The City of Koln:
Wikipedia says:
"...is the largest city both in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants. It is one of the oldest cities in Germany, having been founded by the Ubii in the year 38 BC. The name is derived from that of the Roman settlement, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. Cologne lies on the River Rhine.
...Cologne is a major cultural center of the Rhineland Cologne Trade Fair hosts a number of trade shows such as Art Cologne, imm Cologne International, GamesCom, Furniture Fair and the Photokina. Cologne is also well-known for its celebration of Cologne Carnival, the annual reggae summerjam, and Cologne Gay Pride. and has a vibrant arts scene. Cologne is home to more than 30 museums and hundreds of galleries."
The general populace in Koln is very helpful and welcoming, and the city is noted for this and it's general leaning towards European cafe culture, not something you necessarily see in other German cities. The city centre is dominated by the huge gothic Dom cathedral, but the high street is fairly generic in terms of shops. The city is clean and easy to get around thanks to the train, bus and tram system. There are some outstanding hotels and restaurants in Koln, like the Grande Milano which serves in incredible set menu based on black truffles. although expect to pay above-average prices for a good meal. The gay scene is the second biggest in Germany after Berlin, and leans towards the mature, although people are generally friendly.
Sony Booth:
Whilst MicroSoft opted for a suprisingly toned-down feel for their space, the Sony booth, whilst not as easy to navigate, was larger, brasher and crammed with content, something that PS3 users will be used to by now! The booth was divided into four colour-coded stands (yellow, blue, red and one I'm forgetting), stacked so that they created stands within booths. The Move technology was up front and centre, dominating the branding of the booths, whilst 3D had only a puzzlingly tiny presence with only one 3D screen each for Tron: Legacy, Killzone 3 and Gran Turismo 5. Whilst the depth that the 3D screens produced is very convincing-almost windowlike- the glasses one has to wear darkens the image so much it robs it of much of it's impact.
This aside, the amount of titles and content on show was incredible, from all the big AAA's, like inFamous 2, Killzone 3, GT5, and Medal of Honour, plus all the new Move, PSP and PSN games all being represented in some form. There were some cool touches with beds, baths and toilet seats supplanting for chairs, and in an interesting take on "top down" gaming being able to play certain titles horizontally (i.e. on your back). The consumer days say the booths vget very busy indeed, and while there might be some trepidation about the imminent release of Move and how it will work and if it will be successful, it generated a huge amount of interest and engagement. With Move, the one thing I've consistently noticed is that it produces smiles and enjoyment more than any of the AAA titles, surely a sign that it is working as intended and has great potential to expand the current PS3 audience.
"...is the largest city both in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants. It is one of the oldest cities in Germany, having been founded by the Ubii in the year 38 BC. The name is derived from that of the Roman settlement, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. Cologne lies on the River Rhine.
...Cologne is a major cultural center of the Rhineland Cologne Trade Fair hosts a number of trade shows such as Art Cologne, imm Cologne International, GamesCom, Furniture Fair and the Photokina. Cologne is also well-known for its celebration of Cologne Carnival, the annual reggae summerjam, and Cologne Gay Pride. and has a vibrant arts scene. Cologne is home to more than 30 museums and hundreds of galleries."
The general populace in Koln is very helpful and welcoming, and the city is noted for this and it's general leaning towards European cafe culture, not something you necessarily see in other German cities. The city centre is dominated by the huge gothic Dom cathedral, but the high street is fairly generic in terms of shops. The city is clean and easy to get around thanks to the train, bus and tram system. There are some outstanding hotels and restaurants in Koln, like the Grande Milano which serves in incredible set menu based on black truffles. although expect to pay above-average prices for a good meal. The gay scene is the second biggest in Germany after Berlin, and leans towards the mature, although people are generally friendly.
Sony Booth:Whilst MicroSoft opted for a suprisingly toned-down feel for their space, the Sony booth, whilst not as easy to navigate, was larger, brasher and crammed with content, something that PS3 users will be used to by now! The booth was divided into four colour-coded stands (yellow, blue, red and one I'm forgetting), stacked so that they created stands within booths. The Move technology was up front and centre, dominating the branding of the booths, whilst 3D had only a puzzlingly tiny presence with only one 3D screen each for Tron: Legacy, Killzone 3 and Gran Turismo 5. Whilst the depth that the 3D screens produced is very convincing-almost windowlike- the glasses one has to wear darkens the image so much it robs it of much of it's impact.
