3DO E3 report. extracts
Dale Drechsler
these are the 3DO extracts of the 3 part E3 posts by John Emmer. (repo
sted without his permission hope ya dont mind john). This is a really
informative, well written unbiased article.
Enjoy.
*******E3 - 3DO - ********
Back to the 3DO booth: Actually, first let's hop over to the EA booth
and see what they had for 3DO. I saw a much better version of WING COMMANDER
III than I had the first day. The fmv is definitely much improved over the
sampler version. The rep I spoke with also said they were working to reduce
the load times even further. Ther will be more fmv sequences in this version
than there wer for the PC, as some were removed to save space in that version.
I suppose you could call this WCII, The Director's Cut! (I also saw an fmv-
only demo of this game on PlayStation, and the PS fmv was more colorful than
the 3DO's.) PROWLER is a very nice mech game, much like Amok mentioned above.
The mech was very well articulated, and you appeared to have a lot of freedom
in controlling it. Elsewhere I saw FIRE WOLVES which was described to me
by the developers as a first-person Zelda. This version was pretty slow,
but if you like the diea of a first-person adventure, as opposed to just run
around a shoot everything, keep your eye out for this one - it should be out
around the end of the summer. Back at the 3DO booth, reps said NHL '96
wouldn't be out until October, but SLAM & JAM 95 should be in stores in a week
to ten days. FLYING NIGHTMARES still looked just like the sampler demo. I
did find a side-scrolling shooter tucked away on a multi-game disk, but
AQUA SHARK turned out to not be very interesting, mimicking only very early
shooters, and with no bosses. SPACE ACE and BRAIN DEAD 13 should both be
available end of July. D should appeal to anyone who like Mansion of the
Hidden Souls, which I did. The fmv is not up to par with the best for 3DO,
but it looks like there's a lot of it. The character was having numerous
spooky flashbacks and visions while I played, but tended to walk past things
that I wanted to examine. Promising. One game that was displayed under two
titles, STAR FIGHTER/PLANET STRIKE looked like a lot of fun, even though
there were no enemies yet. It is a very smooth Shockwave-stlye shooter
with a _much_ larger playing field and a very high cieling. Mountains and
buildings that you couldn't make out from the air do tend to pop-up as you
near the ground, but the craft controlled well. KINGDOM:FAR REACHES was still
unplayable, but they said it would be out in June. For some reason, KILLING
TIME looked much better to me on second glance - perhaps they brought in a
newer version, but it was much faster and more colorful than I reported before.
Again, let me note that the 3DO booth was one that impressed with the sheer
number of games available (for more, see my first report, or I'll mail it to
you). While other systems filled up several machines with the same game,
taking up more space, 3DO had almost no duplicates, with every machine housing
a new game.
Now, while the PS had the most impressive games, I must say that the 3DO
booth was the one 'Next Generation'booth that really impressed one as having
the _most_ games. 3DO gamers will not be bored any time in the near future!
However, there was no sign of M2! They did show the car demo in a presentation,
and while impressive, it had the pre-rendered feel to it (i.e. it didn't look
like a tape of someone playing a game, but like a graphics demo). Other than
that, I saw no M2 mockups or any other mention of M2 at all. I will bug some
people tomorrow and try to find out more about this. On to the games:
BLADE FORCE looked and played something like a fully texture-mapped version
of PO'd. I was frustrated, however, in that I seemed to keep running into
invisible walls. I'm not sure if it was a collision detection problem, or
just something about the game that I didn't understand. As one of the mags
noted recently, those laser bolts you see in the screen shots are not really
in the game. Just your standard firey bullets. KILLING TIME was a disapp-
ointment, being very choppy and having graphics with somewhat washed-out
colors. It does not look nearly as nice as the screen shots had led me to
believe. There was a Cybersled clone, BATTLE SPORT, which was nice, but not
as nice as Cybersled. SPACE HULK really does look every bit as good as the
screen-shots have indicated. However, you lead a team around, and without
knowing how to use them, they just tended to prevent me from running away from
monsters, since they were right behind me and I couldn't back up. I don't know
how this will work out in the final game. This game was very reminiscent of
AvP on the Jaguar, which, IMO, is a very good thing. PHOENIX 3 had some fairly
lame platform levels and a space sombat mode where I never got a satisfying
look at the enemy ships. Maybe I didn't play it enough to tell, but it didn't
make me want to play it either... CAPTAIN QUAZAR looked good, I would describe
it as a Horde-shooter. Graphics very much like the Horde, only brighter and
more varied, and gameplay like (again!) Gauntlet. Well, maybe not so much,
since I don't recall moster-generators or armies of identical enemies, but
you get the idea... STAR FIGHTER looked like a slower version of Shockwave
(as a matter of fact, a _lot_ of games at the show, on many platforms, looked
a lot like Shockwave) where, however, you have more freedom as to where to fly,
but I never saw any enemies while the guy I watched played it. CARRIER was
just a collection of fmv infobits on carriers (snore). ICE BREAKER was perhaps
some kind of puzzle game, where you shoot pyramids on a grid, but it wasn't
clear to me what the objective was. A game like Myst is bound to breed some
clones, and ISIS fits this bill, though with an Egyptian theme (they did have
a nice live Isis sitting by the demo...) BIOS FEAR looked disappointing,
the engine was closer to Wolfenstein than Doom (DOOM, however, was nowhere to
be seen at the show, which the author of BIOS Fear pointed out...). Hopefully,
this will look better when it's released. For DEFCON 5, my notes say "nice
VIDEO of Doom", which I think means it was just a demo tape, but looked good.
PANZER GENERAL looked very promising, but only for the serious strategy gamer -
not a game to sit down and play casually. PO'D was looking _very_nice - the
authors gleefully showed me the a new weapon - the drill - which leaves the
screen blood-splattered, so every time you use it, your on-screen persona
wipes his hand across the screen to clear things off! Cool! DEATH KEEP, was
Slayer meets Doom, with even more sophistcated dungeons than the first game,
but the version I played didn't allow for combat (I did see one that was
working better in another booth) - I don't think Slayer fans will be disappoin-
ted. POLICENAUTS, the Snatcher sequel, was still just a target range, though
I did see some of the cinemas in the Konami booth, and they looked very good.
LOST EDEN features a 7th Guest style movement interface, with what loked like
a mostle talking adventure, but I didn't play it for long. DRAGON LORE played
like Myst would if you multiplied the density of the locations (i.e. views per
location) by a factor of 20 or 30, though I never could get it to talk to the
character that I met. CASPER was a nice looking Zombies Ate My Neigbors style
game, but more of an adventure - I didn't see any combat while I was watching.
NHL '96 was, well, NHL '96 - what did you expect? Totally awesome! WING
COMMANDER III did not appear to have any improvements over the Sampler 3 demo,
though you could play other missions, etc. Still unacceptable fmv for a 3DO
title. SHOCKWAVE II was pretty much just what you'd expect it to be. It did
look nicer than the first one.
thanks again John for the Posts :)
Dale
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