[E3 09] Scott's Day 1 Report (Activision)

[AgtFox]

Scott had some luck with Activision, although he didn't get to see Modern Warfare 2, which I guess was behind closed doors and by appointment only (but I set up an appointment with Activision, why couldn't he see it? I digress.).

Here are his thoughts on Blur, Singularity and the Activision experience (and the end of the report for the moment):

After Batman, I then had to look for Activision. They were all the way across the LACC and they were PACKED with people. This is where my E3 adventure got a little deflated. It started when I was told that Modern Warfare 2 was being shown behind closed doors with appointment only so there was no chance of me getting to see it or play it. The pickings were slim and not at all comfortable given the gigantic crowd all watching either demos of Tony Hawk's RIDE or DJ Hero. I was told a few things about RIDE, but nothing we didn't already know. I didn't bother asking him anything because the noise in their booth made it impossible to have any kind of conversation.

We moved on to Blur, from Bizarre Creations and I actually got to play the game, but wasn't given any info on it. My play time was short - one race - but it gave me a good sense of the feel of the game. Controls aren't far from what PGR was, except on a much more open track. They aren't totally sim controls, but they aren't arcade like either. A good middle of the road there. Power-ups in the game come in the form of colored icons dispersed over the track. You've got Nitro, land mines, lightning, shields, missiles and probably more, but those were all I came across. But, unfortunately, that was all I got to play of it as my booth tour guide was moving me on.

When we got to Singularity, from the guys at Raven, my guide had to go handle something else. He told me to wait in line, watch the demo of Singularity in the enclosed room and then come and find him back at the main booth to continue the tour. I did what he said.

The best way to tell you what Singularity is would be to point you to TimeShift. It's got that look and feel, but the difference is that TimeShift altered time in the setting around you. Singularity has a much sharper focus with its time controls. You control time as a weapon and you control the time of objects and people within the game. Not so much the time of the environment you are in. For instance, the main character was in the 1950's and was blocked in his path by some stairs. Rather than back tracking, he just changed the time frame of the stair way to the present and they had a large hole in them. He crossed through, reset the stairs to the 1950s setting and they were back, allowing him to continue his way up the building.

There's other gameplay aspects to it as well. You become more powerful with your time controls as you progress through the game. For instance, you begin to see things that are stuck in this...time limbo, trapped in between the two time periods. You can then extract those things and use them. Might indicate some backtracking possibly, as paths we previously couldn't cross became accessible as we were able to see beams in the limbo, extract them and use them to cross the gap. There's also points at which you're power is ramped up to reconstruct full buildings from the past. A very cool looking effect. It's a game I'd like to see more of and actually play as well, but that will have to wait, as it's scheduled for release sometime in 2010 and they weren't having any talk of multiplayer at this time (an answer I got a lot of actually).

Once done there I had to try to find my tour guide, but in the mass of people at the gigantic Activision booth, I couldn't find where he'd gone. Another complaint of mine. Booths being understaffed. A lot of these tours would have me waiting around for them to find someone to take me through things or waiting for more people to join. Exactly like an online lobby. And even when we'd get underway, other pressing matters would come to these people's attention prompting me to hear many times, "I'm going to leave you here with this game, when you are done, find me and we'll continue." That would pretty much mark the end of any tour right there. And you'd be left on your own.