GC 2007 - Day 3: Sega Rally, Spellborn and MMO money
After a bit of a disappointing start to the Leipzig GC 2007 coverage, Day 2 was a great success for us, so we were keen to press on with the progress. At the end of big events, people are either too chilled or too tired to worry about stuff, so dropping by without a prior booking was no problem. So let's get cracking then! SegaAlthough my visit was at very short notice, Sega were more than obliging to try and fit me in, and I got a good look at two, potentially very popular, up-coming titles: Sega RallyStill going strong in arcades, the Sega Rally franchise has been given a thorough kick up the next-gen pants and a fresh version will be heading for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 in pretty soon. At first glance, it just looks like any other rally game, albeit a very pretty one. A key feature for this release is the persistent deformation of the track surface; unlike rally sim games, which simply have one long, non-repeating track, Sega Rally uses short circuits, that you lap several times.
The track surface is a true 3D model - as you drive over it, your wheels create furrows which remain present (unless something else drives over them); get a decent racing line early on and the later laps will be much quicker because the ruts will be deeper, helping the steering. I was lucky enough to play this in a racing seat with a top-of-the-line Logitech wheel, and you could really tell the difference between racing out of the grooves and when you're in them. If you're worried that it won't offer any challenge whatsoever, being an arcade racer, fear not - Sega Europe's PR guru, Stefan McGarry, gave me a head-to-head race and... well, okay I got thoroughly ass-kicked. Naturally the problem was with the wheel/test system/demo! Alright, the problem was me but I'm not a complete doofus when it comes to racing games, and Sega Rally seems to offer a good enough challenge for all levels.
Sadly my time with this title was all too brief but as long as the PC version is not some borked console port, then Sega have got a winner here.
Universe at War: Earth AssaultYou've perhaps not heard about this game very much - possibly because you've already dismissed it as just another boring RTS game. I have to confess that I was just as guilty in this respect but you know, this might well just be a bit of a dark horse...
The storyline is classic, B-movie sci-fi stuff and without going through it all, the basic idea is this: Earth has been invaded by these nasty aliens who are hell bent on sucking up all the resources in the galaxy. We humans have been thoroughly beaten and we're just about on our last legs but - behold! Saviours appear in the form of two other alien races: super high tech ones who have been hidden on Earth for millennia and an uber robot mob, out for revenge, as it was these evil aliens that squished their creators a long time ago. None of that really matters but it's the differences between each faction that is the key aspect for this otherwise regular RTS. For example, each group has their own way of collecting resources; the robots uses little servant robots which can zoom around the map via a network of energy links, invisible to all bar you. The nasty alien crowd are less polite about this because their resources are actually everything else - bases, units, trees, cows - if you can grab it, it's a resource.
Bases and units vary a heck of a lot too - the ancient, high tech aliens can switch between two modes of operation: light = fast, and mobile, but quite weak; dark = heavy, powerful, but slow and flightless. The Hierarchy, the resource-sucking baddies, uses big, stomping crab-like machines as their bases - so you can send your "barracks" into an enemy camp, have your "base" smash the opponent's buildings to pieces and then spawn troopers in the midst of this, to mop up the rest. There's one more aspect to push this game above the masses and that's how the research and skill/tech trees are handled - each base or unit can only have two upgrades running at the same time and although you can have them all researched, you just can't (and therefore don't need to) have them all enabled. You can roll-back research that you've done, so you'll never be in a position where a game in unfinishable because you don't have the necessary upgrade for it.
The developers, Petroglyph, have taken a lot of steps to remove the fiddly nature of stat-heavy RTS games and that includes the UI, which is very streamlined. There is so much potential depth to the tactical nature of this game that they will need to spend a lot of time working on the Q&A and balancing to ensure that the multiplayer is as good as the campaign mode. But this is certainly one game to keep an eye out for, as it's due out in the Autumn of this year.
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