Who was at the Metreon last night for the early screening of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel?
Hell I was there just to get a chance to play Gears of War after the movie.
I'm just going to copy and paste from my 1up blog...
_________________________________________________________________
So I finally got a chance to play Gears of War....
Woaw....
I got to see a few minutes of the intro and the first battle sequence of the campaign mode, all on the silver screen.
I got to play a multiplayer session of 8 VS 8 team deathmatch, only (on 23" Samsung LCDs).
Unfortunately we were on one map the entire session, as well as the sessions played by everyone else.
On the graphics side, the game looks amazing as most already know.
It looks much better than ANYTHING we've previously seen on the X360, as well as anything I've seen coming out for the PS3.
The M$ guy at the show said that we were playing an "unfinished build" of the game. But what we saw was a very polished build, which you can easily mistake for the final release build.
It looked like everything was in place, from a polished campaign mode, multiplayer mode, to the title & menus screens. All the modes were there on the menu screen; campaign mode, multiplayer, join coop, join multiplayer, and achievements (no we never go to see what these achievements were).
I don't know if this has been mentioned before but there seems to be no graphical downgrade from campaign mode to multiplayer mode. All the graphical details and effects are there, in multiplay! And the frame rate is rock solid.... It might not even be 30 fps, like Halo it might just be something in between 60 fps, like say 40 fps? It's hard to tell in progressive images. The beauty of 720p is that even if a game is running at 30 fps (GRAW for example), the game still has that solid look to it as if it were running at 60 fps.
Bottom line is that the frame rate never took a dip no matter how heated the action got. (There was a total of two momentary hiccups while these other guys were playing but those were the only glitches I saw during the 1.5 hrs I was there)
As far as lag goes, I'm going to blame the hiccups I saw on lag.
That's what it looked like to me, but I could be wrong.
Nevertheless, lag was inexistent.
After all, we were playing via lan....
Next the graphics, woaw (yeah I don't use "wow", that's just too feminine for me haha)....
I know we've all seen the screen shots, even some HD video feeds. But even then, the quick glimpses you get aren't long enough to capture the atmosphere of Sera.
The game oozes with atmosphere. From the killer graphics and detailed textures, to the particle effects, the graphics along with a solid frame rate and tight controls really immerse you into this world. I hate clichés but here it is, "like never before"
This atmosphere carries over to the multiplayer campaign, the great draw distance and being able to see buildings afar through the dusk, the realistic lighting, the heat blur given off by your weapons, the reflective water fluidly moving in flooded areas, and the echoes of crows, this game combines all of this to make this the most atmospheric experience I have ever had in a video game.
Visuals aside, the most important thing are the controls.
Games either live or die by their controls and let me say that the controls are spot on.
Aiming is a breeze (I saw 3 levels of sensitivity, hard, medium, etc).
I can't emphasize how crucial controls are, but you never have to fight them in this game.
For a developer that's mainly worked in the PC world, Epic has console controls locked.
Bungie-like solid controls if you will
Now some might complain that your characters move around a bit slow.
But that's if you're expecting a run & gun experience.
This game is a tactical squad based shooter!
Yeah I learned the hard way as I'm used to playing run & gun Halo 2 style.
(I was curve stomped twice, and had my head blown off execution style once)
We've all seen the "CNN" style camera that follows you when you sprint/dash.
Yes that's right, there is no run button. The sprint/dash we've all seen is performed by holding down the A button and it works very much like a dash in fighting games. You don't run freely, you simply dash and guide your character with the left analog. This might come as a bummer to people, but again this is a tactical shooter. I have no quarrels, you'll get used to it after a few minutes of playing.
All in all, I love the tight controls and the control scheme.
They make for an easy pick up and play experience.
I could sit here and ramble for ever about how pleased I am with this game, but I'll cut it short by going into the weapons. The basic pistol is just your ordinary pistol. It can come in handy if you run out of ammo for the other weapons you're carrying. In a tactical shooter, the pistol can serve as defense.
Next you have your shotgun, your standard up and close shotgun here.
Then there's your standard machine gun which feels pretty powerful.
All weapons have their own unique melee attack, I'm sure you know this already.
The dopest weapon I tried was one that I hadn't seen before, your good old bow & arrow.
With exploding arrows that is
It might seem too powerful at first but there's definitely a catch to it. First reloading arrows is pretty slow.
And your aiming reticle (which is a laser beam) lunges out like a stream of water towards your target.
It even lags a bit when you move side to side, like a stream of flowing water would if you moved left or right too quickly. Oh this was my favorite weapon....
The body parts fly people! Flesh tears apart in every direction, leaving carcasses flopping around every where. Shoot someone in the head, watch it beautifully explode.
We've all heard about the ability to revive a fallen troop. If you go down, pound the A button repeatedly to keep your character from quickly bleeding to death. Hopefully a comrade gets to you in time before you step into darkness. But don't let an adversary get to you first. He can either shoot you to finish you off, or execute you by shooting you at point blank, or the very satisfying head stomp (the M$ guys were calling it the curve stomp). By the way, you get kudos for head stomps and executions
Well there you have it....
I hadn't reserved this game because I have to try games before I buy them.
(blame PDZ for that)
The game was everything I was hoping for....
Oh, I managed to take a couple of pics.
One of me playing GOW (caution, don't want to scare anyone), and the other picture is of some cool swag.
An Emergence Day t-shirt, SWEEEEET!!!!
