Every year I make the same combo-mistake. I don’t sort out my press accreditation before the first day, and I always go to the wrong entrance. You see, there’s only a ‘Press Desk’ in the East and North entrances, and every year so far I end up going to the South first, and then remembering to go to the East one to pick up my stuff.
Still, that didn’t stop me from seeing some pretty interesting stuff on the first official day of Cologne’s Games Convention. It was a ‘Press’ day as well, so I didn’t have to deal with you normal people. The dual theme of today seemed to be “pleasantly surprising” and PC, with a number of different titles on show.
Kalypso Media:
Kalypso can be a bit hit and miss with their franchises, especially their more action/rpg ones. Demonicon is their new RPG set in the same universe as the Drakensang games, which are based on a pen and paper role-playing game from the 1980’s called The Dark Eye. The engine behind it looks competent enough, and over all I got the feeling it was a bit like a more mature Fable, but ultimately it remains to be seen. The First Templar wasn’t that great, after all. I also saw Port Royal 3, which is looking quite good, if a little like Paradox’s Commander: Conquest of the Americas. If you liked the original two games though, this should be a nice comeback for you.
What it was really all about though was Legends of Pegasus. Now, I may be slightly pre-disposed towards space 4X strategy games, but that is looking pretty sweet. Engine wise, it’s as gorgeous as Sword of the Stars II. It draws its inspiration from the likes of Sins and Masters of Orion, and is a mixture of turn-based and real time gameplay. It is apparently multiplayer focus, but it has a single player campaign and offline skirmish mode. We’ll do a more complete write up of this one soon.
NCSoft:
Having gone hands-on with Guild Wars 2 the previous day (which was amazing – write up to come later), I was really only there to see NCSoft’s new project, which we now know is called Wildstar: a Firely-esque “Spellpunk” MMO with some interesting ideas. We’ll be doing a full write up on this one as well, but basically the setting is the home planet of an advanced race of aliens who’ve up an disappeared There are two factions, each with their own races, and there’s various class archetypes as well. Things get more interesting with ‘paths’, which determine what extra content and interaction is available to you.
Most interesting of all seems to be the Settler class, which brings a Salem/Minecraft element to the game, and could be one of a few things that will really help set this game apart. It still follows the more traditional quest based system, but the development team seem to have taken some good lessons from fellow MMO-ers ArenaNet, so we’ll see.
Iceberg Interactive:
A smaller studio which you may or may not have heard about, Iceberg were responsible for helping bring games like Revenge of the Titans and The Ball into the world. At this year’s GamesCom they were showing off the soon-to-be released retail version of Star Ruler, a more hardcore 4X strategy game that’s been out for a year, and FPS/RTS hybrid Nuclear Dawn.
Nuclear Dawn was one of the many pleasant surprises of today. A bit of MAG meets Section 8, it’s the first true FPS/RTS hybrid I’ve ever seen. Using the Source engine, initially Nuclear Dawn looks like any standard FPS. The game mode we were shown had classes, weapon load-puts, squads, and you had to capture resource points.
If you’re the commander though, you can go into a special RTS interface mode, which looks exactly like many of the classic RTS’ you’ve played. From there, you can use the resources your team is generating to drop support buildings, defence turrets… even extra spawn points. We’ll definitely do a more in-depth write up later, but this was one of, if not THE most interesting game of the day. Keep your eye on it.
THQ:
Nothing spectacular to report here, but we did get hands on with both WWE 12 and Saints Row: The Third, which was good. Both games are shaping up pretty nicely, and we’ll be doing fuller reports later.
That’s about it for GamesCom: Day One. I also managed to get a look at Calibur 11’s case mods – especially their new Battlefield 3 one, and I checked out OnLive as well, which really took me by surprise. Xbox Live, the Nintendo Wii… these are all product that changed the paradigm of gaming forever, and I think OnLive may just be the next paradigm shift.
Today is more of a console focus – EA, 2K, Namco Bandai, Microsoft… although there will be some sneaky appointments with Focus Home Interactive and Trion Worlds as well, so stay tuned!
