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Xaeris
Oct 14, 2005, 08:02 PM
Well, that was fun. In addition to PSU, there was all sorts of other stuff set up. Sonic Riders, Shadow the Hedgehog...and there were some tournaments too. Dance Dance Revolution Extreme stood out the most; there were two player machines set up for single players to play on; that's right, one person playing a two player match at a ridiculously sick speed. Once you see that, you feel your own gaming skills are surprisingly inadequate. Oh well, nothing SCII ownage can't fix.

But of course, that's not why you're here. What was set up were two "scenes" from the single player game. The game regrettably still had JP VAs, but at least had English subtitles so I could be privy to what was going on. So of course, I wasn't able to test drive the character creation and was just stuck as Ethan with a party of Karen, Hyuga and Dr....um...a doctor. Yeah. Anyway, they basically just follow you around and engage when enemies are close. I probably won't reveal anything we don't already know, but here's a report all the same.

First scene takes the party to a place resembling Forest. The map follows the same template as the PSO games; a room with enemies in it, kill them, and you can go through the door. The rooms are quite a bit bigger though.

Combat is...a little different. There were no instructions so I had to figure this out as I went along. I think I was pretty through though. The square button, for the most part, acts as a basic attack with whatever weapon you're equipped. Triangle activates a special technique unique to that weapon...or weapon class. I didn't have enough inventory to determine that much. R1 allows you to use the sidearm in your left hand, in my case, a gun. I had to hold it and then press square to shoot.

For example, one of my set ups was a saber and gun combo. Square made a basic slash that I could chain up to three times. Triangle unleashes an attack called Cross Rush. No, that's not nearly as cool as it sounds. It's basically a normal slash with a slightly bigger flash on contact. Still, at the end of a string of squares, you can keep going with three Cross Rushes. Additionally, holding R1 made Ethan aim his gun and let me shoot.

Now, targeting was something to get used to. Hold L1 lights up the crosshairs on the closest enemy, allowing your attacks to home in on that targer. It's not necessary to be locked on like it was in PSO, but damn, it sure helps. Plus, while locked on, you can strafe about the enemy.

Now, and this will probably really important in the complete game, the O button. O brings up a small side menu with various weapon setups, probably predetermined by the user's customizations (this demo didn't allow access to any main menu). Here, you can swap between them. What I had lined up at my disposal was a gun and saber combo, a gun and dagger combo, a sword (think orange Flowen's Sword), and a rod.

Each of these weapons had their own traits and triangle skills. The saber, as mentioned before, had Cross Rush. The dagger had Spin Cut. The sword had Shield Break. Now, we're all used to swords being slow, but Christ, it's like Ethan was trying to heave around a brick. I stuck with the saber and gun combo most of the time. The short range of the dagger was just annoying.

Now, onto the rod. It's triangle skill was Resta, but it had a square attack that wasn't just a swing of the staff. No, it was Gifoie. And it kicked ass, even if Ethan is a human. Makes me wonder how techs are in the hands of numen.

Now, near as I can tell, we don't have TP anymore. Rather, what determines the frequency to which we can use these spells is something I'd call weapon durability. On the right hand of the screen, there was a bar and a fraction displayed. For example, for my saber, it was something like 100/100. After swinging it around for a while and using quite a few Cross Rushes, durability dropped to 91. There weren't enough enemies for me to get durability down to 0 to see what happens, but it's a pretty safe assumption that it's bad if that does happen.

Thankfully though, the rod had a crazy amount of charge; a max of 450 for it. What troubles me is the monofluid I found. Like I said, couldn't access a menu, so I can only guess it's used to restore durability.

Anyways, on with the demo. Scene 1 was fairly easy; hack down some mindless enemies (well, mostly mindless; they did jump back from my swings every now and then) right to the very end and a boss fight.

Enter De Goran. Or was it Rogan...whatever. Anyway, just think dragon remix. Heck, it was a bit loud to hear, but I'm pretty sure I heard Growl, from the Depths of the Earth playing during the battle. It was a pretty easy fight. It flew into the air and launched fire blasts, and I got the hell out of the way. CPU wasn't quite as smart so I had to babysit them with Resta. It would come down every now and then to breath fire and I'd take my opportunity to slash away at its legs.

Sometimes, I'd need to stay away from the body, so I'd just take potshots at the head with the gun. Good stuff overall. I won and it was onto Scene 2.

Scene 2 takes place in what I can only dub a better lit version of Ruins 1. I had the same inventory and the same party to work with. After hacking down a room of the same enemies, I ended up in what seemed like an event battle against a mobile armor. It had multiple areas to target so I made short work of it with the sword.

