ea-spring-break-2008
Latest
Joystiq hands-on: Left 4 Dead
click to enlarge var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/Hands_on_with_Left_4_Dead_2'; Having fortunately escaped a swift booting from last night's EA Spring Break event by PR folk for making an innocent (we swear) "If you make a sequel, will it be titled Right 4 Dead?" query, we sat down and got our kill-on in Turtle Rock Studios' PC and Xbox 360 shooter. Our first thought: Maybe this shouldn't be published under the EA Games label; EA Sims might suit it better. Because, frankly, we can't conjure a game that could better be described as a "zombie apocalypse simulator." Take that, GT5, with your "driving" simulation. Highlighting the four-player Survivor co-op mode, the event's Left 4 Dead station featured four HP Blackbird PCs, so we were definitely experiencing the game as an owner of a high-spec gaming rig would. To that end, the game is looking even better than it did at previous showings, wowing us with a bevy of neat visual tricks (flashlights produce rainbow halos when you stare at them straight on, for instance) and fluid character animation that had us making mental comparisons to Call of Duty 4's lifelike character motion. Left 4 Dead's visual style -- which is largely realistic with just enough style and saturation to lend it a slight arcade hue -- worked its magic and we were soon firmly in the game world's clutches. Not that we were complaining.%Gallery-22771%
Joystiq hands-on: Battlefield Heroes
click to enlarge Producer Alexander Grondal said the team wants Battlefield Heroes to run on your Grandma's PC and -- with a sub-250MB download and the ability to run on Intel's anemic integrated video offerings -- we're sure it will. But that doesn't mean Grams is going to kick the Pogo crack pipe and be racking up levels in Heroes anytime soon. It's about as simple a shooter as you can imagine -- everything from the cartoon aesthetic to the streamlined controls reinforce the game's message: have fun -- but it's still a shooter at heart. It's a curious message coming from the same team that's been bringing the popular, and complicated, multiplayer Battlefield games to the hardcore shooter fans of the world. Has some of their audience grown up? Run out of free time? Still using the same gaming rig they built to play Battlefield 1942 in 2002?In our brief experience with the game at EA's Spring Break event in San Francisco last night, we were initially disoriented by the third-person perspective. Even though you see your character, Heroes doesn't play like a third-person shooter; it's an FPS through and through. A quick mental adjustment later, and we were running after enemies, grabbing flags, flying planes, and driving tanks.%Gallery-22758%
