Here is what happened on Saturday the 19th. The last day of this years E3. :( boohoo Byebye.
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• 5/17/01
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Today I focused on the South Hall where the PC and XBOX stuff was shown. There were some PS2 games being shown here by their publishers and developers. I played a couple that I skipped yesterday and have some impressions here.

How about the games?

Title	Thoughts
Final Fantasy X	I don't know what to say that hasn't been said before. This is another FF game but done in full 3D. It was one of the better looking games for the PS2 being demoed. It still has the random battles. The battle system is similar to all the other FF games. I did like the ability to swap out characters at any time. Only 3 can fight at one time, but you can have more then that in your party. So if you need a summoner in a battle more then a hand-to-hand fighter you can swap them. And speaking of summons... man were they impressive looking. And I really like the fact that they were not just one shot deals. When you summoned something it stays and fights the battle for you. That's a nice change. I didn't get to do any of the underwater parts though, so I can't comment on how that played. Over all, if you like FF then this looks to be a good addition to the series. But, yes there is a but, if you hated 7 and 8 you may not like this one. Since I don't know anything on the story (the demo was in Japanese) I could be wrong.
Blood Omen 2	Think Soul Reaver but w/o the Soul Reaver, more humans, less undead and sucking blood instead of souls. It's a pretty cool game. I felt that it was a lot like a mix of the origninal Blood Omen game and Soul Reaver. You solve puzzles, kill guards, suck peoples blood and use dark powers all in wonderfull 3D. I didn't get to do any of the stealth features in the part of the demo I played. And I didn't see any of how the games AI changes to suit how you are playing. What I did play showed good promise. Hopefully the full game is as good as the short demo was. Other then the change to 3D the only major change I saw was that you had to be right on top of someone to drink their blood. But it does still come flying out in a huge gush of blood through the air into Kain's mouth. Overall I think fans of the original may be quite happy when this comes out.
Stuntman	This wasn't playable, at least I didn't see any playable demos on the expo floor. But a lot of in-game sequences were shown in video form. And it looks like a blast. You get to do all those cool Hollywood/HK stunts you've always dreamed about. And it isn't even limited to cars. There are other vehicles like snowmobiles that you need to do stunts for. Since this is a stunt game, which requires good physics, I hope the developers have improved their physics programming abilities. This is being done by the same people who did Driver. And if you remember, that game didn't have the most accurate physics model. Overall, a fun looking game that I hope ends up being even 1/2 as fun as it looks to be.
Police911	I'm not sure exactly what the game is about. I just watched it because it looks interesting. It looks to be a shooting game like Silent Scope, but it uses a new type of controller that looked like a handle to a gun. It didn't look like a light gun, just a controller. I didn't get around to playing it, and I'm kicking myself for that. :( ... OK, after having watched the people playing and reading a little more on the game I now understand a little more. The game is a port of a Konami light gun arcade game. The game uses a trackball controller instead of a light gun. (which is the controller I saw) It also uses a motion sensor to allow you to duck and dodge. (which explains why I saw people really getting "into" the game) The motion sensor seemed to be working really well since the game was reacting correctly to way the person was moving. (at the time I assumed the person was doing it using the controller)
Capcom vs SNK 2	Well, people asked for it, and now you'll get it. A 2D fighting game on the PS2. The backgrounds are in 3D but the characters and gameplay is pure 2D fighter. I don't know what else to say. It's a 2D Capcom fighting game.
Red Faction	A FPS with a real story. MMMM.. I haven't played an FPS game that was as much fun in single-player since Half-Life. The graphics are good, but not as good as Quake3 Revolution. The Geo-Mod system is very cool. Sure there are some slight problems due to limitations they imposed on it. Some of the materials, like steel and reenforced windows can't be destroyed. So if you happen to blow up all the rock around, say a reenforced window, that window would just float in mid-air. hehe.. But other then that I couldn't find any faults with this game. I'm not a big online gamer so I don't lok at that aspect of a game. If you are.. well then I guess you'll find the standard PS2 FPS fault, poor multiplayer and no online gaming. But as a single player game.. woohoo. There are multiple ways to get through a level, lots of side tracks that scripted events, like in Half-Life, are happening on. The game also uses the mini-level loading system that Half-Life uses. Instead of taking up to a couple of minutes to load in an entirelevel at a time, there are various points in the game where it will load in another part of the level. This causes loading to happen more often but keeps loading time to a few seconds each.