Previews

At an event in San Francisco last week, Flying Lab Software gave us a rather unique twist on the usual Pirates of the Burning Sea demo. They concentrated exclusively on the supernatural elements of their game, something they had not often talked about before.

FLS understands some players come to their game partly because of its grounded setting and they were careful to ensure that those supernatural elements included were both within the legend of their setting, and completely and totally optional as part of what a player must do to advance. This means that while there are a slew of missions for players to enjoy that deviate a bit from what is strictly possible, characters can in essence choose not to believe in that kind of thing and avoid them altogether.

The supernatural elements of the game are confined both through story and geography. Players must undertake missions to experience that content and it is confined to specific areas. While there are "ghost ships" (players cannot capture them) in the seas around these areas, the majority of the content is land-based.

Find out more about the spooky stuff after the jump.

Today, Tabula Rasa on WarCry offers you an extensive preview of Tabula Rasa's class system, including mini-capsules on each of the classes in the game's unique tree.

Advancement takes the form of a tiered, branching profession tree! All of you start on even footing here with me, as Recruits! You will then have several opportunities for divergence and promotion as you advance! Each new class brings with it opportunities for training in specialized skills, abilities, weapons and powered body armor! Your training time, as measured in "ability points", is limited...there's a war on out there! Not every member of the same class will train in the same manner! You'll have tough choices to make, Recruits! Do you read me? DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I'VE EXPLAINED HERE? DO YOU NEED ME TO DRAW YOU A PICTURE? All right then, here you go...

Click below for a comprehensive preview of classes in Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa!

Earlier this week, we released some first impressions of Fury based on our experience in Beta Weekend 2.0. Now, we have a full length hands-on preview of the game from this same weekend. Once again, Alan Hoover does the honors.

Trials are what you use to get your skills. You spend your hard earned Essence (mine wasn't so hard earned as cheaply stolen) to complete these trials to unlock new skills, as you unlock skills you raise in rank. Without even noticing, I progressed to Disciple, level 3 out of the 10 level s available. This meant I had more equip points so I could add higher armor and more skills. I decided I would do just that, but it would have to wait till the next day as I had to log out for the night.

Sunday arrives, all day I am thinking of Fury and playing my new Disciple character. Luckily for me Fury can be played casually and I wasn't falling too far behind the curve that I couldn't catch up. So, finally I get home with about four hours to go on the preview weekend. That's when I came to the realization I was facing a serious time restraint, because as some of you know, the Bossman , A.K.A. Tony Hilliam, Auran CEO, said they were going to reward players who achieve the rank of Adept or higher by giving them access to a new VIP account. Well this could be a problem as I was freshly Disciple and had a long journey to Adept (level 4) and getting my reward.

Read more after the click.

Over this past week, NCsoft has "relaxed" the Tabula Rasa NDA for members of the gaming press. I'm able to tell you this, because over this past week, NCsoft has "relaxed" the Tabula Rasa NDA for members of the gaming press (read it again, slowly). This means that any random internet boob, who happens to have a marginally recognized gameblog and beta access, can now get up on his soapbox, spill juicy details about the game, and editorialize his own agendas.

Hey, wait a minute. I'm a random internet boob with a marginally recognized gameblog and beta access!

Introducing this WarCry exclusive Hands-On Editorial Preview, and the first of many features to come that will start bringing Tabula Rasa into the light of day.

So, is Tabula Rasa a revolutionary game that redefines the genre and completely eliminates every negative aspect of the MMO experience as we've come to understand it? Will it also make thousands upon thousands of julienne fries? Well...no. It does, however, exhibit the hallmarks of evolution. It's the primitive beast of a genre learning to walk, and even run in places, and one doesn't easily choose to return to crawling after that. It is also pretty fun to play...that's important, right?

Oh yeah...and it has giant robots.

Click below to read the article.

Alan Hoover, our Fury on WarCry Site Manager, ran through this weekend's Beta Preview event and came back with some thoughts. He took a different approach, as we've written a few articles on gameplay itself and this time looked at some of the less publicized features the game has or will have.

The fire and brimstone is settling as this weekend's beta preview event has drawn to a close. Players sheathed their swords and headed back to the only grind in this game, that of real life. Fury will absorb you and it will occupy the time with its nonstop pvp action. It truly is a game you could jump into on your lunch break, or you could play a game before you head out to dinner with the family, and share your stories of the armor and riches you obtained by winning in bloodbath.

