This year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), a massive convention in Los Angeles where almost every video game developer shows off what they're working on for this year and next, contained an impressive showing of demos and trailers to woo prospective buyers from massive retail giants to everyday fans lucky enough to get into the show on June 2.
While there's always a dearth of releases during the summer months as developers hold off for the holiday season, there were still a few noteworthy summer titles shown at E3.
Released at the very beginning of the convention, "Red Faction: Guerilla" (available on Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC) was playable in both single-player and multiplayer forms. In this futuristic, third-person shooter, you play as Alec Mason, an insurgent on the planet Mars. With an open world and a slew of vehicles and weapons, "Guerilla" feels like just as much "Halo" as "Grand Theft Auto." The series' trademark hook of fully destructible environments is easily both the game's most fun and most impressive feature, as every building in the game is architecturally correct, making destruction with all manner of explosives and a hilariously overpowered sledgehammer immensely satisfying.
For Wii shooter fans, "The Conduit," a first-person shooter where you defend Washington, D.C. against an alien invasion, comes out June 23. Even with the fact that the game's visuals looked decidedly worse than its 360 and PS3 counterparts at E3 (although the dark tone still shone through the last-generation technology), who cares if the game plays well? "The Conduit" nails first-person controls with the Wii-mote, which is made all the more important by the ruthlessly smart alien enemies, featured en masse and with a good bit of variation among them. The game will also feature an online multiplayer mode that can be played with up to 16 people; though this mode wasn't playable at the show.
Stealth fans will be happy to know that "Batman: Arkham Asylum" (on 360, PS3 and PC platforms), which comes out on Aug. 25, looks like it'll have quite a bit of solid, tactical sneaking around mixed in with some fun hand-to-hand combat, all wrapped up in an incredibly stylish package. Though Batman can't survive much gunfire, tools like the grappling hook add variety to the stealth and the Caped Crusader can still best anyone with his fists. The Joker has escaped after being taken to the asylum, has shipped in a platoon of thugs and has freed villains like Harley Quinn and Killer Croc to get rid of Batman. The asylum itself looks amazing, rendered with a mix of gritty realism and dark comic book-style flair. The PS3 version of the game will also feature exclusive missions where you play as the Joker.
Stepping into September, "The Beatles: Rock Band" (for 360, PS3 and Wii), out on Sept. 9, is shaping up to be one of the most epic music-based games to date. Featuring 45 re-mastered tracks spanning over the Beatles' entire career, the game appears to be specialized even more for the Beatles than any of the band-specific "Guitar Hero" offerings were for their respective ensembles. The backdrops will feature historically accurate venues up until the point in the Beatles' career when they stopped touring; the songs after that will feature abstract "dreamscapes" meant to visualize their songs. Both "Rock Band" players and Beatles fans will likely enjoy the title.
On Sept. 22, fans of racing simulations will get a new entrant into the genre in the form of "Need for Speed: Shift" (built for 360, PS3 and PSP) as the series goes from an arcade, run-from-the-cops racer to a much more realistic driving simulator. The game looked indescribably beautiful at E3, combining highly-realistic physics for crashes and such to create a highly immersive (and challenging) experience. Featuring over 70 different cars to choose from, "Shift" will also let you develop a driver "persona" based on your own driving tactics, such as whether you like to drive perfectly or are particularly aggressive.
Unfortunately for "Shift," another game has a planned release on the same day, and it's likely to be one of the most popular titles of the holiday season as well: "Halo 3: ODST" (360). An expansion to the "Halo" series, "ODST" (which stands for Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, the name of the highly-trained soldiers the player will control) features a more open-ended campaign on Earth that parallels the story of "Halo 2" after Master Chief chased the Covenant aliens away from Earth. The game will also feature a multiplayer mode called "Firefight," in which up to four players can take on endless waves of Covenant, just like the addictive "Horde" mode in "Gears of War 2." And for those who could care less about fighting the Covenant, the game also comes packaged with three new maps for the original "Halo 3" multiplayer, as well as access to the 2010 beta of the recently announced "Halo: Reach."
You can reach this writer at thescene@theeagleonline.com.
