Last night we had a swank company dinner at McDonalds. Let it be known that the Shack lives large, and rolls high.

Bioshock
Developer: Irrational Games; Publisher: 2K Games
PC, Xbox 360

David has a full preview of Bioshock in his latest impressions article, but I going to go ahead and share some of my thoughts on what's looking to be an absolutely incredible title. Though publisher 2K wasn't one of my appointments, I specifically set aside some time to go and force my way into a demo.

Joe McDonough from developer Irrational Games demonstrated Bioshock, which he very clearly introduced as the spiritual successor to the legendary System Shock 2, developed by largely the same team. As with its predecessor, Bioshock is heavy on the atmosphere, so heavy it's practically stifling, which is sort of the point. It takes place an an underwater utopia circa 1950, decked out in absolutely great looking art deco. This is a doomed utopia, one whose inhabitants have lost their humanity in their attempts to improve upon it. As well as simply surviving, the player must learn what happened to this habitat that put it in such a state. The highly detailed world is simultaneously beautiful and starkly oppressive. Large glass walls which depict amazing aquatic environments are threatening, reminders that the whole rest of the world could collapse on top of this place at any moment. Movie posters, restaurants, record stores, things that were once symbols of vitality and prosperity are now frozen in time, their disuse and disrepair a constant reminder of this society's failure. It's definitely not a typical FPS. "We haven't tried to rip off Aliens and done a turd brown industrial complex," McDonough pointed out, possibly implying that a fair number of other video games in fact do just that.

"This world has destroyed itself through loss of its humanity," he explained. Two factions, which discovered the amazing body-enhancing properties of a fluid called Adam, became locked into a biological arms race as they each attempted to outdo the other in terms of becoming the most "improved" humans. Why and how this happened, and the consequences, are crucial elements to be unravelled in the game. To add another dimension to the whole thing, the player is able to become enhanced with various useful modifications as well, such as a speed boost. But at what cost? Well, I don't know, but I have every intention of eventually playing this game to find out.

Unlike most video games, particularly shooters, many of the beings you meet have no particular inherent desire to kill you, or even pay much attention to you. The denizens of this failed utopia are still single-mindedly focused on their own petty and self-destructive goals. Near the beginning of the demo, we encountered a little girl harvesting Adam. These girls are, for whatever reason, the only ones able to find the substance, and she did so by plunging a large needle into a corpse and extracting bodily fluids. She then drank heartily and coughed some of it up, which was more than a bit disturbing. That sort of horror is what Irrational is attempting to create, rather than the monsters-pop-out-of-a-closet sort. "We think what's really scary is demented people," McDonough said, "fucked up people." Accompanying the girls are huge hulking protectors in heavy armor and arcane diving helmets, making for a stark juxtaposition. Such pairs will go about their business, ignoring you unless you do something to catch their attention. With their cumbersome suits, the giant protectors move slowly and deliberately, reflecting the slow but inevitable destruction of their world.

I haven't talked too much about the gameplay, but that's mainly because it wasn't really the focus of the demonstration, and because there are so many other interesting things to talk about. Bioshock is an FPS/RPG hybrid in the vein of System Shock 2, and exploration is just as important, if not more so, than the actual shooting. "In most first person shooters, you're what I call a digital janitor. You go from room to room cleaning up enemies and shooting is your main interaction with the world," said McDonough. "One of the reasons System Shock 2 was so scary is that you've got nothing. It's the same thing here. You've got a shit gun and no ammo."

In all fairness, you do have some ammo, but you'll have to be careful with it. There are multiple types of ammunition, each of which has specific uses. Basic scatter shot isn't going to take down human opponents nearly as fast as anti-personnel ammo. Of course, if you don't have any of the anti-personnel stuff, you may have to expend a great deal of scatter shot to dispatch a human threat, which will leave you defenseless later on if you don't find more of it before encountering a mechanical enemy. Fortunately, most situations have several ways to deal with problems besides just shooting your way through them. One bio-enhancement will allow you to spray an enemy with a substance that makes them appear hostile to the environment's security system, for example, allowing you to sneak by while a turret gun and your opponent duke it out. Other scenarios are more complex.

Unfortunately, I have no idea whether this preview really communicated any nuts and bolts information about Bioshock, but either way I should probably wrap it up. The game is looking incredible in terms of visuals, atmosphere, themes, and design. Fans of System Shock 2 have wanted the team to revisit that style of game for years, and now that it's happening, it looks like that was indeed a good project for Irrational to take on. Do I really have to wait until 2007?

