By Lawrence Cicchetti
Walking the halls at Comic-con, you are met with a plethora of video games that you can play that still have yet to come out that you can play if you are willing to wait in line. There were some big companies there like Electronic Arts and Capcom, who were displaying their newest up and coming games.
Deadrising 2:
Capcom’s next big game coming out is the sequel to their early 360 zombie-massacre game from way back in 2006. The game takes place in Fortune city 5 years after the first Deadrising. You take the role of Chuck Greene as he participates in a reality show called Terror is Reality where contestants must fight off zombies for a large cash prize. Chuck is competing in the Show in order to gain Zombrex, the only cure for the zombie disease, for his daughter, who is infected. However during the show there is another outbreak outside of where the competition is, and Chuck is framed for everything.
The photography mechanic from the first game has been removed and replaced with a crafting system. The player will pick up trading cards representing components that the player will combine using duct tape. The player will be able to create weapons like the “Paddlesaw” which is an oar with chain saws attached to each end.
Thursday there was a panel with the executive producers, Keiji Inafune and Shinsaku Ohara, where they discussed the game as well as made quite a few announcements. The first was the announcement was Deadrising 2: Case Zero, a game coming out exclusively for the Xbox Live Arcade for 400 Microsoft Points coming out August 31. The scind announcement was the special Zombrex edition of the game which comes with making of featurette and the ps3 edition comes with a blu ray disc with the featurette and a dynamic theme for the XMB. The third announcement was the mini-series based on the games called Zombrex: Deadrising Sun. The series will debut on XBL and each episode will be exclusive for a week before it will appear in the official site (http://www.deadrisingsun.com). The first episode will appear August 4 on XBL and the entire collection will be available with the Zombrex edition of the 360 game. Deadrising 2 will be coming out September 28.
Star Wars: The Old Republic
The next Bioware Star Wars game is also the next Star Wars MMO and Bioware has promised a lot for this game. They have released a lot of information on this game so far including all 8 classes and customizable Starships. This time they’ve announced starship combat but they did not release any other information trying to keep as much as they can under wraps while still being able to please the crowds.
The game will feature full voice-over for all dialogue, a separate story for each class, and a morality system just like in their last Star Wars game series, Knights of the Old Republic. On Friday they hosted a panel for the game called Beyond Solo: Crafting the Multiplayer Experience. The first order of business was announcing Starship combat but they said that if you wanted more info on it you would need to pick up the October issue of PC Gamer. There were slight discussions during Q&A like about how Jedi Knights will be able to specialize in order to have the ability to dual-wield lightsabers while the Jedi Consular class will be able to specialize to use Double-sided Lightsabers. Star Wars: The Old Republic will be available next year.
Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions
The new Spiderman game from Activision will be Shattered Dimensions, a game that crosses over 4 different version of Spiderman into one story. The game revolves around the tablet of Order and Chaos which stabilizes the different realities before it is shattered and endangers the different worlds while it in the hands of a different enemy of each Spiderman. Wednesday night they announced the fourth dimension involved in the game: Ultimate Spiderman. The Ultimate Spiderman uses the black symbiote suit making his part like a hack-and-slash game, while Amazing Spiderman centers around the classical style and involves a lot of over-the-top web-based combat, Spiderman 2099 is based on the series of comics from the early 90’s where it is the year 2099 and this universe revolves around aerial maneuvers and combat, and lastly the Noir universe is a stealth version of the game.
The game itself was on demo at the Activision booth where you could play a demo with the Noir and Ultimate universe. The game had a great feel and the transition between the two actually felt like a different game altogether. The Noir universe felt like playing Splinter Cell or Metal Gear Solid, while the Ultimate universe played like God of War or Dante’s Inferno. The game also features first-person combat at certain points which are used to accentuate certain moments like when you first com across carnage. Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions will be available September 7.
Dead Space 2
Released back in 2008 Dead Space put a different spin on survival horror games by giving it a sci fi twist. The series follows Isaac Clarke, an engineer in the future that repairs space stations. The first game took place in a space station that had “gone dark” out in a dead space area and when he gets aboard he finds that the entire population of the ship has been mutated into monsters called necromorphs and he must stop all of them. In the Sequel from visceral games, the necromorphs have appeared on another space station on this time Isaac is on it at the time.
The demo starts with Isaac in his old engineer’s suit form the old game and it’s at the beginning of the necromorphs’ invasion. As the demo progresses Isaac makes his way to the cathedral and he has to fight off hordes of enemies. Afterwards you come across a store where he obtains the new armor as shown in the trailer for the game and he is attacked by a gunship that causes explosive decompression and it causes a quicktime event then the demo ends when he has to climb down a vent to be confronted by a giant Necromorph.
The demo also included another great part of the dead space series: the puzzles. The game brings back the challenging puzzles from the first game by giving you what’s called a stasis puzzle where have to use your stasis projector in order to stop the ship’s artificial gravity and then use the loss of gravity to advance to the next part. In the first game when the gravity disappeared you had to jump from magnetic surface to magnetic surface, but now you can use boosters to move from place to place. The demo seemed to keep the same horror feel as the first one which seemed like a huge plus it just seemed not as intense when in a room with a bunch of other people. Dead Space 2 will be available January 25.
DC Universe Online
DC Universe came to Comic Con 2 years ago back when it was first announced and they presented a pre-alpha sequence that looked amazing. Now, 2 years later they have the game setup at the SOE booth again and this time they’ve brought a PVP level showcasing the game’s system. Unfortunately the demo left much to be desired. It was a simple 2on2 battle between Nightwing and Batman versus Joker and Harley Quinn. It seemed a lot like it was the only game SOE had to showcase, which is a huge contrast to how they used to be. The PVP demo showcased the icon battle where you play as classic characters as opposed to characters you create yourself. DC Universe is Scheduled for release in November of this year.
Playstation Move
Sony Computer Entertainment of America had the Playstaion Move up for demo at Comic-Con with 4 games for anyone willing to wait in line to try out. They had SOCOM 4, The Shoot, The Fight: Lights Out, and Sports Champions. SOCOM 4 played just like Metroid on the Wii, which was pretty good. The Shoot was a stereotypical rail shooter with powerups that require you to do a 360 spin, or move the controller below the camera in order to give you bullet time or shoot all targets on the screen. The Fight:
Lights Out is a fist fighting game using the move controllers and calibration with your arms so that it can track the movements in order to beat the living crap out of someone. Sports Champions is a sports simulation game including: archery, ping pong, volleyball, or sword fighting. Sports Champions comes out September 7.
Playstation Move
Sony Computer Entertainment of America had the Playstaion Move up for demo at Comic-Con with 4 games for anyone willing to wait in line to try out. They had SOCOM 4, The Shoot, The Fight: Lights Out, and Sports Champions. SOCOM 4 played just like Metroid on the Wii, which was pretty good. The Shoot was a stereotypical rail shooter with powerups that require you to do a 360 spin, or move the controller below the camera in order to give you bullet time or shoot all targets on the screen. The Fight: