PG At GC 09: A Trip To GamesCom 09 - Text Edition

Long text coming, but it includes preview on some of the hottest upcoming games!

As promised I've been to GamesCom in Cologne, Europe's biggest video game expo. As I said before, the last three years I've visited the predecessor expo in Leipzig, Games Convention. I've alway liked the Games Convention and I still can understand Leipzig's frustration that "their" convention, an East-German history of success, got stolen to West Germany. But with all big publishers going to Cologne there wasn't a decision for me wether to boycot GamesCom or not. Good thing is that it didn't take me so long anymore to get there. Perfect one day trip now.

Okay, let's get to it: I arrived with a friend of mine, Gerwin, at short past 10 AM. First thing we did was searching for the Blizzard booth with Diablo III. And guess what: We didn't even have a chance.
Diablo III was perhaps the most anticipated game of the whole expo and you had to wait 4 hours to get a glimpse of it and play a few rounds. Well, we decided not stand 4 hours in line.
So we headed over to the Microsoft booth that was in the same hall. There you could play Lips. Never played that game and never wanted to. But there we did it. The song of choice was "Ace of Base" with "Sign". Gulp, 90s pop...
I felt like a complete idiot singing to this little girls' song, but hey, that made it funny at least!

Then we got to the registration and told the Microsoft staff - hot booth babes in short dresses - our gamertags.
This brought us the advantage of being a privileged gamer. Means, for playing Halo ODST we had to wait in a shorter queue
and got a cool drink afterwards. But back to

Halo ODST:


We played a four player co-operative match like the horde mode in Gears of War 2. It's called firefight, I think.
If you are a Halo fan, you will definitely like this game. If you are not, you propably won't see a difference to Halo 3. Because I belong to the last group, I really can't go into depths her. There was a save respawn point from which you went
into an arena. The map played looked like a urban district. From any direction there were enemies coming and you had to fight for your life. With a press on a button you activated a visor in your helmet that made enemies and comrades easier to see
and increased your view, because without it the sun was too strong to see anything. Enemies came flown in by flight vehicels, snipers stood on the rooftoops and it was a struggle for survival. After ten minutes the playing time was over.
The booth personel gave anybody a ODST poster and we went on to play some

Forza Motosport 3



Forza Motorsport 3 was part of the Microsoft booth. There were no waiting lines and you could play as soon as the previous player left the console. There were different stations to play this title. The standard ones with pad, stations in which you
could sit yourself and steer with the steering wheel, the new one that comes out with Forza 3, and some uber stations with three monitors. The game it self was good. It's a simulation and as such it was easy to just drive a few rounds. The steering wheel didn't make it better. I know why I like controllers the best. Anyway, the graphics are just awesome and I guess this game will recieve good critics.
Check out some gameplay here!

After that we took a look around. One thing I recognized was that it wasn't as crowded as in Leipzig the years before. There were lots of people,
thousands but you could walk around in the halls relatively fast. After all KoelnMesse seems to be a bit larger.
We took a look around and just walked into the dev demonstration of

APB: All Points Bulletin


Basically what the developers did was letting us watch a gameplay video. It was kinda a tutorial video, which was played by Mark Rein of Epic Games. APB is an Unreal Engine 3 game and Mr. Rein promised the game was one of the best he had played. APB it self is a third person shooter that plays in a parellel present. There are two parties that go against each other: Criminals and the police. Mr. Rein played a character played a character that looked like himself minus the belly and he weared a shirt with an Unreal logo.
The game it self reminded me of Grand Theft Auto IV from the look of it. In the open urban world there are lots of players who choose one of the sides.
You can highly customize your character with different pieces of clothing, color of skin, face types and tattoos.
Mr. Rein called a buddy who came with a super sports police car. For the strong muscle car it were the same rules: Style it up as much as you can.
They drove through the city and you could see many players fighting on the streets. It were definitely more than 8 versus 8. They did a mission where they collected
bags and needed to drop them at a central point. Now the other team, the criminals started to attack them to ruin that goal. As a police member you can always
call for help so that your team mates come watching your back - if they like. After all they're humans like you.
The game was in an early version but looked good. A few animations still need to be added, for example there was no opening of the doors when the bags were loaded in,
but they'll add it, I am sure. It reminded me, alone from the graphics so much of Grand Theft Auto IV and the missions seem to be similar, to be honest I didn't see very much GTA IV didn't already do, but 10 minutes is propably a bit too few time to introduce a big game.
Next game was:

