First, a two part developer walkthrough. He doesn’t play very well, but this is a good natural gameplay video with some comments from the developer. He mentioned alot of XBOX360 features, so I’m wondering if these translate well into the PC version.
Part 1:
Part 2:
And here’s a little multiplayer video:
Some nighttime single player action:
And more single player mission objectives:
Jul 7
Not me, I am merely a pauper among nerddom, although I do my best. I heard about a movie called King of Kong that made a splash at Cannes or Sundance or somewhere a few months ago. It’s a movie about old arcade game champions and how they still compete today. I searched all over for a trailer of preview or something back then, and couldn’t find anything.
Fast-forward to today, where I caught Sicko at the Alamo, and one of the quirky trailers they showed was for the King of Kong movie.
I never realized that the world champion was so arrogant about being good at old arcade games. He literally sounds like Walken in his “When I put on my pants, I make gold records” form.
It is not our fault that we, as gamers, see a trailer for an upcoming game with impressive graphics and say to ourselves, “That must be just some cutscene, that isn’t how the game actually plays/looks”. It’s not our fault because for a decade or more that’s been the truth with nearly every trailer or teaser released. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
It looks like those days are somewhat over. Sparked by next-gen consoles, game developers are pushing the limits on the hardware to make stunning games. One of the first we’ve seen was in Gears of War for the XBOX360, which, when released matched the trailers in look and feel. At least for current expectations, games look good enough to make their own cutscenes.
But still, old habits die hard, so last year when the first trailer for Assassin’s Creed were released, they looked just a bit too cinematic and reactive to be true gameplay. As such, while the trailer was very impressive, it got shoved in the back of people’s mind as just a pretty cutscene. Fortunately, now we find that the game truly plays much like the trailer. (I say much because some of the angles of the trailer aren’t really seen in gameplay).
As the launch date of fall of this year approaches, and UbiSoft has their showcase gathering in Paris called Ubidays, more trailers and gameplay have been shown, and all of them are impressive. They back up the gameplay by showing, well… gameplay.
Thank goodness this isn’t console only, because I still haven’t purchased any nextgen consoles, and am planning to beef up my PC a tad this summer.
There’s still a trailer for a game I can’t believe is indicative of real gameplay, even though there have been countless suggestions that it will be, and that’s the stunning Killzone 2 trailer released before the PS3 went to stores. It will be hard to keep my money in my wallet if it truly looks and plays that way. And if it does, it may shake the trailer cynic out of me.
May 23
No longer WWII centered, and as the subtitle says, it is now focused on modern combat. The gameplay shown in this new trailer seems to be all close-quarters urban combat. Looks like a winner, and this time the game will not be console-only, which was the big disappointment with Call of Duty 3.
May 19
Well, here’s a video cap of the Starcraft 2 announcement video at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational:
But, they also released some of the videos in much better quality on the newly launched Starcraft 2 website.
IGN also has a few, in similar quality to the official Blizzard ones.
The Power of the Dark Crystal is the name of it, to be released over 25 years after the original was, back in 1982.
John Henson wanted to make an epic “muppet” movie, mixed with live actors, and did so in the original The Dark Crystal. I have only watched it once since my childhood, but I watched a ton of times then. It was a great movie with a very good story. After all this time, I had no clue that a sequel was in the works, this time fronted by Jim’s daughter: Lisa Henson.
The new writing credits still list Jim among them, so apparently he did have an extended story. Here is a plot summary as listed on the movie’s production blog site:
Power of the Dark Crystal is set many years after the events of the first movie. Jen and Kira, the gelflings, are older and are reigning as king and queen in the Castle of the Crystal. After the Gelflings welcome a fiery. and unexpected visitor. to their castle they learn that the very existence of the U-mun people, who live in the searing heat in the center of the planet, is threatened by the death of their sun. There is apparently only one thing powerful enough to heal the dying sun – a shard of the Crystal.
The Gelflings refuse the request for a crystal shard, as breaking the crystal would disturb the peaceful surface world’s balance. But the desperate visitor takes matters into her own hands and steals a shard, making a hasty escape through tunnels deep in the bowels of the castle. The surface world once again falls into darkness – as the UrSkek split into Mystics and Skeksis. So begins the adventure of Thurma, a girl “made of fire”, who bands together with Kensho, an outcast Gelfling, in an adventure in the “inner-world” over the fate of the planet.
The movie is slated for release in 2008. Some rumors went around that it was being cancelled but they were recently dispelled on the blog:
“The Jim Henson Company remains committed to producing Power of the Dark Crystal. The film has not been “cancelled” or “put on hiatus” or any of the other rumored status changes that have been floating around. This film is an ambitious undertaking for us and it continues to move forward…We are grateful to the fans who support Power of the Dark Crystal and we are excited to make this new chapter in the Dark Crystal story a reality.”
– Lisa Henson, co-CEO of The Jim Henson Company & producer of Power of the Dark Crystal
Mar 1
More info is slowly coming in about the Ender’s game movie. The latest is that the XMEN2 writers will be doing the second draft of the screenplay. The first draft was done by Card himself.