Hellgate: London
Developer: Flagship Studios; Publisher: Namco Bandai Games
PC

In the last few years, there has been something of a talent diaspora across the industry originating from Blizzard. Many new studios have popped up, staffed by former Blizzard developers. One of the most prominent of these is Flagship Studios, home to Bill Roper as well as many other Diablo team members, currently working on the PC action RPG Hellgate: London.

Flagship's strong Diablo heritage is immediately obvious in Hellgate: London, which has sometimes been described as a 3D cyberpunk take on Blizzard's classic clickfest. Structurally, the game is similar; you'll pick up quests and story context from hublike safe havens, then head out into the world to hack your way through many, many enemies. One key difference between the two franchises is that the town areas in Hellgate are actually massively multiplayer rather than being limited to a small number of people who have specifically joined your game session. Essentially, it combines the town areas of Diablo with the pre-game Battle.net chat rooms, so you won't need to jump in and out of the game to manage a party. All of the gameplay areas where you'll be questing and fighting are instanced, giving the game a bit of a Guild Wars feel and keeping it from actually fully entering into the MMO realm.

In Hellgate: London, the forces of hell have begun overtaking Earth, and your job of course is to fight back. Enemies in the game are fittingly demonic. As is pretty much a requirement for this type of game, you'll find tons of weapons and equipment, which should allow you plenty of freedom in terms of what sort of combat you'll be doing. There are several classes, including the lanky magic casting Cabalist and the gunplay/melee specialist Templar. The expected range of character creation options is available, including facial features, hair, body type and height, and so on.

On the bottom of the screen is an action bar which can be loaded up with skills, weapons, or items for quick access. Additionally, the F1-F3 keys can be mapped to three separate sets of equipment and skills, to be changed on the fly. The Shift key also operates as a catchall context sensitive button. For example, when running, the Shift key activates a quick sprint; if using swords in melee combat, it will activate a sweeping strike attack.

There was a nice little Diablo reference not-so-hidden in the game, as early on a young peg-legged boy sends you on a quest to retreive his prosthetic leg from some demonic troublemakers. When you find it and return it to him, you assign him a new nickname, and my fellow former Diablo addicts can probably guess what that name was. Quests are obtained both in town and throughout instances, and of course most of them end up with you killing a bunch of stuff. One nice touch is that the specific context of quests and the demeanor of NPCs will change depending on what class you're playing, even if the end result (that is, killing a bunch of stuff) remains the same.

Hellgate: London comes from a pretty fine pedigree, especially for those who have seen the debilitating but alluring nature of a Diablo addiction. Though I have been keeping my eye on this title for quite some time, my gaming experience of years past suggests that I should fear it.

Mass Effect
Developer: BioWare; Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Xbox 360

BioWare is a legendary name in the world of RPGs, so the video game community took note when the company announced its latest project, an Xbox 360-exclusive third person RPG shooter called Mass Effect. Knowing little about the game previously, I sat down for a demonstration from BioWare's Casey Hudson and Scott Langevin.

Mass Effect, as Hudson described it, is a game about a "bright future with a dark secret." The sci-fi architecture is sleek, the colors cool and soothing, and the aliens much more in line with those of Star Wars' Mos Eisley than with Alien's...alien. Your character, Commander Shepard, is coming to an awareness that despite the outwardly ideal quality of life among galactic civilization, something sinister is going on. Though the game always centers on a character called Commander Shepard, your Shepard can be customized within character creation, and can be either male or female.

At the beginning of the demo, Shepard's ship Normandy pulls into the 30 mile long space station aptly named Citadel. He sets out to follow up on a lead by interrogating the various human and non-human denizens of the station, but nobody he talks to seems to want to help him out. This is where the game's conversation and choice system kicks in. You'll have a variety of ways to find out what you want, and the choices your character makes are determined in the dialogue trees. The tone of your questions and answers will also shape the responses of the NPC's questions, answers, and actions. Sometimes, answers look essentially similar, but can have subtle differences in connotation that will result in the situation having a different outcome.

In this particular run through, Shepard got his answers by way of being impatient and threatening, though the developers were quick to note that depending on the player, the conversations could have gone a variety of other ways. Despite Shepard's aggressiveness, there aren't paths of "good" or "evil" in the sense of games such as BioWare's Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox). Shepard is a man who's perfectly willing to shove a gun in some guy's face to get the information he wants, but he's not trying to be a jerk; he just wants the truth. "If you make an 'evil' choice," explained Hudson, "it's because you are driven and justified to find out what's going on." What's going on turns out to be rather worrisome, Shepard learns, and that's why people were so reluctant to explain. It appears that an ancient civilization, extinct for 50 millenia, did not die out in the way that common knowledge dictates. Rather, that race was consciously exterminated by a mysterious race of machines. Furthermore, that systematic rise of civilization and subsequent extermination has been happening on a cyclical basis since time immemorial, and the kicker is that it's due to happen again quite soon. Curses!

