CES 2008: My 15 minutes with Age of Conan

By: Chris Hori

In my search for all things gaming that i could get my hands on, i ran into some playable models of Age of Conan in the Microsoft Booth. It was early and so i had quite a big of time to play around with the game and chat up with Jason Stone (game designer).

For those who don’t know by now, Age of Conan is another Massively Multi-player Online game (MMO) . It features PvP and PvE elements and at its base level, if you have played an MMO before, then you will feel right at home on this one. There are however a few notable differences.

Age of Conan is the first MMO to get a Mature rating, thus limiting its player base. While this might be a draw for many people who can play this game, we will see how this affects the player base size, as a large community is one of the many draws of these types of games.

In speaking with Jason, he did give some interesting bits of info on the game when asked about many of the issues that current MMO’s are experiencing. The first is the issue of equipment.

Many PvP elements of games are heavily affected by “Gear” or the equipment that the players are wearing. People who have the time to acquire the best and most powerful items have a distinct advantage over those who do not. Also players who have the means to attain extremely difficult to get PvE gear have an advantage over the casual PvP player. To counter this, Age of Conan has effectively split its game into two separate parts, with items having two ratings, one for PvE (player vs npc’s) and PvP (players vs another live player). Thus high level PvE items may not be as effective when used against another live player. While this does force players who wish to do both PvP and PvE to have to work far harder to attain high level items, it does prevent hardcore PvE players from attaining the best equipment and then unbalancing the PvP environment.

The next issue i asked about was Age of Conan’s “end game content”.

In terms of PvE, there will be the standard dungeons, however Age of Conan has always been envisioned as a PvP game. There will be open areas that will allow for player guild built cities that will be available for PvP action. In this way they are hoping to achieve an Epic level of game play with Player Guilds making raids upon other Player Guilds cities.

My personal concern is the game lag caused by the potential of so many players in one area of the server, however Jason assured me that this would be looked at during the beta phase and of course updated as needed during the actual game play.

Finally, is the Character Creation.  After all, no one wants to look the same.

For CES, the female characters had been disabled as they were recieving a complete overhaul.  Their goal was to create female models that were both accurate to the setting, but still retain a sense of visual appeal for players.   So with that in mind, i played around with the Male models.  Each of the races looked fairly distinctive.  The options for each race was limited to what was appropriate to the area that they historically hailed from, so fair skin and blond hair was only available on one race, where as dark skin was limited to another.  The remainder of the visuals were affected by sliders, and you can indeed make a short fairly fat (but still muscular) male.  All of this means that you have a good level of control over your appearance, but still retain a distinctive look for your race.

Overall the game itself looked good.   The world felt appropriate and right from the start you get a good sense of the world you are in.  I felt that the world was indeed a rough place to live in, but you are a rough character that can handle it.  The game has a lot of potential in its concept.

One final note: Jason did confirm that depending on where you pre-order the game, you will receive different in game gifts.  Game Stop pre-orders would receive the War Mammoth mount, while Best Buy pre-orders would receive the War Rhino… not to bad to start the game riding a huge animal of destruction.

CES 2008: Sanyo Xacti HD-1000 Camcorder

by Corwin Haplo

The Sanyo Xacti HD-1000 camcorder typical street price is $700.
It adds to their pistol-grip, raygun-like product lineup with an HD 1080i model with a 10x zoom and a large (for its small size and light weight) 2.7″ LCD viewfinder. It records onto SD and SDHC cards (up to 8GB). The HD-1000 can record in 1080i (1920×1080), 720p (1280×720), VGA (640×480), or QVGA (320×240).  Surprisingly, its digital camera resolution is only 4MP.  A Sanyo representitive explained this as a necessary step to increase the low-light video capabilites, a common complaint on older models.  Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to test this out.  It excels as a fully auto, point and shoot camcorder.  There is even a button for “Full Auto” (disables all manually controlled features) and another one for “Simple Mode”, which controls what is displayed on the LCD screen. Strangely, the manual focus is through the joystick and not a more traditional ring around the lens.  The rest of the manual features are intuitive, but it was not clear to me how to change settings like exposure, while you were recording video, typically one of the more popular manual override features to adjust for difficult lighting conditions (e.g., snow or bright window).  I did find it irritating that the lens cap is not attached in anyway to the camcorder.  Most camcorders today either have a leash for the cap or retractable sliding doors to protect the lens.  It would not surprise me if most people lose the lens cap within a few weeks of getting their new camcorder.  Another irritation is that all output connections (HDMI, component video, S-video, composite video, audio) are only available through the docking cradle.  So if you want to view your footage at your friend’s house, remember to bring the docking cradle.  A word to the wise about HD camcorders in general (not just this one).  Because this records in 1080i or 720p and Mpeg4 H.264, you hopefully have the latest Core2Duo PC with lots of RAM and a high-end video card, or you won’t be able to look at the footage you take.  Playing back this footage is very taxing on the PC and this also means that you can only share your videos with folks who have similar high-end PCs.  This essentially rules out most parents and grand parents.

Evolution Factor Medium Low  

My closing thoughts are that this higher-end product does not have enough feature difference to justify the expensive price tag.  Instead, consumers may want to look at the cheaper (by $200) Sanyo Xacti HD700.  You get a 7MP digital camera (instead of 4MP), it is 720p (instead of 1080i which will still look awesome on an HD TV), has a 5x zoom (instead of 10x zoom), and allegedly worse low-light performance. The HD700 has a better balanced set of features for the much more reasonable price point ($500 street price).

