Electronics Entertainment Expo 2002.
Brought to you by HeavenGames.com.
Here's some
shots of the Age of Wonders setup at the Take 2 booth. In the center image next to
Angel Draco, that's Franz Felsl, Artist and Designer for PopTop Software who worked on the
cut scenes for AoW2. On the far right image, you can see Anne-Marie Sims in the
yellow. She's the PR Manager from Take 2 Interactive who allowed Draco and I to
check out Stronghold: Crusaders in a private booth. I'm sure she would like me to
tell you that AoW2 will look a lot better than what you can see in these photos so don't
base your opinion solely on what you see here. Look for lots more information on
AoW2 at Age of Wonders Heaven.
We also checked
out American Conquest, a game based an enhanced version of the Cossacks engine. Oleg
Yavorsky from GSC, dressed in an American Revolution uniform, was kind enough to show us
the world of American Conquest. As you can see from the screenshots, some absolutely
HUGE battles are possible in this game. In fact, in the screenshots above, there are
more than 2000 units in a single battle! We did see some buildings and cities and
they looked pretty much the same as the buildings in Cossacks, which looked fantastic
already. The thing that has really been improved is the unit animations. The
units looked fantastic in the action that we saw and the battles were amazing. The
kewlest part of the battles was that the units expressed their feelings or morale with
short statements that appeared over their head. You can see them in the left
screenshot above. The statements were really funny actually... stuff like "I
don't want to die", and "Mommy!". I have to say, I was really
impressed by American Conquest. Look for more information at Cossacks Heaven.
Draco and I saw
1503AD at the Electronic Arts booth. The game looks like a big improvement on 1602AD
and looks to be an excellent combination of city-building and real time strategy
gameplay. We didn't get a chance to play 1503AD but Draco got a 30 minute private
demo from Wolfgang Duhr and Frank Fay from Sunflower Studios, developers of 1503AD.
The economics of the game have been simplified easing some of the complexity that
made 1602AD difficult to grasp. The graphics were fantastic and we're looking
forward to getting our hands on a demo of this good looking game. Look for more info
from Draco coming soon.
