going to happen. The only setback is that only those on your friends list will be able to view your personal pic. People in public lobbies or on the forums will still see your regular gamerpic. This will cut down on the number of literal teabags I will be sent, I'm hoping.

You can also send photo messages with the cam. My first message was from Zamees. It was pretty scary - I, of course, returned the favor.

The only possible let-down about the camera is the cord length. If you have a home theater setup and sit 20 feet away from your TV, it could be a problem. The cam does have a zoom feature but it does start to degrade. Also, lots of movement causes a tad motion blur but overall, it's a great little gadget. Not unlike the old logitech cams of yesteryear.

For more info on the cam, see Gamertagradio's video.

As for the other accesories, like I said, they weren't functional yet but the HD-DVD resembled a dictionary, the steering wheel felt great on my lap and felt good in my hands. Maybe it will improve my crap driving skills. The wireless headset was made to fit over either ear. While the usual single headsets have an open piece to fit behind your ear, the Xbox headset has a single piece of rubber going from top to bottom. The earpiece flips allowing you to move it from one side to the other. This led to some difficulty in getting it to fit properly. Fellow MVP S4Lee was struggling as he tried to get it to fit snuggly. It tended to stick out a little from his face and he said it was a little uncomfortable. We shall see.

Ok, this is the big one...

Gears of War

Cliffy B was on hand (yes the pic from the other day features Mr. Bleszinski himself) to give everyone a demo of that sick piece of yummy goodness Gears of War. We all sat around and watched him give several demos of the single player and gaped like little kids each and every time he fired it up. It's simply astonishing. The graphics are like nothing you've ever seen in a game, yet. It is genuinely difficult to tell when you're moving between gameplay and CGI.

The real good stuff came later in the day when we were set up on a four on four system link battle royale. For the first half, Godfree and I took turns on a system and man, we kicked some serious ass. Unfortunately, it seemed like when he left my side, I caught the Xbox Herps and couldn't get a single kill. Even with Cliffy on my team I couldn't do shart. The other MVPs really worked as a well-oiled team and took us down game after game. Mgerlach took Cliffy down at least once and jumped up and down with glee.

Changing weapons is a sinch and you can find weapons strewn about the maps to help you. Like I mentioned in my previous blog about the game, you have rocket launchers (boomshots), sniper rifles, SMGs, smoke grenades, and more. All the better to SMASH YOU INTO OBLIVION WITH... :: composes self ::

As long as the online multiplayer keeps the same lag-free beauty of the system link games, I think it's a definite hit. Nice going Epic!

August 2nd and 3rd were a real rush. MS came to NYC to show off their holiday lineup of Xbox and Windows titles. The venue was a studio in midtown and was shrouded by a black velvet curtain - literally. Hidden up 3 floors accessible only by a large cargo elevator, Microsoft's little gaming utopia was booming. Samsung LCDs lined the walls with over a dozen xboxes set up next to them. Representatives from each company were on hand to walk the press through some of the demos or to try and keep them out of trouble on their own gaming missions.

The theme of the event was "Naughty & Nice". Nice was held on Wednesday - this showcased all the family-friendly E rated titles. Naughty was on Thursday. This is where the big guns came out with their M rated titles. Lions and tigers and bears, OH MY!

On Wednesday, I checked out Lego Star Wars, Viva Pinata, Lumines Live, Pacman, the vision cam with video chat and photo capabilities. They also had demos of Test Drive, Age of Empires, Flight Sim 10, Zoo Tycoon 2, Sonic the Hedgehog, Madden 07, NBA Live 07, Tony Hawk's Project 8 and MSN Messenger (yes, at the event, it was still called this).

Lego Star Wars:Let me tell you something - this game had me in tears. I am a huge fan of Star Wars and I know this is the second lego release for the franchise but this one deals with episodes IV, V and VI which are the best movies, period. I played co-op with Godfree from GamertagRadio and we had an absolute blast. It was a good chance for me to check out a game that would not usually even catch my eye in the store over the FPS titles.

