The Wii was big at New York Comic-Con. While I didn't actually keep count, it seemed like there were more Wii controllers set up at game booths than any other type of controller. Nowhere was this more apparent than at Sega, who always had a huge crowd, put on quite the show, and had exactly four games on display, all of which are Wii-exclusive.
Here now is our exclusive developer commentary video, featuing Denny Chu for House of the Dead: Overkill, Eric Nofsinger for The Conduit, and Elvin Gee for Sonic & the Black Knight:
Noticably absent from this video is Platinum Games' MadWorld. This is in no way a dig at the game, because I had a lot of fun with it in my playthrough and it was clearly the most in-demand game of the bunch with long lines for the four machines set up to play MadWorld all weekend long. I concur with John's earlier statements that the section demoed was sort of shallow and repetitive, but it was just a demo and set-up for the Comic-Con crowd who don't really have the time to think up big kills or play through more complicated areas. I did pull of one kill that seemed to impress the Sega guys – slamming a tire around a thug, driving a signpost into his face, then picking up another guy and throwing him into the poor signposted-and-tire'd thug, knocking them both into the spinning blades of an industrial fan. More time with the game would give a better impression of whether it's great or dull, but my experience was decidedly positive and I look forward to trying some more to refine my opinion.
House of the Dead: Overkill (which is in stores this week) played great, but where it really shone was in its presentation. The grindhouse aesthetic is everywhere. It's inescapable in the very best kind of way. Overkill seems like it would be an excellent way to spend an evening with the dudes, taking out zombies two-at-a-time. There were unfortunately a few framerate glitches here and there, but nothing that will ultimately detract from the gameplay. If you like House of the Dead, Overkill is probably the best version yet.
The Conduit didn't initially impress me during my playthrough because it did everything I expected it to. As I thought about it later, though, I started getting really excited. I'm not much of an FPS player, and the controls felt like second-nature to me. My assistant Dan, however, plays a lot of FPSes on XBox and he also jumped right in, plowing through aliens like he'd been doing it his whole life. The enemy AI was generally responsive and resourceful. Textures and lighting looked great. Everything just felt right, and we didn't even try to customizable HUD (though I accepted Eric's challenge to someday play with all the elements in the center of the screen). Dan and I agreed, The Conduit could win frat boys over from Halo and Gears of War if only they'd try it. Sega, market this game well. Everyone else, buy The Conduit. I'm serious. I don't even like FPSes that much, and I'm going to buy The Conduit.
Sonic & the Black Knight is a new 3D Sonic skewing towards the younger set. The two levels and two boss battles I played through didn't offer much in the way of platforming or variety, but it still looked great and played well. I got a bit of waggle-fatigue during the dragon boss fight, but it was still fun. The Storybook series are still the most enjoyable console Sonic games since the Dreamcast days, just be aware that if you remember waiting for Sonic 2 to come out on Genesis like I do, you're probably not going to enjoy this one as much as you'd like.
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NYCC 2009 - A Brief Overview of Games
NYCC 2009 - DC Universe Online
MadWorld: Actually A Pretty Even-Keeled World
Sega "Gets" the Wii