Glorious Gameplay Unveiling (Metal Gear and Resident Evil)
July 28th, 2007
The past 5 days have been excellent for those PS3 owners out there as the first gameplay footage has been revealed for arguably the two most anticipated titles for the system. That is Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resident Evil 5.
What, more Resident Evil 5?! I hear you pout. Well, it seems like Capcom has been extremely generous(once again). They where so kind to even include some nice high res. shots. Now I’m not going to do a complete analysis of this new RE trailer(it’s actually an extended version of the MS press conference) as there is only a few things to point out.
What you can’t miss:
Resident Evil 5 Extended Trailer
Resident Evil 5 Extended Trailer HD
Resident Evil 5 Screenshots
Metal Gear Solid 4 Demonstration
Metal Gear Solid 4 Demonstration HD
Metal Gear Solid 4 Screenshots
Metal Gear Solid Online
Metal Gear Solid Mobile
Resident Evil Analysis
Firstly a lovely panning scene over a large part of the village is shown which gives us quite a bit more perspective of the introductory environment. Shortly after we see the strange man(guy who gets infected with the virus, in case you forgot ;)) being eyed down by one of the villagers.
In the scene with the two blokes chatting away we notice that there is some sort of scarring around the green shirt guy’s right eye. In the crowd scene, we the villagers throwing rocks at the person hung upside down(Chris?). This was difficult to decipher in the previous trailer.
Chris then says the following lines:
“Casualties continue to mount, for the long years I’ve struggled”
“More and More I find myself wondering if its all worth fighting for”
“Who knows?”
He is obviously referring to his fight against the Umbrella corporation/Wesker/The Viruses. Also admire the buffness of Chris, he looks like his in an entirely different league compared to Leon.
Two quick points that I previously brought up are clarified after his speech, firstly this is Chris Redfield and secondly he has the headset. The villagers all disappear after Chris is overwhelmed by the bright light. Mysterious. This could be part of a possible gameplay mechanic or just highlighting the hot/cold or light/dark mechanics that where previous talked about?
Chris then enters the warehouse where we see the previous snippets of the ‘strange man’s evolution all grouped together. It doesn’t look as though he has changed much from his previous self. Perhaps the virus is just ‘possesive’ like the plague in RE4(don’t worry the similarities don’t stop there). We are thrown into an orgy of gameplay clips which look remarkably similar to that of RE4. Although we do notice two new additions; that Chris gets rugby tackled by a villager and he can dodge a horizontal slice by ducking.
The trailer then repeats the clip of the announcer talking thru the megaphone, we have better definition of the guard to his right. It looks like it has no eyeballs….ewww. We hear him call “see for these creatures” or so it sounds. Its quite hard to tell if he is speaking english or a native local language. I’d go with the local language, although the next part up ahead can contradict my hypothesis.
The proceeding gameplay clip shows Chris shooting a villager in the leg who then rolls to the floor. The other villagers are throwing axes at him(Resident Evil 4 alert!). Just as Leon does/did we see Chris elbowing an attacking villager trying to grab him from behind. The lead villager running out from the shed then calls “free them”. Could he be referring to the guard with no eyeballs with the giant flyswat?
This is followed by Chris equipped with a shotgun and some awfully similar vertical slashing action from a villager.
The next interesting part is the dank room where Chris is totally surrounded by villagers. I’ll get to why this is so important later. We then see Chris with a fast firing rifle, another standard weapon for the game. Afterwards Chris pushes a villager and then fists him in the face, it looks like a context sensitive action to me.
More speech:
“If there’s one thing I’ll do, I have a job to do and I’m gonna see it through”
One key part right at the end of the trailer is the quick scene with the girl in the water tank, this is obviously the girl that … was talking about from the previous interview, get a good look as she’ll be playing an important part in the game.
Round up
There is a consistent theme with this trailer that provides some insight to how the developers are trying to redirect the RE series back to its roots while using the RE4 gameplay model. Producer Jun Takeuchi stated this a while back. The theme is being overwhelmed by enemies, we saw this throughout the trailer. This element of a non stop frenzy ensure that you are fighting for your survival(hence survival horror). The enemies also move faster than zombies or gandos which adds to this point.
