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Examiners at E3 2009, Day Two
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Another day bites the dust.
Our schedule opened up a little bit for the second day at E3 which granted us more time to walk the floor and get some hands-on with games and hardware a lot of you may have been curious about.
However, before that, we were able to meet up with the folks at Fusion-io who were co-promoting their new hardware with Johnathan Wendel, better know as “Fatal1ty.” Needless to say, their booth was extremely hardware intensive, showcasing their new product, set to release in July, called the ioXtreme.
For those unfamiliar, the ioXtreme is the brainchild of former Apple co-boss, Steve Wozniak.
To put it in simple terms, the ioXtreme is a PCI Express card and a solid storage device aimed at elevating the performance of high-end PC’s. In short, it increases your computer’s performance at exponential levels with its 80GB of non-volatile capacity.
We saw it demoed and it was absolutely mind blowing. It allows for the user to play high performance games while allowing him or her to seamlessly use any other program in the computer’s arsenal at the same time.
If your computer handles gigantic files on a daily basis, and you are a multi-tasker, it doesn’t get much better than this. Look for a more in depth look at the ioXtreme after E3 ends tomorrow.
On day one, we had been limited to the amount of time we could put into getting hands-on looks at some of the more touted games of the conference, so we used the rest of the day to try some of them out.
One of the games we badly wanted to get a closer look at was Valve’s Left 4 Dead 2. If you haven’t heard of the first one, it might be time to climb out from under your rock.
A few things that we were able to garner from the demo that we played:
It included four new characters named Ellis, Rochelle, Coach and Nick whom apparently replace Zoey, Louis, Bill and Francis.
Quite sad.
The demo level, complete with the normal movie style load in screen was entitled The Parish.
The graphics seemed very upgraded with the zombies moving in more fluid, human-like motions replacing their jumbled movements in Left 4 Dead’s first edition.
We also were able to use a melee weapon, the axe, which proved to be a deadly way of dismembering zombies. Hopefully they add a few more for variety, and knowing Valve, they definitely have that base covered.
It looked nothing short of amazing in the few minutes that we were able to try it out, before we were eventually swallowed by the rabid crowd that apparently hadn’t left since the first day.
Two other games that we saw that should be winners are Ubisoft’s Splinter Cell: Conviction and Capcom’s Dark Void.
While Splinter Cell wasn’t playable, it really looked fantastic and should be making a big splash this year, as the franchise usually does.
Dark Void was also a nice surprise as it combined some of the features from the Gears of War franchise and added a jetpack. Adding this asset in allows for the character to fight vertically in some truly insane combat that we will have some feature video on in a later article.
Honestly, it is truly hard to describe because it is such a surreal dynamic for a game. While we played, we were also able to hijack an alien craft and fly it ourselves wrecking havoc on the enemies that were attacking us.
Look out for this one, it could be great.
As usual, the Tekken 6 booth was completely occupied the entire time we were there and we have yet to have been able to give it a test drive.
We also got some hands on with South Peak Games’ Section 8 that seems to be a Halo-esque game on a much grander scale. One of the cooler aspects was the fact that every time you die, you were able to switch your class and your squad. Once you did that, you began to plummet to the earth with the ability to slow down to control where you wanted your character to land.
Unfortunately, we got rather full of ourselves and decided to drop in close to enemy territory.
Be sure not to do that if you want to live for more than 30 seconds. Overall however, it was a really fulfilling, multiplayer experience and playing with friends will only make it better.
Tomorrow, on the final day, we have some great interviews set up that will definitely be a great end to a long three days that have made our feet bleed from walking the LA Convention Center.
Again, it is safe to say, E3 is back. See you after the finale.
For more info: Contact Adam: admillios@gmail.com
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