Category Archives: Preview

Brink E3 Roundup: Making a Splash

E3 was the first time many journalists had the chance to go hands-on with Brink, and in spite of its great showing last year, the multiplayer shooter managed to surprise once again.

During the show we had three-player demo stations set up nextdoor to our massive 33′-tall Founders’ Tower statue (as seen here), all supporting a steady stream of pressmen and women. Lucky for you, a lot of them went home, sobered up and wrote about their experiences.

Check out some of the videos, previews and interviews we’ve seen so far:

G4TV has a Live Demo and a written preview where the game is described as “very, very fun.”

GameTrailers Video Walkthrough

GameSpot Stage Demo, Hands-on Preview: “Before jumping into the multiplayer map we had a brief look at the character customization. In the space of a few minutes we turned our character from a Mohawk-sporting, tattoo-wearing, chain-sporting punk into an Upper East Side prep-school kid with an off-putting British accent (yes, you can change characters’ accents). Suffice it to say that we had a lot of fun with this aspect.”

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Around the web: On the Brink of new coverage (Updated)

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It’s Friday, so this is the last web roundup of the week.

Videogamer.com has new articles up from their Gamers’ Day visit. Wesley Yin Poole interviewed Senior Gamer Designer Ed Stern, and also posted his impressions of seeing the game in action. On top of his Brink coverage, he’s also written a new preview for Hunted. Here’s a snippet:

“Caddoc, on the other hand, moves his planet-sized frame with a Hercules-like gravitas. His attack style combines sword swipes with shield bashes; he’s a tank in the most traditional fantasy sense. And unlike E’lara, Caddoc’s execution moves are all about being up in his enemies’ faces. One sees him rip a skeleton’s arm off and knock its head clean off with it. Nice.”

Elsewhere, The Guardian has previews up for all four titles shown in Paris: Brink and RAGE, as well as Hunted and Fallout: New Vegas.

For more on New Vegas, The BitBag has their preview online — complete with every bit of concept art and screenshots we recently released.

Moving along, GameSpy’s Will Tuttle and Ryan Scott interrogate each other while discussing RAGE. It’s nothing like what you’d see from Jack Bauer, but the segment is still called The Interrogation Room. Here’s an excerpt from Mr. Tuttle (not to be confused with the teacher from Bayside High)…

“The animations are remarkably smooth and realistic, even at this early stage (did we mention the game’s not out until next year?). I’m not typically the type of person who oohs and ahhs over shiny graphics, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the finest-looking games I’ve seen in all of my years.”

Over at GoFanBoy, there’s a feature on the top franchise revivals in this generation of gaming. Among the five, Fallout makes their list.

Wrapping up this update, if you’re looking at doing space travel anytime soon, Armadillo Aerospace, founded by John Carmack, have a new deal with Space Adventures that will send folks out of this world for around five minutes. Read the MSNBC article here. Here’s hoping there’s a company discount :) !

Updates: Previously, I missed an interview with id Software’s Tim Willits discussing RAGE at Xbox 360 Achievements. Additionally, Inc Gamers has their impressions of the game.

Around the web

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Input overload! We continue to scour the web to find the latest previews out of our Gamers’ Day events… here’s our latest findings.

Inside Gaming Plus has a new RAGE interview with Matt Hooper, the game’s Design Director, who discusses the game’s story, vehicular play, weapons, and how they id is expanding upon the game’s core shooter experience. Watch it below.

If you didn’t watch them already, Inside Gaming Plus also has interviews with Hunted’s Maxx Kaufman and Fallout: New Vegas’ Josh Sawyer.

Hit the jump for more news…

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Six-page New Vegas preview in Game Informer

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The latest issue of Game Informer (June 2010) features a six-page preview with new details and screenshots from the strip of Fallout: New Vegas. If you’re a Game Informer subscriber, you should expect it in the mail any day (if you haven’t received it already). If you’re not a subscriber, be on the lookout for it on a newsstand or at a GameStop near you.

Read the latest coverage for Brink

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Unlike Fallout: New Vegas, Hunted, and RAGE – we weren’t able to show Brink at our Last Vegas event — with the team from Splash Damage being trapped in Europe courtesy of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull. A week later, however, we were able to show the game to press folks in Europe. Here’s a rundown of some of the English-speaking sites that have new coverage on the game.

IGN UK’s Alec Meer got a first-hand look at the game — here’s a snippet from his preview:

“Brink’s aim is to tear down the church and state separation of single and multiplayer, so you’re using the same disciplines, chasing the same goals and enjoying the same rewards however you play. This is, of course, the theory: other games are sniffing around the same idea, with Left 4 Dead arguably at the head of this young pack. With Brink though, there’s a real sense of no compromise.”

Read the rest here, and then be sure to check out the rest of the coverage below.

Lastly, VG247, has two new interview for Brink — with Senior Game Designer Ed Stern and Game Director Paul Wedgwood.

New Vegas impressions and interviews (Updated)

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While Nick’s been tracking down coverage for RAGE and Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, I’ve been working through all the coverage out of our Paris/Las Vegas press events for Fallout: New Vegas.