Operation Flashpoint 2: Dragon Rising


This great title was hidden in the hall with the ESL. That was not so bad, because you needed to wait only about half an hour. I guess most of you have already heard of or seen footage of Operation Flashpoint 2. It's that enormous open world military simulation. The devs gave us ten minutes to play.
I really can't say wether it was the PC or 360 version because you could play it with mouse/keyboard or pad. I guess it was a PC build. The game itself was
incredible. I did a mission where I had to storm a hill and blow a radar station up. I was on my way with my squad, which you could give orders via a button press
(I believe the order menu appeared when you held the right bumper.) It was middle of the day and the sun pitched the vegetation in a mild light. A very
beatiful game. Suddenly shots were fired at me. I gave my comrades the order to nail the enemy soldier, so that he couldn't move. Than I flanked him.
But the comrades were faster and got him. Even this battle situation was tough, because in the field of grass it was very difficult to spot the single
enemy soldier. And remember: You can't take too many shots. If you take to many, you'll have to heal yourself via a medi pack, if you won't do this, you'll lose
blood permanently and will die slowly. But I did that and when I took the hill I had a perfect overview over the area. Beneath me was a house with Chinese soldiers
in it that saw me and immediatly started firing. Time for me to use the rifle. Aim, shoot, kill. A big cloud of blood showed me that I hit the enemy.
After securing the area I went to the radar station. Somehow I had to destroy it, but I didn't figure out how. Propably via the commander mode in which you'll get
when you press the back button. This reveals a zoomable world map and lets you command your comrades from birdseye view. And you can order airstrikes, which weren't available strangely.
So I tried to blow the radar up with grenades, which didn't work either. But that made me view the overwhelming dust effects this game has. Throw or grenade and dust will be blown up
like in no other games. Meters in the air there will be smoke which got blown away by how the wind was. Amazing.
After playing Operation Flashpoint 2 I am sure that this game is worth the wait and worth the hype. And by the way: The demo I played took part on a small island in front of the main island
Skira's south coast. Rumors say that this will be the demo coming to Xbox Live.
The next title was:

Mass Effect 2


This was part of the EA booth which was way bigger than any else and when I saw that this game was there I just couldn't withdraw. Who wouldn't? Things got even better when the booth crew
began throwing shirts in the crowd. To my luck I got one. Never would've imagined that, so cool. And it came better as I thought: You could play yourself, not watch some videos.
The demo began with Shepard being on the Asari homeplanet. He got flown to a private high tower complex in a red flying Porsche car by an allied Asari. You had a conversation with her
and could give her different answers as you know it. Your goal was to find an assassin. When you arrived at the tower immediatly enemies came and tried to kill you. But Shepard knows how
to save his ass and he had to loyal crew members with him. None of the first game's cast. The battle dynamics have improved. In Mass Effect 2 it feels like your weapons do greater damage and have
a stronger impact. It was very funny shooting lots of security bots down, and using powers like push to smash them 10 meters away. The demo level was known through the trailers.
I searched my weapons via quick button and so found one of the new heavy weapons: The rocket launcher. I found it quite difficult to handle, because it had homing missiles and
I somehow were not clever enough to determine which enemy they destroyed.
Anyway, when having destroyed every enemy in the way, you reached a room in which the next conversation took part. You had a conversation with an Asari who knew you via a connection in the first game (one of Liara's family?).
Suddenly Thane, Mass Effect 2's all new race super assassing appeared and ended half of my crew and that Asari. He seems to be a quite, efficient and dangerous character.
But my guess is that he'll join your party in the progress of the game.
Mass Effect 2 was exactly what I prayed for as a fan of the first game- it's the sequel to one of the best games ever and worth the hype.
And when Casey Hudson and Dr. Ray of Bioware talk about Mass Effect 2 being the trilogy's dark second chapter, you better believe them. Under 18 years you had no chance to play the demo.
Cherries on top were the Mass Effect 2/ Dragon Age Origins poster the booth crew handed out to every visitor. Sadly filming wasn't allowed as in so many booths.

God of War III


I didn't play this game because it was overcrowded. The demo they had on GamesCom was the E3 dev walkthrough which you've seen on E3 already. The game it self is
God of War to the bone. Only that it looks so incredibly good. And it is brutal as hell. Kratos constantly shreds enemies, decapitates them or tears them in two parts.
You can even see the enemies blood on Krato's body. The end of the demo said "March 2009". If they keep the quality as in the demo it's another fine fine PS3 exclusive. Check out some gameplay here!

Heavy Rain


Only watched here too. I think I've seen the demo somewhere elese before. You are that police man that searches a dump yard for clues to a murder. In the process you'll meet a big black guy
who is very angry. Just like Mass Effect different answers are able in the conversations. And you have different choices activated by different buttons when searching the surroundings.
In another scene I've seen the officer tried to arrest the man, but has a strange weakness attack and finds himself locked up in a car in the trash comprimisation machine. He just survived it via
Quick Time Events. Check out my gameplay vids on this game!

