Gameriot at Lollapalooza

[Orpheus]

Went to Lollapalooza yesterday and spent sometime in the Gameriot tent before the good concerts started. They had about 50 kiosks set up with new games that are coming out later this year, as well as a few recent releases. There wer also about 20 or so Alienware PC's setup (they were the little Shuttle cases with some sweet airbrushed art on the cases for the game that was being demoed) Here's what was showing and my impression from the brief bits of time I spent on them....

 

Crimson Skies: This game looks beautiful and the controls were very smooth and intuitive even though I'd rather be playing this type of game with a joystick rather than a gamepad. Dogfighting and zeppelin killing was quite fun. Much anticipated for me.

 

Sudeki: I only played long enough to check out the combat engine. Everything was done in real time with complete freedom of movement (much like Zelda). I only had 1 other person in my party, but he acted independantly in combat and was actually rather effective. Non-combat seemed like typical RPG stuff, which isn't a bad thing. Not too thrilled with the in the game camera , but I didn't look through the options in the menu to see if it was changeable.

 

XIII: This cell shaded shooter is looking pretty sweet. I got a few headshots with a sniper rifle anda little comic strip came up showing the guy getting whacked. Pretty cool. I was able to play both the PC and Xbox versions of this game, and while I do prefer a mouse and keyboard, it played as well as any of the other FPS on xbox. It's definately a unique game, my getting it depends entirely on what other games are coming out at that time, but it is good enough that I would consider it.

 

ESPN Football: The 1st person mode wasn't available in the version I played. The playcalling system is vastly changed from last years (I was told it's more like madden, wouldn't know) and I found it to be very tedious to navigate. Once out of playcalling mode, there was little difference from 2k3. I wasn't able to get on the one machine that had NFL Fever 2004, so I'm still unsure where my football dollars are going this year (aside from not to EA).

 

Voodoo Vince: I only spent maybe 5 or 10 minutes with this. I'm not big into platformers so I don't really have any opinions on this other than I found the camera really frustrating.

 

Baldur's Gate 2: The version they were showing had 3 of the 5 characters unlocked, a human barbarian, a dark elf monk, and a moon elf necromancer. Otherwise more of the same as Baldur's Gate:Dark Alliance with nicer graphics, which in my mind, is a good thing.

 

Fallout:Brotherhood of Steel: Take the Baldur's Gate 2 game engine, mix in the best post apocolyptic RPG world ever, blend thoroughly. This was obviously a level from an early in house demo, but it was fun running around with the chain gun mowing down raiders. The Vivendi rep said he had a more recent version but didn't get a chance to install it yet. He wasn't sure what the Xbox live component was going to be, but speculated that it would just be DLC.

 

Soul Caliber 2: Oh yea! They had the Japanese version in the kiosks. This game is as sweet and addicting as the first Soul Caliber was on the Dreamcast. Game play is silky smooth. THe eye candy is very pretty. Spawn and the other new characters are alot of fun. I played this for a good 40 minutes, plus made it to the semis in the elimination tournament. I'd have played more, but I didn't want to miss Jurassic 5. Finally, a good fighter on the xbox.

 

There were other games shown that I didn't play or look at much. Tony Hawk: Underground, Hunter the Reckoning 2 were the only other future releases that I didn't play. They also had Outlaw Volleyball, Midtown Madness, Brute Force, MLB 2k3, Wolfenstein, and a few other recent games in the kiosks. They ran tourneys all day for various games, had some nice big BenQ plasma displays for people in the audience to watch the action on. Nvidia was showing off it's interactive Butterfly Girl and newest video card on two nice big plasma screen. Plus there were two Booth Babes (sorry, no camera with, damnit all), who put on little E3 style dancing productions for the Tourney stuff.

 

There was also another tent setup with the xbox music mixer. I heard alot of bad karaoke coming out of there....

 

Oh yea, the concerts were great. Audioslave and Jane's Addiction were absolutely fantastic.

[Robot Monkey]

Great capsule, Orpheus!

 

Okay, now what were the surprises (good or bad)?

 

-j

[Camp]

Thanks for sharing your impressions.

 

Crimson Skies and XIII are standouts for me this year.

[Hank Scorpio]

I didn't want to miss Jurassic 5.

 

How were they? Did Cut Chemist and Numark do any sets w/out the MC's? Cut Chemist has done some outstanding work outside of J5...namely the Brainfreeze and Product Placement mixes he did with DJ Shadow.

 

Oh, and thanks for the impressions Trav! I'm looking forward to Soul Calibur 2, and the XIII shooter.

[Orpheus]

The Good:

 

XIII was jsut slick. The pop up frames in game really made it seem like you were actively scripting a comic book as you played along. Super cool effect that really ties the game together and brings something new to the FPS.

 

The Bad:

 

The cameras in Sudeki and Voodoo Vince. Nothing kills a game for me faster than bad in game cameras. Hopefully these get tweaked beyond the builds they were showing.

 

The Surprising:

 

Crimson Skies. For all this game has gone through in development, what I played was most excellent and looks to live up to it's PC predecessor.

 

 

 

BTW Jason, J5 was great. Cut Chemist and Numark did do a solo set and it was pretty amazing.

[Chatakinns]

I am so jealous. I want to go.

[Hank Scorpio]

BTW Jason, J5 was great. Cut Chemist and Numark did do a solo set and it was pretty amazing.

 

I can imagine. Cut Chemist and Z-Trip once built an incredible blend using 'Hall of the Mountain King' and a Gift of Gab track.

 

It's actually at the end of the movie Scratch - and on the DVD Z-Trip shows how it was done.

 

After skipping Lollapalooza, I've now missed J5 twice. They were at The Rave a while back, but I can't stand The Rave. There are no really GOOD concert venues in Milwaukee.

 

Another cool blend from Scratch was done by MixMaster Mike, who took a copy of Robert Johnson's 'King of Delta Blues Singers' and mixed it over a battle record for astounding results. It prompted to me to seek out a copy of 'King of Delta Blues' and try my hand at blending it. Big surprise - I'm no MixMaster Mike. What he did was incredible.

 

 

Oh, and to keep this post somewhat videogame-related, bring on Soul Calibur 2! Yeah!

[adamsappel]

Check out the Gameriot tour schedule here. I hope to attend the stop at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC on September 8.

 

Playable PC and Xbox games include:

Forza Motorsport

Project Gotham Racing 2

Mech Assault 2: Lone Wolf

Chronicles of Riddick

Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow

Rallisport Challenge 2

Red Ninja

America's Army

Toca 2

Tony Hawk's Underground

Sid Meier's Pirates

Halo

Jade Empire

Call of Duty

ESPN NBA 2K5

ESPN NFL 2K5

ESPN NHL 2K5

ESPN MLB 2K5

Kameo

Sudeki

Shrek 2

Spiderman 2

Soul Calibur 2

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004

Tribes: Vengeance

Men of Valor

Unreal Tournament 2004

Doom 3

[Robot Monkey]

Shoot, no Philly date.

 

Hank, do you know if that Hall of the Mountain King mix is available publically anywhere on the net? I didn't realize that Cut Chemist is the same guy from Ozomatli, which I like a whole lot.

 

-j

[Cyberwoo]

Whoever goes to this MUST make it a priority to get some Forza Motorsport playtime in and post your impressions. Failure to do so could have a negative impact on your health and well being.