GDC Travelogue Day 2: The Insanity Begins
Tuesday, Feb 19
8:30 am - Time to get the adventure underway. But first, an adventure within an adventure in trying to get from Oakland to San Francisco. You see, in order to get into the city, I have to take the bus, and then the subway. Now, I’m a country boy, not big city folk, so when I need to get somewhere I’m accustomed to just hopping in the car and driving where I need to go. At any rate, the public transportation game is a whole new world. One thing I DO know, I’m going to need a lot of hand sanitizer…
9:00 - Alright, I made it into the city without any major muckups. Now then, I’m in a new city, by myself, and I have to find the hotel that’s hosting my first event. On top of all that, it’s raining… hard, and I don’t have an umbrella. I wonder if I’ll be the first person in 300 years to die from “exposure.”
9:30 am - I just came from a great meeting with Atari. They showed me a really cool demo for Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit. I can’t go into the details now (blasted embargoes), but series fans are going to pee their pants. There are going to be a lot of happy anime fans in the near future.
10:00 am - I’m heading for my next meeting down the street. It’s funny, because a lot of developers are doing their demos and events in super swank hotels rather than on the show floor. These places are too ritzy for their own good, with front desks that are hidden way in the back, and elevators that won’t take you more than 3 floors up without a special keycard. I guess this is one of the few times when gamers and developers can pretend to be rock stars, so they may as well milk it.
4:00 pm - Long day with a lot of games to cover. Check out the recap to see what all was covered, with links to previews if they are available. The day’s not over yet, I’ve got another 7 hours of work ahead of me.
6:30 pm - Microsoft has called a press conference for Too Human to show off some playable content and a bit of story. They need a a strong showing here to win back some of the fans they lost from the E3 ‘06 trailer.
So the demo was pretty good, looks good but there’s no real “wow” factor. It looks like Microsoft is trying to ride on the Mass Effect coattails, but I don’t really know if there’s enough here to blow anyone’s mind. It may be that this turns out to be an amazing blockbuster, but so far it looks like it’ll simply be a good, but not great, game.
Now then, I’m off to an EA DICE event, time to get my drink on.
11:00 pm - So the DICE event was more than I hoped for due to one simple reason, a new title called Mirror’s Edge that is going to blow your mind. Unfortunately, all info about it is embargoed until March, and it’s kind of a hard game to describe, but I can guarantee you’re going to like what you see. Oh yeah, they also showed Battlefield Heroes and Battlefied: Bad Company but don’t worry about that, just remember Mirror’s Edge…
Tuesday Games Recap
Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit (No preview until April)
Age of Conan: Hybronian Adventures
Disciples III: Renaissance
Dark Sector (Preview in March)
Bangai O Spirits (Preview in March)
Puzzle Quest Galactrix (Preview in March)
Too Human (Preview this week)
Battlefield Heroes (Preview in March)
Mirror’s Edge (Preview in March)
Battlefield: Bad Company (Preview in March)