Uncharted 2


Just watched. A very colorful feel good shooter. Another big PS3 hit. Check out some gameplay here!

Gran Turismo 5

Just like Forza 3 Gran Turismo 5 was playable with a steering wheel and pedals. To be honest, I suck at simulations and so I drove and drove, crashed, drove and suddenly time was up. Graphically Forza 3 and GT 5 are on par, but steering wheel wise I found the PS3 wheel had a much stronger force feedback.
Check out some gameplay here!

Brutal Legend


I stood over an hour in queue for this game and the time was over too soon. Brutal Legend is a game that combines Heavy Metal and humor with great gameplay. It played very nice.
The game is totally funny and especially the character facial animations are made with love. The demo level was one you propably know from before, but still great to have it played myself.

Brink


Here comes a very mysterious game. There's not much known about it yet - not more than a few screens and a teaser trailer. Gameplay is not available and I am sure if I could've filmed I'd instantly
got 300+ more subscribers on YT.
Brink is the child of a co-operation of Bethesda Softworks, who does the marketing and publishing, with Splash Damage, the guys that did the famous and still played Enemy Territory games.
The demonstration was walked through by the CEO of Splash Damage, a very sympathic British guy. At that point he did that presentation nearly ten hours over and over, but he said to "make it the best one of all" and you know what, he was right, for my part definitely. Brink plays in the future with a risen oceanic tide and everything is flooded. Like in water world the people have managed to survive.
There are two parties that fight against each other: Police and rebels. Both sides have very unique outfits. The security forces had more uniform like military dresses, while the rebels made their armor with everything they find, which lead to people with pieces of tires as shoulder armor, for example. In general, customization is king in Brink. The game has a very unique arts style,
as you know from the screenshots.
The developer showed is another special feature of Brink. This part of the demo played in a train yard, in the sections where the security forces have upper hands. A very futuristic level design, it reminded me a bit of
Mirror's Edge. A perfect location to... showcase the S.M.A.R.T control system. Basically you control your character like in any other FPS too, but here comes S.M.A.R.T. in (I've forgotten what is stands for, but the dev thanked Bethesda's marketing for the name)! Just hold one button and you'll sprint. Now every obstacle that comes in your way is about to be get over with parcour style. It seemed very good integrated. The dev showed it on a weapon scanner. He pressed the S.M.A.R.T. button and the character sprinted torwards the scanner. Now the dev looked slightly up and the character climbed very fast on the scanners top without triggering
the alarm. On the other side he turned around, pressed the button, ran towards the scanner again, but this time he looked down. Now the character slid beneath the lasers without triggering the alarm as well. Very nice made and the implementation is seemless. After that the dev decided to bring some more action in. He began a mission as security officer. It started near the water on a rebel outpost. The level design was like art. It was a rebel part of the city which could be seen by many provisoric homes in containers and the whole atmosphere was like an offshore ghetto. You arrived with your team, which was about 8 to 10 persons big, I guess. Storytelling kicked in and the officers talked about the mission and how dangerous it'd be when suddenly shots were fired and the action started. At the spawn point (instant spawns for every player) there is a terminal where you can choose your weapons and class. There are many classes like engineers and soldiers for example. The dev was running around as soldier when the team discovered a barrier with heavy enemy resistance. Now came a very cool thing I've never seen before in a game. Dynamic Mission Creation. Depending on how your team progresses through the world different situations are created and those can be solved many ways. Via a button press the mission menu appears and
now you can see active missions. For every mission you'll get experience points, more or less depending on how difficult the missions are. The dev chose in which he sneaked behind enemy lines to clear the barrier. From the other side you took the enemies out and when the barrier exploded and your comrade secured the point, the mission was finished. The next mission, as engineer was to make a path clean of enemies, so you installed
automated fire turrets, like in Team Fortress 2. Worked wonderfully and very effective. And he needed to repair a crane to get your operation vehicle where you needed it. It flexed a container upon, the forces
had to hold the position and then the story kicked in. The demo didn't let us see what was in that container, but it had to be pretty shocking and important. Arrghh, pre alpha cliffhangers...

Speaking of pre alpha: If this had been pre alpha I would've never guessed it. Brink looks extremely good. On par with Killzone 2 definitely. But it's colourful and not grey on grey. The gameplay seems very, very deep and the whole concept with teamwork and different objectives is very refreshing. This is a Quartal 1 2010 game, if it won't be delayed. It has very good chances of creating a big, big hype
once first gameplay material shows up.

All in all the GamesCom was a full success. Sadly I didn't manage to play Diablo III or Dante's Inferno and didn't find Final Fantasy XIII. Guess it was behind closed doors. We stayed the complete ten hours
opening time and it was worthy. Next year we'll be there again, definitely.