Gamescom 2011 – Microsoft’s Play Day

It was the evening of press conference day at Gamescom 2011. We’d been on the go since 4am this morning braving the EasyJet masses, the budget hotels and, my personal nemesis, the ruthless efficiency of the German public transport system – all to bring you the latest gaming news from Köln.

First up was Microsoft. Rather than holding a full press conference they decided to let us get hands-on with as many games as we could, over in the welcoming brick walls of the Vulkanhalle. Given that we only had two hours and that I took an accidental train journey to to Duren this morning (curse those fast trains), I only got to check out a few of the games.

And yes, they did call it a “play day”…

Dance Central 2

The full Dance Battle mode from Dance Central 2 was on display and it really does shake up the typical head-to-head routine. As you already know, Dance Central 2 adds side-by-side multiplayer to the franchise. In Dance Battle you compete through the same song but the normal routine is broken up at times with one player sitting out for 2 counts of 8 while the other has the chance to rack up extra points.

There’s also a new feature: Dance Any Move, where a selection of random moves will appear. Choose one and pull it off successfully to bag yourself an extra 10,000 points. If a move appears in a gold box, definitely grab that one for a 40,000 point bonus. These gold moves also appear during the normal routine.
Finishing moves now have a point to them as well. Each battle is concluded with a side-by-side shot of the two of you attempting to recreate the same pose. Thankfully, the photo is tastefully styled up with a fashionable bloom effect. No more cringing at obviously bulging guts or peeking underwear.

Today’s session also revealed the last two crews of dancers – Pictured below from left to right you have Hi Def, Riptide, Flash4ward and Lu$h Crew.

Gears of War 3

The Horde and Beast modes were on show for Gears of War 3, which is the first time Gears of War has been allowed to go on sale in Germany. On display today were the improved Horde mode and the new Beast mode.

I talked to Chris Kimmel, Executive Producer on Gears of War for Microsoft. “We call it Horde 2.0. We saw that in Gears 2, players would naturally form defensive positions together. They’d find a corner in the map where they would hunker down, so epic built gameplay on top of that idea.”

In the Gears 3 Horde mode you still have the 50 attacking waves of Locust but you build defenses around a chosen command post. Killing Locust earns money that you can use to buy fences, decoys, gun turrets, a sentry weapons and ultimately a Silverback – that exoskeleton that you may remember Marcus and Dom discovering in a recent trailer. You could also choose to forgo the defenses in fav
our of weapons – a boomshot perhaps, or the Hammer of Dawn.

Every 10 waves you’ll get attacked by a boss. Counter these by purchasing defensive upgrades. The spiked fence can be converted into barbed wire or even upgraded to a laser fence. You’ll need to time your upgrades. No sense spending money on a few feeble spikes just before a brumak comes charging into the fray.

Of course, none of these fences appear to give you any cover from incoming fire. Presumably they’re in there to slow down the charging brumak and hopefully do a bit of damage along the way. Looking at the picture, I really wouldn’t have much faith in a laser fence at all.

Beast mode is the one where you play as the Locust. In contrast to Horde mode’s defensive strategy designed to last through 50 waves, this mode only has 12 waves of attack. It’s fast-paced and extremely aggressive. You can choose from a range of Locust, including the speedy tickers (which Kimell described as “crabs on cocaine, scurrying as fast as possible”), the omnipresent drones who carry weapons, the butcher with his huge cleaver and the serapede. If you’re good enough you can unlock the Berserker and really go to town.

Age of Empires Online

AoE Online launched YESTERDAY as a free to play game available from ageofempires.com. They’ve launched with Greeks and Egyptions to start with. You can also spend real money to unlock the premium civilisations for each of these. Premium gets you access to ranked PvP, better gear and extra ambassador hall slots, which allows you to appoint new ambassadors for new skills and features. You can still play PvP without shelling out for premium, but you will not be ranked.
Civs are much more customisable than in the traditional “Age of” games. Instead of just working your way through a pre-set tech tree, you get points that you can choose to spend on, say, defensive or offensive technologies within the tree, rather like a traditional RPG skills tree.

Two more civilations will be launched later this year – Persians and Celts.
Tying ranked PvP into the premium bundle seems particularly ruthless and mercenary to me. I suppose it guarantees that people to take the game seriously HAVE to pay but there had better be some pretty in-depth tactics for this to compete with the likes of Evony, Caesary and the recently-launched Civilization on Facebook, which sticks to the tried-and-tested microtransaction model.

Orcs Must Die

Having talked about the wave-based Gears cooperative modes earlier, this XBLA/PC title seems very much a combination of the two but with plenty of things that make it unique. You play as a hero guarding a series of passages. The enemy will storm out of one door, through your room and out the other. They’ll come in a set number of waves per level and it’s your job to stop as many of them as possible. You achieve this with the aid of traps, tar pits and your trusty crossbow.

Start the level and you get about 15 seconds of door rattling before the buggers break through. Use that time to lay down your initial traps and check out the environment for handy shootable things like a chandelier that could come crashing down on them. Don’t worry if you screw up at the start. Every 3 waves you get a breather that can be used to redesign your entire trap strategy. With 25 levels, 25 different traps and a host of room-based nasties to inflict on the invaders, this game is certainly worth a look when it comes out on XBLA and Steam in October.

Other games that were on show:
Forza 4 (I’ll see if Nick can look at this)
Kinectimals (with bears. Too cutesy for my tastes even though the panda is adorable)
Kinect Sports Season 2 Tennis (bored of motion tennis games already)
The Gunstringer (huuuuge queue for this. Looks good. I’ll try and grab some time on it later this week)
Kinect Star Wars (not enough freedom of movement for me to want to try this)
Halo CE Anniversary (looks and plays like Halo but with Reach graphics and jetpacks)
Kinect Disneyland Adventures (cute and probably engaging enough for kids. Exploring for hidden coins and on-rails theme-ride sections mean there’s nothing in it for me)
Orcs Must Die (XBLA game which I will cover in more detail later)

Quick breather and then it was off to the EA press conference for us! I have just learned that German keyboards have all the punctuation in different places and the y and z keys are transposed so please forgive me if future articles are a little bit strange. It’s the kezboard!

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