Once again, because I can’t help but collapse at night after my daily nightly prayers at the mosque, I couldn’t blog about the first day of GCA, so I guess a double blog post will do.
I won’t bother covering both days separately though, since both days were pretty much the same in terms of activities and crap.
Electronic Arts
Let’s get started with the booth you see before you when you enter via the main entrance:
EA had a huge booth, filled with stations loaded with some of their latest games, including:
Spore
Can’t say much more about this, especially since I already went to its launch. Feidamu kept inserting Citsu into the Spore demo machines though.
Red Alert 3
My first time playing this, so I was pretty excited. I decided to play with my brother, since while both the machines were connected to the Net, there was no point going all gung-ho like some sort of n00b.
Fariz took Japan, I took Allies. I lost. 
The game felt like it was trying to pull a Universe at War; all 3 sides (Allies, Soviet, Empire of the Rising Sun) played differently.
For example, Allies depend on their Construction Yard heavily; it handles tech tier research (and ensuring buildings in its build range get the tech tier upgrade) and its build range is non-extendable, save for deploying outposts.
Japan resorts to building drones that deploy into buildings, meaning that they can build freely, so long as the drone doesn’t get busted on the way or while its unpacking. Their separate production buildings (e.g. War Factory, Barracks) have their own tech tier upgrades, so no depending on the Yard’s proximity for that.
Soviets allow you to place buildings immediately, but take time as it’s being built; the complete opposite of the Allies, which uses the classic RA “build-and-instant-deploy” tactic. However, they use the old RA tech tier formula, in which you slowly gain access to more units the more you build up your base.
I’m picking Soviets next time.
Mirror’s Edge
Even though it was only a demo, it screamed “THIS IS REALISTIC”. The desperation you feel as you clamber up walls and jump from rooftop to rooftop, the footsteps echoing as you run towards some idiot shooting you, it’s all there. And it was awesome.
Pity it was only a demo.
Dead Space
Though it’s touted as a “horror” game, I wouldn’t call it a horror game. IMO it’s more along the lines of “thriller”, especially when you put the sci-fi genre into the mix. You can’t get too scared when sci-fi’s involved, especially when you get chances to upgrade your armor, weapons and whatnot to take on more baddies.
That aside, this game is not for the squeamish. If you hate gore, stay far away from this game. I’ll paint a description for you, so you’ll see what I mean:
You walk cautiously into a narrow corridor, heading towards the toilet. You peek in, but nothing’s there, save for some ammo packs for your plasma cutter. You trudge on towards your next objective, opening a door to a medical facility. Suddenly, the warnings lights flash, and a mutant (I think that’s what they are) crashes through a window and runs for your flesh. You aim for the legs (limbs are their weak point), and slice them off. Blood sprays across the ground. As the creature attempts to recover, you walk up to it and give it a good, solid, stomp in the head, literally decapitating it, spewing more blood all over the floor.
Also, if you get too close to a mutant, you might enter a “cutscene” in which it tries to rip the living crap out of you. Hammering the “A” button allows you to rip it off and smash it into the ground, assuming the mutant is a tiny one.
Like Mirror’s Edge, the HUD is well-hidden into your own suit. As the game is third-person, the “spine” on your back, or RIG as it’s called, indicates your current health, and any screens such as the inventory hover next to your character, as if he was actually looking at it himself. I still wouldn’t play this at night though, there’s something about being surrounded by freaks of nature that make me shiver a bit.
LOTR Conquest
This one was totally “LOLWUT”. The game lets you switch classes (warrior, archer, mage, scout) during a mission, and each has its own pros and cons. It’s like playing Onslaught from UT2004, capturing control points and defending them. Occasionally, you get to control Hero units like Gandalf or Legolas, which are obviously stronger than their basic counterparts (magea and archer respectively).
The game’s pretty inaccurate though. I mean, did Isildur really slash Sauron until he collapsed and disappeared in a puff of smoke? Where’d his finger (and the ring) go then?
Still, throwing lightning and fireballs with Gandalf is nothing short of a unique experience. XD
I’ll skip NFS, kthx.
[end of EA]
I wandered around, taking more pix as I went along. The hall was huge, though it was pretty empty in the afternoon of the first day.
Eventually, I stumbled upon a Singaporean publisher, Runup. They had some games on display, including one that caught my eye:
The concept art for Emil Chronicle Online looked like something out of an anime. My interest piqued, I decided to take a closer look:
And upon closer inspection, I noticed some cheeky guy had left a Hinagiku in the server:
The gameplay felt a bit generic though, reminding me very much of other anime-ish MMOs like Asda Story and Holic Online. I’ve yet to actually play it though (as in killing mobs and exploring), so hopefully I’ll get to play it later today.
The idea of an MMO full of lolies and shotas sounds like it’ll attract a lot of moe-moe fans like me, though. Nekomimi warrior anyone? XD
Trailers below, music sounds nice, and the anime trailer looks cute too ^.^:
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.694000&w=425&h=350&fv=%26rel%3D0%26border%3D0%26]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHr-uaRRFMk]
ECO is due in about a month’s time, watch this space for moar!
The other MMOs at Runup aren’t worth blogging about here. Just generic unimportant crap, unless you actually like Angels Online.
I’ll end this here, it’s nearly 3AM. Gawd, looks like I’ll have to merge the next part with CosCon. Oh well.
Up next: Cross-platform MMO! Cosplay! Useless crap!
4 Responses to “Games Convention Asia 2008 – Part 1”
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HINAGIKU!
The reason Dead Space is called horror is when people play the game without listening to instructions, the supposedly-dead zombies pop out again and again and again…
@nanopulp: Actually, once the “zombies” die, they don’t come back to life. You can tell when they die, since they stop moving and drop items (sometimes).
Sometimes, though, the game spawns “already dead” zombie bodies, which pop back to life when you approach them and slice at you.
Must play ECO!
But why’s the KOREAN trailer playing a Japanese song? ^^;