This aside, the amount of titles and content on show was incredible, from all the big AAA's, like inFamous 2, Killzone 3, GT5, and Medal of Honour, plus all the new Move, PSP and PSN games all being represented in some form. There were some cool touches with beds, baths and toilet seats supplanting for chairs, and in an interesting take on "top down" gaming being able to play certain titles horizontally (i.e. on your back). The consumer days say the booths vget very busy indeed, and while there might be some trepidation about the imminent release of Move and how it will work and if it will be successful, it generated a huge amount of interest and engagement. With Move, the one thing I've consistently noticed is that it produces smiles and enjoyment more than any of the AAA titles, surely a sign that it is working as intended and has great potential to expand the current PS3 audience.
Heavy Rain Move Edition:
Having sold a very respectable million-plus copies of Heavy Rain, there may be concerns that this Move-enabled edition (both a full-retail release and a patch for the current edition) would be redundant. To a certain degree, that's true, and it was sad to see the Heavy Rain Chronicles DLC get cancelled to get this ready for Move's launch next month. That said, there are qualities of the Move edition which suggest exciting things in the peripheral's future; the way you are asked to match physical movements of those of the characters onscreen means this feels infinitely more involving than using a Dualshock. Punching away attackers during Madison's dream sequence has an almost "you are there" quality. The only concerns are is that the choice of icons doesn't always make it clear what direction you are meant to perform: "up" and "up and forward" feel almost alike but the icons are very different. The Move peripheral takes some getting used to, but as you more spend more time with, you almost don't notice it. This is something that was true across all the move software that was tried.
SingStar Dance:I heard some groans when SingStar Dance was announced last month. Having gone hands on-literally- and busted more than a few moves in Hall 7, I can say your doubts should be assuaged. Now. Whilst this isn't as immediately impressive as Harmonix's Kinect title, and dancing with Move in your hand occassionally encourages accidental button presses, it works very well. It opens up the functionality and breadth of SingStar as a brand, but it's the gameplay which gets the big boost. You can play solo, with a dance partner, or with two of you dancing, a third AND fourth person singing, and with the demo I had with the SingStar team, this makes SingStar a whole new party experience. The calibration setup also revealed something really impressive: the precision of Move means it can estimate your height to the centimetre. not relevant to the quality of the game, but very impressive nonetheless. Menus can be navigated with Move a la Minority Report, although the sensitivity at this stage is a little high, and the dev team are aware of this.
SingStar worked with a team of street dancers in London to find choreography that was both accessible and a challenge, and it's noticeably more demanding than Harmonix' Kinect title. In terms of how hard it is, the choreography's professional origins are evident, but not inaccessible, and gentle repetition means anyone can pick this up. Changing difficulty doesn't change the choreography, but rather how it is scored, and it also varies from song to song. Comparing Crookers' "Day & Nite" to "So What" by P!nk is like, well, day and night, and there's some hardcore cardio to be had alongside the obvious fun the gameplay provides!
SingStar Dance was one of the very few booths at GamesCom to get a lot of female visitors, and everyone who was on it was smiling and having a great time. I can see this being enjoyed by casual and hardcore gamers as they master these moves, and SingStar seem very excited by the user-generated content that should be coming out of the rapidly-growing SingStar online community. SingStar Dance launches as a retail release alongside SingStar Guitar in November, and will feature new trophies added onto the current SingStar list. Other SingStore titles will be patched for Dance support in the future, so plenty for budding performers to be excited about!
Killzone 3:
Being a hardcore Killzone fanboy, I was pretty much squealing inside as I approached the age-restricted section of the PlayStation area, but any lack of enthusiasm related to the demo I had after wasn't a testament to a lack of quality, but to the over-familariaty of the demo's content-thanks, internet! These are the jetpack, minigun and WASP sections you've seen before. What was cool was the "home" feel that Sony went for on it's presentation booths, with beds, bathtubs and toilets subsituting for chairs (see right). It must be said in regards to Killzone 3 is that the brutal melees are not for the sensitive or squeamish; even at this early stage of development, and taking into consideration the level of violence in Killzone 2, it's hard not to feel a little disturbed by Sev's new-found love of twisting Helghast necks and shoving knives into their eye sockets. I did notice many players, myself included rushing up to the Hegs to give these new combat options a twist, kick or stab, so hopefully the Killzone community are looking to embrace Guerilla's new ideas. On the demo I'm guessing the difficulty has been tweaked down, because the Hegs feel like cannon fodder, not something one ever felt playing Killzone 2, so hopefully the Killzone challenge will be retained in the final release. Obviously, the game looks fantastic for a pre-alpha build, and those who criticised Helghan for being grey were ignoring Guerilla's painstaking attention to detail and how the colour palette of the world was specifically designed to draw the player's eye without using forced HUD icons, increasing the sense of immersion. Those red, glowing eyes? No accident.
