E3 - Metal Gears, Jungle Beats, Unreal Tech?

Thanks to continuing coverage of the E3 Expo show from GameSpot, from 1UP, from GameDaily, and many other sources - highlights for the second day included Eurogamer's detailed write-up of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, apparently "an overwhelming spectacle" in both positive and other ways, GameSpot's first images of Unreal Engine 3.0, a "complete game development framework for next-generation consoles and DirectX9-equipped PCs", IGN Cube's hands-on impressions of DK Jungle Beat, allegedly "the sleeper hit of the show", 1UP's musings on The Lord Of The Rings: The Third Age, an "attempt to make a Japanese-style turn-based console RPG in America", and even GameSpot's brief impressions of a mobile phone-embedded Turrican, as the Factor 5 classic returns "pre-loaded on Siemens 65 Series phones."

Comments

Unreal engine 3

[tolan-b]

I'm speechless, that is truly incredible.

Does anyone know how close to completion this is? Or when we might start seeing games based on it?

Re:Unreal engine 3

[ChibiLZ]

Per the Unreal Technology site, Unreal Engine 3 is completed and ready to be licensed. As to when we will see games on it, I think it would be safe to say no sooner than mid next-year for PC games. Hopefully UT2k5 will be on this engine. For console gaming, wait for the next generation, about 2006 or so. This just announced: The Duke Nukem Forever team has announced that they are switching engines to the Unreal Engine 3! They apologize, but this will unfortunately add another year or 2 delay. :)

Re:Unreal engine 3

[aliens]

Well I dunno about that.

Considering they mentioned that up until NVIDIA's and ATI's newest video cards, which are really just now trickling into the market, they weren't getting more than 3FPS I don't think they'll be releasing anything for at least two years. If it bogs down a tip-top machine today that only 10 people own I don't think a year is enough time.

Re:unreal engine 3

[luserSPAZ]

Nah, it'll just take one person ten times as long.

Re:Unreal engine 3

[junkgrep]

I doubt mid next year: they are targeting 2006. They really need to get a much much larger chunk of players onto 64bit systems and GPUs that are better than the 9800Pro era.

Unreal 3 Engine Video

[rmathew]

...is here:

http://germanjulian.com/open/unreal3_0002.wmv

It really is quite awesome.

Re:Unreal 3 Engine Video

[rmathew]

Sorry, that link is not working any more - try this one instead:

http://download.beyondunreal.com/fileworks.php/dem os/unreal3_0002.wmv

Re:Unreal 3 Engine Video

[junkgrep]

It really is. But then, at this point, I'm not sure who to credit: the engine makers, or the people who make DirectX and write the drivers for video cards. I mean, so much of the WOW power of these next-next gen games comes from using what are pretty standard and well known shaders and effects. Sure, it takes work to program it all into an engine, but provided you are willing to spend the money and target a certain level of hardware, it just doesn't seem as ingenious or a singular an achievement anymore. I mean, the engine looks incredible... but they are running it and targeting it on tip top hardware. Of course it looks better than stuff out today. And anyone else that targets the same specs is probably going to be able to do all the same things. I think it's really coming down, these days, less to the engine and more to the talent of the game designers and artists.

Re:Unreal 3 Engine Video

[Babbster]

But then, at this point, I'm not sure who to credit: the engine makers, or the people who make DirectX and write the drivers for video cards.

No respect for the artists? :)

Re:Unreal 3 Engine Video

[junkgrep]

That's what you get for not reading the whole post that you are responding to. :)

Re:Unreal 3 Engine Video

[Babbster]

Oddly, I always (including this time) read through posts three or four times before making a comment like this. My pitiful brain just never made it to the last word...Sometimes I'm mildly retarded and sometimes I'm a jerk. This time, I think it was more of the former. Mea culpa. :)

What sucks about MGS3

[Pluvius]

...is that it's not a remake of the real Metal Gear 2 (as opposed to the poor substitute that America originally got, Snake's Revenge). Should be interesting to see a story about another Snake, though, even if it is as clogged with narrative as MGS2 was.

Rob

Re:What sucks about MGS3

[Pluvius]

When was the idea of a remake of MG2 ever tossed about in an official capacity?

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that I thought that it was. Sure, I hoped that MGS3 would be an MG2 remake way back when the media was reporting vague bits of information about it (e.g. it was a prequel set in Central Asia), but it never went beyond that.

Rob

Re:What sucks about MGS3

[Imperial Tacohead]

The funny thing was, I had heard that Metal Gear Solid 2 had the most ridiculous story line in the history of mankind, so I avoided the game. But everybody loved the original MGS, right? So when Snake Eaters came out, I got that. Good Lord! It's hard to believe that they could actually come up with something more thoroughly ridiculous than that game. The play mechanics were great, but every time a cut scene came up my brain started bleeding.

Re:What sucks about MGS3

[Imperial Tacohead]

Uh, not Snake Eaters, I meant Twin Snakes, sorry.

Re:What sucks about MGS3

[Pluvius]

Well, the thing is that MGS2's story is an order of magnitude more goofy. The ratio between gameplay and narrative was also worse.

Rob

MGS3

[Killjoy_NL]

From what I read from the MGS preview (which was excellent btw), this game is going to be huge, especially with all the new/different ways of fighting the enemies (weapons/martial arts) I'm REALLY looking forward to it :)

Re:DX 9?

[Robmonster]

That might be true, but since most haves have dreadfully long developemnt cycles, by concentrating on DX9 they can be reasonably sure that when the game is released there will be lots of DX9 supporting hardware available out there.

By concentrating on the newest and best upon release day only , say, 5% of peple will have the hardware that utilises the DX10 only features.

Re:DX 9?

[Robmonster]

That was supposed to say "most games"

Curve my aversion to post preview.

Re:DX 9?

[Robmonster]

CURSES!

Re:DX 9?

[tc]

Because DX 10 hasn't been released yet? Wouldn't it be nice to have something you can actually start using right now?

Re:DX 9?

[MachDelta]

You might be interested to know that DirectX 9 is deemed the MINIMUM spec for Unreal Engine 3. If and when DX10 is released, i'm sure the engine will be ready to take full advantage of it. But we probably won't see UE3 until 2006 at the earliest.

Eh

[djdanlib]

Hands-on preview of Donkey Konga!

Hands-on! Hahahaha! Get it?

Re:Eh

[Incoherent07]

RTFA... Donkey Konga != DK Jungle Beat.

Re:Eh

[chrismcdirty]

But Jungle Beat still uses the bongo (not conga) peripheral to control it.

unreal engine 3

[WormholeFiend]

right now just one person can make a custom character, and a team can manage a total conversion mod.

with all the detail that one can put in a custom character, will its creation require a whole team?

Re:DX 9?

[The Other White Boy]

curse? =)

mgs3 looks good

[yinako]

I think MGS3 look quite good given how limited PS2 is I can't believe they had all those grass in realtime(in a ps2).