BitSnark

Socom developers Zipper Interactive were on hand at the Sony Conference and brought with them a mammoth 256 player demonstration of forthcoming online FPS MAG. A first for console shooters; never before has 256 players been present in a simultaneous ongoing battle.

The demonstration that was shown by Zipper, ably illustrated the chaos on offer by MAG, but thankfully, the maps to fit in all of these 256 players are quite simply freaking huge. One of the twelve maps due to be included in the final game was shown off at the demonstration and represented a 1km square area, including many different types of buildings, slums, industrial complexes and many more for players to use and subsequently defile.

In terms of overall objectives, the demonstration played out very much like a conquest game of Battlefield. The primary objective is for attackers to capture territory and waypoints, whereas the defenders have to defend said waypoints and territories. Also similar to Battlefield is the manner in which respawn points work. Should you capture a waypoint and then die, you can respawn at the waypoint you just captured. Conversely, if you should capture a waypoint, lose it and then die, then you will respawn at the last point you held previously.

As is pretty much standard for any online shooter these days, MAG effectively facilitates weapon, equipment and armour upgrades through an experience system which is based around kills, waypoint captures and of course, battle victories. Where MAG shines however is that the 256 player limit does more than simply make things more frenetic, having 128 players per side allows the creation of battalions, squads and sub squads all under the command of sub-leaders and higher ranking generals (all player controlled), creating a command hierarchy not seen in any online FPS to date.

Zipper Interactive should also be applauded for eschewing the ‘class’ system that is so often a mainstay feature in contemporary online FPS titles, as previous class ‘jobs’ such as medic and engineer have to skill points put in them before you can use them. Similarly welcome is the fact that no weapons have to be unlocked per se’, just have to actually earn them here. Ranking up and gaining experience points are revealed to have another use too; they can unlock what is known as ‘leadership abilities’. These abilities allow anything from airstrikes to carpet bombings to be utilised alongside other more less forceful tactics such as recon of a particular area to reveal enemy positions.

Squad leader commands which can be unlocked allow a player to effectively delegate orders down to his comrades. A pointless feature you may think as presumably people could just ignore the orders and go charging in regardless. Well, they can if they wish, but in a clever move by Zipper Interactive, obeying squad leader orders from a player gives that a player a large amount of experience points for doing so, so the incentive is definitely there to conform to the hierarchal structure that MAG strives to sustain on the battlefield.

No online FPS would be complete without vehicles and thankfully the demo showed that MAG will deliver in spades in that regard. Everything from two different kinds of troop carrying APC’s, to tanks, attack helicopters and transport helicopters (often used as a way for players to reach respawn areas) were present and accounted for in the demo.

At this stage the only two reservations I have about MAG are that it requires some definite visual polish; the framerate was consistently smooth, but the models and environments seemed a tad simplistic and garish, and the spectre of lag, which could quite conceivably rear its ugly head given the sheer amount of crazy shit going on at any one given time.

MAG impressed me a great deal more than I thought it would after its announcement last year and has rose very quickly up my ‘most wanted’ list for games this year.

Sony have a great thing going with MAG here, I hope they can follow through with it when the title launches in late 2009.

E3 2009 was truly the venue where both Sony and Microsoft sought to close the gap with Nintendo’s Wii Motion Plus control system, by showcasing one of their own. Sony’s own effort, known simply as the Playstation Motion Controller, was demonstrated on stage to the E3 audience.

Working with the Playstation Eye and looking like an approximation nintendo’s own Wiimote, the motion controller itself was essentially a wand with a glowing purple ball on the end with which the Playstation Eye tracks your motion to 1:1 efficiency. The benefits of using the Playstation Eye in conjunction with what we would now call a ‘traditional’ motion controller was that on-screen all manner of things could appear in the players hand such as a sword, shield or bow and arrow.

Somewhat echoing Nintendo’s own Wii MotionPlus archery demonstration, control with the wand on stage appeared to be effortless and the precision impressive, as the wand was gestured in real time to mirror bow firing movements and responded in kind on the screen.

Impressively, all of this was rendered in real-time, and even if the models themselves seemed somewhat superimposed or simplistic, the result was still eye brow raising and lends thought to what future applications the technology can be put to.

For what it’s worth, it seemed to me that the technology here was a genuine step forward for motion control. In terms of comparisons to the 360’s Project Natal however, the motion controller seemed more of an actual tangible step forward, then a ‘oh shit is that actually real?’ leapfrog that Natal certainly seems to be. Time will tell on both counts I believe.

Regardless, PS3 owners should be looking forward to their foray in the lovely world of motion control early in 2010.

With the announcement of Lost Planet 2 for the 360 a few months back, PS3 owners had plenty of reasons to worry. Chief among these was the fact that the announcement seemingly was just for the 360 only with no suggestion or hint that the title would be heading to Sony’s home platform. In addition to this, PS3 owners were fearful that even *if* the game got announced that it would be probably suffer the same shoddy conversion that the original did with stuttering framerates and poor graphical detail.

