The downside of E3 is that trying to keep up with all the news can really cut into your gaming time, so between that (and a random sidetrack into Farcry 2 on the Xbox) I’m only 11% of the way through Infamous 2 after my first weekend with the game.

To put that in perspective, I’m still in the first “chunk” of the game, but have gotten past the tutorial sections and into the ‘open world’ parts. I’ve also unlocked the User Generated Content stuff. I’m not sure how the game determines % of completion but I have spent a lot of time chasing down blast cores (you collect these to increase your energy storage capacity…or in other words they give you more ammo between re-supplies) and Dead Drops (audio logs on USB thumbdrives strapped to the legs of pidgins flying around). Plus doing my hero thing of stopping crimes in progress and fighting the evil Militia.

Point is, I’m not rushing through the missions by any stretch of the imagination.

In my first post I worried about the twitchiness of the controls, but as anticipated I’ve become much more comfortable with them now. I do still shove innocent people over now and then, but most of New Marais seems to be in party mode so they’re all pretty laid back about this kind of thing. Hell, I’ve hit a few with electric bolts and once they’ve picked themselves up, they’ll still run over to me and thank me for saving them from the bad guys. They understand collateral damage, I guess (plus I have that Hero Boost that means I don’t do much damage to civilians).

Side missions have started to repeat, but so far I haven’t found anything as tedious as those “Remove the surveillance devices from an apartment building.” missions the first game had. Disrupting the off-loading of supplies from docking ships is the one I’ve had twice, but they’re fun missions. Fighting on boats when water means instant death is always interesting. Though I did get a Trophy for killing a baddie by stepping in the same body of water he was standing in. Electricity charged the whole area and down he went. Evil Karma for that, though..even if it was an accident.

The story hasn’t really taken off yet, but the Dead Drops are really cool if you played the first game, since they fill in a lot of what was going on ‘behind the scenes’ while you were running around chasing Kessler. I’m not sure they’ll be as interesting to folks who hit the series at game #2.

So the most important question: Am I having fun? Well hell yes I am! I’ve gotten back into the grove of grinding power lines, leaping and then hovering over baddies and finally doing a slam into the ground, throwing goons every which way (for example). The people are starting to love me (I’m headed for that full Hero Trophy) and it’s always gratifying to heal a crowd and have them all cheer me afterwards. I’m doing good in New Marais…. but the Militia aren’t the only evil lurking in the streets and I think things are just getting started.

My biggest problem is that I focus so hard on the game and get so into it that I tend to be in a kind of daze for a while after playing it! While that’s bad, it’s also high praise when a game sucks me in like that.

During a “hand’s on” demo of Fable: The Journey for G4 TV, Peter Molyneux made a point of saying that Fable: The Journey isn’t Fable IV. I’m going to paraphrase, but essentially he said The Journey is a kind of side-story, and was created because Microsoft asked Lionhead to come up with a ‘core game’ for Kinect. The Journey is about a Wanderer, but, Molyneux said, Fable 1, 2, 3 & 4 are about the Hero. Yes, he absolutely mentioned Fable 4 when he was saying this (though he may have not used “hero” to describe the main character..I’m doing this from memory).

No other details in Fable 4 yet, though.

He also assured the G4 audience that The Journey isn’t on rails but they restricted the press conference demo just to reduce the possibility of something going wrong. We’ll see. The magic system looked more interesting when we got a longer look at it with Molyneux explaining what was going on. My favorite part was when the player “extruded” a spear from mana and then hurled it at an enemy.

It was enough to at least put Fable: The Journey on my personal watch list, assuming the Nyko Zoom actually makes Kinect able to work in our living room.

There were a hell of a lot of games at E3, and the big names got plenty of coverage. I like to poke around the virtual corners of game coverage and uncover interesting looking titles that didn’t get a huge amount of coverage. Storm is one of those titles. All I found is this trailer, which makes the game look like the love child of ThatGameCompany’s Flower and Q Games’ Pixel Junk Shooter. Hey, a game could have uglier parents!

Storm will be released on PSN in the not-too-distant future.

Even though I’m a million years old, I can still remember being a little kid at Christmas when the world was full of possibilities. Back then we’d get the Sears Wish Book which was full of toys and games, and leaf through it and daydream. I knew a lot of the stuff in there I’d never get, and even at that young age I knew some of the stuff that looked cool (X-Ray Glasses!) was really junk, but it was still fun just to look and daydream.

