E3 motherfuckers.

[adam_grif]

It's nearly here. People have started releasing trailers early as usual.

Notably:

Crysis 2.
Lucasarts gearing up to disappoint us with The Force Unleashed 2
Deadspace 2
Battlestar Galactica Online?!
Fallout: New Vegas
Mortal Kombat
"Quantum Theory": Gears of War meets JRPG, result is even more terrible than it sounds; has nothing to do with quantum theory.

[atg]

Battlestar Galactica Online?![/url]

Hot damm I want that game.

[Stofsk]

wtf

Is it supposed to be an MMO? Jesus.

[Stark]

Battlestar Galactica Online?![/url]

Hot damm I want that game.

A game by nameless developers based on an unsuitable licence and you want to play it based on pre-made promo trailers?

[atg]

Battlestar Galactica Online?![/url]

Hot damm I want that game.

A game by nameless developers based on an unsuitable licence and you want to play it based on pre-made promo trailers?

I reserve the right to be stupidly hopelessly optimistic

[weemadando]

An excerpt explaining why any BSG RPG is a bad idea.

Have you seen that they (they, being the nameless, formless wraiths that control licenses and games) are making a new-Battlestar Galactica PnP RPG? I for one, am not at all conviced. They might be using the Serenity RPG mechanics, but that setting is no good. What the hell kind of game can you run? I sit around on my cramped civilian freighter with 2000 others? I'm a Refugee 2/Mechanic 5 human with an "avoid starvation and plague save of +8"? I had better hope that my GM doesn't roll high on the "your ship gets blown up in a frakking Cylon raid table"?

It makes no sense as a setting. Maybe you can play a game set on the 12 Colonies in the lead-up to the 2nd Cylon War. But then, you have the problem of massive, orbital, thermonuclear bombardment which leads to players becoming Fine White Radioactive Ash 1/Mechanic 4 or going back to the "sitting around a goddamn ship" game.

Perhaps a New Caprica game might be fun. You can play as valiant rebels, or nasty secret police. And then you can die of starvation, be killed in a suicide bombing or police crackdown. Get executed. Get betrayed, imprisoned and tortured. Or get killed in the final liberation attempt by a Viper's strafing run or a stray resistance bullet or a well targetted shot from a centurion.

But WAIT!", I can hear the legion of license lovers shout, "You haven't mentioned a campaign set ON the Battlestar Galactica itself." Because that would be just as bad. You're stuck in a place with military discipline, with a very high character attrition rate and where in your off duty hours your likely going to spend it all in an drunken haze, getting in fist-fights with shipmates. Maybe you can be a valiant Viper pilot and use some mediocre ship-to-ship combat mechanics. Or a Marine who spends most of his time having to hold guns to the heads of shipmates or civilians or suspected Cylons or getting butchered by Centurions all while being abused by an alcoholic XO.

In all seriousness, there may be room for a game there, even one set during the exodus, but it would take a really good group and an excellent GM to manage it. People just need to realise that licenses are, for better or worse, a part of gaming - but not every damn thing needs to be licensed! Not everything needs a spinoff or sequel or whatever stillborn blighted corpse of a game results from the flailing at bloated equines. Some games are made better by the application of a license - but for the most part, these are the games which would have been strong enough to stand on their own.

[Gandalf]

There's like three dozen characters in the fleet, and fifty thousand nameless faces. Can I be tylium refiner #24608?

[adam_grif]

Word on the street is it's being made by the developers of browser games. Your fortune: outlook bad.

But who knows. I suppose the least shitty way to do it would be a non-persistent world, it lasts for like a month then when the Colonials are destroyed or they reach Earth the game is reset. Like a really long, drawn out conventional objective multiplayer mode, with a drop-in/drop-out feature.

[Nephtys]

The only way a BSG game can be ANY fun I think is if it takes the same route the board game did: Don't make it about spaceships and battle. Make it about treason and paranoia. You don't know which PCs in your guild or whatever are actually traitors, who want to destroy you. It could be none in this particular party. It could be many. They are going to do their thing, while you do yours, and it resets every now and then.

Basically, a murder mystery writ large, with occasional attacks from Cylons that you must repel (or use as an opportunity).

[Ryan Thunder]

That Crysis trailer looks fuckin beautiful.

[adam_grif]

Oh my fucking god.

This is some of the cheesiest shit I've seen in recent memory.

The model is trying so hard to sound enthusiastic about it all

[Vympel]

I hate bloody pre-rendered cutscenes. That said, TFU2's one is awesome. Pity the game won't be half as awesome.

[2000AD]

New X-Com trailer:

http://uk.pc.ign.com/dor/objects/142523 ... 60910.html

Cue polarisation of existing fanbase between "OMG, new X-Com, sweet" and "OMG, new X-Com, it's going to suck".

[Starglider]

Cue polarisation of existing fanbase between "OMG, new X-Com, sweet" and "OMG, new X-Com, it's going to suck".

It doesn't share any game mechanics, the graphical style, any enemies, characters or weapons. As far as I can tell it has nothing at all in common with any of the previous X-Com games. This isn't like Fallout, where they changed from turn-based isometric to FPS but kept the setting, backstory, graphical style, scale, RPG mechanics etc. It isn't even a reboot, it shares nothing but the name. It'll probably be a mediocre FPS, but it shouldn't be of any relevance to the existing fanbase at all.

I'm looking forward to Dead Space 2 and to a lesser extent Fallout NV. Crysis 2 is obviously pretty but then Fallout 2 was pretty, I'll wait for reviews of actual gameplay before getting excited.

[Admiral Valdemar]

No Valve Portal surprise yet?