The room springs to life with more of the same armors so Karen instructs Ethan to take the doctor and run while she and Hyuga hold off the armors. One room of enemies later (Resta = win), and I got into a cutscene where Ethan apparently confronts Renvolt for the first time. Unfortunately, I didn't get to fight as the scene ends there as does the demo.

I played through both scenes three times apiece. Overall, I think it's gonna be great. Battle isn't quite as fast as I'd like it, but it's smooth regardless. And the line really wasn't all that long. In fact, there was no line for the two machines set up with the demo. Granted though, it was midday Friday; place will probably be packed tomorrow.

By the way, Shadow the Hedgehog will suck. You heard it here first. And that concludes my day at the expo, for whatever it's worth.

_Tek_
Oct 14, 2005, 09:22 PM
But shadow has a gun.

Also I'll read all that later. I'll just tag this topic.

Parn
Oct 14, 2005, 09:31 PM
Doesn't negate the fact that Shadow the Hedgehog will suck.

Anyways, nice of you to share info with us. Like I said in the other post, it sounds like you guys played the same demo build that was available in May at E3, so I imagine things will be a little more interesting for the final release.

Otis_Kat
Oct 14, 2005, 09:42 PM
Wait are you saying shadow sux cuz you hate what they did or did you get some hands on with it?

PhantomAlpha
Oct 14, 2005, 10:22 PM
On 2005-10-14 19:42, Otis_Kat wrote:
Wait are you saying shadow sux cuz you hate what they did or did you get some hands on with it?


I'm sure it's going to suck either way.

Xaeris
Oct 14, 2005, 10:25 PM
It was really more of a joking passing comment, but yes, I did get to play it. I didn't like it. The controls are pretty slippery (granted, he's on a pair of hover skates, but a single tap of the stick can send him flying). Jumping seems to have regressed since SA2, and as the gun is more effective than the homing spin attack, it's really not practical to do much more than shoot from a distance.

And the game reduces Sonic to Tails status in terms of AI. I mean...of all the cardinal sins...

therealAERO
Oct 14, 2005, 10:46 PM
I played Shadow the Hedgehog game at e3 and it was really fun. As for the PSU demo. All you did was play the e3 demo. Did it say "Coming Winter"? Or something along those lines?

Reenee
Oct 15, 2005, 12:54 AM
When you strafe with a gun, is it some pansy-ass "I'll just take my time by walking hurr hurr hurr" strafing or "holy shit, I'm into this! RUN!" strafing?

King_Rappy
Oct 15, 2005, 02:49 AM
I was there too. Did you notice that Dr. Dorson is called Dr. Dorson in the first chapter, Dr. Dawson in the second chapter, and then Magashi calls him Dr. Darren?
Also, Shadow won't be as bad as Sonic Heroes, though it controls like a pile of crap. I rarely, if ever, used the guns, though. I don't know if you played Sonic Rush, but that and PSU were the 2 best games on the floor as far as I was concerned. The dark blue DS had the entire game beaten, including the last story.

omegabuild
Oct 15, 2005, 11:30 AM
he basically said most of what i said, but said it better, mayeb a little less boringly.

I find your weapon durability take interesting, i was wondering what those numbers were, for gun though it went down once per shot, and the gun was useless once it was out. maybe it can be thought of as photon in the weapon. Anyhow the melee weapons never seemed to run out, my guess is teh monofluid is for something else.

Im thinking the rod with custom techs is merely one way of achieving techs, this may not be teh case, but having acess to only 2 techs at a time.... i dont think most fos would like that. this would make tp another issue and thus monofluids.

I found teh npcs were too decent, it would be so easy to play the fo role and just resta and spam techs, they are as good as your average online players. (lets face it outside of cmode usually tactics are zerg zerg and more zerg) personally i hope they have more control IE you can press say select and controll one specifically, or adjust their overall tactics.

So yea teh demo was alright, i think its time for them to release a new demo build though.

O yea as far as the release date change, it still says winter, of course this is probably an old demo, but i think they are sticking to their original release plan for now,

Rion772
Oct 15, 2005, 12:14 PM
Everyone: stay on topic!