Below is a video from G4TV.com, where Abbie Heppe and Adam Sessler discuss seeing New Vegas in action at our Gamers’ Day event.

For more preview coverage, hit the jump below…

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Hunted Previews Hunted Down (Updated)

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Caddoc and E’lara are always going everywhere together. The grocery store. Demon’s forges. Press events.

The latter was the case not a few weeks ago, and now journalists are chiming in with their impressions of Hunted, the co-op action game starring the fantastical duo. Game Informer says: “It’s not often that players have the chance to play co-op games in a fantasy setting–particularly in dungeon crawlers–and it’s a welcome change of pace.”

Like the RAGE roundup, we’ve got a running list of every article for you to explore. Take a look:

Previews

Interviews

Coverage on the game continues to roll in, so we’ll update you on anything new that we see. And after the break, we’ve got Giant Bomb’s interview with inXile President, Matt Findlay, as well as an interview with Game Director Maxx Kaufman

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RAGE Previews from Around the Web (Updated)

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Yesterday’s deluge of previews based on the aptly-named “BFG 2010″ press event brought with it our latest look at RAGE, the upcoming shooter from the first-person pioneers at id Software.

The slick new screens sure look great, but journalists say the game looks even better when hitting your eyes with 60 frames per second. “The game is at least a year away from release, but visually, it’s almost flawless,” said Eurogamer.

To facilitate your digestion of the sweet new info, we’ve compiled a handy list of all the RAGE articles we’ve spotted so far. Take a look below to read all about the post-apocalyptic tech marvel — and if you spot any additional coverage, let us know in the comments.

Previews

Interviews

We’ll have more news on RAGE soon. In the meantime, hit the jump to see video coverage on the game.

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Around the web (and in print, too)

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Here’s a quick look at news I found on our games online (and some in print as well)..

Can you believe it’s been over four years since Oblivion was released? Last week The Koalition’s Gary A. Swaby posted a new article discussing how the RPG holds up today. Here’s an excerpt where he discusses quests within the game.

“Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is damn near unbeatable. Sure the main storyline quest is beatable within a couple hours, but the main quest is nothing. There are literally hundreds of quests in this game, and given the world which Bethesda has created for you, you will definitely attempt to complete as many as you can. The fact that there are two huge expansion packs doesn’t make it any easier either.”

Oblivion also gets mentioned in BitMob’s Top 5 Video Game Sequences written by Omar Yusef, where they included the Dagon Shrine questline …

“It was this specific mission that appropriately demonstrated Oblivion’s breadth. The game allowed players to brazenly hack and slash their way through difficult scenarios or sneak past them. Each problem players were faced with could be approached from a number of angles. In essence, the Dagon Shrine proved that Oblivion catered to almost every type of role player, which is why it’s worthy of commemoration.”

One final bit on Oblivion. The latest (June) issue of OXM has a small feature titled, “The Developer’s Cut,” where developers discuss content from their games that didn’t make the final release. On page 87, Todd Howard discusses content cut from Oblivion. Head to your local newsstand (or your mailbox) to read it, as well as a new preview for Hunted: The Demon’s Forge.

Putting a bow around this roundup, author Grant Tavinor recently released a new book, The Art of Videogames, featuring Fallout 3 on the cover. Throughout the text, you can find references to DOOM, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 (I’m particularly interested in reading the chapter “The Morality of Videogames”). For more on the subject, Tavinor recently wrote a column for Kotaku in response to comments from film critic Roger Ebert.

Updated: GameSetWatch’s Emily Short has an in-depth look back at her play experience with Fallout 3. Read the article here.

Around the web

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We’re back with another “Around the Web” with plenty of good stuff to check out.

This morning on Kotaku, I spotted this awesome Fallout 3 fan art bey Deviant Artist Patrick Brown. Looks like I’ve got a new desktop background. You can find more of Patrick’s work here. And if you’ve got artwork to contribute to the blog, send it in…we’ll be putting up new entries soon.

In other Fallout community news, we got an email letting us know about a song titled “Vault 101″ by Kirby Krackle. Head to their website to give it a listen (lyrics can be found here).

Moving to Brink news, IncGamers has a new online interview with Splash Damage’s Paul Wedgwood, Richard Ham, and Ed Stern. The interview covers the gamut: Splash Damage’s roots, their staff, and their plans and goals for Brink. Props to IncGamers for their clever edits.

Elsewhere, check out Girl Gamers UK preview on Brink..

Neilie Johnson of GameShark has posted her impressions of Hunted: The Demon’s Forge. Head here to read the full preview, but first, here’s a snippet discussing some of the attacks you’ll have at your disposal:

“During the demo we were shown spells ‘Hellfire’, which shot a big ol’ fireball, and ‘Levitate’, which rendered enemies helpless by lifting them off the ground. We were also shown a co-operative mechanic called ‘Battlecharge’, in which one character charged up another with spells, giving both of them more power.”

Finally, at this year’s MI6 awards for marketing, our promotional video for WET, “Shot at Love”, won a Silver award. Congrats to the marketing teams here at Bethesda and Ayzenberg for their work.

As more news comes in, we’ll keep you posted.