volume
1, issue 38
Today
in loonygames:
New!! The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments on the front page!
Livin'
With The Sims:
theAntiELVIS explores the wild and wacky world that is Will Wright's The Sims,
asking the inevitable quesiton, "is The Sims the first step toward a virtual
life where everyone is Swedish?"
Pixel
Obscura: Josh
Vasquez on Omikron: The Nomad Soul.
Real
Life: Check
out our newest comic strip, Real Life! Updated daily!
User
Friendly: Updated
daily!
Related
Links:
Penny
Arcade at E3: Those wacky Penny Arcade kids do E3!
T-Shirts:
Stylin' loonygames t-shirts from Berda Compugrafix!
Artwork:
Hey, dig the artwork on loonygames? We're selling some
of the original art.
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an opinion...voice it! Drop a line to our Feedback
column...you could end up with a free T-Shirt!
Random
Feature :

The Community Summit: Our exclusive chat with the folks who run your favorite gaming pages (from our seventh issue).
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loonygames
goes to E3!
(part one)
By
Jason "loonyboi"
Bergman
very year the software industry goes completely insane for a week at
the world's largest gaming industry show. Those lucky enough to attend
were shown just about every game that will ship in the next year, along
with quite a few that will ship after that. Titles were shown for literally
every platform - from GameBoy to PC to Nintendo 64 and beyond. I was
fortunate enough to attend this year's show, and while I will admit
that I found the whole event somewhat exausting, I did get a chance
to see a number of exciting titles. What follows is my rundown of what
I saw…at least some of it. Bear in mind that there were thousands of
games shown at this year's E3…and there's only so much time. With that
said, let's get into it.
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Messiah
looked great (16 images).
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Messiah: This was
one of those titles I was really looking forward to seeing at the show,
and I'm very pleased to say that I wasn't disappointed in the least.
With just about every game these days using some form of Level of Detail
(LOD) technology, I didn't expect to be at all impressed with Shiny's
RT-DAT system, which seemed to me like a fancy form of LOD. That may
be the case, but they've done some incredible things with it. Most LOD
systems take a model of a few thousand polygons and drop them as the
character gets further and further away. Messiah does the same
thing, but their models start at half a million polygons. The
end result is some incredible looking models.
I was also extremely impressed
by the whole visual look of the game. The environments are delightfully
dark…Shiny's Stuart Roch demonstrated the game for me, and he pointed
out that a good portion of the game's rooms actually don't even have
ceilings. It sounds strange, but it's very effective. The rooms bleed
off into darkness, and the shadows are creepy and well executed.
I'm not easily won over by visual flair in any game (I tend to get annoyed
when a game is all flash with little or no substance) so I was thrilled
when I saw that Messiah actually has some great gameplay to back
up their technology. You play Bob, a little angel who has no actual
powers of his own. To fight enemies, you have to possess your enemies.
This is accomplished by hopping into their back, and the animation here
is fantastic. Once you've possessed someone, a little halo pops over
their head (in a room populated with similarly outfitted enemies this
would get confusing otherwise, I imagine). The gameplay possibilities
here are enormous. You can sneak by enemies, or start a firefight between
them. You can kill your host body and jump out at the last second. There
are a ton of different ways to access each area. Messiah looks
to be one hell of a game.
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Deus
Ex has some really cool locations (20 BIG screenshots)
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Deus Ex: Here's another
one I was really excited to see for the first time. Deus Ex is
a first person perspective RPG, designed by none other than Warren Spector
(think Ultima Underworld, System Shock). The game is a
nice balance of first person action and role-playing elements, and has
some nifty technological wizardry, including a spectacular on-the-fly
lip synching system.
(Continued
on next page)
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