There were many pretty promo girls all around... but next year's tendency might be different, since games' audience is changing. Revenge of the females?
Amongst the pretty girls, there were some very famous faces... remember Lara? Lara Croft?
And what about Xena, the warrior princess? Or should I write, the warrior screamer :) ?
Be bad! Dungeon Keeper 2 deserves your attention. More than Quake 3, yes!
click on a picture on your left, to view a full size version of it.
The ever changing Gaming Scene
As the whole world knows by now, the Games' Industry is so huge, that it rolls more money than movies... Of course this is true since the end of 1997, but only recently, with Electronic Arts breaking the magic one billion US dollars barrier, every newspaper and tv show started paying attention to what once was a few's selected magical private hobby.
The PC Gaming world is now very, very professional, and in less than one year, the average number of people per team (programmers, designers, musicians, etc), increased from ~6 to ~25, at least in the USA and in the UK. There are many teams with over 50 people!
These enormous changes have their effects on everything. As the pictures from the latest E3 show you, there is now little difference between such expo and, say, a car's expo. You have the girls, the music, the movies and the gifts. Then, you demo your products... mainly electronic games in E3, mainly cars in any car expo... big difference? NO difference.
Is this good, is this bad? Was it expectable? IMHO, the metamorphosis was guaranteed and very previewable, since the ZX SPECTRUM days, when publishers started licensing software from the movies and music industries. Right back then, it was obvious that games were an unstoppable locomotive heading big $$$ and divorcing the bedroom scene...
It doesn't matter how much we all miss those days, where YOU [alone] could make a difference, because Time will not go back, and many projects are doomed to never see the light of day, or the disks of your HD :), just because they don't fit a company's established criteria for releases. Again, although this is bad, it is also good, because in such a competitive universe, only the very best will survive. Right?
1999 is now on its second half, and many magazines - as it is now inevitable in such a high spec industry - are selling on the basis of such clever sentences as "exclusive stuff", "the best this", "the best that", "genre redefinition", bla bla bla...
You have to pay more attention to reviews and give extra credit to small paragraphs, that read like black on white...
Until August / September, I would focus on the following games: Outcast, Hidden & Dangerous, Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 and Dungeon Keeper 2. Sure I am missing many highly expected releases, but this small selection has its reasons, and some may shock you. Remember it is just my independent opinion...
I've been playing the Outcast DEMO 1, and you can read about it [as a today's topic] here, so let me jump to Hidden & Dangerous [H&D]...
After Rainbow Six, came Delta Force, that was absolutely great: a complex idea made simple. You could control your man on a very selfish way, sometimes giving you the sensation that your mates weren't really necessary, but it was so addictive, so solid and perfect on the way it recreated the missions, that it plays like the wonder you might know. Well, H&D is kind of a Delta Force with many extras.
I've played the H&D demo and I am very disappointed!! VERY! The camera doesn't feel right, the control mechanism affects the camera constantly, and - worst of all - the binoculars and the sniper guns seem 200% ordinary, to the point of that the binoculars' vision does NOT really zoom! OK, this may be a problem of the demo, but it is the demo that I am writing about and I did NOT enjoy the game!, all because of these two reasons. This is surprise #1, I guess. Give me Delta Force 2, please!
Now, Quake 3 - that is scheduled for October - is gonna get rave reviews. Some of these reviews, could be written RIGHT NOW, because no one from the mainstream magazines will dare to tell ID that it time to stop worrying with pretty curves and start building something that breaks with bang + bang + gotcha loop!
As a single player's experience UNREAL is much better than Quake, and I expect Unreal Tournament to beat ID on the multi player field! Of course, both will be superb games. What I doubt is some guys' guts to recognize Unreal's advantage... that already shows... on the demos... Surprise #2? You decide.
Finally, Dungeon Keeper 2, refining a very different idea, might have a modest reception... But it is daring software like this that we now need. Be bad!
