by Angel Washizu

Age of Kings: The Conquerors Expansion Pack - I can't say too much about AOK:TC, except for that it is pretty cool and surprising in their choices for the new stuff (pleasently surprised mind you). What I CAN give you is an estimated release date. September of 2000 is the current word coming from Sebastian Motte of MS Games. One of the highlights of the trip for me was a gift I recieved from Bruce Shelley and the Ensemble Studios team. They gave Merlin, Thunder and I a nice picture of a mini Computer Gaming World magazine cover (July 1998) incased in lucite. It was the first cover article AOK ever had, and they said everyone at ES has one on their desk, and now Merlin, Thunder and I do as well.

Dungeon Siege: drumroll please................ If this game ships a year from now as planned, it will light the gaming world on fire. It's an 3D action RPG with RTS-like controls. You start out with a fairly generic character (no pre set classes or anything), and as you progress through the game, whatever attacks you use becomes your specialty. Little cool things like arrows sticking into you and the monsters (I remember seeing a flaming arrow sticking out of a skeletons head haha), and being able to set things on fire add nice touches to the game. The REALLY cool thing about the game is the engine. Fully 3D with NO loaded times between areas. You can see far into the dungeon even while you're outside, which I thought was really kind of neat.

With all this cool stuff, the best part is that every single part of the game is supposed to be customizable, including the levels, the characters, the monsters, the weapons, the spells, etc. Oh and did I mention the outdoor architecture was amazing? I saw canyons that looked bottomless, until they freefloated down into it all the way to the bottom. Several hundred feet of game space. I talked to Jacob McMahon, the VP for Gas Powered Games (which should be called GASP powered games, after everyone's reaction with DS), and he said the engine can handle a tremendous amount of heights and depths, due to its design.

Last, I have to say the guys at GPG are VERY cool. I sat next to Chris Taylor at dinner and he just interacts with fans like you wouldn't believe. He's this larger than life, over the top, in your face but still your friend kind of guy, but has an extremely keen eye for putting in things that gamers WANT. Wait til you hear about how they've improved things like colleting loot from dead monsters. Jake, their VP, was immensely receptive and just cool to hang out with in general. We even got us a tour of their office and we saw some cool stuff they were working on. If I had to rate a development team in terms of how in tune with the fans they seem to be from a fansite webmaster's perspective, I'd give them the highest rating possible.

Ok, that's enough talk about DS. Bottom line... DS = good :)

Crimson Skies: A very neat and interesting game. The premise is that after the Great Depression, the US splits up into different countries and instead of the car, North America falls in love with the airplane. Think totally exaggerated dogfights, hot chicks, and amazing aerobatics. Some of the stand out features were things like in game screenshots that can be put into a scrapbook for viewing later on in the game.

Mech Commander 2: Graphics looked pretty impressive and I even got to play this one for a bit. If you're familiar with the Battletech universe, it's a BT 3D RTS. If they can work out some of the interface troubles (I found it a bit cumbersome), the game could really be fun. I know it's been said before, but Homeworld hit the nail on the head when it came to an easy 3D interface, and so much so I have a hard time imagining any other reasonable solutions.

MechWarrior 4: Although they had some trouble with the demonstration, the action I saw looked extremely cool. Much better than Mech 2, which is the only one I have played in recent years. Jordan Weisland said they were trying to make a great action game rather than be stuck in the "Mech" genre.

Motorcross Madness and Midtown Madness: Two racing games that are pretty high on the PC racing market. If you like racing games, you'll probably like these, especially Motorcross Madness, which had some cool sequences of the guy getting launched off his bike.

Loose Cannon: The police can't control crime so they get these vigilantees to kill crooks. You are one of these "new police officers" and you start in a vehicle all decked out with weapons driving around town. You're on your usual route of shooting bad guys, when all of a sudden you hear of a robbery on your police scanner. You head over to the robbery and park your car. Then, you guessed it, YOU GET OUT OF THE CAR. The game switches to a FPS mode, from which you can do all the cool FPS stuff. You can also decide to get back in your car, steal a police car, or some crook's speed machine. One scenario the presenter gave us (he used to work for Industrial Light and Magic btw, but said he had nothing to do with Jar Jar) was attacking a guarded fortress. You sit on a hill, snipe out all the tires of their car, then get back in your car, go in there with guns blazing, do what you have to do, and then when you make your escape, they can't chase you because their tires are all flat! Pretty cool eh? I thought so.

Freelancer: We got a sneak peek at the Freelancer trailer and man, when it was done, I was about to fall off my chair. Lets hope they release this thing on the net sometime soon, cause I couldn't believe the technology I was seeing, especially combined with the story. This trailer itself was better than Wing Commander the movie ;)

Hardware: We also saw some hardware demonstrations, namely the Strategic Commander, which will give great advantages to RTS and strategy games. We also saw prototypes of Gamevoice, a headset and software package that allows quick voice chat over the net. We were supposed to see an early version of the X-box in action, but unfortunetly they had some problems getting it set up (a TV was to blame, not the X-Box). As you can see, the demo version of the X-Box is pretty intimidating isn't it? I think so.