At 8:30 PM there was a special presentation of Gears of War with lead designer Cliff Bleszinski. He was really excited about the title and showed off two demos one from X05 and one from the Tokyo Game Show. The demos looked intense, these really showed off what the Xbox 360 could do. After the preview Cliff answered questions from the audience. Some things he said:
– There will be downloadable content, but it is not announced yet.
– Two player co-op features two different characters and you can jump in at any time by pressing start.
– Cliff believes that the game can be successful in Japan. He said that Famistu was impressed by the title and that since the game features zombies (i.e. blending supernatural with natural war) it could be a hit overseas too.
After a talk I got a chance to play the Tokyo Game Show demo. I started out running around by holding A while running. The camera tracks behind like TV coverage of a war. When I ran up to a door I automatically kicked it in. Then the shooting began, you could fire with the left trigger and switch weapons with the d-pad. By pressing up on the D-pad you could switch to throwing grenades. When you lob a grenade there’s a convenient targeting system that shows the arch and where it would land. This way you could perfectly aim it towards a hiding zombie. Once I blasted through a few monsters I ran to a switch, turned it and a bat came up to end the demo. Long story short Gears of War feels like a mix of Resident Evil 4 and Unreal.