These days Christmas is more or less a non-event, but on the opposite side of the calendar is E3. I *love* E3. I’ve only actually been to the show a couple times, but I ‘attend’ it remotely via TV and internet. And I just love looking at the reveals and trailers and daydreaming about what’s possible in the world of gaming. Some very few games go on the ‘Day 1 Buy’ list, a good number more go on the ‘Keep an eye on this’ list, but the vast majority I just let kind of wash over me.

I doubt that I’m alone in enjoying the spectacle of E3, but sometimes it feels that way. As I surf around the blogosphere, it seems that every year more and more words are devoted to aggressive apathy towards the show. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s fine not to care about the show, but what I don’t understand is why people need to make a big deal about not caring about the show, or about the games that are shown there.

We can’t make ourselves like stuff we don’t like, of course, and our blogs are our blogs. I’m not saying folks shouldn’t vocalize their “Meh” reactions to E3. I’m just saying I find that it’s a little sad. After all these are games; we don’t need them to survive or even to be happy (I hope). A preview of a bad game, or a game that doesn’t interest you, doesn’t harm you in any way.

I just think a lot of us are becoming rather cynical these days. I’d love to remove all video and computer games from the world for a year or two, and then re-announce them via E3 and see if that could re-kindle the joy. Maybe if we weren’t exposed to games 365 days/year we’d feel less apathetic about them.

I have to admit, I don’t finish a lot of games, but Infamous was one that I did, so I was psyched to, for once, start a sequel and be able to import something from the original! When you start up Infamous 2 you can import your Good Karma, your Bad Karma, or just start fresh. I went with Good Karma and it seems like rewards are based on trophies from the first game, rather than a save game file. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, since Infamous gave you a lot of trophies ‘organically.’ By the time I’d finished the game I had 50 or 60% of the trophies and had never chased any, if you know what I mean.

From the import I got a few little perks. A wad of experience to spend on skills, a passive ability that causes my attacks to do less damage to innocent people, and one other thing that obviously didn’t make an impression because I don’t recall what it was.

So the game starts with a quick overview of what happened in the first title. You, Zeke and a lady spy who is refreshingly not a huge-breasted babe in a leather bikini top, are on a ship getting ready to head to New Marais so you can pick up some new powers; powers you need to take on The Beast. (Of course Zeke insists New Marais is all about the 3 B’s: beer, boob and mechanical bulls.) You’re just about to shove off when the city is attacked! Oh noes! You rush off to fight this new opponent. I won’t spoil everything but by the end of the fight you’ve been drained (ie, lost most of your powers). So this is the big Reset button to start off the game. Time to level up Cole again!

The next section is a very linear transversal of a bunch of docks and small islanads, but it gives you a chance to start familiarizing yourself with the controls. Movement feels super twitchy to me; I almost wish I could tone down the sensitivity a bit. It’s great when running and fighting, but it makes it way too easy to accidentally run full-tilt into an innocent bystander. As I’m playing Cole as a hero, that feels wrong to me. I’m sure I’ll adjust, though.

It took me several attempts to get my grinding/flying/fighting chops back enough that I could pass through this first section. I don’t recall being able to speed up while grinding a wire in the first game, but you can here (by pushing the left stick forward) and you need to if you’re going to make some of the jumps in this section. I fell in the water quite a few times before making it through (since Cole’s powers are all electricity based, water means instant death to him).

I didn’t really mind, though, as replaying this section a few times gave my brain time to recall all the fun stuff you can do in Infamous. Pretty soon I was jumping while tossing electric grenades, grinding rails/wires and sucking the juice out of power consoles, just like old times. It was really fun.

And that’s as far as I got! I never made it to the open world section. So far it seems like a real sequel. Familiar but with some new options layered on (including a melee weapon). There’s still the comic-book cut scenes to set the tone, but there are also CGI cut scenes. That felt a little odd, since the cut-scene characters look so much more detailed than the in-game characters, but now I’m picking nits.

It’ll take me a few days to get used to the pace and the chaos of the game again, but I’m really looking forward to playing more Infamous 2

One hour rating: Buy if you enjoyed the first game. If you didn’t play the first game, get it for free via Welcome Back and play it first. If you didn’t like the first game, stay away from the sequel.

The post title tells it all. Todd Howard visited G4 at E3 today, and showed off Skyrim. Now we’ve seen most of this footage before, but this time (if you’re patient) you’ll see some footage of the user interface. It’s all looking really good. 11/11/11, baby!

Note that the video may be a bit slow to load…I’m sure their servers are getting hammered today.

I never played Prey 1. All that portal insanity made my head ache and my stomach do flip-flops. But Prey 2 is a completely different game, putting you in the role of a bounty hunter in a distant sector of space. Will it be great? Or good? Or mediocre? Who knows!?