The controls were extremely easy to pick up (big yay for kids) but the gameplay wasn't so easy to figure out. There were a couple of instances where we were running around trying to find a path with no real clues. It involved a lot of exploration, teamwork and logic skills to pass through the levels. In this respect, I would definitely recommend it as a game parents will want to play with their kids. Also, parents who loved the Trilogy will be able to enjoy the story as they're playing along side their children. Not to mention it's just hilarious. There's something about the way the characters build things that cracked me up every time - uh huh - small things entertain small minds, I know.


Viva Piñata:Viva Piñata is still one of those games that makes me raise an eyebrow when I hear it mentioned. I think it could possibly be a sleeper hit but with the online functionality and accompanying merchandising and cartoon series, I think it could go far.

The idea behind Viva Piñata is to create an eco-system where you raise crazily colored piñatas and cultivate the land encouraging more to call your your farm home. It's definitely a sim-type game because everything you do in your world affects the personalities of your "animals". Hit them and they get mad, smash open a sick one and others of the same species will be reluctant to join your space, feed them good things and they will be happy. One of the coolest things is that you can mate your piñatas. Get two of the same kind together when they're really happy and bam - they do the mating dance and give you babies! There is no death in Piñata land, either. If one of your guys gets too sick to heal, he will simply return to the wild. This will strip him of any customizations you've applied but it does skirt the issue of telling timmy why his starved wherm turned to dust.

You can also accessorize your little guys with anything from Candy cigars (yes CANDY cigars) to sunglasses, hats and shoes.

An interesting concept for the game is the social aspect. You will eventually be able to trade piñatas online or even send your friends mystery gifts. Call it a piñata virus if you wish because you will be able to send friends offensive piñatas as well as good ones. Of course you will have the ability to accept or decline any gift but you won't be able to see what your crate contains until you've unleashed it on your land.

As said before, there will also be a cartoon series released to compliment the game. The creators of Pokemon are behind this cartoon so they certainly have the experience. Is there a Piñata lunch box or backpack in the future? Only time will tell...

Upcoming Arcade Titles:

Lumines Live:

If you owned a PSP, chances are, you owned Lumines. One of the things I got excited about during the Xbox press conference in May was that Lumines would be released on the 360. Lumines is a puzzle game similar to tetris that can be played against time, against the CPU or against your friends either online or on the same console. The idea of the game is to get rid of as many blocks as possible by making combinations of four in a square pattern. While it may sound like a fairly boring game, the visual beauty and techno music really keeps you going. If you challenge the CPU, the characters it throws at you can be quite bizarre. They appear to mimic psychadelic origami puppets.

Luckily for me, I got to re-challenge Godfree to a match and redeem myself from my dismal showing at E3. We went head-to-head for a couple of rounds. Once I decided that maybe it would be better to use the D-Pad instead of the thumbstick, I started to kick ASS. The games were still very close, though. I believe we both were pretty even by the end of our match. I was challenged by other attendees after Godfree left to do an interview and may I say, I ended up going 7 - 0 against everyone. BOOYAH! :: head inflates ::

Pacman:

Yes my lovelies, we are indeed being treated to a re-release of one of the best arcade titles ever - Pacman! Who would have thought that a game where the hero was based on a pizza with a slice missing would be such a hit? And such a hit that it would be resurrected on a state-of-the-art gaming maching like the 360? Well, it is coming and it has lost none of its original flavor. Everything feels the same except the controller...Hopefully now, caloused fingers are a thing of the past.


Coming Next - Day 2 - Rated "M" goodness

Holy poop. That's about all I can say right now about Gears of War. Thanks to our MVP lead, we were able to get behind the closed doors and get a hands-on demo of Gears where we all got to play the multiplayer version of the game. Our group of eight was split into two and we were pitted against each other in a deathmatch

How could you not love playing with a massive hunk of a man who grunts with the passion of a rhinoceros? How could you not love running up behind someone and instead of just knocking them in the back of the head with the butt of your gun, you start the roar of your chainsaw and split them in two?

