I met with Majesco last week and we went over their holiday and spring lineup. Most of it looks pretty good. I’m really excited about Infected.
Teen Titans is due to ship in February 2006 for gamecube, ps2, and xbox. It is up to 4 player story mode coop or arena. In coop mode you can switch between titans at any time to make use of their special attacks. The game has the look and feel of the cartoon with locations from the shows and more than 12 voice actors involved. Each character gets upgrades to his/her special attacks and can pull off combo moves. There are 24 characters to choose from in arena mode, which is an up to 4 player free for all. There are also some puzzle levels that are like retro games, ie pong and invaders.
Jaws Unleashed is due to ship in February 2006 for PC, ps2, and xbox. Built on the Echo the Dolphin engine, this is a story where you play as Jaws and attack and destroy everything. If you’re really careful you can disembody your prey before consuming it. They are adding cinematic fatalities to the game. There are more than 12 kinds of boats and different ocean and land areas (mainly harbors and docks) to be explored. The night levels were pretty cool – the moon reflects off the ocean’s surface and down below it is murkier than during daylight.
Age of Empires is due to ship for Nintendo DS in January 2006. Built on the success of earlier Age of Empires games this brings a solid foundation to wifi enabled 4 player battles. User profiles track scoring and bonuses so you can compare yourself to friends and enemies. They’re currently working on adding more artwork, streamlining game play, and tweaking the battle system to show more graphics in the results. You can use the stylus or the d-pad to control troops. There are 28 missions total, 5-6 per campaign.
A few weeks ago I got to play Call of Duty 2: Big Red One while meeting with the good people at Activision. The game is entirely new, meaning a new core engine for GameCube, PS2, and Xbox. They also improved the enemy AI. I could tell. The Nazis don’t just stand there and shoot back. They drop back, regroup, even try to flank you. In addition your comrades’ AI improves over the course of the game as they become experienced.
You play as a member of America’s most decorated and heroic fighting unit, The Big Red One. You’ll have to work with your squad to accomplish a variety of land, sea, and air combat missions spanning North Africa, Italy, and Nazi-occupied Western Europe. The goal of the development team was to “create an epic war movie” and they did. And then they threw you right into the middle of it.
The Collyer brothers began programming computer games in their bedroom in the late 1980’s and they produced their first game in 1991. That game was the wildly successful Championship Manager, or Football Manager. Risto Remes began programming hockey games in his bedroom in the early 1990’s and released a freeware hockey management
simulation game that received a lot of critical acclaim. The Collyer brothers launched Sports Interactive in 1994 and eight years later asked Risto to join and make a hockey game. And then the magic began. The combination of the fan driven features that Sports Interactive has come to be known for in their Championship Manager (Football Manager) and a great hockey game designer yielded an accurate, fun to play hockey simulation for PC and Mac.
New York City September 22, 2005.
This morning I met with Activision and id about Quake 4. This involved a lot of playing the PC version and some playing of the Xbox 360 version. This preview is tainted positively because I have so much fun killing everything that moves. Quake 4 is a whole lot of fun in single player story mode. A sort of edgy fun. The kind of edgy fun that involves invading your enemy’s home world with a pistol.
Quake 4 is really the sequel to Quake 2 in story mode and Quake 3 in multi-player mode (supports up to 16 players). id brings the both of best worlds together in Quake 4. So here’s the story. The ground assault begins on the Strogg home world. You play Matthew Kane of Rhino Squad, a squad of elite ground troops. You’re on the ground just outside the Strogg fortress. Fight your way in and…at this point who cares? I know all I need to know. I kill the Strogg and protect my comrades in Rhino Squad. Now let’s start killing.
If you’d like to view the slideshow click here.
Yesterday I met with EA and saw some game demos. The most interesting were:
Black is a first person shooter that sets out with the goal of creating a hyper-realistic weapons experience. It’s like stepping into some over the top special forces movie. You are pretty much firing incessantly, lobbing grenades and taking cover. There are any number of ways to accomplish something. For example, if you need to get by some enemies who are behind a care you can sneak around the car and shoot them, blow up the car and them with a grenade, or shoot out the tires and then take head shots at the enemies when the car sinks. I played almost a third of a level and it was a blast, literally. It’s an all out firefight. It’ll be out late February 2006.
Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth 2 is a PC only real time strategy game. It’s pretty cool because it uses the Middle Earth world as a background. You build your castles, recruit your heroes, fight your enemies, and control Middle Earth. It looks beautiful with a lot of detail on the buildings and troops.
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