Metal Gear Solid 4
What a way to celebrate MGS’ 20th B-day then announce a slew of new franchise games and show the first gameplay footage of MGS4; the final game in the series. Well…make that in the timeline. 🙂 Kojima showed off a full 15 minute gameplay demonstration of the new title which was very impressive.
We got to see how Snake’s new suit works with the environment, some new weapons, hiding places and just how awesome this game looks. The one thing that I couldn’t stop thinking about throughout the trailer was how equipped Snake was. You can do almost anything with Snake; throw grenades while climbing ladders, roll on your back, front while shooting in 1st or 3rd person perspective and then there is the new suit. It seems that Konami has tweaked Snake into the ultimate stealth warrior.
Avcon 07 Adventures
July 22nd, 2007
What is Avcon
Avcon is Adelaide’s Anime and Gaming convention. Next question, what is Adelaide Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia, an important Australian state. This is an annual convention situated at the Adelaide University. The events lasts for a weekend including the Friday night launch.
Introduction
I’ve been so busy lately with training for my new job that I didn’t have much anticipation for this year’s Avcon. Which is somewhat unfortunate as the event was quite a significant improvement over the previous year. I can whole heartedly say that I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Despite only going on the Saturday due to other commitments, I still had an awesome time. Judging by the timetable Saturday had most of the hows meat. I’m just gonna now run thru my personal highlights of the event.
Major Improvements
Are something that stood out this year. Throughout the day I noticed some great changes, big and small that improved on some of last years issues. For starters they let people in a bit earlier in order to avoid the long wait. Last year the wait was over half an hour, this time we got in in about 3 minutes. The overall layout was much easier to navigate through and also more spaced out over several areas. The staff levels, range of activities and the BBQ where improved greatly from last year(yay, bread!).
Initial Screenings
This time around I didn’t spend most of my time watching anime screenings. I had a good variety of anime, games and shopping. The best events in the morning where the screenings, so I watched the early stuff being: .hack//Roots and Devil May Cry. .hack//Roots was alright, I’ve seen some of the series before and got the same impression. It’s just a bit bland overall, although it was a premiere which was cool.
Devil May Cry should be renamed to Alucard May Cry. This series looks so similar to to Hellsing its not funny. The style, camera angles, voice acting and even the sound seemed to be almost identical. But it’s got one thing that Hellsing will never lay hands upon; Dante. Dante is a cooler dude than Alucard anyways. Plus he uses his fists more. It’s worth mentioning that it surprised me too that there was a DMC anime, never knew about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ3iSUDS0c4
Watch a trailer for DMC
Vendors
If posible I like to reserve my purchases relevent to the show for the show because of all the savings. Although there where considerably less vendors than last year the quality was better and more relevent to the show. Personally I’m not interested in goth wear or oddball dress up people no matter how interesting their personalities may be.
This year I most enjoyed the new stalls; namely EzyGames, but I’ll get to that a little later on. The usuals had a good show, Shin Tokyo, Pulp Fiction Comics and Madman. Madman had their own computer survey set up, by filling in their survey you received a free DVD with 3 full length episodes and 60+ trailers, nice.
There was a small stand with some guy selling dating software with young ,attractive anime babes. When I talked to him it seemed a little awkward and he wasn’t quite sure on how to pitch it to people. Interesting. There was also a stand from a second hand games shop that I have seen out the bus window a few times on the way to Uni. They had a notable collection of games, including an almost perfect SNES + Mario All Stars package. I spent a considerable amount of time chatting to him about the store and games in general. There where a few games that would have been great for the collection. I saw Street Fighter Alpha 3(GBA) for $29 which was a major pain. I decided to hunt around for this game and couldn’t find it so I bought SF Alpha Anthology for the PS2 after the Connection Tour.
EzyGames
Ezygames had a stall this year which was quite surprising and also useful. You see I recently ordered some rare games through the site and haven’t recieved them for almost two weeks now. Concerning I know Only a few days ago I had sent an email in to query this, so I went to the stand to ask what was going on.
