Paris Videogame Festival 09 has gather 70k people this week end. Despite the gameshow was more HD twins oriented, a few highly anticipated Wii titles were shown :
Monster Hunter 3
It was my very first time I played a MH game, so all was new to me
- Controls (Played with Wiimote + nunchuck)
C to center cam
B + direction to dodge
Weapons drawn out : A or waggle to hit, recognize the swing horizontally or vertically. With Z, charge attacks. 1 to draw its weapon back.
Weapon drawn : Z to run, A for context-action
Cross to browse inventory
- The demo was very difficult since you are alone, three missions were available, where you had to hunt a specific monster which wanders around around the map in ten minutes. Somehow, the monster is very powerful, and it is able to call for reinforcements which you obviously haven't
- The world of MH is not an open world, but is in fact divided in smaller areas, with loading screens :/. Loading is quick, but I missed the instaopening doors of Metroid.
- Game is gorgeous, details are higher than anything.
- No lock on target, it's really annoying but your weapon is so big (I took the character with an enormous axe) that you don't really need to lock. You have to center the camera very often
- While playing the demo, I had a very interesting discussion which someone who was obviously from Capcom EU. He told me there was no Wii speak compatibility, no MH2:G for Europe, a possible bundle with the new classic controller, no Wii-MH3 bundle (T_T). I asked how the online subscription will be, but he told me they didn't want to communicate about it and there was a lot of discussion with Capcom. He told me that Capcom japanese RP had finally understood western gamers were not playing online the way eastern players do ^^. Expect EU release for spring 2k10
- Then I died horribly rampaged by an enormous stone-skined dinosaur I had to hunt, but the role had suddenly reversed. Damn !
- It seems the hunt for monster can go on for hours. Definitely must buy !
Dead Space Extraction
I just beat the original Dead Space, so the environment was very familiar. If I understood well, the action takes place in the Ishimura before the arrival of Isaac and it's crew. There's always a chick around you that keeps on talking (she's the damsel in distress) but you can't skip her babblings :/
- Controls (Played with Wii zapper)
Nunchuck analog pad to switch between your four weapons
B to shoot
A for looting
C for Freezing
Waggle when in close combat when the necromorph gets you
You have to rotate the wiimote to use the secondary mode of your weapon. Nice !
- The camera is less shaky than RE:DC, but I found the graphics less good than this one
Comparatively to the PC version, I found the environment graphically similar (with far more aliasing). Somehow, the necromorph are really awful and poorly modelised, imho.
- Of course the motion-based targeting is obviously far more accurate than the original analog one. But tt's a bit hard to open the cases and take the loot inside and following the camera at the same time...
- In the demo, there was a boss fight, it's the four-legged tank with a weakspot in its back. DS players now this boss well, the strategy is to freeze him, go round it, then draw out your liner or ripper to shoot him in the back. In this demo, the fight was exactly the same, but, as it's on rail, you can't move on your own. So the fight was really boring, cause you freeze him, but you can't go round, neither choose the position to hit him in the back. And it took us 10 mn to beat it...
- As I am playing the PC version (with a last gen dual analog control, u know, the 360 controller ^^), after playing DS extraction demo, I was really puzzled. Why didn't they make the same game, or an FPA ? In RE:UC, Capcom adapted the zombies to the on rail gameplay by making them tougher. It seemed to me than EA didn't changed anything, and just transposes its game on rail.
Red Steel 2
Two months ago, at a precedent videogame meeting, I already played a few minutes of the demo. Now, I had the chance to play the same demo (the first level) straight.
- It begins as you're bound to a rope dragged by a bad guy riding a bike. Then, as you can free one of your hand and shoot him with your gun, the enemy crashes and the game begins. As in a tutorial, you're explained the use of your gun. Then, you get your saber \o/. In RS2, many opponents will be armored, so your gun will be useless. To destroy their armor, you have to hit them several times. Then, you can finish them with the gun or keep on with the saber. There are finishing moves (though I didn't knew how to trigger them :/)
- In RS2, swinging your wiimote is not all you have to do. Actually, against armored ninja, you have to waggle strongly to
hit them. So the way you strike is taken into account. Quite nice,
- Block the enemy attack with A + position the WM+ horizontally or vertically. You can see the enemy attack, cause they take a special stance and there are a flickering red circle around them.
- Lock on enemy by pressing Z, pressing Z repeatedly will switch targets.
- You can use your gun whenever you want by pressing B
- If an enemy is about to strike you in the back, a Z is prompted so you can turn back and block its attack.
- There's lots of enemies, so you have to switch a lot and adapt to various attack. things can be a bit hectic, but I think it will be the force of this game, and a real challenge. Oh btw, when you slash enemies repeatedly, they strike you back.
- Sometimes, there are safes that you have to open for money. You have to use your wiimote next to the ear and turn it like you open a safe. A good safecracking after a killing spree !
- Then the first boss encounter. The boss is a big plated guy wielding a big hammer. A thick armor covers its body and he has a big cross-shapped scar in the back? I wonder where is its weakspot ^^. Lockin with Z , and pressing A rapidly make you move quickly around. But beware, as you slash him in the back, he can strike behind him to get you.
- Finally, I personaly liked a lot RS1, but this new iteration of the franchise looks really promising. Oh, and the cell shading is just gorgeous.
Ok, of course there were plenty of other games of different platform, but I didn't want to wait hours for the modern warfare 2 demo nor the presentation video of alien vs Predator. Nevertheless :
- The french version of Scribblenauts makes me feel like a sad panda cause it didn't recognize 'shotgun' nor 'Leeroy Jenkins', ladder neither, though I thought I typed 'echelle' correctly. And I don't know how to write time machine ('machine a remonter dans le temps' T_T). Seems regionalization fucked up this one, once again :/
- Mario and Luigi : bowser inside story seems to be a rpg beast
- Brutal Legends is funny, but I don't like the 'do x action - loading - cinematics - loading - do y action - loading ...' Exploding chaos priest with a guitar is awesome somehow.
- I played one round hour of Muramasa and we explored the game as long as we could. I forged more than ten sabres on my own \o/ This game rocks hard ! Available in november in EU, damn regionalization.
- RUSE was playable, on PC and on the tactical table ! the investment will be hard for the wallet though, 800€ /o\ but it didn't seem the game itself was revolutionary...
- Uncharted 2, GoW3, L4D2, Bayonetta, assassin's creed 2 were playable
- Spent a lot of time on the retrogaming ground ^^