CES 2008: My 15 minutes with Hellgate

The Dell outdoor gaming truck had PC’s running with Crysis, Hellgate, and Unreal Tournament 4 going on them. Special thanks to Missy from PMS Clan who so sweetly offered to play a game with me. Then proceeded to beat me 8 to -2 at UT4. Yes, i killed myself twice. Missy just seemed so sweet that i thought i would help her out, because I’m just nice like that.

After that, i started up Hellgate.

Overall, i must say that I felt pretty disappointed. While it might be my fault for expecting something that it wasn’t, i was hoping for an MMO where players meets the armies of hell, where humanity feared for its life in the ruins of its own world.

Instead i had a corruption sword in one hand (purchased from a vendor in the starting area), one hit killing zombies in a fairly bland setting. Any wounds i took were almost instantly healed by the health regen effect of my pants. This only showed me that this game will become gear based, where high level loot will become essential when fighting in higher level areas. While i realize i was in the beginning area, at no point did i feel humanity’s struggle for survival against hell, nor did i feel threatened, or even immersed in the world i was placed in. I had no problem with the graphics themselves, but the overall presentation of setting, character and NPC’s just felt very weak.

The controls had some problems as well. I was playing a Melee class, but it still controlled like an FPS game, with the WASD keys for movement, the mouse to look, and left click to attack. This left me mashing the left click to swing my sword, my left hand using WASD and some magical third hand that i don’t possess to work the number pad where i mapped my special moves. I couldn’t Click to activate special moves as moving the mouse changes where my character is looking and swinging the sword.

The quests are MMO quests, kill 10 zombies, get 10 drops, kill the boss looking zombie that has the little kids fake leg (you really get this quest) so nothing truly inspired there.

What is most disappointing is that i didn’t feel like there was an opportunity for the game to be reach the Epic level. Either through PvP or PvE content. No struggle to survive, no saving the world, no epic purpose or battles that would draw me into the world and keep me there for days on end. Perhaps late game content might improve the game, though i don’t think i would last that long to find out if there is something worth playing.

I am going to pass on Hellgate: London in favor of games both already out and coming out soon.

CES 2008: My 15 minutes with Metal Gear Solid 4

 By: Chris Hori

On day 1 the line at the Sony booth was long… and by long i mean i couldn’t get in.

On day 2 i arrived EARLY!  8 am (and the floor officially opens at 9) and got in by waving around a press badge. From there i headed straight to the Sony booth and all but planted myself in front of the TV that they were showing Metal Gear Solid 4 on. My diligence was rewarded with a full walk through of all 3 demo stages, and then was handed the controller to take it for a spin first hand!

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots; tactical espionage action. That is the full title, not joking. For start, you know most of the basic info: PS3 exclusive, you need a HD tv to properly play it, stealth based, blah blah blah. now on to the good stuff.

The game is Dual Shock supported, and there are moments when you will appreciate it. You might feel a rumble of an aftershock, or that of a tank, or any number of other things that might cause you to take concern on a battle field. The effect is subtle and by no means a huge give away, but the extra sensation does help to immerse you in the game. While i’m talking about the controls, i thought that they worked fine. If you have played other Metal Gear games in the past, then everything remains true to its roots. Everything from crouching to swapping weapons to making full use of the camo suit works fairly intuitively. After watching the rep play through the demo once, i got the feel of how he was controlling Snake and I jumped in right away.

One of the big game play elements is Snakes Active Camo Suit. This nifty piece of clothing has a chameleon like effect where if you hold still near any type of terrain, the suit will re-pattern itself so you blend in with your surroundings. And they did a VERY good job with this. The first thing i did was run up to every terrain texture i could find, and the suit visually did a wonderful job, from the broken rubble of a destroyed buildings floor, to the wall paper, to the muddy street. Each time the suit changed to match and my stealth meter bumped up to a secure 90%. The system works quickly and without any hassle.

I did feel that the controls had clunky moments, particularly when i wanted to turn around, and instead Snake would back up. While i understand that they were going for a realistic feel to Snake’s movements, at times you can just push back to turn around, and at others he backs up. While practice will probably help you control him better, for my demo run i found it frustrating during tense moments.

Now i am no MGS fan, but its primarily due to my lack of patience. So after clearing the first demo stage using all the stealthy tricks from quietly taking people out with my stun knife, to the good old fashion box (which is NOT considered stealthy if you box in the middle of the street), i decided it was time to get myself killed.

Swapping weapons is easy with the R2 button and shooting has 2 modes. Auto aim, which feels like the old MGS games where you face the general direction, and snake shoots the targets in that direction, and Manual Aim,which allows you to hold a button to go into a FPS style shooting view for head shots and sniping people hiding behind cover.

In terms of graphics, we have all seen the screenshots and i can assure you that the game is indeed as pretty as you think it is. I noticed a few clipping issues here and there, but i was playing a demo stage, so i expect those types of things to be cleaned up in the final version. What i can say is that the game does retain its beautiful textures and fluid movement in the actual game play.

Overall, this game still feels like Metal Gear. They didn’t take away the core of what the game is, but instead built upon it and taken it to a point where even people who might not be fans of the game can find many things to enjoy about it. Even if you don’t like to “play” the game, with the next gen graphics you definitely can enjoy watching someone else play it.  I know the crowd behind me was getting into it as i ducked between buildings trying not to get myself killed.