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E3 Dreams Continued

By Ray Ivey

I'll admit that I approached my 2000 E3 adventure with some trepidation. Would I be frightened by the C-list celebrities I was sure to see, like Pauly Shore and Bill Shatner? Would GameSpot actually have Randy arrested? Would there only be 2.5 adventure games in the whole show?

As it turns out, I shouldn't have worried. I found many games I was excited about. And some that other people are excited about. And some just plain excited people (you should have seen the young boys at the Eidos display, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the pneumatic Lara Croft model).

Here's some more of what I looked at.

Guybrush, Is That You?

I know, I know, I'm the guy who just leveled a sawed-off shotgun at the first Monkey Island game a few weeks back.

But that's before I saw the demo of LucasArts' Escape from Monkey Island, their bright, funny, 3D continuation of the legendary Monkey Island series. Developed by the same team who created Sam and Max Hit the Road, and built on a second-generation Grim Fandango engine, to say this game looks great would be a plank-walking understatement.

Mouse lovers won't be thrilled to hear that navigation is in the same style as Grim Fandango, with Guybrush looking at objects that are available for inspection. Frankly, the system looked pretty easy and elegant to me as we watched the demo.

I have to say I'm impressed by LucasArts' security. Think about it--we only got true confirmation of this upcoming game's existence a few weeks ago, and it's set for release this fall! That kind of secret-keeping rivals the fifteen months of successful stealth perpetrated by Presto while they've been working on Myst III. I think this is an admirable policy, because who wants to yap about these games for three or four years?

At any rate, even after my Monkey Island vitriol, after spending a little time with the 3D adventures of Guybrush, I wanted to run home and play Monkey Island 2 and Curse of Monkey Island right away.

LucasLearning Looks Lovely

I also have to mention the fine work being done by LucasArts' sister company, LucasLearning. For any of you with kids, you should really check out these products. LucasLearning has a delightful line of entertaining educational titles set in the Star Wars universe, with titles like Jar-Jar's Journey, Yoda's Challenge, and the superb upcoming math title, Jabba's Game Galaxy. These are games you won't mind your kids spending time with.

And it won't always be just the kids ... I would defy any ten-year-old to tear me away from the insanely fun Pit Droids, another irresistible LucasLearning title that I've fallen head-over-heels with.

Some of the interesting games we saw were either in very early development or have no fixed release date as of yet.

From Russia with Play-Doh

Russian company Avalon Style Entertainment is working on two claymation adventure games, Clay Dreams and Clay Agent.

Believe it or not, when I asked the nice woman at the booth if she was a big fan of The Neverhood, she didn't know what I was talking about. Perhaps it was a language thing. Or perhaps in Russia The Neverhood has been translated into something like Funny Clay Characters That Solve Puzzles and Make You Laugh.

At any rate, Clay Dreams and Clay Agent both appear to be adventure games in which funny clay characters solve puzzles and make you laugh. Like The Neverhood, all of the work in the games is actual, hands-on claymation--none of those highfalutin computer graphics here.

Clay Dreams is aimed at all ages and promises to be sunny and funny. Clay Agent seems to be aimed at a slightly older audience but is a pure adventure as well.

Major Payne

The next "Release Date to Be Announced" game of note is a very intriguing project from Remedy Entertainment. The game is called Max Payne, and it's a hardcore action shooter. So why in the world am I even talking about it? Well, this is the kind of game that gets an adventure player's attention, that's why.

Inspired by American film noir, Hong Kong action director John Woo, and the cutting-edge visuals of The Matrix, Max Payne appears to be a supremely artistic, violent, realistic depiction of a comic-book hero's exploits against the bad guys in the mean streets of New York.

The demo that we saw for this game was full of camera moves, art, and effects that literally made us gasp. If Nocturne could appeal to some adventurous adventure fans, then so should Max Payne.

Are You a Blair Witch, or a Bad Witch?

Three games with very definite release dates are the three, count 'em, three Blair Witch games being developed by three different studios under the Gathering of Developers name. All three are using the Nocturne engine, and if you're familiar with that great-looking game, you have an idea of the look of this trilogy.

Of the three, only the first (being developed by Terminal Reality) looked like it would appeal to many adventure players. It takes place in the same noir-ish era as Nocturne and even stars a major character from that game, Doc Holliday. She's on the trail of the Blair Witch in a game that looks like a reasonable blend of action and adventure.

The second game (being developed by Human Head Studios) is described as a Blair-Witch-Meets-Resident-Evil romp. Be still my heart. It looked pretty but not particularly enticing to me, the adventure weenie.

The third game (by Ritual Entertainment) appears to be a pure shooter.

I have to echo Randy's sentiments about this series. The Blair Witch Project was a truly scary movie, one of my favorites of 1999. I'm very sorry that shooting was the only way game developers could picture making games from this very promising property. Imagine if all of the gorgeous technology shown off in Nocturne was used to create a truly scary horror game, not just another Resident Evil clone.

The Blair Witch games will be released this fall.