My E3 (and LBP2 plus Crysis 2)

A couple of weeks ago I attended the E3 games show in Los Angeles to demo our new game, Eat Them! The show was great and I had a really good time out there and we got a really positive reception for the game – about which I will be writing more in the coming months… (check back for links…)

For now I wanted to share a little of what else I saw there that excited me (as well as Eat Them!)…I was quite busy demo-ing the game so did not get as much time as I’d like to see stuff, however a couple of other things that I did see…

Little Big Planet 2

This is going to be huge.  The first Little Big Planet (LBP) was big enough (and I loooove all the Cthulhu levels on there) but the addition of logic-gate type electronics (the ability to have the system make simple decisions such as AND, OR etc.) to the system is going to produce something really…well…I don’t know; and that’s why it’s going to be sooo huge.  When you throw that sort of functionality at millions of players who create millions of objects – and can share them – it’s a massive media ecology system that is bound to produce astounding results.  I guess what we will see if half-way between a kind of Skynet Sacknet melding where humanity is wiped out by nukes made of string and cardboard – or the more utopian LittleBigCulture where we get all post-Sackboy post-human as the Artificial Intelligence that players develop takes on a life of it’s own and builds a huge culture where humans and sackbots live side-by-side in perfect harmony.  It’s going to be fun finding out…

I had dinner one of the evenings with some of the developers from Media Molecule and they are a crazy bunch (crazy as in the good creative type) who clearly love what they do – and that passion shows in their games.  LittleBigPlanet 2 – instabuy.

Crysis 2

I queued along with lots of others for about 20 minutes to be taken into a small hot, sweaty room to see the game being played on the big screen.  What I saw was the PC version (I’ll be getting the PS3 one) and it was amazing – the sheer amount of effects, polygons, sounds and particles being thrown around was pretty astounding.   It looked amazing despite a few bits of slow-down.   I’m a sucker for sci-fi and I enjoy 1st person shooters, so this is also an instabuy.  (I also love the slight movement-wobble in the HUD which is a small touch but makes it seem more like your in the suit – the demo I saw was full of such touches!)