Impressions from Day Two at E3 – Full Text Overview
The gameplay was excellent and felt like an older-style platformer with a modern touch. Strong water currents in a jungle-themed level felt like a throwback to the Labyrinth Zone from the original Sonic the Hedgehog, and the candid nature of the game reminded me greatly of platformers from the ninties, such as Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon. Running at a cool sixty frames per second, Rayman Origins was also quite possibly the best looking game I’ve seen at E3 so far; the gorgeous professionally drawn in-game artwork’s resolution didn’t falter one bit when zoomed in about 3x. One of the developers of the game was kind enough to guide myself and two strangers through two sample levels, and provided a lot of information about the development of the game: only forty people are making it, including artists, and it should be out this holiday season for all three major platforms. Don’t miss out on this one.
After playing Rayman, I headed back to the Nintendo booth once again with Austin to have another go at Skyward Sword, this time intending to try out the flying sections of the game. After thirty minutes of waiting, Austin and I proceeded to the front of the line. I let Austin play first this time since I went first the day before. He played the dungeon demo this time around, and apparently got farther in it than anyone else had that day. After ten minutes, it was my turn. I selected the flying demo, and saw a pretty poorly graphicked text overview, where I was told I would win the lovely Zelda if I could catch a golden bird before the other boys in the village could (NPCs are still voiceless, thankfully). After a pretty cool sequence of running off of a cliff and calling a giant red avian creature to catch Link, I was off and running. The bird was controlled in similar fashion to the beetle item, by rolling your wrist left or right to turn, and pointing up or down to respectively go up or down; it was precise for the most part. The bird was similar to Epona in that it had three feather icons that represented rechargeable boosts. Flying was pretty fun, and I suspect it will have a large part in the overworld in game.
With that, day two at E3 was over, for us at least. We got some free Nos from the free Nos stand (which helped me write this article immensely, by the way), and headed on out to the bus stop. There was a mad rush of cop cars headed downtown as we walked to our stop, which we later found out helped bust a large-scale thievery ring. This concludes part two of my three part E3 coverage article series. SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY.
-Jack Johnson
Photos taken by Laura Tsai
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