Hands On
What a weekend. The Major League Gaming (MLG) Summer Championship, also known as MLG Raleigh, has come and gone (8/24-8/26), and with it the joys of watching professional gaming. While not as big as last year, mostly due to the exclusion of Halo (which is in transition from Reach to 4 currently), this year brought with it something of value to gamers who enjoy playing games instead of watching others play. The Sony PlayStation booth included demos for three unreleased games; Borderlands 2, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, and Eve Dust 514. Since covering these games with an article on the whole experience would do no good (Borderlands 2 comes out 9/18 US and 9/21 UK after all), I've decided to write on them now, so consider this a preview of both upcoming games and of The Gamer's Gazette MLG coverage.
Borderlands 2
Advertisement for the demo at MLG Raleigh.
As I entered the "Compound," Sony's name for their demo section, I was surprised to find an open seat for the sequel of the immensely popular 2009 game Borderlands. Though I had never owned the game myself, a fellow suite member in my dorm did, and the game captivated every member of our group for nearly a semester. Though I was not overly familiar with the PlayStation controller, a few button presses quickly revealed that the controls were the same between games, and perhaps even felt smoother. But enough about that, to the demo itself.
Given the choice between the starting four characters at level 21, I chose Salvador (Sadly, I only realized later that skills had not been preset, so I was unable to get a good look at potential builds). A voice over the intercom greets me, telling me that I will be unable to get through the Hyperion Shield without obtaining a Claptrap upgrade. Roland, the owner of the voice, reveals that a supposed friend of mine, Mordecai, would know more about where to find one. As I make my way towards his location, I am met by multiple Stalkers, who attempt to use cloaking to get within melee range or fire needles at me. A few quick burst from my corrosive poison rifle finish them off, as well as reveal that I have made progress on a challenge to deal a large amount of corrosive damage. Rather than dwell on what other challenges I could start on, I climb up the hill to Mordecai's position. Upon greeting each other, Mordecai reveals that our mutual enemy, Jack, has captured Mordecai's pet named Bloodwing, who has all of Mordercai's data, including my Claptrap upgrade, stored on her collar. Mordercai tells me to travel to the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, Jack's hideout, to retrieve his pet, while he provides assistance both in term of information and supporting fire from his sniper. Just like Frozen Express, he says.
The trip to the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve is both short and painless, thanks in part to Mordercai's sniper shots and my incendiary long range rifle, having run out of ammo for my original rifle. I manage to pick up a corrosive sniper, however, before I find myself at a locked gate. Pressing the button to open said gate only summons loader droids to defend their sanctuary, but Mordecai states that wounding three of the robots would cause the gate to open. Not one to argue with his logic, I take up position away from the gate and use well placed sniper shots from both myself and my ally to injure the necessary number of loaders.
Mordecai
Upon entering through the now open door, I am greeted by numerous engineers along with loaders with spinning blades designed to deflect bullets. While still taking full use of Mordecai's sniper, I decide to use my grenades and shotgun to take down my foes. Upon reloading, I learn that Salvador throws the shotgun at his foes, resulting in the shotgun exploding and causing damage to the area around it, only to regenerate filled with ammo a moment later. Needless to say, taking down enemies by throwing your gun is a special kind of joy. I continue onwards, fighting more engineers and loaders, who are eventually reinforced by flying repair bots that I quickly take out with my revolver. At last I arrive at the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, with the path now ending at a jump down into a skag infested habitat.
Here I will reveal that I played this trail twice, both as Salvador. The fact that I was playing Borderlands 2 before its release caused me to completely forget to take notes the first time around. The first attempt also ended shortly after this point, as my brother had given up his seat to another gamer and was itching to go watch the next League of Legends match. I managed to kill a massive corrosive skag along with his smaller brethren with my two rifles. My second attempt did not go as well. I will admit that I was cocky and charged the skags with my shotgun, a very, very bad plan. Those skills I didn't know weren't set would've been really helpful...
Though only a demo, the game felt like a worthy successor to the original Borderlands. Controls were sharp and responsive, gameplay was fast paced and varied in difficulty (my gung ho attitude didn't help), and the art style is as eye pleasing as ever. The gameplay trailers that I have watched capture the essence of the game accurately, but only by playing the game did I get a better feeling for what the game will be like, and I enjoyed what I experienced. Sadly, I was unable to play the demo as other characters, nor was I able to interview the Borderlands 2 dev member in attendance, due to my impeccably bad timing. Oh well, perhaps the next two previews will make up for my mishaps.
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale
Most of my demo playing time was spent on PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale with cheese and bacon, as the game supported four player splitscreen versus. Man do I hate typing out the full title. Anyway, for those who have not heard of this game, this is Sony's answer to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series, and it shows. The game plays extremely similar to the Smash Bros. games, the physics engine is nearly identical, and even character moves are copied (Sweet Tooth has a move that is a direct copy of a Donkey Kong move, among others). Does this make PSASBR w/C&B a bad game? Well...no. Of all the games to copy Sony picked a good one, and though it cannot out Smash Bros. Smash Bros., it does serve as a good Sony version of the brawler style game.
Many of the currently announced characters.