The visuals in the game are good - I've seen better but in no way did it detract from the fun of it. The game uses the Unreal® engine to do all its dirty work and it handles it beautifully. The only slight distraction I noticed was during the press briefing demo that Cliffy gave. During the single player campaign, a slight lag could be seen when moving from one stage to another. No doubt this was just a loading sequence catching up and hell, it's better than having to sit through an actual load screen. If it was something else, hopefully it will be fixed by release.

I was on Team Cog and we were taken down in the first game. Being the competitive people we are, though, we came back with a vengeance. We took the other team out 4 times! The representative that was coaching our team had a bad habit of coming over and screaming "B B B B" in my ear. YES! I GET IT! B is the chainsaw! I will never forget that now, dude. Thanks!

I managed a pretty nice sequence of chainsaw hackup and teammate resurrection - yep, that's right, resurrection. You can shoot a player until he falls down but if you don't keep shooting him, he has the chance of being resurrected by one of his teammates. Hmmm Sounds familiar...ShadowRun applied this idea to their game, too. I'm hoping this new concept will cut back on some of the spawn killing that goes on.

The weapon system reminded me of the Ubisoft games where you can bring up your inventory and select your favorite killing apparatus. We had the chance to pick up rocket launchers, sniper rifles and others. There is also an annoyance factor built in with reloading. You have to time it correctly or else your character cusses at you and jams the gun. I'm happy to say, I only managed to do this once. Don't think for an instant that you can be trigger happy run and gunners, either. This game makes full use of the aiming. If you think you'll kill your enemy just by firing wildly, it ain't gonna happen. Spraying fire is really spraying fire. Stop, aim, shoot. Those three words will be your friend.

I'm sure the game will draw fire for being violent but there are some of us in this world who have control over ourselves and can play games like this without feeling the need to then go to the shed, pick up the chainsaw and go on a butcher spree in the neighborhood. Maybe people should go under psychological testing before being allowed to play games. UGH. having said that, this is not a game I would like to see in a 10 year old's hands.

Something emphasized in this game is the use of teamwork. Without your team, you are fairly useless. Sticking together was the only way my team succeeded in smashing the competition. After all, it won't help you if you go off as a lone wolf, get pegged but have no back-up to resurrect you - have fun in observation mode. You will also want to get acquainted with cover. To survive, you need to shield yourself and finding some kind of cover will do this. You have the opportunity to stay in cover by rolling, sliding and turning from one spot to another, which is kind of cool.

I was so disappointed when we had to leave. I can't wait for this title to come out. Now, there's no such thing as a Halo killer in my mind but this will definitely be one hell of a sidekick for me. I can't wait to chainsaw my friends in half. We all love each other...really we do.

Today we were in for a real treat. The MVPs were given a private session with the EA team and we got to play some Battle for Middle-earth II for the XBox 360. Louis Castle (VP of Creative Development for the 360 version of the game) came to talk to us about everything that went into creating it.

I think I was the only RTS virgin in the group so I was really interested to see if this game could bring me into the genre. We split up into two small groups and had face time with the marketing guys, community leaders and the developer of the game.

I went to the back of the bus with the COOLEST group and I got an RTS primer. Of course I'm familiar with the storyline and for some reason, decided to show my age by admitting that I played the text based "The Hobbit" way back in the day.

Now given, I am always seeing complaints about EA's servers and bad online play but I have to say, at least the single player portion of this game was really amazing.

I'm one of those who searches for the tiniest details in games. Little things really show you how much the developers and art directors appreciate their product. They also allow for a more submersive experience. There's nothing worse than seeing a beautiful game ruined by repetitive actions or speech. This game made great use of these small things. When you get a game that gives you the ability to send Trolls to pick up trees but they start fighting because they go for the same one, you know it's going to be good. I was told about but didn't see a troll scratch his butt and reel in digust when his hand gets close to his face. I'll be sure to look for it in the full release. (I hope they leave that in.)

The lighting and texture maps really were beautiful. There are maps in the game ranging from snow covered mountains to lush, green, rolling hills.

I really don't expect much detail from a game such as this because there's just so much going on. I would have thought the action would make the graphics suffer. Not the case - you have the ability to zoom in on your armies and see tiny details such as arrows in legs and folds in clothing. One of my favorite features was having a troll pick up an elf and watch him struggle to get free.

