pre-e3-2011
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NGP backwards compatible with all PSP games (on PSN); smoothing and dual analog support included
The PlayStation Portable's lack of a second analog stick has always been a problem for shooters. Sony Bend's Resistance: Retribution had a clever – albeit complicated – solution for this shortcoming: let players tether a DualShock 3 controller to the handheld. So when Sony showed off the game running in emulation on an NGP last month, with full use of that right thumb stick, we assumed there was some benefit specific to Retribution. As it turns out, all PSP titles1 will be able to take advantage of that second analog stick, as well as other NGP enhancements. "All PSP titles that are currently available on the PSN can be played on the NGP," VP of product development at SCEA Scott Rohde told a crowd of game journalists. "And they'll take full advantage of the graphics smoothing capabilities of the system and the controls will be remapped to take advantage of the dual analog sticks." While I can't say much about the graphics smoothing – it definitely looked like it was being zoomed up 400% – I can say that the second analog stick worked wonderfully in Retribution. The game originally mapped the right stick to the four face buttons. It's unclear how the tech will work with other games, and the representative we spoke could only say that the technology we were using was early. In fact, the sole NGP prototype that had the emulation software belonged to SCE's Shuhei Yoshida, who was taking it with him back to Japan that night. We're hoping to learn more about how PSP games take advantage of NGP hardware at E3. Any specific questions or concerns, let us know in the comments. 1: Of course, the list of PSP games that never appeared on PlayStation Network includes several high-profile titles, like Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, and Lumines.
Uncharted: Golden Abyss preview: Drake me out to the small game
There's no better showcase of what the NGP is all about than Uncharted: Golden Abyss. With the NGP, Sony has created something of an uber-machine, so tricked out with bells and whistles, it would be an immense feat of creativity to simply use them all in one game; now, using them with purpose, that's a whole other thing. Before kicking off a demonstration of Golden Abyss in Los Angeles last month, Sony Bend creative director John Garvin wanted to make one thing clear. "Golden Abyss is a brand new Uncharted game," he said. "It's not a port." In case the lack of Naughty Dog involvement makes you nervous, Garvin says, "We've been collaborating and working closely with Amy Hennig, the creative director at Naughty Dog, to make sure that our characters and story are authentic." As far as characters go, we've got series' star Nathan Drake making a return, the role being reprised by omnipresent voiceover artist Nolan North. To capture that performance, Sony Bend is using the same mo-cap and sound studios that Naughty Dog uses for its Uncharted titles and, in the short cinematic I saw, it showed. If there was one area that made it clear that the main Uncharted series still belongs to Naughty Dog, it may be the lack of a number on that title. "It's a standalone story that takes place before Drake's Fortune," Garvin explained. "It's not a prequel, but a standalone story." In other words, it's self-contained.%Gallery-125163%
Metro: Last Light preview: Once more, with feeling
THQ's Huw Beynon (that's pronounced "Hugh" by the way) calls last year's Metro 2033 "a flawed masterpiece." The Ukranian-developed shooter somehow managed to over-deliver on some of the rarest components and fail on the most obvious one; a mountain of wonderful flourishes toppled by a clumsy and downright bad combat system. 4A Games nailed the bleak, post-apocalyptic tone, coupled it with survival horror-esque resource management (like the necessity to monitor your gas mask filters), and layered in home-brewed weapons like the pneumatic shotgun which you pressurize, air pump-style. What it failed to do in 2033 was to make the combat compelling ... at all. So when Beynon calls it a "flawed masterpiece" that's what he's talking about. To correct this in the sequel, dubbed Metro: Last Light, the team at 4A has "rebuilt all of the gameplay systems from the ground up" meaning "better stealth, better weapons and core combat." If you're worried that this change might upset the original game's unique tone, like I was, Beynon says that's not their intention. "We don't want to dumb this down, or westernize it," he said. "We're giving the studio complete creative freedom to tell the apocalypse their way." THQ and 4A are avoiding the desire to follow the usual sequel route and "dial it up to 11." Since novelist Dmitry Glukhovsky's original sequel to Metro 2033, titled cleverly enough Metro 2034, didn't follow the same story, the team at 4A opted to handle writing duties in-house. "It's an original story that leads on from the end of 2033," Beynon told us. "The author of the original book actually wrote a pseudo-followup called 2034 which is a very different style of book entirely. He kind of describes it as an art-house thriller where the first one was perfect material for a video game." So instead, we're back in the Moscow Metro as Artyom, the unassuming protagonist from the first game. %Gallery-124654%
TrackMania 2 Canyon preview: The amazing race
Even fans of Nadeo's legendary TrackMania racing series (which, even if you haven't played, you might remember from the wild 1k Project videos) might be forgiven for thinking they've been abandoned. The last game in the series was released for the Nintendo DS two years ago, and while a full sequel to the popular original game and its many addons was announced in 2009, those plans were apparently derailed a bit by a Ubisoft acquisition in 2010. Last year at E3, Ubisoft revealed that it would be turning the series into a platform called ManiaPlanet, with not much more than a name and an ambitious release plan (including not just the long-awaited racing sequel, but also highly customizable RPG and shooter titles as well). Since then, we haven't gotten much more than a screenshot, and a promise that the game's still coming. Finally, last month at a pre-E3 event, we got to see the title, now called TrackMania 2 Canyon, in action. This is indeed a brand new TrackMania game, featuring all of the kooky customizable tracks and over-the-top physics-based racing that's made the series so popular. But rather than TrackMania 2, Canyon is actually the beginning of the TrackMania platform, one that will depend as much on user creations as what the developers actually assemble.%Gallery-124809%
