So back at E3 2012, a couple of weeks ago, I was delighted to get the chance to sit down with an industry veteran, Christian Allen, who’s now becoming responsible for bringing the hardcore tactical shooter back to the market, where more casual shooters have left a large subsection of the gamer audience clamouring for more depth, more realism and better tactical gameplay. Project Takedown reached its Kickstarter funding goal back at the beginning of April, and the team at Serellan is now getting stuck into the development, working to reintroduce the genre, eschewing certain elements of modern FPS design that have begun to compromise the shooter experience, in favour of a more old-school approach.
[Read more…]
DayZ Preview – Interview With Dean ‘Rocket’ Hall (E3 2012)
DayZ, Dean “Rocket” Hall’s zombie survival mod for Bohemia Interactive’s Arma II, has exploded over the face of the internet’s games community. This is not just ‘some zombie game’ to add to the pile of industry’s most ubiquitous theme – it’s what everyone, from the word go, has been asking for from a zombie game: open-world realistic survival.
Still in alpha, as its creator is eager to stress, DayZ is drawing an inordinate amount of gamers into its harsh world simply by providing a large open island filled with villages and towns, Chernarus, a selection of scavenge-able weapons, medical supplies and food, scattered throughout the empty buildings and 30-50 other players, who may or may not be willing to try to survive alongside each other. With 1:1 time, food, drink and blood meters along with the occasional need for realistic first aid treatment and full-on unrestricted PvP, DayZ’s vision of the zombie apocalypse is bleak and satisfyingly simple in its realism.
[Read more…]
E3 2012: Games & Press Events Review (LA Gaming Conference)
It’s here. Electronic Entertainment Expo 2012, better known as E3, has kicked off in Los Angeles and just like last year’s E3, it’s the games industry’s annual D-Day. The announcements have already started rolling in, even though the show floor has yet open. Zath is in attendance once more and will be giving you daily summaries of all the news of the day as well as in-depth game previews and interviews over the next 3 or 4 days. We’ll begin with a summary of the various press conferences of the day.
[Read more…]
E3 2011: Games & Press Events Review (Los Angeles Gaming Conference)
The Electronic Entertainment Expo (otherwise known as E3) is a strange and fantastical beast of a convention. Large companies forgo their everyday suits and shareholder meetings to install fully-fledged stylised buildings within the Los Angeles convention centre’s great halls, complete with multiple floors, ventilation, windows, backrooms and theatres.
These strange architectures are then rammed with PR trying to sell games they understand little of, developers nervous and agitated at the prospect of doing hundreds of almost identical interviews and ‘booth babes’ clueless as to what’s going on at all. And thus, as in previous years’ of E3, a literal gaming city is erected for the sole purpose of hype; most of it we see, some of it, such as the altogether more business-like buyer meetings and VIP rooms, we don’t.
Well E3 is well and truly here, and on the day before the show floor opens up to a hungry press, two of the console companies along with EA and Ubisoft held press conferences to demonstrate their latest and (hopefully) greatest, and of course, to brag about games/consoles sold.
[Read more…]