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CliffyB's guided tour through Gears of War
You already know what we thought of CliffyB's space marine action shooter, Gears of War (in case you don't, it's awesome!). Now listen to what CliffyB has to say about it. Gears of War Realm (that's right, a GoW specific fansite is already up and running) has posted a video of CliffyB's part in an E3 panel with a troika of console-specific gaming luminaries including Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid 4 on PS3), Xavier Poixwho (Red Steel on Wii), and Cliff Bleszinski (Gears of War on Xbox 360, duh). Cliffy talks a bit about his design of the game -- "it's almost like a platform game but instead of jumping up, you're jumping forward and around the world" -- before walking us through the first level with running director's commentary. I always love the juxtaposition of thoughtful CliffyB (see Smartbomb) and pimp-suit CliffyB. Thoughtful CliffyB is on display here. [Thanks, Luke](Update: I've embedded a higher-quality video after the break. Thanks for the link, James!)
Xbox 360 impressions: Gears of War multiplayer
Gears of War is overwhelming. It's also deceptively simple to control. Our boot camp kicked off deep inside the Microsoft booth, where we were tossed in a 4 vs. 4 team deathmatch battle that was both humbling and amazing.GOW is extremely polished in its current state. During our 30 minute play session we did not detect a moment of slowdown. The one glitch that occurred with some frequency (2-3 times) was getting stuck in cover mode -- but it was easy enough to break away. Character models, animation, lighting, and sound are already a step above any current Xbox 360 game, as they should be.The game's true brilliance is its gameplay. The core strategy revolves around cover, which has never been better implemented than in GOW. If you don't use cover, you die. Half of the thrill is reaching that perfect cover point, racing low to the ground, camera bobbing, as you roadie-run for your life, bullets whizzing overhead.
Unreal Tournament 2007 coming to Xbox 360
Not sure if this wasn't planned all along, but the above image from the May 2006 issue of GamePro magazine clearly says Unreal Tournament 3 will be coming to the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. During Epic's press preview at GDC, Mark Rein said that UT2007 was being developed on both the PC and PS3 platforms; however, Gears of War is obviously being developed on the Xbox 360. Since the Unreal Engine 3 middleware is built for both systems, there is no technical reason the games couldn't be cross ported. GoW is still a 360 exclusive ... for now.[Thanks, Mike]
Heard@GDC: no Unreal Engine 3 on Revolution
During a Q&A session following a demonstration of their new Unreal Engine 3, Epic Games' Mark Rein said, "It won't be easy to take something HD res here to the Revolution," continuing we probably "won't be seeing Unreal Engine 3 on the Revolution." Although he was clear to say that he has not seen the final hardware for the Revolution, Rein said the existing Unreal Engine 2 would provide more than enough muscle to take full advantage of the Revolution's hardware since it won't require HD resolution. Naturally, nothing's been announced, so despite the fact this came from Epic's VP, consider it unconfirmed. Any geeks in the house care to pontificate on whether or not UE3 is in fact worth it for Revolution developers?See also:Revolution can handle Unreal Engine 3Mark Rein to consider Unreal Engine 3 for RevolutionNintendo responds to Epic's Revolution disdainEpic VP rips on Revolution concept(UPDATE: To prevent further confusion, I'll attempt to clarify what I think Mr. Rein was saying. The process of porting UE3 games running in HD from platforms like PC, Xbox 360, or PS3 to the Revolution "won't be easy" and therefore, he suspects, won't be done. He elaborated that licensing Unreal Engine 3 for a Revolution game would probably be overkill, since Unreal Engine 2 is already capable of maxing out what they perceive the system to be capable of. That being said, what about the streamlined scripting and animation tools bundled into Unreal Engine 3's Kismet? Wouldn't some developers gladly pay the increased licensing fees to work in a refined development environment that, according to Epic, could cut their development costs. Furthermore, some developers, like Midway, have purchased studio-wide licenses to develop all their next-gen titles with UE3, presumably their Revolution titles as well.I think mocax got it right, "Epic's writes software graphics/game engines. Nintendo makes a machine that allows developers to deviate from Epic's core business. Any self-respecting profit-oriented corporation will twitch at Nintendo's disruption." I suspect we will see UE3 on some Revolution titles, but the idea is antithetical to Nintendo's stated ideology and thereby threatening to a company that makes their money selling eye candy.
Epic shows off Unreal Engine 3 at GDC
Epic Games, creators of the gib-tastic pixel-pr0n Unreal Tournament series were showing off the latest version of the tech behind their games at GDC: Unreal Engine 3. So, we all know it's pretty. How pretty? Super duper pretty. It'll make you give up religion and find faith in fragfests, it's so pretty. Beyond it being pretty, what else was there to show off? Epic showed off Kismet, an advanced scripting system that allowed them to create gameplay elements in a graphical UI that strongly resembled a flowchart. It's this middleware system that they claim will prevent the budgets of next-gen projects using their engine from jumping 200-300%, instead citing a more reasonable 50%.The ability to simplify many of the core game design elements will theoretically result in increased creativity; it'll be amazing to see what the mod community turns out using these tools. They showed off the system running on both a high end Dell Renegade and a PS3 dev kit, both of which elicited many oohs and aahs, despite the fact the PS3 version wasn't running on all of the system's SPUs and contained some textures from Unreal Tournament 2004. For a more in-depth look at the demonstrations, check out Gamespot and GamesIndustry.biz.Read - Epic shows off Unreal tools [Gamespot]Read - Getting Unreal with Epic's Mark Rein [GamesIndustry.biz]
GDC: A game worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize
What kind of game concept would be considered for the Nobel Peace Prize? That's the question GameLab CEO Eric Zimmerman posed to the group of developers competing at the third-annual Game Design Challenge.The winning concept (as judged by audience response), Peace Bomb, developed by Deus Ex lead designer Harvey Smith, would be a multiplayer game for the DS. Players would join together and trade resources, eventually leading to real world flash mobs — a crowd that assembles suddenly in a public space, performs a notable act, and then quickly disperses. It's Smith's hope that the Peace Bomb flash mobs would erupt around socially constructive movements, encouraging players to transform an entertaining game into an effective social project.
