Hey all. I just got back from Tokyo Game Show, and I am absolutely bushed. Met a lot of new people there (including 1up, IGN and Game Informer folk), as well as saw a few guys I already knew (two guys from Capcom, and a host of others).
I made a really long post on GAF with some TGS impressions and photos, so I'm going to save some energy, and paste all of it in here. Enjoy the regurgitation!
Photos after the Microsoft Party:
I'll start with just a couple photos after the Microsoft party on the night before our visit to TGS. The whole shindig was rather boring, and there wasn't even any alcohol there.
We did get a grab bag of not-so-goodies, and I took a few photos.
Gears of War JP sticker. Boring. Next.
Ah! Here's something interesting! An XBLA point card. We later found out it only had 100 points on it. We couldn't even buy a picture pack with that. :\
Here's sp0rsk trying to use the Xbox Live radio with retractable headphones. Not only do the headphones not effectively retract, but the radio itself didn't work.
TGS photos:
That's sp0rsk's head in the shot. He was taking a photo and had no idea I was as well. That's the entrance to TGS.
The It's A Wonderful World booth at Square Enix. I had to wait for 20 min to play the game, but it was worth it. It really hooked me, and I love the battle system.
This is the SNK stage where they announced KOFXII would use new sprites. As you can see, they're talking about KO2MI2 here.
EDF3 in action. Was lots of fun, and had some good texture work on the main character, but in general, didn't feel like it added anything.
The Xbox booth. Looks far more grand on the outside than the inside.
A Trusty Bell station. I really liked what I played of the game. The on map enemies had zero AI, but the actual battles were fun and felt fairly original.
360 with the HD DVD add on next to it...and a very very cute japanese girl behind it.
A project sylpheed station. I really enjoyed this. Can't wait to pick it up on the 28th.
A crappy angle of the Sony booth. When I saw it, I was really taken aback. It took huge real estate, and basically screamed "Okay, you can start. We've arrived."
One of my favorite booths. I didn't get a chance to take photos of the inside of the Gyakuten Saiban 4 booth (only this sign), but inside it was a big mock courtroom with DSes set up in a square running GS4.
DMC4. Own.
DQM booth. I really enjoyed what I played. It looks really promising.
There was absolutely no line to play Bleach DS 2nd. Which worked for me, because I was pumped to try it out. The demo had only two new characters playable out of the 6 that were choosable: Urahara and Ikkaku. Urahara was awesome. Didn't get to try out Ikkaku.
The Capcom booth, running a video of Lost Planet on the big screen.
Kojima and Murata doing to the Hidechan's Cafe stage show. They showed some very cool footage of the Kojima Prod. team doing more field training for MGS4.
The same terrible mass that sp0rsk took photos of. This was a veritable bermuda triangle. Konami, Sony and Capcom were the three corners, which is what made it so goddamn terrible. Namco Bandai had a tales of destiny stage show going on at this point, which made it worse.
The playable demo booth for Heavenly Sword. After playing it, I felt completely underwhelmed. The camera was way too zoomed in, the combos felt phoned in, and there was no tactile, visual or auditory key to show that I was actually pulling off counters. In general, I was underwhelmed.
Cute japanese girls playing Bleach Wii. Wii was at the show to take photos of (holy crap that thing is TINY in person), but it wasn't playable for the regular greasy masses. Understandablem considering no Nintendo reps were present at TGS.
Impressions:
It's a Wonderful World for DS:
I only played IAWW's battle mode in its entirety, so I'll share my impressions on how it works. The bottom screen is the male character, who is who you control most of the time. All attacks are different movements with the stylus. To move your character, you touch your character and drag the pointer around to move him. Attacking enemies is slashing them. Casting fire is dragging the stylus around the screen in lines or circles. Casting lightning is poking enemies.
The top screen is the female character, and she is mostly auto controlled. She has attacks that are controlled by using the dpad. She does this herself, but if you control it, you can cast the attack faster (right right, up, right right right, which you can do as fast as you can, but the computer will take its time).
It seemed like every time you do a certain attack with the girl, you get a card on the bottom screen. 3 cards allows you to pull off a super attack. I couldn't figure out why there were different cards, or how the different cards affected anything, though.
Heavenly Sword for PS3:
After playing it, I felt completely underwhelmed. The camera was way too zoomed in, the combos felt phoned in, and there was no tactile, visual or auditory key to show that I was actually pulling off counters. In general, I was underwhelmed.