Well, PS3 fans can now exhale and stop worrying because not only was Lost Planet 2 confirmed for an early 2010 PS3 release at E3, but also that Capcom were ‘determined’ to ensure that it wouldn’t be in any way inferior to the 360 version.

As always, the proof is in the proverbial pudding, but its good that not only is the title getting a release but also that Capcom are directly addressing the issue of a poor conversion.

Sony’s titan sized killer app got both a release window and a demonstration at the Sony conference, reminding gamers that the titular god himself Kratos still has what it takes to get the blood pumping, and indeed, spraying.

The demonstration commenced with the camera centred on Kratos, in all his HD glory surveying the landscape as a cataclysmic battle happened in the skies with flaming dragons fighting each other and generally a whole load of utter destruction in the distance. Moving smoothly, yet looking every bit like a God Of War title with the HD sheen applied (hey, it was a stunner to start with) Kratos charges toward a cabal of unfortunate undead folk, melting them with fire and throwing them off the cliff with brutal aplomb.

After using his trademark insane strength to open a massive set of stone doors, we see our favourite Greek anti-hero snatch up a giant vulture and use it to fly across a gap in a similar way to how Link would use a chicken to negotiate gaps and chasms in the Zelda titles. The difference? On the way over, Kratos is seemingly bored so he repeatedly guts said birdie with his swords a number of times until he reaches the other side of the chasm, at which point the vulture is nothing more than a pile of gore with broken wings. Nasty.

After a short rinse and repeat of bird flying and airborne mutilation respectively, Kratos leaves the cave and glides down on a pair of funky black wings to what appears to be a gargantuan arena. At the far end of the arena just past its walls, a staggeringly huge molten/meteor giant makes its appearance known; looking all shiny and detailed with lava trickling down its face and detailed cracks and fissures punctuating it’s overbearing physique.

Again, Kratos gets rushed by a patrol of people who should really know better than to screw with an angry God Of War, as we scores of foot soldiers swiftly dispatched by his twin blades in a masterfully kinetic demonstration of wheeling chains of fire and spinning blades. One thing that I did notice however, besides the fact that the frame rate didn’t hitch once, is that everything just bleeds a lot more. I mean, a LOT more, as each death brings with it scattered pools of blood and real time splatterings of the red stuff everywhere.

Moving on, a centaur turns up with about twenty more guys thinking that they have a ghost of a chance, which of course they don’t, as in Matrix Reloaded style, we see them all attempt to smother Kratos only to literally get blown away and scattered to the winds as a result. Obviously sick of said centaur sticking his hooves in where they don’t belong, Kratos turns his sadistic attention to the centaur whom in a matter of seconds is lassoed to the ground with a rope of amber fire and then shortly disembowelled, spilling the contents of whatever he ate previous to his now regrettable meeting with Kratos all over the floor. Again, nasty.

Next in line for a good bit of mutilation at the hands of Kratos is a chimera styled creature that is some kind of screwed up combination of a snake, lion and goat. Interestingly here, when Kratos beats the creature down and initiates a QTE sequence (yep, they’re still there) to destroy a particular part of the creature, say the snake part for example, the creature will revert to whatever forms it has left to attack Kratos, and this was shown by Kratos destroying the serpent part, only be to pounced by the lion part shortly after. Pretty cool indeed.

After destroying all the forms and dispatching the confused creature with a particularly nasty optical lobotomy, Kratos proceeds to turn his attention to the pissed off molten giant stomping around in the background and…. that’s a wrap!

Yep that’s where they finished it the teasing gits. At this stage God Of War III looks every bit like the worthy title to finish(?) the series; boasting a solid, smooth framerate, detailed monsters and environments and the gore factor ramped up to eleven, I cannot imagine this disappointing *any* PS3 owner when it finally sees the light of day in March 2010.

One of the games of the show, if not THE game of the show, came from Sony and Team ICO and it has a name – The Last Guardian. Leaked some three weeks before E3, the trailer for ‘Project Trico’ as it was then known was simply mind blowing and reportedly a year old.

Effortlessly showcasing the artful decadence that Team ICO is famed for, along with a real, tangible emotional link between a boy and his monstrous (yet cute) guardian, the trailer was greeted with overwhelmingly positive fanfare.

At the Sony Conference, an extended trailer of the title was debuted and despite the fact that some of the wind may have been taken out of the proverbial sails of the announcement due to the leaked trailer, the title wowed show goers nonetheless.

Ultimately, just like Shadow of the Colossus and ICO before it, The Last Guardian is sure to be one of the most critically acclaimed and visually arresting titles of the Playstation 3’s lifetime when it is released in 2010, creating a synergy between the artistic, emotional and gameplay mechanics that few (if any) developers can ever match.