That's pretty sweet (the strafing thing)

Guntz348
Oct 16, 2005, 03:10 AM
Heh I was there too, the expo itselt was OK, decent I guess for a public expo but nothing compared to E3 or anything like that. As for the PSU demo I played for about an hour all together and I must say I enjoyed it. I'm not sure if I like how you have to have a rod equipped to cast spells and if you do and can only have 2 attack that will cripple the FO's. I really can't see how that set up would work for casters. I have a feeling a FO will be able to cast what ever he wants with no weapon and the rods, wands ect will just boost its power. All I can say is this after coming home from the expo, I pre-ordered the JP version and I can't wait for it to come in! http://pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_smile.gif

Nai_Calus
Oct 16, 2005, 11:20 AM
Yeah, they'd better have come up with something actually USEFUL for FOs to use. >_>

So far they're just confirming my fears. Come on, ST, it was bad enough being a FO in PSO where you had six buttons to slap techs on and could cast barehanded. -_-

But only two action buttons, and a Rod only allowing two techs...? That's just... Yeah, no. Not going to work. *shiver*

omegabuild
Oct 16, 2005, 12:14 PM
well really you can change weapons pretty fast, so if you ha like 5 canes with your spells... but thats a lot to run through, anyhow guess we ll see

PrinceBrightstar
Oct 16, 2005, 12:42 PM
Hey, i'm taking a few minutes to sit down at Digital life. Here's what i've learned about PSU

Sniper mode for guns activated by pushing L3 when gun is active.

The Dragon is called De Ragen

There is now an auto-targetting mode which is activated by pushing the L1 button. You don't ever have to let go, however I found it cumbersome to use when using the flowen's sword and i'm more used to manual targeting so i don't think i'll be using it that often.

To change weapons, hold circle, select your weapon, and release.

To change weapons while moving, hold circle with your right pinky while your index pushes the dpad to select the weapon.

Resta range is very very short.

Characters can get stuck if walking too close to a wall, much like in PSO.

You can strafe while shooting with a gun, but not in sniper mode. By the way, that sniper mode is perfect for machinima purposes.

The best place to attack De Ragen is underneath the tail with gifoie. it hits about 6 spots. Also go into sniper mode with the gun when its in the air.

The average combo you'll see is square, square, square, triangle, triangle, triangle.

Meseta drops as yellow gems still, but more on their side.

Regular items like trimates and monofluids drop as red gems.



I also met clumsyorchid here, a shame i forgot my camera. I'll see if i can get him to come to the HP booth for a picture. Also he has confirmed that Pioneer Haloween will be released when the lobby decorations are up. He'll also be working on Pioneer christmas as soon as he gets back.

Oh and one more bit of detail, I managed to crash the game on the first try. Basically De Ragen got stuck in the sky flapping its wings, and when i went to reset it, it wouldn't reset, so the power on the test playstation 2 had to be turned off.

I'll make a full post on the front page tonight when i get back home.

Split
Oct 16, 2005, 01:34 PM
On 2005-10-15 09:30, omegabuild wrote:
he basically said most of what i said, but said it better, mayeb a little less boringly.

I find your weapon durability take interesting, i was wondering what those numbers were, for gun though it went down once per shot, and the gun was useless once it was out. maybe it can be thought of as photon in the weapon. Anyhow the melee weapons never seemed to run out, my guess is teh monofluid is for something else.

Im thinking the rod with custom techs is merely one way of achieving techs, this may not be teh case, but having acess to only 2 techs at a time.... i dont think most fos would like that. this would make tp another issue and thus monofluids.

I found teh npcs were too decent, it would be so easy to play the fo role and just resta and spam techs, they are as good as your average online players. (lets face it outside of cmode usually tactics are zerg zerg and more zerg) personally i hope they have more control IE you can press say select and controll one specifically, or adjust their overall tactics.

So yea teh demo was alright, i think its time for them to release a new demo build though.

O yea as far as the release date change, it still says winter, of course this is probably an old demo, but i think they are sticking to their original release plan for now,

maybe you just can't use techs when the bar on your weapon runs out. like each weapon has its own individual TP.

omegabuild
Oct 16, 2005, 01:46 PM
this is possible, but then whats teh monofluid for, recharging all photon? possible i suppose

Rubesahl
Oct 16, 2005, 03:53 PM
Thanks for the hands on information ^__^ I have a clearer idea on how the game will be...

Rion772
Oct 16, 2005, 09:28 PM
Now i'm not too sure if I went to be a Newman for my team...

OdinTyler
Oct 16, 2005, 10:33 PM
Why do we have 2 or 3 individual posts for the same event? We're all replying to different posts. They need to be merged somehow. If anyone's interested, read all the posts. Guess we were afraid to admit who we really were...I mean what are the odds of running into fellow visitors of PSO World. I did wonder at times tho...