The first guy that I talked to was the owner of the business, he pretty much runs the whole thing himself. He knew who I was straight away and explained the situation. We then spent a bit of time talking about games, the business and his business ethos. The guy was straight out genuine and shares the same strong but level headed passion for games that I have.
Later that day I returned and bought some stuff with my brother. He provided us with some excellent deals and was a true champ. I promised that I’d link out to him because he won us over with his genuine passion to deliver great games with great service and prices. So check out his site, its relatively new but already has made a good dent in the Australian online games market.
Competitions
Throughout the day a number of tournaments where hosted, I myself only took part in two of them being the Tetris DS and Smash Bros Melee. I wasn’t too keen on playing Smash Bros. as well it’s Smash Bros. it just sucks playing a game that is seen as being so superior to everything else when its not. Plus it’s not a skill based game either, ugh. I played against a group of campers which wasn’t much fun. I came 3rd because they all ran away and I managed to slip and lose a life amidsts the excitement and having not played it for a while.
The Tetris tourney was much better, I came 5th out of about 20 people which is really impressive as I only play the game with mates and I’ll often lose to my brother(whom was knocked out of the first round :p) during thse times.
Games
The overall gameplay set up was more spaced out the previous year. There where 3 main areas for gaming if you don’t include the hallways littered by people with their pastal coloured DS Lite. Two areas where general gaming and one for mature gaming. Mature gaming had games like Gears of War, Golden Eye an Halo. I also demoed the first level of Timesplitters Future Perfect for the Gamecube(I didn’t even think that a GCN version was made!). It felt like a much more interactive game than TS2, I guess that I gotta hunt this game down now as well. 🙂
The smaller gaming area had two tvs and some Mario Strikers. I think that the Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo tournament was there as well. I was impresed by the idea of playing the movie; The Wizzard on a project in the centre of the room. Shows a lot of character.
The larger room held the Smash Bros competition. I was pleasantly surprised to see a large TV an couch dedicated to King of Fighters XI. Awesomeness, I sat down and played this game with a Chinese student from ShangHai. He was really good, a pure master of the button mashing technique. Unfortunately we had to take turns as there was only one controller and it wasn’t even a dual shock pad. In the same room DDR, Donkey Konga and Tekken where being played to death.
Conclusion
Avcon has seen a large improvement over the previous year. This can be seen in the presentation, organisation and personality that this event holds. Even the small things such as whats includinged in the goodies bag when entering. The reference guide is a great example of how professional this event has become, with its ultra trendy design and clever layout. Avcon was a lot of fun, had a good vibe and I overall had a great time. Can’t wait until next year.
Unfortunately no pictures have really surfaced yet. 🙁 I forgot to take my camera too, so I’ll post some up in the following days, if they become available.
More Great Capcom Tidbits
July 20th, 2007
Hey guys, not sure if you have read this or not. I actually posted this on the 20th of July but because we where switching servers it got deleted. 🙁 I know that it went thru my RSS reader, not sure about anyone elses, in anycase. Here it is:
Another excuse for me to post about Resident Evil 4? Well yes. I seriously didn’t expect all of these new details and videos to pop up so suddenly. But they have so by law I must blog about them.
To begin with Capcom has recently revealed their new 2D fighter based on the Devil Kings franchise. This game is heading for the PS2 and Wii. Great news, should sit nicely along side Street Fighter and Dark Stalkers. There’s not a lot more to say, you can check out some screenies and scans here.
The most important part of news is that new details have surfaced on Resident Evil 5 straight from the producers mouth. Overall they are actually pretty juicy. Lets run thru:
-the main character is Chris Redfield, he is working for a group called the BSAA and was sent to the area to research the recent events-the foes aren’t ganado or zombie-there is a big focus on one of the female characters from the series, we will find out more about her soon, she affects the story and gameplay
-producre thinks that if you think that RE5 looks like RE4 then by the next trailer, you would have a completely different impression of the game
-the gameplay is affected from moving between light and dark areas, this affects the vision as per real life
More details can be found here. So until the next trailer, I will hopefully leave RE5 alone for a while.
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