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.: E3 first impressions on Shadow, Ecko, Odama and more
By Glenn Song - May 19, 2005
Odama and Meteos
Odama (GameCube, Nintendo)
How’s this for a concept: It’s pinball on a feudal era Japanese battlefield.
You’re trying to move a bell from the bottom of the screen where the paddles
are to a pair of gates at the top. In between is a horde of soldiers guarding
the way. You have two weapons on your side: your own flank of soldiers and a
huge stone for a pinball. You play as a general and control the flippers, and
every time to flick your ball across the level you can roll up your enemy, like
you would do with garbage on a katamari. You’re not penalized for tilting the
level, as it’s an integral part of the game – keeping your stone pinball moving
and crushing. 
The true innovation however, is voice controls. Using a microphone attached to
your cube controller you can summon your soldiers to do your bidding. Yell
“Charge!” and your guys will do it. Say, “I need more men!” and more guys will
spew forth from between the pinball paddles ready to do your bidding. I had a
problem with the voice controls, so there was a lot of me standing in front of
the game yelling “Charge! Charge! Charge stupid ass!” until the Nintendo guy
told me to hold down the ