Makuhari Messe convention centre was dark, with all lighting coming from booths and large TV screens. I did what anyone would do when faced with massive crowds and sensory overload — I grabbed a program and played the first game with a clearly signposted queue.
My first game was Dynasty Warriors Multi Raid Special (真・三國無双 MULTI RAID Special / Shin Sangoku Musou MULTI RAID Special) for the XBox 360 (also available on PS3). It was fun jumping and smashing things in ancient China, although I felt as if I was just button-mashing a lot of the time, especially when different body parts of my character would glow for no reason. I also made the mistake of trying to kill all warriors in each area before moving on. When I got to the boss, a magic missile-tossing magician, I had very little time left to kill him and he seemed invincible to my previous buttonmash combo. Having played it though, I got a little something for my mobile phone.
Kaihin-Makuhari train station had been covered with advertising for Resonance of Fate (End of Eternity in Japan) and I immediately wanted to play it once I saw the trailer. It looks quite Final Fantasy-ish in presentation, design and character archetypes. However, one of the unique selling points is that you can change the characters’ costumes and see it reflected in their cut-scenes. Also, unlike Final Fantasy, there doesn’t seem to be just one ‘hero’ character to represent the player. You control all three characters equally and when one dies, the game is over.
While the queue for the PS3 version was so long they had stopped admitting people, the line for the Xbox 360 version was relatively shorter. The hour-long wait didn’t faze me, although it did use up most of the battery in my phone as I kept posting to Twitter.
I played a special version of the game intended just for TGS 2009. First, I sat through the tutorial, which consisted of defining scratching damage and direct damage and what weapons you can use to inflict them. Maybe I should’ve waited a bit longer, since I never really got a clear understanding of gameplay from it. I skipped it after about eight minutes (everyone does this, right?) and ended up in a room with a monster hitting the three main characters, without any idea how to hit back. Eventually, one of the booth staff came to help. Press X, then X again, select your path and then buttonmash the hell out of it. I don’t know if he told me the only strategy or if he told me the one that would get someone as clueless as me through the game. If that was all there was to it, I don’t get it. The result looked really cool, but I don’t know how much skill really factored into it. On the other hand, one of my characters (Reanbell) died fairly quickly and so ended the game. This really is something I’d have to play more to tell if it’s good or not.
While I was waiting, I watched the trailers for Bayonetta and the people playing it. It seems very similar, if not identical, to the Devil May Cry series in terms of gameplay. I really loved the main character’s tough attitude and I think response to this game will depend on how gamers feel about her. One of the scenes I saw was her fighting angelic monsters on a Big Ben-like clock whizzing through space. Very cool. Another one was her fighting a giant whilst standing on the same bridge he was holding in his hand.
I stopped at the Playstation 3 booth to watch some game trailers. Nier Replicant had a short trailer, but the cutely horrific monster designs intrigued me. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow looked like an amazing blend of Japanese gaming action and character design combined with epic European set designs and camerawork. It had Patrick Stewart narrating too, as well as voice-acting from Robert Carlyle.
Of course, I have to talk about the Final Fantasy trailers. Final Fantasy VIII will blow you away with individually animated hair strands. The first scene from the trailer, where two main characters are watching fireworks, was a richly imagined world but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from their hair. Oh, and the skin. You can almost see the pores. Um, but that’s the most detailed scene and others haven’t got the same level of animation. I imagine that one also comes with a hit pop song as the fireworks explode around them.
The Last Guardian (人喰いの大鷲トリコ / Hitokui no Oowashi Toriko) intrigued me but ultimately had some problems. The basic story is that of the adventures of a boy and his giant chimera-like eagle named Trico. The trailer I saw starts with a feather floating down. A tiny crow lands next to it and you see how big the feather really is… A monstrous bird lands and chases after a young boy, who almost goes over the edge of a cliff, until he befriends it. Trico looks adorable, not to mention incredibly realistic. The backgrounds too, have amazing levels of detail and shading and I saw a five minute behind-the-scenes preview that emphasises this. You can even see the dust rising up when shards of sunlight hit them. Why, then, does the boy look like he’s on loan from a completely different game? Flat and cartoonish compared to all other aspects of the world they created. The more I watched, the less I could unsee it.
I left when they started playing an extended Playstation “Game Face” commercial. Don’t get me wrong, I’m under no illusion that game trailers aren’t commercials too. But they are exciting and interesting to me in a way that footage of people playing the PS3 isn’t. Awesome games with good advertising should be their own adverts for your gaming system. All we need is a quick reminder of which one it is.
With not much time left, I opted to play one last game. I chose a less popular one, with a shorter queue and a free gift for having played it. That game was Ghost Trick for the Nintendo DS.
First of all, I’m a slower reader compared to most people in attendance. If I have a time limit, I can only do so much. After a while, I realised that the compulsory in-game tutorial wasn’t getting me anywhere and I really should just click through to get to the game itself. The story goes that the main character is dead. However, he can possess and jump through objects to activate them. As an example, there is a bad guy pointing a gun at a woman. Your character lies slumped (he IS dead) in front of a bicycle, but his soul can only travel so far (about one centimetre on the screen). Using the stylus, you guide his soul to the pedals and then to the bell. With a tap, you activate the item. The bell goes off, the bad guy is frightened by the sound and he doesn’t shoot the woman. Ghost Trick has a new take on gameplay, but I need to play more challenging problems before I’ll give a stronger opinion on it. I liked it as far as it went.
One more photograph before I go, which might be considered “not safe for work”: Booth cosplayer. This unusual (but official) costume caught my attention for its weirdness. Click on any other of the photographs to see them in a bigger size on their own Flickr page.
Thank you for reading my review of the Tokyo Game Show. If you want to read more articles like this, click on any of the tags below or to your right.