Motorstorm for PS3:
Motorstorm is an absolutely beautiful game. When opponents crash, it's really spectacular. They twirl out of control and parts start to fly in different directions. The framerate chugs a bit at points, but in general, it's really solid.
The maps seem really exciting and don't give you a defined track, maintaining that offroad feel. The biggest problem is that the races feel like everyone is driving at 10km/h. If they sped it up a bunch, we might have something!
Genji 2 for PS3:
I bought and played Genji, and was totally unimpressed. As Bebpo from GAF once said, it's a great 2 hour game that goes on for 10 hours. That was one reason I was apprehensive about actually waiting in line to play Genji 2 at Sony's booth. I was totally floored when it finally came time.
I was presently surprised to find that the open war scenes were actually quite chaotic, and motion blur was used sparingly and effectively to subtly show quick movement. There seemed to be a slight overuse of bloom, but the effect served its purpose in most cases.
The quick slash system from the first game has returned, with some new twists. Major enemies (like the famous giant crabs) had multiple different ways to take them down, facilitated by the different character's strengths. One thing I liked was that the characters could be changed on the fly, unlike the first game, where you had to return to your base and speak with the character to take control.
The biggest problems I found with the game were in fact not the control. There seemed to be frame tearing and framerate issues in certain parts of the demo, especially the demo's waterfall area. Hopefully things like that will be fixed soon.
Bleach DS 2nd for DS:
I was a huge fan of the original Bleach for DS, and a huge fan of the manga of its namesake. Bleach DS 2nd doesn't seem to mess too much with the formula, and that's definitely a good thing. They added a timed bar for specials, so if you get knocked down, you can't retaliate with a special immediately.
The demo only had 4 player free for all to play, and 6 selectable characters, but two new characters, Ikkaku and Urahara, were playable in the demo. I only had time to try out Urahara, but he played very differently from other characters. Many of his moves actually used Ururu and the other store employees, which was an interesting twist on the super move list.
It's really a shame that the Guardian Heroes style mode wasn't sampled in the demo, as I'm sure that would be a must buy feature for both fans of the series as well as those who have never read the manga, but just love Treasure games.
That's all for now! I'll try to update with more impressions later.
I made a really long post on GAF with some TGS impressions and photos, so I'm going to save some energy, and paste all of it in here. Enjoy the regurgitation!
Photos after the Microsoft Party:
I'll start with just a couple photos after the Microsoft party on the night before our visit to TGS. The whole shindig was rather boring, and there wasn't even any alcohol there.
We did get a grab bag of not-so-goodies, and I took a few photos.
Gears of War JP sticker. Boring. Next.
Ah! Here's something interesting! An XBLA point card. We later found out it only had 100 points on it. We couldn't even buy a picture pack with that. :\
Here's sp0rsk trying to use the Xbox Live radio with retractable headphones. Not only do the headphones not effectively retract, but the radio itself didn't work.
TGS photos:
That's sp0rsk's head in the shot. He was taking a photo and had no idea I was as well. That's the entrance to TGS.
The It's A Wonderful World booth at Square Enix. I had to wait for 20 min to play the game, but it was worth it. It really hooked me, and I love the battle system.
This is the SNK stage where they announced KOFXII would use new sprites. As you can see, they're talking about KO2MI2 here.
EDF3 in action. Was lots of fun, and had some good texture work on the main character, but in general, didn't feel like it added anything.
The Xbox booth. Looks far more grand on the outside than the inside.
A Trusty Bell station. I really liked what I played of the game. The on map enemies had zero AI, but the actual battles were fun and felt fairly original.
360 with the HD DVD add on next to it...and a very very cute japanese girl behind it.
A project sylpheed station. I really enjoyed this. Can't wait to pick it up on the 28th.
A crappy angle of the Sony booth. When I saw it, I was really taken aback. It took huge real estate, and basically screamed "Okay, you can start. We've arrived."
One of my favorite booths. I didn't get a chance to take photos of the inside of the Gyakuten Saiban 4 booth (only this sign), but inside it was a big mock courtroom with DSes set up in a square running GS4.
DMC4. Own.
DQM booth. I really enjoyed what I played. It looks really promising.