But the trailer has Johnny Cash — at least I’m pretty sure that’s Johnny Cash — and a vibe that feels like it could take place outside the Mos Eisley Cantina if Star Wars was a much darker and grittier IP.

Just in case you missed it, here’s the new trailer for the Tomb Raider game coming out in about 18 months (Fall 2012).

Of course a great trailer doesn’t mean a great game, but with launch so far out I don’t think that matters yet. I’m just sharing this from the point of view of “Trailer Theater.” Enjoy it as a great short-film and don’t worry about the game yet!

(And may I suggest going full screen and high def for this one?)

According to Raptr, I’ve logged 7 hours into Hunted now. I’m going to assume what I’ve seen is what the game has to offer, so this will probably be my last post on it, unless for some strange reason I finish it.

Last night was really more of the same. Frustrations with 1-way doors in level design (even if sometimes the “door” is a ledge you jump off of and can’t climb back up) and logic inconsistencies (I needing a flaming arrow in a room with several burning lamps sitting in holders about 5 feet tall, but I can only set an arrow alight from a fire burning on the ground), but combat that’s actually pretty fun, and (the highlight of the game for me) puzzle crypts to explore (found 3 of these so far, of 8 in the game).

The “Secret Areas” piss me off the most. So far I’ve found 1 (of 32) and I need to find 6 to unlock the 2nd weapon slot. And when I said “found” I mean “get access to so the game gives me credit.” I’ve seen a lot of them but apparently suck at figuring out how to get access. Generally it seems to involved shooting something with a flaming arrow, and see above re: finding a place to set an arrow alight. I’ve also left some behind via hitting a 1-way level chokepoint and losing access to the secret area before I’ve even started trying to solve it. I guess I could “Reload from last checkpoint” but that’s not really my style.

Last night I had to quit because I was getting queasy in a motion-sickness kind of way, just from all the constant camera spinning I’m doing as I look for ways into these secret bits. I’m not a really big puzzle person to begin with, and in an action game I just want to keep the action going, not stop and ponder a puzzle for 10 minutes (this seems like a really odd design decision given that co-op play is such a big emphasis for the game).

I’ve also decided that while having dungeons and crypts that have no light sources is much more realistic than what you encounter in most games (where you discover ancient burial chambers with merrily burning torches waiting), it really isn’t very much fun. I spend more time squinting into the darkness in this game… often I’ll get E’lara to light a flaming arrow just so it’ll act as a feeble light source. There will sometimes be an unlit torch in these areas, but in order to pick it up I’d have to drop my shiny magic sword, and fight with the torch. Again, realistic, sure. Fun? Not so much.

Anyway, so that’s my Hunted: The Demon’s Forge story so far. And that may be the end of things for me. I’m not feeling particularly compelled to go back to the game. It’s just not very good. At least not for me. It could have been, I think. It just feels like a game that needed another 6 months of development for level design (and other) polish.

One of the first things I downloaded when the Playstation Store came back online was the Infamous 2 demo. I loved the first Infamous and not only did I finish it (a rare occurrence for me) but I started a 2nd play-through immediately after.  Never finished that, though, as I’d borrowed the game from a friend and had to return it.

Anyway, I was anxious about whether or not Sucker Punch has screwed things up for the sequel (which I already have pre-ordered).  Here’s how it went:

Fired up the demo, watched the intro which recaps the first game without giving away any major spoilers. Nice job with that! Then a quick pre-amble about why we’re going to a city much like New Orleans for game two.

Finally gameplay starts. It’s fast. I just had to think about moving the stick and Cole is running down the road. Fast and smooth…controls feel good but will take a bit of getting used too; it’s been a while since I played a game with such sensitive controls.

I’m supposed to be following an agent down the street, but the first time I see a telephone pole I scramble up it, then run out along the power lines. The agent stops and hollers back at me and I leap off, landing near enough to her that she dives for cover. Heh.

And then we’re taking fire from some thugs on a couple of balconies down the street. I toss a electricity grenade at them. The first grenade takes out about a quarter of a balcony and sends a bad guy flying. Then I change to electricity rockets. They do even more damage, and the uppermost balcony gives way, crashing down onto a lower one and tearing it, too, off the wall. Thugs go flying everyone which way and, back on my couch in the real world, I literally yell out “Oh, HELL YEAH!”

And then I shut down the demo. Sucker Punch hasn’t screwed this one up and it’ll be here next week. No need to spoil things for myself.

I can’t wait!

The first game is available for free to PSN members as part of the Welcome Back deal and in my opinion, it’s the best game they’re offering (yes, I’ve played all five that they’re offering).