Lord Error
Insane For Sony
I must say, Midway is surprising me lately. Psi Ops was more than a decent game, and now this?
As you may or may not know, the MGS3 issue of OPM has this demo on it. I went in expecting yet another shitty FPS, but then it started to unroll and hey, not bad. Not bad at all. First thing that caught my attention was that these guys actually made a graphics engine that uses detailed texturing. On PS2. Yes, of all the teams in the world, it was Midway's developments studio XYZ to do this, so color me surprised (for those of you who don't know, detailed texturing is a special form of mip-mapping where a detailed layer of textures is faded onto a surface when you get really close to it - Halo was the first game I know of that used it, and I really don't think there was a single PS2 games so far that had it) Also, there's a very Halo-like flashlight effect that you can switch on and off, very nicely lit industrial environments, really effective looking particle effect everywhere (gunfire, etc. the gunfights look very 'busy' and crazy throughout the whole demo) and a really neat blurring effect that fires up when you start getting hit by an enemy. Really, the game looks MUCH better than what you'd expect when you hear words Midway, very atmospheric, and having not seen Killzone, there's simply nothing on PS2 as far as FPS games go that I can say looks as good as this. Framerate is the only problem for now, as it dips below 30FPS quite often. Your squad mates seem pretty useful, enemies seem both smart and crazy at the same time (they are some kind of failed lab experiment). Unfortunately, the demo ends abruptly, maybe five minutes into it if you don't rush, and there really isn't enough of it to put some real judgment, but what's there is quite promising. I suppose this will get completely overlooked in the light of all the upcoming FPS mega-hitters, but if the demo is any indication, Area 51 could be a nice, arcady romp, with tense, heavy action all the way through (pure speculation, based on this short demo), that would put it into it's own niche, and separate from the cerebral, exploration, strategic, and whatnot shooters like HL2.
As you may or may not know, the MGS3 issue of OPM has this demo on it. I went in expecting yet another shitty FPS, but then it started to unroll and hey, not bad. Not bad at all. First thing that caught my attention was that these guys actually made a graphics engine that uses detailed texturing. On PS2. Yes, of all the teams in the world, it was Midway's developments studio XYZ to do this, so color me surprised (for those of you who don't know, detailed texturing is a special form of mip-mapping where a detailed layer of textures is faded onto a surface when you get really close to it - Halo was the first game I know of that used it, and I really don't think there was a single PS2 games so far that had it) Also, there's a very Halo-like flashlight effect that you can switch on and off, very nicely lit industrial environments, really effective looking particle effect everywhere (gunfire, etc. the gunfights look very 'busy' and crazy throughout the whole demo) and a really neat blurring effect that fires up when you start getting hit by an enemy. Really, the game looks MUCH better than what you'd expect when you hear words Midway, very atmospheric, and having not seen Killzone, there's simply nothing on PS2 as far as FPS games go that I can say looks as good as this. Framerate is the only problem for now, as it dips below 30FPS quite often. Your squad mates seem pretty useful, enemies seem both smart and crazy at the same time (they are some kind of failed lab experiment). Unfortunately, the demo ends abruptly, maybe five minutes into it if you don't rush, and there really isn't enough of it to put some real judgment, but what's there is quite promising. I suppose this will get completely overlooked in the light of all the upcoming FPS mega-hitters, but if the demo is any indication, Area 51 could be a nice, arcady romp, with tense, heavy action all the way through (pure speculation, based on this short demo), that would put it into it's own niche, and separate from the cerebral, exploration, strategic, and whatnot shooters like HL2.