Read more after the click.

It's officially here, the end of our E3 coverage. Today we bring you two more pieces to cap things off. The first is a look at the NCSoft free-to-play hack'n'slash MMORPG Dungeon Runners.

"There's no epic storyline in Dungeon Runners, it's about little self contained nuggets of goodness," we were told.

The dungeons in Dungeon Runners are procedurally generated. Essentially, the team built pieces and lots of content. The computer just spits out logical combinations every time someone goes in. This isn't a hardcore game that someone can grab a map for off our website.

Click below for more.

Fury is a fast-paced PvP MMO from Australian developer Auran and upstart publisher Gamecock. It's due out on October 9th, but we got a chance to take a peek at the recent EIEIO event in Santa Monica, during E3. Find out what we thought:

At EIEIO, we played Bloodbath, the scalable free-for-all game. It can hold anywhere from eight to 32 players and puts them in a map appropriate to the number who show up.

When I last played Fury, it was at PAX last fall and while I had a lot of fun, there was quite a learning curve. This time, I was able to jump right in and with only a few hints on how to use my character, get my licks in. In fact, I actually won my first game, albeit against a group of fellow newbies.

Click below for more.

As we polish off the last of our epic E3 coverage, today's non-MMO preview is of Civilization Revolution, the console adaptation of the epic strategy franchise. Sid Meier took a hands-on approach with this game and at E3 we saw the Xbox 360 demonstration.

The "revolution" of this game is the way it handles victory conditions. My one complaint about the Civilization franchise has always been that at a certain point, it feels like there is an inevitable march to a specific victory. It's an epic game and not really full of twists and turns. They reworked that for Revolution. They believe that every single victory condition is now viable and, what's more, each civilization will likely have a chance at one of them each game. This means that while Napoleon goes for a conquest victory, George Washington might be on the very of economic victory, Ghandi a cultural win and Elizabeth I a space victory.

The game also has a bunch of ways for players to pull the rug out from under each other. For example, if Rome is about to take home the economic win, a player who builds "The World Bank" wonder ups the amount of money Caesar needs, but leaves it the same for themselves. A well timed World Bank could be the difference between a narrow loss and a dominating win.

Read more after the click.

Age of Conan is likely one of the most anticipated MMORPGs headed to market, likely rivaled only by Warhammer Online. With its main competitor not at E3, they had the spotlight to themselves. Unfortunately, through no fault of their own, the demonstration suffered some unfortunate setbacks. Find out what we thought of this Eidos / Funcom project:

Melee combat differs from traditional MMOs. Instead of auto-attacks modified by a series of feats, Conan allows the player to swing their weapon in any one of five directions. Players equip feats that are in reality combinations. A half moon display at the bottom of the HUD shows each of these directions and lights up all the potential moves that would continue one of those feats. So after the first swing, three might light up, each a part of a different combination, after the player performs their second swing, perhaps only one or two light up, and so on. It's a great mechanic in a genre that desperately needed one, although it seems difficult to do with a mouse and keyboard (more on this later).

Read more after the click.

At E3 2007, Turbine gave us some clues about Book 11 and a lot of information on Book 10. It includes the feature all MMO players have been waiting for: the ability to play as a free range chicken!

The Rangers and Trolls each cost 5,000 Destiny Points to play and in the interests of everyone getting their turn, play time is limited to one hour. From the look of things though, it will be worth it. We were not able to see the Ranger, but the Troll looked like a lot of fun. They're huge, humans are only leg high, and really gave the feeling that the movies evoked during that epic battle. The troll is all about doing damage to multiple enemies at once, while they told us the Ranger will concentrate (with his bow) on single targets. Prepare for sniper fire!

The great equalizers should balance out the Monster Play areas and provide a lot of fun for those lucky enough to get in the creature's shoes for an hour.

Read more after the click.

SOE Seattle once again showed off The Agency during E3. There was not a lot new - the demo was identical - but with some impressive spying skills of our won, we ferreted out a few nuggets of information. Read on for the goods:

"You are what you wear," is their design mantra. That means if you put on a heavy armor, you're going to blow the hell out of something. If you put on a push-up bra and high heels, you're likely at a cocktail party in disguise.

