Gamescom 2010 special // Day 4

The last day we checked out of our hotel early in the morning. We dropped our luggage in one of the underground lockers at the central station and made our way to the show floor…

We went inside and walked straight to the Sony 18+ area where they were showing Infamous 2, Killzone 3, Dead Nation, Socom, The Fight, Time Crisis 4, Heavy Rain with move support and Motorstorm Apocolypse. I went straight for The Fight because i was curious to try out the new motion controller. But when we couldnt get the game to work we quickly decided to try something else. I noticed Killzone 3 was playable in 3d in the corner bathtub so i made my way there and waited untill the person before me was finished playing. Meanwhile my companion checked out Motorstorm. When it was my turn to play Killzone 3 in 3d from a bathtub my companion sat down on the toilet next to me and played the normal version. I’m not a huge Killzone fan but i do like the atmosphere they have put in the games. The first few minutes i was mostly trying to focus my eyes on specific details but when i found out this was almost impossible i just tried to make my way through the level they provided. It was the same level we already saw on the E3 demo but that didnt matter much to me.

The game played and felt like killzone 2 with the controls being a bit better then before. The only problem i had was that it was hard to see details in the distance wich made aiming a bit harder as well. Especially when everything is in a shade of gray or black. The only things that stood out in the distance where the red eyes from the hellghast. This became even harder to see when the screen got filled by explosions and rpg’s. In my opinion its still to early for me to see the benefits of playing games in 3D. I found the game to be a lot easier on a normal television.

After we both finished playing in the bathroom we wanted to check out Time Crisis 4. I’m a big Time Crisis fan so i couldnt wait to see what the new controller would do to this game. Unfortunatly it was a big dissapointment. You didnt have to aim at all but just point the Move on the screen and move the target reticule over the enemy’s while holding the trigger. The whole take cover, reload and aim gameplay was gone and this is what made Time Crisis so much fun to begin with. Graphically the game didn’t look to bad only maybe a bit to colourful. We both shared this opinion when we put down the controls to see what else was new.

After having another look at Infamous 2 wich looks pretty sweet we tried our luck on Dead Nation. This is a PSN downloadable game only that focusses on killing hordes of zombies as creative as possible. Much like Dead Rising only seen from the top down and without Gaffa-tape. The first part you only have a simple hand gun that shoots single shots and you can use melee attacks to bash zombies that get to close. But when you progress there are weapon shops that provide you with more efficient killing devices. You can use sound, light and movement to distract zombies from attacking you. The first items that let you experiment with this are flares and grenades. When you throw a flare all zombies in the area start running towards it and when they are close enough just lob a grenade in the center to blow the to pieces. Littereraly blown to pieces because the way the zombies die is really spectacular. Other things you could use in this demo to distract the undead horde were car alarms & vending machines resulting in the same blood and gore fest that is Dead Nation.

After having another go with The Fight and seeing all that Sony had on offer we made our way outside. There we walked passed Enslaved. Since there wheren’t alot of people playing this we went in to have a look. The graphics looked pretty and the action looked intense but when we got our hands on one of the controllers we found it to be none of this. Every jump was pre-programmed meaning you only had to press x on the edge and Monkey would jump across no matter the distance. You couldnt even fall down if you just kepped pressing forward and x al the time. It did make you feel like you where playin a movie but since we both like a challenge we dropped the controlls after 5 minutes and made our way to the exit of the booth.

We had a final look around on the show floor, played a few more games we missed earlier and finished the Gamescom with another visit to the EA stand to try and get that Need for Speed T-shirt one more time. Unfortunatly we both failed…

Gamescom 2010 was a nice chance for us to see some of the upcoming titles and we had a great time exploring it all…See you next year Cologne!!!

(photo special will follow)