I watched first as the "experts" played and finally got the guts to show my newb skills with the game. Luckily, the guy who played before me had left a nice army for me to fight with but I still managed to get them all killed in about 30 seconds. My trolls were throwing rocks, bashing things with tree trunks, and elves but they still couldn't defeat the stupid elven guys. BAH... I did, however, learn how to poison my arrows so that any hit I got would release a continuous poison.

The basic controls were easy to pick up, move with the left stick, spin and zoom in and out with the right, A is the action button, B is cancel action, Y is find your way to the last waypoint, clicking on the left thumbstick will take you back to your fortress. Easy enough for me to pick up fairly quickly. You also have a creature menu where you can make your "soldiers" perform several actions. As I pointed out before, you can make trolls either throw rocks at the enemy, pull a tree out of the ground for use as a weapon or pick up a troll for the same purpose.

Like other RTS games, you will need to build up your resources and structures before going into battle. Of course you can keep building your army as you fight. You can also instruct your builders to contruct tunnels from point to point.

Another nice feature is that you can resurrect your heroes in your fortress.

The game is taken and designed completely from the books and movies so I'm sure fans of the series will feel right at home. It got me interested enough to pick it up.

This is how E3 should be...

A big thanks goes out to the EA guys: Aaron, Louis, Amritz and Scott for giving us the opportunity to check out the game.

Nope, I'm nowhere near finished with my blog entries but today I am just trying to recover from the havoc that was E3. With that, I again want to thank everyone who made the trip so frickin' cool. All of the MVPs, John Porcaro, Cesar Menendez, Major Nelson, TriXie, the EA guys, all the bloggers who came by the bus including that weird HiDef guy who only came to steal twizzlers and most of all, Tony Hynes. Yep, I said it before and I'll say it again. This guy has completely turned around the MVP program for us. He does whatever he can to make us happy and I can only hope that he's proud of the way we represent the program.

We love you, Tony! :-D

Day one of E3, to me, is the absolute worst day of the expo. There's always a lot of pushing and shoving as well as people going crazy trying to get as much schwag as possible. This year was no different. I decided that I would take a bunch of photos and do a quick run through of all the booths to get a feel for what was there.

The doors opened at 11am and like last year, it was marked with a pretty daring parachute jump courtesy of the Army.

I watched this from the comfort of my patio chair outside of Microsoft's Blogger Bus. This bus is outfitted with leather chairs, wireless internet, two 360's, snacks and drinks. Most people who keep active blogs or run news sites were invited to come and hang out while they got to take a break from the madness and upload their thoughts.

I walked through the event with Godfree (GTR) for a while. I got to see a little Moto GP 3, some cool wrestling stuff like chairs that had been thrown, outfits, head-dented garbage cans and more.

Huxley was in the next booth so I squeezed in to see some people playing. This is one of the games that takes advantage of the ability to play either on your console or on a PC. It looked like an amazing game but I do wonder what the pricing will be to play it. I also wonder if PC gamers will be able to take advantage of the console gamers by cracking codes easily. Just another, "wait and see".

After my first pass-through of the event having been elbowed in the chest, pushed into a booth by an overzealous man who needed a blinky neckalce, hit in the crotch with an inflatable sword, and getting the run around with an interview with a certain developer I decided it was time to just go back to the bus, calm down and try to finish my blog from the press event.

Lots of people were stopping by the bus - some who were allowed to be there and some who were intent to get a peek or a seat for nothing. We drew the line with the pizza, though. That's ours biatch!

I went back in for a second pass and worked my way back to the XBox booth where I met up with an old friend from the XBox policy department. That's right - POLICY - this means the guy who can make sure that if you don't play by the rules, you go bye bye.

Major disappointment was in store for me since they didn't have hands-on time with Gears of War even though they said they'd have this during the press event the day before. You could only get this if you had an appointment with the developers. Godfree, was lucky enough to be able to do this so check out his audio at GamertagRadio.com. For the rest of us, there was a theater set up where Cliffy B basically did his demo again. Cool but would have loved to actually play a little.