The game relies heavily on instancing, but hopes to make it something that is as unobtrusive as possible. He explained what they're calling "seamless instancing". He gave us this example: A player is in a public space, let's say a bar. There are dozens of players and NPCs dancing up a storm, but in the corner is a quest NPC. He talks to that NPC and is told of a big bad guy hanging out backstage and warned that if anyone sees them talking, trouble could follow. At this point, the quest NPC's indicator turns red and the players know that if they talk to them again, they're going to go into an encounter. That gives them time to load their weapons and get their friends together. Once ready, they bug the guy again and boom, they're in an instance. The real players in the club fade away and the bad guy comes crashing through the back door. Without loading screens, a social situation turned deadly, just like they do in the movies.

Read more after the click.

As we continue to bring you daily looks at the big name games we saw at E3 2007, we focus in today on BioShock. This game launches later this month and provided us one of the most complete and impressive demos at the show. Period.

Style's great, but what about gameplay? Well it definitely excels there too. I'd go so far as to call it a fast paced first person puzzle shooter (FPFPPS for short, of course!). Every area was crafted carefully and while in some the best way through is obvious, in others the number of ways to complete an encounter is limited only by the player's imagination. The demonstrator told us that after two days of the show, playing the same high level are over and over, he was still able to find new ways to kill the bad guys. Normally, I'd ignore such a comment as presentation hype, but frankly, I believe him.

The key to BioShock is the way weapons interact with the environment. Shock a guy and it's basically a stun. Shock a guy in a pool of water and everyone with a toe in fries.

Read more after the click.

E3 2007 allowed WarCry to see some games that we normally do not cover. One of the highlights was a chance to play Activision's Guitar Hero III. The rock-riff sequel comes out this fall and offers more of the same, which is definitely not a bad thing in this case.

Relieved that I would not have to buy new furniture to house my plastic guitars this fall, I was able to concentrate fully on the game at hand. The gameplay, as one might expect is pretty much identical. In some ways, Guitar Hero III is more like a massive song pack. This time Activision promises 70 songs, the bulk of which will be master tracks (which is code for "not covers"). The actual strumming and playing is virtually identical.

Joe Blancato from The Escapist and I battled it out on three songs: Pearl Jam's "Even Flow", The Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" and "Cherub Rock" by the Smashing Pumpkins. Earlier, I also played "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones. Joe took our death match two games to one. He won a Pro-Faceoff battle of "Even Flow", while we split two games in the new Battle Mode. I beat him at "Cherub Rock" and he got revenge during "Sabotage".

Read more after the click.

E3 2007 gave us the chance to talk to Flying Lab Software inside the SOE meeting rooms. There we saw the game and spoke to Content Director Jess Lebow who talked about their most recent build, the march to launch and some plans for the future, including a crew system.

With an eye towards the future, Lebow expanded on one plan FLS hopes to add to the game post-launch. Crews are great, but having them just as a stat seems like something that could be expanded upon. In what Lebow thinks will likely be a free content update, the team plans to add crew members with personalities.

As players do missions they'll encounter these personages and eventually they may or may not join the player's crew. These would be officers or high level experts. Once in your crew, they further customize the individual ships. In essence, they'd act like talking persistent modifiers. More than that though, they transform an NPC crew from a nameless statistic to something with a soul.

Read more after the click.

E3 is a big show and there are not a huge numbers of MMORPGs on hand, so we decided to stray from time to time and look at some of the other big games that everyone is waiting for. At Eletronic Arts, we saw quite a few titles and in this article we preview three of the highlights: Rock Band, Madden 08's Family Play and The Simpsons game.

And while I didn't dare go near them in a crowded room, vocals also look well done. Of those I heard, clearly you needn't be a good singer to get some OK scores. Invariably, the singer always had the highest percentages in every band I saw and let's just say none of them will be on MTV any time soon. The vocals should add comedy to parties, even if I won't go near them.

An EA rep also told us some welcome news that while nothing has been done or decided, Harmonix hopes to find a way to make the game compatible with the Guitar Hero II guitars. He made clear that there were no promises, but sounded hopeful that something could be worked out. I'll likely grab the new ones for the new toys, but at a certain point, my living room cannot be transformed into a video game recording studio and with Guitar Hero II, Guitar Hero III and Rock Band, that's real possibility.

Click below to read on.