PixelJunk Shooter:
I loved PixelJunk's first chapter of Shooter, one of the finest PSN downloadable titles to date, perfectly pitched and formed, taking a simple mechanic and create consistently innovative puzzles and levels out of water, lava, gas and oil powered by wonderful liquid physics. The sequel taking place in the [spoiler!] belly of the beast- literally. The first chapter's brown and red caves and mines have been replaced by bright purple intestinal tracts that spew lethal acids, and dark tunnels which you need to carry lights through to navigate: the twist being the light attracts lethal enemies! Fans of the first chapter will be very satisfied with what this next one is bringing to the table.
Dead Nation:
Setup on the the PlayStation booth's "top down" displays (see photo left), SuperStardust HD developer's Housemarque's twin-stick zombie shooter left one distinct impression: it's really, really hard. The game doesn't forgive mistakes easily, so although the notion of decimating zombie hordes might appear causal, my impression is that it's anything but. The lighting and art direction are very strong for a downloadable title as anyone interested in the game will have seen already; the use of the PS3's ambient occlusion produces a torch beam that lights up the hundreds of zombies onscreen, whilst making all that apocalyptic dismemberment look very attractive.
I loved PixelJunk's first chapter of Shooter, one of the finest PSN downloadable titles to date, perfectly pitched and formed, taking a simple mechanic and create consistently innovative puzzles and levels out of water, lava, gas and oil powered by wonderful liquid physics. The sequel taking place in the [spoiler!] belly of the beast- literally. The first chapter's brown and red caves and mines have been replaced by bright purple intestinal tracts that spew lethal acids, and dark tunnels which you need to carry lights through to navigate: the twist being the light attracts lethal enemies! Fans of the first chapter will be very satisfied with what this next one is bringing to the table.
Setup on the the PlayStation booth's "top down" displays (see photo left), SuperStardust HD developer's Housemarque's twin-stick zombie shooter left one distinct impression: it's really, really hard. The game doesn't forgive mistakes easily, so although the notion of decimating zombie hordes might appear causal, my impression is that it's anything but. The lighting and art direction are very strong for a downloadable title as anyone interested in the game will have seen already; the use of the PS3's ambient occlusion produces a torch beam that lights up the hundreds of zombies onscreen, whilst making all that apocalyptic dismemberment look very attractive.
Sims 3:
The Sims are coming to consoles! The wildly popular franchise is winging it's way to the PS3 and the 'box! All those customisation features and wonderful behaviour "mods" are all intact. I took the chance to play the current build at EA's slick and comfortable stand, and, yes, I made a gay couple :) The personality quirks that you can instil in each Sim represents a deep well of gameplay, and allows the player the opportunity to play a puppet master of sorts, but in a far more sophisticated vein than the previous games. The build runs very well and looks clean and detailed, although there is a drastic frame rate drop when you zoom out on the map (although this is something that has plagued most build of Sims, consoles or not).
This incredibly slick and good-looking game suffers one major stumbling block that I can see: the expectations people will have that it will run like Criterion's brillaint Burnout franchise. This is not the case at all. Whilst the cars till gleam, and shatter into beautiful hunks of twisted expensive metal upon crashing, this is a far more focussed and trimmed-down affair, using the very basics to produce a knife-edge balance between hunter and prey. It isn't as fast as Burnout, and it seems to be missing that crucial sense of adrenaline one would expect from a arcade racer from this particular stable, but this seems like a calculated move to focus the players to make the most of their limited resources. It doesn't feel particularly compelling at first, but after a few rounds, there were signs that the game could slowly get it's hooks into you when it's released around the very crowded Christmas schedule.
Other titles worthy of note were:
ActiVision's Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, which was a surprisingly polished and enjoyable take on a character that has not enjoyed many quality games attached to his name... clearly Arkham Asylum's shadow has germinated good things in the development community.
LBP2 was in effect, but sadly only in a very cute Story mode, whereas the real excitement is in the new Create features, none of which were on show at GamesCom on the show floor.
Ghost of Sparta, the PSP God Of War title was playable at GamesCom, and it looks astonishingly good for a handheld game. Reday At Dawn is clearly a studio who knows their way around the hardware
Overall, GamesCom was gaming manna, a wonderful experience if you care about games in any shape or form. It represents a special opportunity for the European gaming community to connect with the publishers and developers, and the sheer amount of money invested in the various booths shows how seriously the big players are taking it. Couple this with the fact it happens in a beautiful and friendly city, and that most of the attendees are eye candy, and you're guaranteed I'll be back next year.
Christopher Parkes
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