NYCC 09 Wrap up Part 1

For those of you lucky enough to make it to the New York Comic Con, you were able to test drive games months in advance. For those of you not lucky enough to attend the convention... well, that's what I'm here for. I walked the show floor, trying out the games in hopes of giving you guys my hands on impressions of what was being presented.

My first stop was the Ubisoft booth to try out Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. (By the way, I can't stress enough to you how annoying H.A.W.X. is to type). Remember when Tom Clancy was known for his writing and not his games? I miss that Tom Clancy. Anyway... after playing the game for a few minutes, I realized that the convention atmosphere isn't really conducive to playing a game for the first time. With all of the noise and distractions, it's hard to give a game your full attention especially if that game includes piloting a fighter jet and trying to not have it crash. I've never really been a big fan of flight simulators but I wish I could have given this game more of a chance.

My next stop was the Sega booth. I was hoping to see either a playable demo or more footage from Sega's upcoming game Bayonetta, but what I got instead were three Wii games that go against the grain of the majority of Wii games on the market right now. And I played all three because they were giving out free t-shirts to everyone who played all three... (who can resist a free t-shirt?)

The first of the three was also the most unknown quantity to me, The Conduit. Before stepping into the Sega booth, I hadn't heard anything about the first person shooter. But I always thought that the unique Wii controller would be perfectly suited to FPS gameplay. The most surprising thing about the Conduit wasn't the controls (which are pretty good) but the graphics. This is not only a good looking Wii game, but a good looking game, period. The level of graphics that were present in the game was impressive especially given the fact that it was running on the least graphically powerful console of this generation. If you're a huge FPS fan but you got stuck with a Wii, keep your eyes open for this one.

From mowing down aliens to mowing down zombies, the next game I got my hands on was House of the Dead: Overkill. This on rails shooter gives you everything you'd expect from a House of the Dead game... blood, gore and zombies. Which coincidentally is everything you wouldn't expect from a Wii game. I'm not sure how "on rails" this shooter is because I could have sworn I was able to get a little peripheral action going on but I may have just been imagining it. There was an annoying little delay between motioning to reload the gun (shaking the wiimote) and the game finishing the reload animation. Seeing as how the game is on sale now and I was told this was the final build of the game, that little annoyance is probably in the retail copies.

Finally, I was able to play a little MadWorld. Here's where I wish I had a little more time to spend with the games. MadWorld has been on my radar for a while now. The unique graphical style, the over the top violence... what's not to love? But spending a few minutes trying to figure out the controls while my character was being used as a punching bag wasn't at all fun. I do feel if I had been able to spend more time with it in a more controlled environment, I would have had more fun but I had to settle for one of the booth workers giving me a rundown of the game and it's mechanics.

Leaving the Sega booth behind with a free t-shirt in hand, I headed to the Rockstar booth to take a look at the littlest murder simulator, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Chinatown Wars reminds me of the GTA of old, the top-down open world game that the franchise originated from. It makes sense given the lack of horsepower in the Nintendo DS, but I'm wondering if fans of the past few GTA games will accept this throwback to the original games. What was conspicuously absent in Chinatown Wars was a lack of touch screen controls. Granted, I only played the game for a few minutes so I'm sure Rockstar incorporated touch controls in an organic way.

So that's it for my first day of NYCC hands-on impressions... be sure to come back next week for day two, when I'll give you my thoughts on Prototype, Velvet Assassin, the eagerly anticipated Ghostbusters game and more! Does reading this make you wish you could have been at NYCC to play the demos and get free swag? Well, I can't do anything about the demos, but I can do something about the swag. We'll be giving away all of the free stuff we've accumulated from the con through some yet-to-be-determined contest so keep your eyes peeled for that as well...