I was able to play four matches, each with a different character and map. My first character, Nathan Drake of Uncharted Fame, was a very balanced character, with both a decent melee move selection as well as multiple ranged gun attacks. Drake also comes with numerous moves that involve pushing over ancient columns or breaking stone floors onto his foes, which are quite hilarious. The fighting was very frantic, as the map selection, PaRappa the Rapper's Dojo, started off small and then expanded as the small building we were fighting inside fell apart. As this was my first time playing the game, however, I spent most of the time testing the various buttons, so I only managed to come in second. My brother, however, figured out that Fat Princess has a really overpowered move, and took full advantage of it to score a ridiculous 14 kills. Stupid cavalry chicken thing.
*Ahem* Moving on, my next match was on Nathan Drake's Map high in the sky onboard a plane. I decided to try out the Big Daddy of Bioshock, and boy was that a mistake. The Big Daddy is incredibly slow, and has little in the field of long range attacks, as his splicing moves are still limited in range. I managed to come in fourth against three bots, partly because I do not enjoy slow characters and also because I fell off the map twice. Yes, I am not afraid to say that I failed miserably, because my next character, Radec of Killzone, feasted upon his enemies. I decided to try out the God of War Hades map, which was wide enough to take full advantage of Radec's arsenal of weaponry. A sniper for long range, a pistol for up close attacks, not to mention assault rifles and grenade launchers, there was little my close combat foes could do against my zoning techniques. However, I came away feeling that Radec might be too ranged oriented, and the Big Daddy too close combat designed, but perhaps that was the aim of the developers. I felt that Nathan Drake's broad range of skills would dominate these two specialists should he be controlled by a skilled player. Dante of Devil May Cry, my fourth character, also fit into Drake's category, but was slightly inverted; while Nathan had numerous attacks but seemed to possess more ranged attacks, Dante commanded more melee attacks with his dual pistols serving as his ranged techniques. Perhaps Dante made up for this with exceptionally long range melee strikes from his sword/scythe/axe/whatever is decides to be for the attack. Unfortunately, I once again took home second place as the Sackboy player continuously exploited a terrible Fat Princess player for numerous kills. Oh well, you win some you lose some.
Eve Dust 514
I had the exact opposite problem with Dust 514 than I had with the other two games. Because the game is an online shooter, and in fact because the demo was actually part of the closed beta currently going on (though apparently "closed" is a loose term, as I later found out), I was never able to try the game out myself. However, I was able to talk to two different members of the dev team, to get a feel for what the game is about.
Eve Dust 514
Eve Online is an MMORPG focused around space combat and operations. The game is known for a lot of things, such as its massive economy, but a primary claim to fame is that the game is run on a single game universe (well, the Chinese have their own, but whatever). Everyone is located in the same realm, for those of us who have played World of Warcraft. How does this play into Dust 514? As the devs told me, Dust is essentially the ground based shooter part of the galactic wars that go on in the Eve universe. And as a part of the Eve universe, they are on the same server. As in the PS3 shooter and the PC space combat game are interconnected. Does a spaceship corporation need to capture the mining facilities on a planet? Hire mercenaries (AKA PS3 players) to take down the current owners of the planet. Now the corporation owns the planet and the mercs have more cash. Do the mercs need some help in their battle? Ask for an orbital bombardment, and in real time your allies above the planet will place heavy fire where you need it. Conversely, the mercs can fire anti-spacecraft missiles into space to help out their allies outside the planet's atmosphere. The devs were really excited about the possibilities this sort of inter-connectivity could open up, and so was I, though I will wait until the game has been released to pass judgement.
As far as gameplay goes, the game looked like it included most of the standard FPS features, though without playing the game myself I can't say in what areas CCP Games has innovated on gameplay wise. The game does have a lot of vehicular combat, with light assault vehicles (LAVs), tanks, and airships (similar to falcons/hornets from Halo) currently making their presence known in the game. The dev members did mention that personal mechs would eventually make their way into the game which combined with the various types of infantry would be a wide arsenal to choose from. The mechs are part of the around two years worth of updates already planned for the game, so who knows what else is in store?
By now maybe our PS3 owners here at TWC are thinking "Huh, this game sounds interesting, but how much will it cost?" Nothing. Dust 514 is a free to play game that will make use of microtransactions. In fact, the game is free to download for all PS3 owners. Now that word "microtransactions" probably raised some alarms, so let me clarify how the devs described it. The majority of the various potential purchases are aesthetic in nature. The few that aren't however, work as follows. As a character you level up certain attributes/levels, up to a maximum of 5. Your current level determines what weapons you can use. However, you can use real life currency to essentially buy a gun of a higher rank for use now. But it only goes up one level; a level 1 can only buy/use a level 2 gun, and even then if they waited until they reached level 2 they would've been able to acquire the gun then. And at level 5 there are no more advantages to this, as level 5 guns are the maximum. This prevents the game from become pay to win, something the devs adamantly wanted to avoid. This also works for the regular in game currency; an Eve Online player could give some of that currency to a Dust 514 player in order for them to get better weapons, but as they will only be able to buy their current level gear Eve Online players won't be able to massively affect the balance between Dust 514 players. Oh yeah, you can trade stuff between games. Comes with being on the same server, no doubt.
Well, there you have it. I wish I could've gotten a hold of the Borderlands 2 dev or had a chance to play Dust 514 for myself, but with the multitude of stuff going on at MLG Raleigh it was hard to find time to do it all. In the future we here at the Gamer's Gazette will try to bring more previews of unreleased game demos as expos come and go, but this will probably be a rarer column than the others. But when it does show up, we hope that you will take a look at upcoming games with us.
- CJ