In order to find out exactly what happened and why, and how to stop it, you'll be travelling all around the galaxy trying. Planets can be examined and researched from orbit, as well as explored in a big all terrain vehicle or, depending on the location, on foot. At that point, the game plays like a third person squad based shooter. Combat works in real time, so you can run and gun as well as take careful aim, though there is auto-targeting if desired and, since this is an RPG and not really an action game, the hit boxes are quite forgiving. In the demo, Shepard was outfitted with a futuristic equivalent of a machine gun, sniper rifle, and airborne enemy-tracking grenades. All of the game's weapons are modifiable. Since the game is squad based, you'll be able to let your party members fight on their own or give them specific orders. The game can be paused at any time, during which you can move around freely and set up waypoints and orders corresponding to your party members. When un-paused, they'll execute the plans you've laid out.

Sonic Wild Fire
Developer: Sonic Team; Publisher: Sega
Wii

I've never been a big fan of Sega's 3D Sonic games. I'm sure some of them are good in their own right, but they never really seem to achieve the qualities that made the 2D Sonic games so universally appealing: simplicity, ridiculous speed, and only just enough actual control to make you feel like you were somehow responsible for all the awesome stuff happening on the screen. These are clearly the elements Sega was going for with Sonic Wild Fire, the mascot's first outing on Nintendo's upcoming next-gen console.

Sonic Wild Fire is controlled by holding the Wii controller horizontally. In the "default" position, Sonic will run forward with the camera trailing fairly close behind him; tilting the controller left and right turns Sonic left and right, tilting it back stops Sonic and has him run in the reverse direction, and giving it a quick shake activates a powerful speed boost once a boost meter has been filled during gameplay. Like the classic Sonic games, Sonic Wild Fire uses only one face button which makes Sonic jump when tapped or come to a stop when held down. This was an extremely bizarre decision, as it's far too easy to slow Sonic down (why would you ever want to slow Sonic down?) when you intend simply to make him jump. Furthermore, the "brake" function is redundant since the same result can be achieved simply by tilting the controller back. Hopefully, the designers at Sega rectify this quirk before the game ships next year, as it is a decidely unintuitive part of an otherwise very intuitive game.

In a sense, the largely on-rails gameplay of Sonic Wild Fire can be considered a step back in the world of 3D platformers post-Mario 64, where a healthy degree of free roaming is expected. Still, that stripped down design is precisely what Sonic, in classic Sonic games as well as this one, to reach such ridiculous speeds. As soon as you have to start worrying too much about where to go or how to get there, you're probably no longer hauling ass, so this game wisely removes those concerns. The directional control works very well, too. It was only a matter of seconds before I adjusted to how much I needed to tilt the controller to get Sonic to go where I wanted. It's particularly fun to navigate Sonic through extremely twisty passages, which feel like driving a car through a slalom course.

Sonic Wild Fire's basic design breaks no ground, but that's deliberate and works to the game's advantage. The unique Wii controller gives the game's tried and true methods a fresh feel. If the designers fix that one minor control issue and perhaps introduce a few branching paths such as those found in the original Sonic games, Wild Fire should shape up to be a fitting bearer of the Sonic name.

(You know, there's some kind of cosmic irony in waiting ages to play a Nintendo console, then only really having time to get hands on with a Sonic game.)

Guitar Hero II
Developer: Harmonix Music Systems; Publisher: RedOctane
PS2

Harmonix's Guitar Hero II is a sterling example of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." However, it's just as good an illustration of the slightly less catchy "If it ain't there and gamers say it should be, add it in." Today I put my fingers through several songs on the sequel to what was one of last year's best reviewed and most well loved games. Fundamentally, the design and mechanics are exactly the same, so there will be no learning curve at all for veteran guitar heroes. However, several very frequently requested features got added into the mix.

Most importantly, multiplayer is no longer confined to a duelling guitars setup. Now, you can play cooperatively (like real musicians!). One player takes the lead guitar duties, while the other handles rhythm guitar or bass, making for a more interesting shared experience as well as simply increasing replay value by offering multiple ways to play the same track. Carrying on the cooperative theme, players in co-op mode share a Star Power meter and must tilt back their guitars simultaneously to activate the Star Power. Another oft-requested feature that Harmonix added is practice mode, making it possible to practice those searingly difficult lead lines without having to through the entire song each time. Unfortunately, I didn't get to try that out myself, as it wasn't available in the version at the show. Expert mode has also been made even more brutal, for those godly players who have somehow conquered all of the first game's lines on expert mode.