Games like this aren’t just mere pieces of disposable entertainment, they take your emotional state to a different place outside of your typical gaming experiences. A mature realm where wonderment, discovery, happiness and tragedy interweave seamlessly, and you, the gamer are fully entertained and emotionally stimulated beyond what you thought a mere ‘video game’ could achieve.

I simply cannot wait for this, and I’m not alone.

Little Big Planet was a key milestone in a number of aspects. Chief among those was its relentless pursuit of individual creativity that it demanded from the player. With ModNation Racers, it would appear that United Front Games have taken this design ideology kicking and screaming into the kart racing genre.

At its heart, ModNation Racers is pretty standard stuff; it’s a cartoon style kart racing game whereby you have to reach first position using all kinds of power-ups such as rockets, machine guns, turbo boosts and many more besides, but where the game promises to excel is in the aforementioned wide-ranging customisation that it will allow it’s users to achieve.

Boasting a similar system to LBP, players are able to customise their racers and their karts in a number of different ways, making use of pre-determined parts and downloadable content. Where the customisation aspect really comes into its own in ModNation Racer, is in regard to what gamers are able to do with the tracks and surrounding environments.

The actual track creation is done in real time with the track being procedurally generated behind the car in a 3D fly through of sorts. The process was so fast that a very basic track was able to be created in ten or so seconds.

In addition to this, many other things may be tweaked and customised. The track surface itself may be changed with ice, snow, sand and standard gravel options as well as the incline of hills and troughs of dips. You can also mess about with the weather too; dictating where the sun will rise and fall and also weather effects such as wind, rain and snow.

The fact that it boasts customisation options deeper than any Kart racer on the market would be somewhat moot if you couldn’t let other people see your wonderful, inspiring creations. Well thankfully you can, as just like LBP, there is a solid emphasis on uploading the fruits of your labour for others to enjoy and vice-versa.

No price or specific release date was announced for ModNation Racer other than ‘sometime in 2010’.

Looks quite promising.

The long rumoured, but now confirmed PSP version of popular Ubisoft stealth killer Assassins Creed was announced at the Sony conference to arrive on November 10th 2009.

Known by the moniker ‘Assassins Creed: Bloodlines’, no other details were given aside from the fact that progress made in the PSP title will make additional unlockable bonuses available in Assassins Creed 2 for the PS3.

I wonder what we will get with this, a quasi-faithful attempt at replicating the gameplay style of Assassins Creed on the home consoles, or an entirely different experience altogether?

Time will tell.

Jack Trenton was forthcoming with yet another bombshell announcement; this one that a new title by GTA developers Rockstar North, known as ‘Agent’, is in development and is coming out exclusively for PS3 and will combine espionage with a 1970’s setting.

It was also made known that Agent by it’s a very nature was a title that could ‘only’ be created for PS3 and that Rockstar North were fully confident that it would be the ‘next GTA’.

Given the pedigree behind this enigmatic title, I see little reason to disagree… but give us some details!

One of the biggest heart-stopping announcements of the show was Sony big cheese Jack Tretton unveiling none other than Final Fantasy XIV for the Playstation 3. Even better than that, was the fact that the title would be out in 2010.

Say what now?

Bated breath remained bated as the trailer rolled showing the ever popular mix of the mythological and sci-fi; a world of flying ships, big swords and of course… Chocobos.

It was right at the end of the trailer however that the megaton announcement felt a little deflated as the game’s full title became apparent: Final Fantasy XIV Online.

Of course realistically speaking, there would have been no way that they could have a whole new Final Fantasy sequel in development, along with other games in the Final Fantasy XIII series; Versus, Agito etc… but the pure suspension of disbelief was tangible and the feeling that Sony had truly ‘one-upped’ Microsoft with the announcement, couldn’t have been any more overstated regardless.

Ultimately however, whether or not you profess a love for MMORPG’s, Final Fantasy XIV Online should not be underestimated. Console MMORPG’s have yet to gain a decent foothold and sure Final Fantasy XI is old, clunky and possibly a bit crap when compared to its contemporaries, but that title was released at a time when console online capabilities were very much in their infancy.

These days, BOTH the PS3 and 360 are formidable online gaming platforms and I feel pretty confident in saying that with seven years of learning behind them, an entirely new graphical engine and a powerful networking model, Final Fantasy XIV Online should make a pretty big splash when it releases late next year.

Amusingly, Jack closed the announcement with ‘Well that one didn’t get leaked did it?’.

No Jack. It most certainly didn’t.

As well as being confirmed for MGS-starved 360 owners, PS3 owners should not worry as Konami also confirmed that the Raiden-starring Metal Gear Solid: Rising, will also be making it’s way to the console at the same time.

Just like at the Microsoft Conference however, next to nothing was shown of the title, bar a few character illustrations and that all-too familiar ‘stormy field’ animation that was used as a viral teaser.