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/6562/1856scdte3.jpg
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/6138/picture013dz8.jpg
Migg
Hell I was there just to get a chance to play Gears of War after the movie.
I'm just going to copy and paste from my 1up blog...
_________________________________________________________________
So I finally got a chance to play Gears of War....
Woaw....
I got to see a few minutes of the intro and the first battle sequence of the campaign mode, all on the silver screen.
I got to play a multiplayer session of 8 VS 8 team deathmatch, only (on 23" Samsung LCDs).
Unfortunately we were on one map the entire session, as well as the sessions played by everyone else.
On the graphics side, the game looks amazing as most already know.
It looks much better than ANYTHING we've previously seen on the X360, as well as anything I've seen coming out for the PS3.
The M$ guy at the show said that we were playing an "unfinished build" of the game. But what we saw was a very polished build, which you can easily mistake for the final release build.
It looked like everything was in place, from a polished campaign mode, multiplayer mode, to the title & menus screens. All the modes were there on the menu screen; campaign mode, multiplayer, join coop, join multiplayer, and achievements (no we never go to see what these achievements were).
I don't know if this has been mentioned before but there seems to be no graphical downgrade from campaign mode to multiplayer mode. All the graphical details and effects are there, in multiplay! And the frame rate is rock solid.... It might not even be 30 fps, like Halo it might just be something in between 60 fps, like say 40 fps? It's hard to tell in progressive images. The beauty of 720p is that even if a game is running at 30 fps (GRAW for example), the game still has that solid look to it as if it were running at 60 fps.
Bottom line is that the frame rate never took a dip no matter how heated the action got. (There was a total of two momentary hiccups while these other guys were playing but those were the only glitches I saw during the 1.5 hrs I was there)
As far as lag goes, I'm going to blame the hiccups I saw on lag.
That's what it looked like to me, but I could be wrong.
Nevertheless, lag was inexistent.
After all, we were playing via lan....
Next the graphics, woaw (yeah I don't use "wow", that's just too feminine for me haha)....
I know we've all seen the screen shots, even some HD video feeds. But even then, the quick glimpses you get aren't long enough to capture the atmosphere of Sera.
The game oozes with atmosphere. From the killer graphics and detailed textures, to the particle effects, the graphics along with a solid frame rate and tight controls really immerse you into this world. I hate clichés but here it is, "like never before"
This atmosphere carries over to the multiplayer campaign, the great draw distance and being able to see buildings afar through the dusk, the realistic lighting, the heat blur given off by your weapons, the reflective water fluidly moving in flooded areas, and the echoes of crows, this game combines all of this to make this the most atmospheric experience I have ever had in a video game.
Visuals aside, the most important thing are the controls.
Games either live or die by their controls and let me say that the controls are spot on.
Aiming is a breeze (I saw 3 levels of sensitivity, hard, medium, etc).
I can't emphasize how crucial controls are, but you never have to fight them in this game.
For a developer that's mainly worked in the PC world, Epic has console controls locked.
Bungie-like solid controls if you will
Now some might complain that your characters move around a bit slow.
But that's if you're expecting a run & gun experience.
This game is a tactical squad based shooter!
Yeah I learned the hard way as I'm used to playing run & gun Halo 2 style.
(I was curve stomped twice, and had my head blown off execution style once)
We've all seen the "CNN" style camera that follows you when you sprint/dash.
Yes that's right, there is no run button. The sprint/dash we've all seen is performed by holding down the A button and it works very much like a dash in fighting games. You don't run freely, you simply dash and guide your character with the left analog. This might come as a bummer to people, but again this is a tactical shooter. I have no quarrels, you'll get used to it after a few minutes of playing.
All in all, I love the tight controls and the control scheme.
They make for an easy pick up and play experience.
I could sit here and ramble for ever about how pleased I am with this game, but I'll cut it short by going into the weapons. The basic pistol is just your ordinary pistol. It can come in handy if you run out of ammo for the other weapons you're carrying. In a tactical shooter, the pistol can serve as defense.
Next you have your shotgun, your standard up and close shotgun here.
Then there's your standard machine gun which feels pretty powerful.
All weapons have their own unique melee attack, I'm sure you know this already.
The dopest weapon I tried was one that I hadn't seen before, your good old bow & arrow.
With exploding arrows that is
It might seem too powerful at first but there's definitely a catch to it. First reloading arrows is pretty slow.
And your aiming reticle (which is a laser beam) lunges out like a stream of water towards your target.
It even lags a bit when you move side to side, like a stream of flowing water would if you moved left or right too quickly. Oh this was my favorite weapon....
The body parts fly people! Flesh tears apart in every direction, leaving carcasses flopping around every where. Shoot someone in the head, watch it beautifully explode.
We've all heard about the ability to revive a fallen troop. If you go down, pound the A button repeatedly to keep your character from quickly bleeding to death. Hopefully a comrade gets to you in time before you step into darkness. But don't let an adversary get to you first. He can either shoot you to finish you off, or execute you by shooting you at point blank, or the very satisfying head stomp (the M$ guys were calling it the curve stomp). By the way, you get kudos for head stomps and executions
Well there you have it....
I hadn't reserved this game because I have to try games before I buy them.
(blame PDZ for that)
The game was everything I was hoping for....
Oh, I managed to take a couple of pics.
One of me playing GOW (caution, don't want to scare anyone), and the other picture is of some cool swag.
An Emergence Day t-shirt, SWEEEEET!!!!
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/6562/1856scdte3.jpg
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/6138/picture013dz8.jpg
Migg