There was absolutely no line to play Bleach DS 2nd. Which worked for me, because I was pumped to try it out. The demo had only two new characters playable out of the 6 that were choosable: Urahara and Ikkaku. Urahara was awesome. Didn't get to try out Ikkaku.
The Capcom booth, running a video of Lost Planet on the big screen.
Kojima and Murata doing to the Hidechan's Cafe stage show. They showed some very cool footage of the Kojima Prod. team doing more field training for MGS4.
The same terrible mass that sp0rsk took photos of. This was a veritable bermuda triangle. Konami, Sony and Capcom were the three corners, which is what made it so goddamn terrible. Namco Bandai had a tales of destiny stage show going on at this point, which made it worse.
The playable demo booth for Heavenly Sword. After playing it, I felt completely underwhelmed. The camera was way too zoomed in, the combos felt phoned in, and there was no tactile, visual or auditory key to show that I was actually pulling off counters. In general, I was underwhelmed.
Cute japanese girls playing Bleach Wii. Wii was at the show to take photos of (holy crap that thing is TINY in person), but it wasn't playable for the regular greasy masses. Understandablem considering no Nintendo reps were present at TGS.
Impressions:
It's a Wonderful World for DS:
I only played IAWW's battle mode in its entirety, so I'll share my impressions on how it works. The bottom screen is the male character, who is who you control most of the time. All attacks are different movements with the stylus. To move your character, you touch your character and drag the pointer around to move him. Attacking enemies is slashing them. Casting fire is dragging the stylus around the screen in lines or circles. Casting lightning is poking enemies.
The top screen is the female character, and she is mostly auto controlled. She has attacks that are controlled by using the dpad. She does this herself, but if you control it, you can cast the attack faster (right right, up, right right right, which you can do as fast as you can, but the computer will take its time).
It seemed like every time you do a certain attack with the girl, you get a card on the bottom screen. 3 cards allows you to pull off a super attack. I couldn't figure out why there were different cards, or how the different cards affected anything, though.
Heavenly Sword for PS3:
After playing it, I felt completely underwhelmed. The camera was way too zoomed in, the combos felt phoned in, and there was no tactile, visual or auditory key to show that I was actually pulling off counters. In general, I was underwhelmed.
Motorstorm for PS3:
Motorstorm is an absolutely beautiful game. When opponents crash, it's really spectacular. They twirl out of control and parts start to fly in different directions. The framerate chugs a bit at points, but in general, it's really solid.
The maps seem really exciting and don't give you a defined track, maintaining that offroad feel. The biggest problem is that the races feel like everyone is driving at 10km/h. If they sped it up a bunch, we might have something!
Genji 2 for PS3:
I bought and played Genji, and was totally unimpressed. As Bebpo from GAF once said, it's a great 2 hour game that goes on for 10 hours. That was one reason I was apprehensive about actually waiting in line to play Genji 2 at Sony's booth. I was totally floored when it finally came time.
I was presently surprised to find that the open war scenes were actually quite chaotic, and motion blur was used sparingly and effectively to subtly show quick movement. There seemed to be a slight overuse of bloom, but the effect served its purpose in most cases.
The quick slash system from the first game has returned, with some new twists. Major enemies (like the famous giant crabs) had multiple different ways to take them down, facilitated by the different character's strengths. One thing I liked was that the characters could be changed on the fly, unlike the first game, where you had to return to your base and speak with the character to take control.
The biggest problems I found with the game were in fact not the control. There seemed to be frame tearing and framerate issues in certain parts of the demo, especially the demo's waterfall area. Hopefully things like that will be fixed soon.
Bleach DS 2nd for DS:
I was a huge fan of the original Bleach for DS, and a huge fan of the manga of its namesake. Bleach DS 2nd doesn't seem to mess too much with the formula, and that's definitely a good thing. They added a timed bar for specials, so if you get knocked down, you can't retaliate with a special immediately.
The demo only had 4 player free for all to play, and 6 selectable characters, but two new characters, Ikkaku and Urahara, were playable in the demo. I only had time to try out Urahara, but he played very differently from other characters. Many of his moves actually used Ururu and the other store employees, which was an interesting twist on the super move list.
It's really a shame that the Guardian Heroes style mode wasn't sampled in the demo, as I'm sure that would be a must buy feature for both fans of the series as well as those who have never read the manga, but just love Treasure games.
That's all for now! I'll try to update with more impressions later.
posted by Nayan at 5:35 AM
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