Xbox 360 Party

I attended Xbox 360’s 2nd anniversary (in Singapore) party last night (April 3rd). It’s basically a small invite-only event for developers to showcase some of the upcoming titles to local bloggers and an excuse to have cake. I’m not exactly sure why I was invited, but apparently someone from GameAxis recommended me to the Microsoft PR people.

The party itself was basically just a series of presentations by employees from various companies like EA and LucasArts. The entire thing consisted of only about 40 odd people. Everyone kind of knew each other, so I was kind of out of place since I have just about zero involvement in the local gaming scene. I was actually approached by someone who reads my blog which, considering its quality in recent months, was somewhat surprising.

Anyway, I’ll just take a quick run through what was covered during the event:

Ninja Gaiden II

No, no one from Team Ninja was there, but the Microsoft people did have a playable build of this animated bloodfest on-hand. The graphics and animation are all top-notch. It looks like it’s going to be a hit as expected, but it’s not my type of game.

Will be out in midyear. (I think.)

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

You play a previously unmentioned Sith apprentice of Darth Vadar who is charged to eliminating the remnants of the Jedis after the coup. During the game, you will eventually be presented with moral options that will determine whether you break free of the dark side.

The people from LucasArts Singapore were there with a playable build of the game. I have to say that it looks very, very awesome. Everything is super fluid and your force powers can affect just about anything that’s not part of the ground. You can use force push to bend metal doors with the physics engine doing real-time calculation of the metal warping. And you can even bend a door back to seal off the enemies behind you after you pass through.

Of course as with past games you can throw your enemies around like rag dolls with your force powers, but now you can choose to fix your cameras on the options you throw around to get a rocket view of the projectile’s path of destruction. Not to mention that you can actually throw TIE fighters around…

After watching the LucasArts people demo a fight scene with a giant Rancor, I think this may just be the best Star Wars game ever. (Or maybe I’m just easily impressed.)

The Force Unleashed will be released on 16th of September in USA, 17th in Asia and 19th in Europe. (I hope I remembered that right…) Apparently this is some sort of exclusive revelation, but I guess the rest of the bloggers present at the event should’ve blogged about it by now. Heh.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Nothing much. They showed the demo video which is already available online publicly. Interestingly though, the Microsoft people assured us that GTA will finally be available in Singapore, due to a new video game rating system which they managed to convince the MDA to adopt. I guess they don’t want a repeat of Mass Effect.

Dragonball Z: Burst Limit

A playable Japanese demo was shown and the fighting effects are surprisingly good. The camera moves in and reorientates around the 3D plane when you have some combo or power attack going.

It really has to be in motion to work…

Alone in the Dark: Central Park

Frankly, I don’t like horror games. I can’t stand them. Call me a wimp or whatever, but I just don’t find them fun. The environmental interaction looks like it has some potential, but the short gameplay demo didn’t really showcase much of it. I guess some people are probably looking forward to this. Midyear release… I think.

Dead Space

EA’s first foyer into the sci-fi horror genre (or something like that). EA didn’t have any playable demos for this, so I can’t really form any opinions about this in terms of content and gameplay…

… But at the risk of reaching a hasty conclusion, I’d say that this looks uninspired. The game from EA basically admitted it himself when he said that it’s like Doom.

EA also talked about some other games, like UEFA 2008 and Mirror’s Edge, but it’s quite clear that the guy didn’t really have much to show off. The EA guy was also the only one who used Powerpoints… (I mean, seriously…)

I’m actually quite interested in Mirror’s Edge from DICE, the studio responsible for the Battlefield franchise. The game is basically parkour inspired urban running set in an Orwellian future.

Free Stuff

There was a lucky draw at the end of the event and someone walked home with a Halo Xbox 360. The rest of us less-fortunate bloggers got a swag bag instead.

Man, what am I going to do with a wireless controller when I sold off my 360 ages ago?

P.S. The cake is a lie.