505 Games Double Feature Demo Night NYC Event Recap

Written by Young Jeohn

In the heart of New York City at Times Square, 505 Games organized an info session to give us gamers a glimpse of several fantastic products coming down the pipeline. With two games for the major platforms and an area for tablet and mobile games, we have updates for you on these three areas.

Adr1ft

The introduction is eerie and secluded as the first person gamer wakes up to find himself disoriented... and floating. You eventually realize you’re in a spacesuit and the information you’re seeing is a helmet readout on the remaining oxygen levels and the direction you’re facing. As you start exploring, you get the feeling that something’s gone dreadfully wrong. Bunches of flowers and broken things are floating about, though thankfully so, are canisters of oxygen because you’re almost out of air and you’re gasping. Why is your oxygen running out so quickly? Is it because you’re moving too fast? Has your suit been damaged? How do I fix this? How do I get out of here? As you have no choice but to conclude that you’re the lone survivor, you’re determined to make it out of this alive.

Adr1ft is a beautifully designed game with rich imagery and reminds me of the film Gravity, as Sandra Bullock struggles to survive space all alone. But instead of feeling cold and dark as in the film, the surroundings come alive with flora, trees and floating oxygen cannisters encouraging you to seek a way out and to live - or at least die a beautiful death.

This Santa Monica game developer has been working hard to bring out this game with the realistic physics of space and is based on a personal story that he’s experienced in his life (though it didn’t happen in space). The demo was also available on Oculus Rift virtual reality, which was fascinating because you could see as if you were really in a spacesuit looking out through your helmet. But Oculus or not, this game will be available on all major platforms including Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Payday 2, Crimewave Edition

Our developer friends in Sweden haven’t been caught sleeping on their laurels as some might do when they have a hit game on their hands. With 9 million players on their networks, which is astounding for a first person shooter, they’ve continually updated new levels, gave away free items and weapons and kept their customers and fans happy (more than 50 updates since the launch of the game. How many developers release so much stuff for little or no cost?) Building on this incredible following, they’ll be launching Payday 2, Crimewave Edition, their next sequel to the game.

With controllers in hand, the feminine and sexy voice of our narrator caught us off guard as she gave us our mission orders and revealed the true history behind the artifact that we were to “unload” from its current owners. And the unnerving truth was that anyone who’d come into possession of this artifact - both history’s greatest leaders... and tyrants ultimately led to their ruin.

As you stock up on weapons, armor and other goodies, you can’t believe the amount of jaw dropping options you have. With over a hundred weapons and ability to enhance them with add ons (all manner of scopes, silencers, ammo clips and varying design colors for example), you could easily spend the whole day configuring your gear and specifying the design of your masks - a task you should think of carefully as it could mean the difference between gaining the prize or losing out to your opponents.

Gameplay is fast and unnerving, with windows of four players on the screen that always seem to be egging you on to move faster and making you wonder if you picked the right weapons for the job. Although your adrenaline might be flowing, you have to remind yourself to slow down and focus on the objective at hand, which can actually be quite hard to do because of all the mayhem you probably caused by making too much noise or by shooting at the lock instead of trying to pick it. And you keep thinking to yourself “the other guy got in the compound quicker than I did and he doesn’t have a whole swat team gunning for him yet, damn!” I can say it’s really fun, challenging and informative when you see what other players are you doing. To be honest, I have to admit that I “borrowed” some of my opponent’s ideas!

The most interesting aspect I’ve found about Payday 2, Crimewave Edition is the cross agreements of intellectual property. With these in place, they’ve integrated some truly epic weapons from popular games and tv shows, such as Lucille, the barbed-wired baseball bat in The Walking Dead. This and the addition of new levels, gameplay, random events and the uncompromising ability to shape and configure practically everything in your arsenal, makes this game a winner that you’ll enjoy playing time and again. And if history’s a telltale sign of what’s to come, these guys will keep developing new levels, weapons and other goodies long after you’ve bought the game to keep things spicy and hot. Amen to that.

Mobile Games

We were offered the pleasure of their Four Horsemen of mobile; their flagship game Ember for the iPad, Gems of War, Battle Islands and Hidden Heroes.

Ember is a modern RPG iPad game that plays like the Baldur’s Gate Series. But what’s striking is the level of sophistication and smooth graphics that should only belong on a PC or gaming platform - its wealth of visuals and a game engine that deals with day/night simulations and asynchronous gameplay are astounding. When I asked about how they achieved this level of detail on an iPad 2, they told me they’d worked closely with Apple to make full use of its existing technology.

For those of you that enjoy both RPG’s and Candy Crush, Gems of War seems to be a nice hybrid of the two. Unlike time based games, this turn based RPG has you thinking strategically to match gems that will power your characters and enhance their attacks on your opponent. Every time you enhance, you can see how your characters are affected while at the same time, you get hints of what your opponent is up to. With critical warnings, you may have to change your mind on gem actions if you don’t want to get clobbered by that big cannon that’s preparing to fire on you.

Can’t get enough of games like Clash of Clans? Hidden Heroes just might fill that appetite as you work on expanding your kingdom from lowly insignificant to a mighty empire. This one is realtime gameplay as you keep tapping your enemy to death on the touchscreen (your whole army will attack) or take the long range route by selecting your desired arsenal to attack large enemy groups (which has the oddly desirable side-effect of less fingerprint smudging of your screen.) This game reminds me of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but in real time.

Battle Island takes place deep in the South Pacific, as your platoon of first rate troops lands on a tropical island. Command the troops and your arsenal of military hardware very carefully, including tanks, warplanes, boats and jeeps in this World War II strategy game. You can battle against friends for supremacy over land, air and sea. Also great is that the game is constantly updated. Check out the still below.

We’d like to thank the publisher, 505 Games for organizing a great  event and to the developers for coming to give us the lowdown on some truly amazing games that will be ready for sale this coming spring/summer. There’s a huge variety to choose from, so check out the screengrabs and demo’s for the visuals. There’s something for everyone from home players to people on the move.

For more on 505 Games visit: www.505games.com