Page 3 - Fun and Games

Fun and Games 

The real fun began when several top tier game developers came up to demo their games.  Some of them we were not allowed to take photos of, like S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Oblivion Lost.  Let's just say about that game, that it's a monumental effort, and it looks incredibly impressive.  All around the room were some very high-end machines from AlienWare, VoodooPC, and Falcon Northwest, sporting some mighty fine 18.1" LCD's, running various games.  All of the developers were backing NVIDIA hardware, some more painfully than others.  It was obvious, and a little irritating.

The thing that came to mind most about S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Oblivion Lost is insane realism.  This is a virtual world.  I would not be surprised if the stars that come out in the games' day/night cycle are taken from real star charts.  The game is that detailed.

The first demo of the day was from Damien Moret and Olivier Dauba of Ubisoft France demoing their game XIII.  It's a cell-shaded game based off of a French comic book of the same name using the Unreal2 engine.  It's a stunner.  It also has a pretty high polygon count due to the cell shading and outline technology.  They caused quite an applause when the demo was over: the game looks fantastic!  XIII looks to be a very hip and not just your average first person shooter.

Of course, Harvey Smith from Ion Storm was on hand to show off Deus Ex 2: The Invisible War.  I tried to snap a few photos, but it's a very dark game.  I am a fan of the first DeusEx, and the second iteration looks to be a very large leap ahead.  Deus Ex 2 won't be using the Unreal engine as did the first, however, as the team developed their own engine called ISIS.  I don't know what it stands for, but it has an impressive physics engine, lots of creepy crawlies, very good AI, and the same multiple path approach that made the first Deus Ex so much fun.  Expect it to be released in December.

Third up and second most outspoken for the day was Randy Pitchford of Gearbox Software.  You might be aware that they made a game called Halo.  Halo recently made the jump from the Xbox to the PC, and underwent some major surgery on its way to your PC, namely a shift to DX9.  NVIDIA worked very hard behind the scenes to make that transition work for Halo.

The big mouth of the lot was Mark Rein, who always had something interesting to say, showed off his Unreal Tournament 2004.  UT2004 has an impressive use of vehicles and variations of game play, and pretty much stole the show.  I don't want to spoil too much of the game, and it's already got a good amount of press already.  Mark Rein has some skills too.

The game that drew some Oohs and Aahs, was EA Games' Battlefield Vietnam.  If you've played any of the Battlefield series, this one looks like the best of the bunch.  Dense foliage, huge maps, tons of vehicles, and a rocking soundtrack, make this one very impressive!

Sorry about the shaky-cam.  I figured it would not be cool to use the flash.