NYC ComicCon 2010

So the Comic Con just got started today and boy it was pretty huge. People started flocking here early in the morning, creating a huge line. Some of them were wearing their cosplays to show off their favorite character. It wasn’t limited to comic book characters; some also put their gaming character costumes. For those, who were unfortunate enough not to have a costume, were offered costumes for a pretty low price. Unfortunately my bank balance is low which restricted me not to buy one or even I couldn’t get the weekend pass for myself, rather I got the one day pass. So I will just talk about today’s event (which was indeed sad considering the fact, I wasn’t able to capture some pictures of girls wearing sexy cosplays on time, most notable being the Princess Leia and Wonder Woman). It was held in NYC Javits Center, which is just a river crossing away from my home. Well the gate opened at 1 AM and due to the huge line, I managed to get in after 30 minutes. During this time, there was a huge roar amongst the crowd. It was the famous Stan Lee (yes I saw him and somehow tried to capture him with my bloody slow camera).
 

 

 

I got into the main area at 1:30 and I was greeted with some anime booths and gaming booths. I will focus on everything related to gaming, since if I start writing about comics and anime, this blog will be freakishly huge. The booth I came across is the Rockstar Booth and they were representing their upcoming Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare DLC. At first I asked the Rockstar people, that I represent NoobFeed and asked them to let me have some demonstration from them. Although they asked for a business card and I didn’t have one, they were still kind enough to provide me with previews and demos on a pen drive. I will open those, try it and upload some videos about it later. I wasn’t allowed to take videos so I just played while he gave me some demonstration (well the best way to experience the game is to play by myself and that’s what I did).

 

Read Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare

Watch the teaser trailer

 

What is the Undead Nightmare? Rockstar says that it will contain a single player with a storyline which involves cleansing the states from the undead. So basically the demo lets you play a portion of a single player in a graveyard where you have to approach a coffin and burn it, resulting some hordes of undead rising up from the grave. So your main mission is to kill all the undead zombies with your limited ammo (which is pretty much a big challenge). The reason being that I felt they should have provided a shortcut for melee attacks which is not included in the main control scheme. Next the best way to conserve your ammo is to shoot everyone on their heads (on shot kill). Here the Dead Eye feature works perfectly. There are more coffins in the area and the more you burn, more will arrive. The hordes get bigger making it more challenging. It’s pretty fun though but I thought it could have been better, mostly because of the control scheme. Rockstar said they have plans to include a multiplayer mode but they have not confirmed it yet.

 

Dead Space 2

One thing’s for sure, the graphics of this game is awesome. It’s more fluid than the previous game. The game is also great when you play with a pair of Turtle Beach headphones that they provided. The game is practically pretty similar to the previous game but I think they have added some variations in the enemies since I found quite hard to destroy some of them (it seems that they have tweeked the body ligaments of each enemie, bringing slight variation just to make the game more interesting). Not to mention I came across some new sets of savage enemies: the babies. Yes they are small, they are mean and they are fast and they also come in hordes. In the demo I also came across a single puzzle which you have to solve using hacking feature (which is a new concept although it’s a minor addition), grappler and stasis.

James Bond 007: Blood Stone

When I played this game, the very thing that came to my mind is that "OMG, I am playing Everything or Nothing!" So I think Blood Stone will continue the story where Quantum of Solace is left off. Since the game is not movie based rather an exclusive game title like Everything or Nothing, i think it is going to be great. Yes it didnt disappoint me as the game is really impressive. It is a third person action game. Although I didnt find any major differences with Everything or Nothing, it is still fun to play. The graphics a little bit dated which really concerns me what Activision is doing for the series, provided I didnt find any major differences in the gameplay that EA had made revolutionized in Everything or Nothing. However the impressive part is that it gives you a feeling that you are watching a movie. The cutscenes are played during the loading sequence which is good in a fact as the game is not making players bored with loading sequence.

 

Deus Ex Human Revolution

 

At 4:30 PM, the people from Square Enix had shown a demonstration of their upcoming game from the Deus Ex Series. You play as Adam Jensen, a private security officer, who has been forced to take augmentation surgery for survival after a sudden attack in his company. Since it is a First person role playing game, you can develop your character in four different ways and the gameplay will change according to that. You can build up your character using augmentation specializing in Combat, Stealth, Technology and Social. Square Enix showed us a portion of the gameplay where they showed us the hacking technique and how you can alter security and camera. You can play the level either in brute force or in pure stealth. Playing in stealth is fun as you can have a cloaking ability, sneak on enemies and even perform stealth kills which also varies depending on your augmentation (yes you can build yourself to kill two people at once). Also before killing them you can hear their conversation to get some valuable information like secrets or passwords which would be really helpful. Cloaking is limited so you need to use it wisely. In some cases if you are detected they will ask for backup which can get messy as at one time they called a huge Mech enemy which eats up a lots of bullets before getting destroyed (alternately you can use rocket launcher). Also there was a portion where you infiltrate the area by breaking the glass roof. You break in, you come at a point surrounded by enemies where the gamer can initiate a area stun command on impact to the ground while you kill all them surrounding you using frag bombs. These moves can be initiate in a combo by the gamer. The graphics in this game is mind blowing (which is normal for a Square Enix game). I am mightily impressed with this game and I think it should be a must buy for everyone when it gets released on 2011.

 

Michael Jackson Dancing game

 

A rare sight where STARR members performing MJ moves!!!

 

Yes a lot of people tried this game in the event. Oh yes guess who were the presenters? The Frag Dolls were here. Ubisoft showed their Wii version to us. So basically the game can be played by 4 people and after choosing a specific MJ song, they perform a set of moves directed by the game. People seemed to enjoy the game and most people ended up showing their MJ dancing techniques which was fun to watch.

 

Mega Man Universe

 

 

The biggest showstopper in the games department was Capcom. A lot of people gathered themselves in the line to play some of the Capcom games. Megaman Universe is one of them. As I kept on playing the game, the game kept its root intact with difficult platform and purely simple control scheme. You can choose multiple characters, each with different specialties. Also you can choose the difficulty level in the game. What bothered me most is the graphics itself. The game is based on vector cell shaded graphics and for a game like Megaman, it does not suit perfectly. Overall the game is still fun to play but I thought it could have been better (Capcom should improve the series at significant level considering the fact they have a huge fanbase).

 

 

Last but not the least here is the biggest game that is featured in Comic Con:

 

Marvel vs Capcom 3: The Fate of two worlds

 

Due to huge line, I could not have the time to play this marvelous game but I asked some people who played the game and they said it was a nostalgic experience. Even watching this game felt really good. The presenters kept on providing commentaries in the game as some professional gamers played. The game took a pretty good facelift and adopted the style of graphics that Street Fighter 4 boasted. The fast paced gameplay of the game was by far quite impressive and moves given by each character was simply marvelous (maybe I am getting biased about this game but this is what I felt even when I watched this game). The game will be released on Spring 2011. At 7:30 PM, Capcom has revealed that two additional characters will join the roster: Arthur from the Ghost and Goblins and Radd Spencer from Bionic Commando.

 

Also I met the producer of the Marvel vs Capcom 3 game, Ryota Niitsuma, who gave me a signed poster of the Marvel vs Capcom 3.

 

Me with Ryota Niitsuma

 

So here you go!! I had lots of things to write but the blog was getting extremely big. It was one fine day however my biggest regret was not being able to stand beside the two beautiful Princess Leia and take a photo. My stupid camera didn’t function properly. Sorry Sleven I could not meet you request. Maybe next year I will take a better camera.