New York Comic Con 2009 Game Preview

The New York Comic Con is in full swing this weekend, and while hardly known as a game showcase, NYCC has become a place for developers to generate some buzz for upcoming summer releases between the holiday blitz and E3 in June. We took a quick jaunt across the lovely state of New Jersey to stop by and take a look at some upcoming games from Activision, Sega, THQ, EA, and others to see how 2009 is shaping up. While there wasn’t a huge amount of games on display, we were pretty impressed with the few we saw and even got some hands-on time with games like Prototype, Red Faction: Guerilla, Jumpgate: Evolution, Champions Online, and even the just announced Battlefield 1943. Read on to hear our initial impressions of the games we’ll all be playing in 2009.

THQ

THQ’s Volition had a small booth in the back that was modeled around the destructible playground that is Red Faction: Guerilla. On display was the aforementioned Red Faction, as well as Deadly Creatures on Wii and Legends of Wrestlemania. Having played through the first Red Faction, we were interested in seeing how the newest iteration was taking shape, with special regard to the destructible environments that made the first game successful.

THQ had two kiosks setup playing through 4-player death match, giving us the opportunity to try the game for the first time. Red Faction: Guerilla features an almost fully destructible environment, similar to its predecessor. The physics system was developed in-house at Volition, which gave them greater control over certain effects in the game. Your player starts with a standard machine gun and sledge hammer, which is useful for knocking down walls of concrete and steel allowing you to create quick escape routes from your enemies. One of the really cool aspects we saw was multitude of backpacks scattered throughout the level, each with its own specific ability. The Thrust pack essentially gives you the ability to pull a Boba Fett on your enemies, while the Rhino pack lets you charge through buildings and enemies alike, sending both flying through the air.


We were really surprised by Red Faction: Guerilla, as the previous game didn’t hold our attention once the novelty of the GeoMod system wore off. Guerilla, however had us captivated and it was really hard to tear away from the multiplayer once we got used to the system. It was a blast using a Rhino pack to launch one of the developers into the air during our play test and we are eagerly awaiting some more time with Red Faction: Guerilla when it gets released in June. Red Faction: Guerilla is being developed for the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Windows platforms.