[Covenant]

Well, most X-Com fans are mad because this has nothing to do with X-Com. Sure, there's elerium, and aliens, but that's it. Frankly, this looks less like an X-Com game than STALKER did. The mini-blue-blowout in this trailer is just anemic next to an actual emission.

To be fair, the reason that they're getting such huge backlash is because they're marketing it as a full-on shooter despite the fact that the graphics look really flat, the guns are terribly uninteresting, and the combat is really bland. It's not actually a full-on shooter from what the printed media says. You're an FBI group, you operate from an Airforce base, you've got wire taps to monitor phonecalls for chatter about alien blobs, and have a small research team to develop new technologies.

If they integrate WWII ufo myths like Foo Fighters and stuff I could see them doing something clever with it, but I've got extremely low expectations at the moment because of that trailer. It just doesn't look like a very good shooter, and it's not terrifying or anything. I like the idea of unknowable geometric foes, but this thing is just not terrifying looking, and the oil-slick rejects from the X-Files don't look menacing either. And if they aren't menacing then at least make them cartoony and fun--which they aren't. Sectoids and Mutons weren't scary, but they were very distinct and fun. Good colors, real vibrant, etc.

And without there being a stronger tactical element they might as well have had you go alone. Think about it--we've got infestation blobs that slorp around worthlessly against a human, but your two buddies are going to be blob-fodder unless you babysit them, because AI is always terrible. And they do not seem to be saying you'll have strong tactical control over them, so they're bound to be a goddamned albatross around your neck that you get fined for letting die. I'm imagining the entire game as one drawn-out, frustrating escort mission.

Now, it could be okay. It's not X-Com at all from what we've SEEN and can confirm, but as a shooter it may still have promise... maybe. It's a pretty bland looking game yet. I really need them to add in some cool tactical elements, coop campaign mode, or a decent strategic element. Then it might be good. They better let my guys wear gasmasks and chemwarfare suits instead of hats and slacks. That does not look suitable for taking on an alien horror.

[Havok]

Lucasarts gearing up to disappoint us with The Force Unleashed 2

Say what you want about the actual games, but Lucasarts make masturbatory quality teasers and trailers.

[Darksider]

Lucasarts gearing up to disappoint us with The Force Unleashed 2

Say what you want about the actual games, but Lucasarts make masturbatory quality teasers and trailers.

What about the people who actually liked TFU?

(Ok, I know it was seriously flawed, but wielding the awesome powers of the force was fun.)

I just hope they fix the lightsaber combat so it actually cuts like ya know, a lightsaber. Hitting people with my lightbat was the most disappointing part of that game. They really didn't put any effort into the lightsaber combat mechanics at all.

EDIT: Also, from what I read in a recent GI article, the storyline is more self-contained, with Marek looking for clues to his past and such, rather than him influencing galactic events like the first game, so the people who were butthurt about an EU vidjimagame character being so important should be able to relax somewhat.

[Mr Bean]

And without there being a stronger tactical element they might as well have had you go alone. Think about it--we've got infestation blobs that slorp around worthlessly against a human, but your two buddies are going to be blob-fodder unless you babysit them, because AI is always terrible. And they do not seem to be saying you'll have strong tactical control over them, so they're bound to be a goddamned albatross around your neck that you get fined for letting die. I'm imagining the entire game as one drawn-out, frustrating escort mission.

Now, it could be okay. It's not X-Com at all from what we've SEEN and can confirm, but as a shooter it may still have promise... maybe. It's a pretty bland looking game yet. I really need them to add in some cool tactical elements, coop campaign mode, or a decent strategic element. Then it might be good. They better let my guys wear gasmasks and chemwarfare suits instead of hats and slacks. That does not look suitable for taking on an alien horror.

Not only does the trailer combine my hated of small jumpy enemies (Oh lookout! It's oil/ink blobs! Oil blob alieens!) from what we can see I agree your AI buddies are drooling morons. I expect them to be drooling morons unless proven otherwise. Come on now people the Marines of HL1 or Replications of FEAR were not Super Geniuses. They were simply decent AI. The problem is so much AI programing consists of "See player, charge player, attack player until player dead" Or a recent example the smokers of L4D 1 & 2 demonstrate quite good AI programing. They are quite happy to pick off the last or first player and often times do it from a range where its hard to nail them from.

But from what we've seen, and remember trailers are supposed to show off the good stuff, your Xcom FBI buddies exist only to die. Like little Federal Redshirts.

[General Zod]

Devil's Third looks like it might be fun. It looks like someone took the concept of WET and polished it up a bit (good lord did that game need polishing). Given Ninja Gaiden's producer is behind it it just might not suck.

[weemadando]

No Valve Portal surprise yet?

Didn't Valve say that they were pushing the Portal 2 stuff and wouldn't bee showing it?

[General Zod]

No Valve Portal surprise yet?

Didn't Valve say that they were pushing the Portal 2 stuff and wouldn't bee showing it?

The Portal stuff was cancelled and replaced with a "surprise".

[weemadando]

If that surprise is Left 4 Dead 3, I predict that we'll have a Houston, we have testify moment.

However, if it is Orange Box 2 (or equivalent) with Ep 3, Portal 2 and the rumoured Counterstrike reboot...

[CaptHawkeye]

I just want someone at E3 to say "World in Conflict 2" and i'll be able to die peacefully. Sadly it doesn't look like we're going to get that.

[FSTargetDrone]

Lucasarts gearing up to disappoint us with The Force Unleashed 2

Say what you want about the actual games, but Lucasarts make masturbatory quality teasers and trailers.

Spoiler

Since when does Vader leave it to his troops to kill someone like that? Doesn't seem like the Dark Lord's style...