In my first post about the MCM Expo I covered the following games – Explodemon, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Blade Kitten, GoldenEye 007, Super Scribbleanuts and Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. That wasn’t the end of my gaming session though. I got to play another 7 games during what turned out to be a very busy afternoon for me at the Expo.
Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate Of Two Worlds
Oh dear. Marvel vs Capcom 3 is challenging Blade Kitten for my worst game of the show. I don’t know what they were thinking by adding totally stupid 60+ hit mega attacks into the game. Heck, my characters spent half the time off the top of the screen and the rest of the time zipping about it so fast you couldn’t see them. What’s the point in spending any time designing the characters if you arn’t going to see them for more than a nanosecond. The game consisted of one mega attack after another until you’d wiped out your opponent. Sounds fun? Err, no. It all seemed very over the top and really quite dull. I miss the simpler times of Tekken 1, 2 and 3 when it was all about fighting and not uber mega stealth ninja attack battles.
Medal of Honor
This could have been Battlefield: Bad Company 2 or Call of Duty 4 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or Call Of Duty: Black Ops and I wouldn’t really have noticed. It looks ok and plays like you expect a first person shooter to play. People shoot at you and you shoot back and you/they die. I can’t think of anything I was impressed with or really hated. It’s was all simply ok.
Fists of the North Star: Ken’s Rage
Surprisingly enough I was quite taken by this game. Graphics wise the game isn’t a looker. Compared to Warriors: Legends of Troy (next door to this on the show floor), it does look a bit unfinished. However, it was lots of fun to play. Fists of the North Star: Ken’s Rage is the closest I’ve gotten to a decent Double Dragon/Final Fight game in many years. The controls are intuitive and like Batman: Arkham Asylum you will be kicking ass like some sort of seasoned Ninja in no time. Which for me is all sorts of win. That doesn’t mean the game is a walk over, its just that the game itself makes it easy to have fun. There’s a great range of cool looking moves, plenty of bad guys to drop-kick in the face and lots of scenery to destroy. Worth checking out.
Deathsmiles
This was a bat-shit insane shoot em-up from the developers Cave. It was completely mental to play with all sorts of mutant animals, people and objects spewing a ridiculous amount of bullets at you. Too many bullets it would seem if the in-game slow down is anything to go by. It was fun in a WTF? way, but not something I can see myself playing that often. I’m not one for replaying levels to get the greatest high score in the universe ever (for a day). Play game, complete game (or get annoyed/bored with everything). Move on. Personally, I can see Deathsmiles fitting into the annoyed/bored category.
I felt the game was trying to hard. There was too much going on for it to be really fun to play. I’m not talking about making it easier, but rather making it so at least the console can cope with the on screen action. Slow down (however helpful) is not a good thing to see in shoot em-ups. The video below shows everything I’ve talked about. You have manic action, slow down and at 2:06 a giant cow boss. Moo. Pew, pew. Moo….
Warriors: Legends of Troy
This felt like being inside the Jason and the Argonauts film, which in itself was quite cool. Armed with a shield and sword, you battle against overwhelming odds to, I don’t know, battle some more? There wasn’t much more to this game than bashing the living crap out of lots of other characters dressing in armour and brandishing shields and spears. The giant stature I fought looked really cool but was a right git to kill. He was absolutely huge and I was very tiny. Hacking at his shins was about all I could do! Overall the game was entertaining if a little one dimensional. Hack, defend, hack, defend, run, hack, defend.
Dead Space 2
Aliens, space, gore, guns and spooky. Yep, it was the same Dead Space 2 demo that I played at the Eurogamer Expo. Not much more to add really other than there seemed to be a lot more jaggies on the screen than before. It maybe because of the PlayStation 3 joypads being fixed to the demo pod, my face ended up about an inch from the screen. Nothing looks good from being that close. As I’d played the demo before I went off to play Gran Turismo 5.
Gran Turismo 5
I decided to really test my driving abilities out on the 20.8km Nürburgring Nordschleife track in an Enzo Ferrari(F60). Whilst the track generally looked absolutely lovely (I still have a problem with the crappy looking tress though) including all the on track graffiti, my driving was absolutely appalling. I hadn’t realised until that day just how difficult the Enzo is to drive. The merest hint of power before you’ve got the car stable results in a lovely spin. So I sneaked off into the rest of the show whilst no one was looking. I think my driving skills have been ruined by too much Burnout. Then again, in my defence, Gran Turismo 5 has taken so damn long to develop that there were loads of awesome Burnout games to keep me occupied.
Gran Turismo 5 release date is still the subject of much speculation. I’m hoping for a 2010 release, but only Sony know if that’s going to happen. In the mean time you can find out where the best Gran Turismo 5 deals are.
That’s about it for the MCM Expo now. It was an excellent games expo from my point of view. I managed to play a huge amount of games during the Friday. There were some really great games, and some really terrible ones, but overall the standard was high. I’m certainly looking forward to the next show in May 2011.