I played one track each of lead guitar, bass guitar, and rhythm guitar, and all three were as fun and balanced as those in the original title. Guitar Hero II won't feel as new and surprising as its predecessor, but with a whole new set of songs as well as the inclusion of much-needed features, fans have no reason not to check it ou.

Wii Virtual Console
Publisher: Nintendo
Wii

In its perpetually packed Wii booth alongside the dozens of playable games, Nintendo had two machines outfitted with a mockup of its upcoming Virtual Console service. Virtual Console will allow players to purchase and play titles from certain consoles throughout gaming history as well as, according to Nintendo's current plans, offer developers an online delivery mechanism for new lower budget games, similar to Xbox Live Arcade. The E3 demo, which a Nintendo rep noted does not yet reflect the final look of the service, included the full version of one game from each of the five currently announced consoles supported by the service: Super Mario Bros. (NES), Super Mario World (SNES), Super Mario 64 (Nintendo 64), Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis), and Bonk's Adventure (TurboGrafx-16), which publisher Hudson Soft just announced would be made available.

Since the games are the originals running through emulation, they play just like they always have, though Nintendo 64 games have had their framerate and resolution bumped up. All games are controlled with the recently unveiled retro controller. Unlike in that shot, however, the controller has only one secondary shoulder button and two regular shoulder buttons rather than two and two, since a fourth shoulder button is not necessary in any of the supported consoles. The controller is incredibly comfortable, with a nice tactile d-pad (remember when consoles actually had good d-pads?) and analog sticks that are more accessible than they look. Playing Mario 64 felt fine, and didn't leave me feeling the need for the three-prong N64 controller. This pad is semi-wireless; the cord coming out of the controller plugs into the expansion port on the standard wireless Wii controller. NES games can also be controlled by rotating the default Wii controller on its side.

Pricing details for Virtual Console games have yet to be announced, as has a list of "launch titles." Wii's retro controller will most likely not be bundled with the system, but will be available for purchase on launch day.

Telltale Games
Games: Sam & Max, Bone, CSI Three Dimensions of Murder
PC

Episodic adventure game startup Telltale Games didn't have anything officially on display at this year's E3, but tech lead Kevin Bruner did set aside some time to sit down with Shacknews and discuss the company's current projects and future plans. Founded by a number of former LucasArts developers two years ago, Telltale is best known among dedicated gamers for one of its current projects, an episodic series of games featuring Steve Purcell's Sam & Max, the off-kilter dog and rabbit duo birthed as an 80s underground comic and made famous on a grand scale by 1993's classic PC title Sam & Max Hit the Road. LucasArts cancelled the sequel Sam & Max: Freelance Police in 2004, and late last year Telltale announced a deal with Purcell to develop a new series of episodic games.

Bruner informed me that development on Sam & Max is now in full swing, with the full designs for the first two episodes complete and actual production underway. The first installment should arrive for purchase via Telltale's website as well as through the GameTap online game subscription. While the company likens its Bone games, based on Jeff Smith's acclaimed graphic novels, to a miniseries, it looks at Sam & Max more like a full television series. Each two-hour episode will see Sam & Max solve a complete case, with an overarching storyline tying the episodes together and culminating in a season finale-like grand finish. This September will see the beginning of Sam & Max Season One, hopefully to be followed by further seasons. Bruner explained that Telltale would like to set the standard for episodic character-based games. "When people think of 'television show' games, we want them to think of Telltale, not Simpsons Hit & Run," he said. "When [game publishers] see The Sopranos, I wish they didn't see GTA." In general terms, he sees the buzz around games like SiN Episodes and the upcoming Half-Life episodes and Alone in the Dark episodes as a good indication that Telltale, which has been pursuing the episodic business model for two years, is on the right track.

Telltale is currently in general early discussions with Microsoft about the possibility of making its games available via Xbox Live Marketplace. Since Telltale's games are compact and episodic already, they would fit with Live and its limited game download sizes. The studio also hopes to speak with Nintendo and Sony about similar possibilities, presumably once those companies actually outline their full plans for downloadable content. Bruner agreed that Wii in particular is an attractive platform for Telltale's games, as the pointer-like controller would be an easy match to their games' point-and-click gameplay.

Finally, Bruner revealed that the company has a secret project in the works, but he wouldn't give so much as a hint towards its identity. For now, Telltale is officially working on the third Bone game and the first Sam & Max episode, both under the watchful eye of recently hired creative overseer Dave Grossman, co-designer of LucasArts' Day of the Tentacle. Look out for those games later this year.