TAG ARCHIVE: VIDEO

Greed Corp US press tour: Final day in LA

Tuesday, February 23, 2010DevelopersNo comments

Getting to Los Angeles from San Francisco by plane was easy, getting to our hotel was a little trickier. Instead of using a rental car, we ended up getting a cab. It took us to one of the most extravagant hotels in LA, but because we had to get up early and were pretty tired, we didn’t spend much time admiring all its peculiar details.

There was only one appointment for which we had to leave the hotel the next morning. So after a crazy taxi ride, including a Burnout-like near miss experience, we arrived at the studios of G4. They have these cool ‘ON AIR’ signs, including spinning red lights. Unfortunately we were not going to be in their television or web show, so we moved on to the capture room to once again play a match against an Expert opponent for recording. It’s really cool that all the playthroughs we had, including this one, resulted in some very diverse matches with different outcomes. Replay value is one of Greed Corp’s greatest strengths and I think that really shows in all the videos that have appeared up until now. Brian from G4 could certainly see that as well.

With the last on-site meeting now out of the way, we had to prepare for the last presentations in our hotel room. We asked the cab driver to stop by a supermarket, to buy some drinks and snacks. While Marco and Chris, our PR contact, went inside to get those things, I kept an eye on all our equipment and experienced an awkward eternity of silence between me and the cab driver. With way too many soda cans and bags of crisps, we went back to our eccentric hotel to set everything up. Up until now, everything went pretty smooth technically, but the hotel’s philosophy of form over function caused the first obstacle that could ruin our clean run. The televisions in our room were placed inside a large glass container, looking like a large reflective box until you turn on the TV. There were some input connections on the side, which were routed back to the TV itself. Unfortunately, the cables were apparently broken, so all connectors were failing.

Getting closer to the time of our next meeting, we called upon the help of the hotel’s technical department to get our Xbox 360 test kit working on the TV in the living room. We also had one in the bedroom which was operating perfectly, but despite our previous experience with demoing in bedrooms we thought it would be more professional to not do it there. So in came two engineers and their manager, to remove the entire glass facing of the designer TV casing. We confirmed that the connectors of the television itself were working, but the casing without its cover was not a pretty sight, with all the wires and such. Some very smart man fortunately added a hole to the bottom of the casing for occasions such as this one, so we were able to hook up the Xbox 360 directly to the TV. We did have to call the same guys in again to remove the plate once more, so we could get our HDMI cable back.

The setup was done just in time and we welcomed GamingEvolution to our not so humble hotel room. Those two guys had some nice questions about the game and other things, which resulted in one of the longest articles to come out of this press tour. When they left, we went straight on to our last appointment of the day, with nFamous, Coin-Op TV Live and GameTrailers. It was a nice meeting with an informal feel to it and everyone responded very well to different aspects of the game, the world and its characters. It was one of the best meetings we had during the entire tour and we went on with GameTrailers to shoot a video walkthrough of a match and an interview with me. Because of the practice we had with earlier recordings, everything went pretty smooth and you can find the very informative videos now on the GameTrailers website.

And that was it. Three days of hard work and three days of less hard work, checking out San Francisco and Los Angeles. Just like the one in the UK last year, this press tour has been incredibly rewarding. We met some famous reporters and saw some of the biggest TV screens you can get. The rain we got during our stay must have been some kind of record, but it was a nice trip none the less. All the responses have been nothing but positive and we’re hoping that will translate into some nice reviews and sales numbers. As the game will be released tomorrow, we won’t have to wait too long to find out.

Greed Corp tutorial video on msxboxworld.com

Monday, February 22, 2010News1 comment

msxboxworld.com posted a video of Greed Corp’s tutorial on their website. The tutorial is the first option within the campaign and teaches you the basics of how Greed Corp works and what the controls are. It is completely optional, you can jump right into the first real mission of the campaign if you prefer to learn to play the game by yourself.

Check out the tutorial video here.

Greed Corp US press tour: Last day in San Francisco

Wednesday, February 3, 2010Developers1 comment

It was not the best time to be in San Francisco. Although we had some time in the weekend to explore the city without it raining all the time, we spent most of the time on the first day in between demos trying to get to the car without getting soaked. Fortunately the response to Greed Corp was way more positive than the weather. That vibe continued on the second day, the last one in San Francisco.

Because of that terrible weather, we left early so that we would be at our first appointment on time. That was not a problem on the first day, but now we would have to head south. The idea was to drive there first and get breakfast if there would be time left. Even though we spent quite some time stuck in traffic, we still managed to get coffee and a bite to eat in the building where IGN was located. They were not our first appointment though, so we went over to the building next to them for a meeting with Official Xbox Magazine and PC Gamer. Because the new way of demoing, like we did the previous day at Giant Bomb, was pretty successful, we decided to stick with it and just play against the AI while explaining what was going on. That created some interesting matches throughout the day, all resulting in very different scenarios. I actually lost most matches, much to the delight of Marco and the editor audience. In my defense though, it’s pretty hard to think about what you’re going to do and explain it at the same time. At least it demonstrated that our Expert level AI is not a pushover.

After the first appointment, we went back to the previous building to meet with IGN. They have a pretty cool office, with lots of funny posters, life-size statues of game characters and even a room just for Master Chief. We met with Daemon, who already contacted us about the game right after we first announced it, and he captured a Greed Corp match on video. That makes it even harder to play well, because you can’t really pause the game to talk. Due to the extreme weather conditions, some of the meetings we had were cancelled. It’s hard to demo a game when the power has gone out or the road to get there is flooded. So it seemed like it was going to be a short day of work, but our PR contacts managed to arrange a last minute meeting with GamePro. We drove back to downtown San Francisco, while the weather actually started to look better. That meant that our flight to Los Angeles in the evening would surely just go as planned.

Even though I’ve been to the United States a couple of times and have relatives there, I never tasted meatloaf before. So when I saw it on the menu at the place where we had lunch before the last presentation, I decided to try it. I’m glad I did, but it’s not really my thing. The meeting at GamePro was very cool and while we were sitting there, the first articles based on yesterday’s press visits were already showing up online. After some discussion about the latest games, which the GamePro editors were already able to play, we had quite some time on our hands before our flight to Los Angeles would leave. During our stay, we noticed a lot of big billboards for The Book of Eli, a new movie with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman. Reviews seemed very positive about it, so we decided to go and watch it at the Metreon. To keep it short, it was a little disappointing, but we did get to see a couple of cool trailers from upcoming movies. We left for the airport afterwards, got something to eat and flew to Los Angeles without a hitch. More on that final day in the Greed Corp US press tour soon!

G4′s impression of Greed Corp

Sunday, January 24, 2010NewsNo comments

We visited G4 during the US press tour on Thursday. The captured video and Brian’s impression of Greed Corp are now available online.

“Pretty exciting stuff, right?” – Brian Leahy, G4

Greed Corp dev interview and video walkthrough on GameTrailers

Sunday, January 24, 2010NewsNo comments

After doing an exclusive with GameTrailers last week regarding our Mistbound ‘Welcome to the World of Greed Corp’ trailer, they came over to our hotel in Los Angeles during the US press tour a couple of days ago. A quick match was captured on video, in which Nikki explains the basic mechanics of the game. They also did an interview with him, about the game and its inspiration.

Both videos are now available on the GameTrailers website. Click here to check out the Strategy Mechanics Interview. The video walkthrough has been split into two parts, watch part 1 and part 2.