That night, we attended the C3 party which was a lot of fun as usual. Like last year, we all got a nice up close and personal look at the games without having to beat a bunch of people up just to sneak a glimpse. This year's party was much bigger than last years so there was a little waiting involved but not nearly as bad as during the day. I got to play ShadowRun, Crackdown, F.E.A.R., Table Tennis and Dead Rising. One of the coolest parts? I got to meet Moe! She's that fargin cool chick from 1up that made the finalists to be the new Frag Doll. She is just as cool in person as she was when I talked to her on 1up.

Here is a really brief summary of the games I played and my initial impressions. I am trying to keep in mind that these are still all demos so fine tuning may be needed but here you go:

ShadowRun: I got to the game when the training was half way through so it was a little confusing to begin with. Eh - I just switched off the machine and started over. The play seems to be centered around stealing ancient artifacts from a tomb-like setting but you have special abilities such as gliding and teleportation. I played several rounds of capture the flag against the AI. It was fun for a couple of minutes but got a little repetitive after 5 rounds.

Table Tennis: Ok, this was very cool - Rockstar set up a table tennis tournament with the winner getting a trip to Paris, France. Of course, being the chicken I am, I didn't sign up but many of the MVPs did and had a lot of fun with it. I played a couple of practice rounds with Zamees and Fatty Chubs. I'm proud to say, the GamertagPics founder and my "boss" won the whole damn thing baby!! He won't be taking me, unfortunately but the lucky gal going is well deserving. I want a plastic Eiffel Tower damnit!

Dead Rising: I had to go through a fairly long intro scene that cut into my playing time but then it went straight into a helicopter sequence where I figured out that you could take photos for points. There were lots of scenes of zombies and carnage for my photo-taking pleasure. It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to do but I'm a little slow so - ya know... I did get a nice photo of a half blown up, flaming zombie which got me about 200 points. I'm going to try and get back to it today since I only got a little time with it during the party.

F.E.A.R.: This game was very, very dark. One of the hard things about playing games here is that you're usually picking up from someone else's checkpoint. When you've never played before, it's a fast learning curve but this one I picked up fairly quickly. All the good stuff was there, jumping, shooting, reloading, death, carnage, darkness and gloom. What more could you want?

Crackdown: I played this with Fatty Chubs and after about 10 minutes of shooting random gang members who were roaming the streets we got a little...bored. I just don't think it has enough to take away from the GTA series. There didn't seem to be a point except to shoot people. Even with my bad attitude that gets boring after a while. The style was a little off for me, too. The idea of the cel shading was pretty cool but I just don't think they pulled it off. The characters looked awkward and choppy but the fact that you and your friend can roam the world together or apart was pretty cool. The idea of having your friends jump in at any time was pretty cool but again, just not enough to keep me enthralled.

Peter Moore made an appearance at the party, too, which was pretty cool but we're hoping to get some more face time with him later this week.

Today I plan to take a closer look at Sony and Nintendo's booths but judging by the lines that were already forming this morning, I won't be seeing the Wii just yet. I got some info that not only do you have to wait in a 3 hour line outside the closed booth but once you get in, you have to wait another hour to play all the games. Some people who got in said they spent the entire day in there waiting in lines. Not my idea of fun and while I am here to report on this stuff, I'm not going to miss out on other stuff waiting in line for something. SORRY!

So I'm off again to check more stuff out. Damn, I hate leaving this bus. It's so comfy and quiet...

BTW, have I said lately that Tony Hynes is THE SHEEEEEIIIIIIAAATTTTT? Well, the entire XBox team is - Ceeeeeesar, John, TriX, Major, and all of them. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be here and a happy girl I am because of them. Tony gets the special love because, well, he just looks after us really, really well.

Be back soon!

OHHHHH I almost forgot, I picked up a little something for one of my favorite xbox.com and gamertagpics.com forum posters. I did promise him a Hello Kitty pin but they aren't to be had anywhere so I got him this instead: SEE! I didn't forget hahahaha I'm sure you'll look great in it.


Feelz Good will look great in his Serious Gamer Disguise Kit