End of Nations preview: Real-time synergy
A few years ago around this time, Trion was suggesting to gamers that despite the overwhelming domination of World of Warcraft, there definitely was room for more than just Blizzard's opus in the MMO market, though the suggestion didn't raise much more than an eyebrow among those interested at the time. A few years later, Rift is out and stealing both players and mindshare, even getting hinted at on a conference call as one reason for WoW's numbers being slightly down. As much as Trion has been able to do with Rift, that game is only the beginning of the company's plan. As we saw at a pre-E3 event last week, the next step is to break ground on a second MMO title, this one built as an "MMORTS" with veteran strategy developers Petroglyph. We only got to play through part of a short match, but what's there showed that Trion is aiming to do with this genre what it did with Rift, even if there's a long way to go. %Gallery-124499%
Modern Warfare 3 preview: Two heads are better than one
After a two-minute recap montage of everything that's happened thus far in the narratively impenetrable Modern Warfare saga -- wow, I barely remembered any of that! -- two people took the stage. On the left side, standing in front of a giant Infinity Ward logo was Robert Bowling, "creative strategist" at the troubled developer and, obviously, not one of the studio's now-fired founders. On the right side, standing in front of a giant Sledgehammer Games logo, was Glen Schofield, head of the newly formed studio that was originally slated to "extend the franchise into the action-adventure genre." Now, they were both on stage flanking an even larger Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 logo. "For the last year we've been working together with Infinity Ward to deliver Modern Warfare 3," Schofield told the crowd in Los Angeles last week, forcing every games journalist there to wonder how things were going before Sledgehammer pitched in. "We came out of Modern Warfare 2 with a very strong vision of what we wanted for Modern Warfare 3," Bowling chimed in. "Things we wanted to add, things we wanted to polish, the payoff we wanted to deliver to our fans who've invested come November 8, 2011. Luckily, in the execution of that, we were looking for a team that had the same passion for the franchise, the creative skillset we could turn to, and we found that in the entire studio of Sledgehammer Games." And that was all they had to say about the unusual circumstances that led to both men presenting what is arguably the highest-profile release of the year on stage with each other. "Like Infinity Ward, we believe the game should do the talking," Schofield said, effectively ending that portion of the presentation.%Gallery-124479%
BioShock Infinite preview: Tears in the Sky-line
"Booker! Booker! Gold!," Elizabeth cries out, holding up what appears to be a valuable figurine of George Washington, found amidst the various red, white and blue offerings at Notion's Sundries and Novelties. "That's gold like I'm the king of England," former Pinkerton agent, and player character, Booker Dewitt responds. It's a charming back-and-forth, and the beginning of a lengthy pre-E3 demo for Bioshock Infinite, Irrational's city-in-the-sky followup to BioShock. The first thing you may notice is obvious: Booker speaks. "You're a character in this game unlike the previous BioShock games," Irrational Creative Director Ken Levine tells an audience of game writers. The "level" we're seeing is about a third of the way through the game and "it's still pretty early in that relationship, how you two interact with each other," Levine says. Of course, by this point Booker has rescued Elizabeth from her imprisonment, and they're being chased by "Songbird" (previously referred to simply as Him). "He's her jailer," Levine says. "Her only friend. He's got one job in the world once you bust Elizabeth out: to find her and bring her back to her tower." So, for Elizabeth, everything in Columbia is as marvelous as it is to us, and then some. "She's a bit de novo. She was basically Rapunzel sitting in her tower with her books and the Songbird. All she wants when she gets out of her tower, it's a very Roman Holiday moment," Levine says, citing the 1953 Audrey Hepburn classic. "She wants to explore and see this incredible world and she learns very quickly it's not that simple. All she wants is to control her destiny." But before she can do that, she'll need to learn to control her powers.
Gotham City Impostors preview: Batman with guns
"When I started at WB, one of the things I was most excited about was that I was going to get to work with the creative teams behind No One Lives Forever, Shogo and FEAR," Laura Fryer, general manager of WBIE's myriad Seattle studios told an assembled audience of E3 judges this morning. "So when I started, the first thing I did when I got that NDA signed was I went and found that team, and I said 'Okay guys, what are you working on?'" As it turns out, the team at Monolith Productions was in between projects and wasn't actively working on anything. After some encouraging words from Fryer, the team put some serious thought into what it wanted to work on next and the answer was ... Batman. "Okay, it's cool," Fryer told them, "but we already have a Batman game. And last time I checked, people really liked it so I'm not sure how that's going to work." "No, not the Batman," they told her. "We want to work on multiplayer Batman."