Nick started gaming in the early 1980s on Nintendo's Game & Watch handhelds before spending a serious amount of time playing Elite on the BBC Micro. Its been downhill since then via ownership of the Atari ST, Amiga, A500 and A1200, PC Engine GT, PS1, PC, PS2, Gameboy Advance, SP and DS, PSP, Wii, PS3, PS Vita, A1200 (again) and PS4 Pro. He likes shoot-em-ups and role-playing games – citing Dungeon Master as “the greatest game ever made” – driving games, the odd platformer and Zelda games.
Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate Of Two Worlds
Oh dear. Marvel vs Capcom 3 is challenging Blade Kitten for my worst game of the show. I don’t know what they were thinking by adding totally stupid 60+ hit mega attacks into the game. Heck, my characters spent half the time off the top of the screen and the rest of the time zipping about it so fast you couldn’t see them. What’s the point in spending any time designing the characters if you arn’t going to see them for more than a nanosecond. The game consisted of one mega attack after another until you’d wiped out your opponent. Sounds fun? Err, no. It all seemed very over the top and really quite dull. I miss the simpler times of Tekken 1, 2 and 3 when it was all about fighting and not uber mega stealth ninja attack battles.
Medal of Honor
This could have been Battlefield: Bad Company 2 or Call of Duty 4 or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or Call Of Duty: Black Ops and I wouldn’t really have noticed. It looks ok and plays like you expect a first person shooter to play. People shoot at you and you shoot back and you/they die. I can’t think of anything I was impressed with or really hated. It’s was all simply ok.
Fists of the North Star: Ken’s Rage
Surprisingly enough I was quite taken by this game. Graphics wise the game isn’t a looker. Compared to Warriors: Legends of Troy (next door to this on the show floor), it does look a bit unfinished. However, it was lots of fun to play. Fists of the North Star: Ken’s Rage is the closest I’ve gotten to a decent Double Dragon/Final Fight game in many years. The controls are intuitive and like Batman: Arkham Asylum you will be kicking ass like some sort of seasoned Ninja in no time. Which for me is all sorts of win. That doesn’t mean the game is a walk over, its just that the game itself makes it easy to have fun. There’s a great range of cool looking moves, plenty of bad guys to drop-kick in the face and lots of scenery to destroy. Worth checking out.
Deathsmiles
I felt the game was trying to hard. There was too much going on for it to be really fun to play. I’m not talking about making it easier, but rather making it so at least the console can cope with the on screen action. Slow down (however helpful) is not a good thing to see in shoot em-ups. The video below shows everything I’ve talked about. You have manic action, slow down and at 2:06 a giant cow boss. Moo. Pew, pew. Moo….
Warriors: Legends of Troy
This felt like being inside the Jason and the Argonauts film, which in itself was quite cool. Armed with a shield and sword, you battle against overwhelming odds to, I don’t know, battle some more? There wasn’t much more to this game than bashing the living crap out of lots of other characters dressing in armour and brandishing shields and spears. The giant stature I fought looked really cool but was a right git to kill. He was absolutely huge and I was very tiny. Hacking at his shins was about all I could do! Overall the game was entertaining if a little one dimensional. Hack, defend, hack, defend, run, hack, defend.
Dead Space 2
Aliens, space, gore, guns and spooky. Yep, it was the same Dead Space 2 demo that I played at the Eurogamer Expo. Not much more to add really other than there seemed to be a lot more jaggies on the screen than before. It maybe because of the PlayStation 3 joypads being fixed to the demo pod, my face ended up about an inch from the screen. Nothing looks good from being that close. As I’d played the demo before I went off to play Gran Turismo 5.
Gran Turismo 5
I decided to really test my driving abilities out on the 20.8km Nürburgring Nordschleife track in an Enzo Ferrari(F60). Whilst the track generally looked absolutely lovely (I still have a problem with the crappy looking tress though) including all the on track graffiti, my driving was absolutely appalling. I hadn’t realised until that day just how difficult the Enzo is to drive. The merest hint of power before you’ve got the car stable results in a lovely spin. So I sneaked off into the rest of the show whilst no one was looking. I think my driving skills have been ruined by too much Burnout. Then again, in my defence, Gran Turismo 5 has taken so damn long to develop that there were loads of awesome Burnout games to keep me occupied.
Gran Turismo 5 release date is still the subject of much speculation. I’m hoping for a 2010 release, but only Sony know if that’s going to happen. In the mean time you can find out where the best Gran Turismo 5 deals are.
That’s about it for the MCM Expo now. It was an excellent games expo from my point of view. I managed to play a huge amount of games during the Friday. There were some really great games, and some really terrible ones, but overall the standard was high. I’m certainly looking forward to the next show in May 2011.
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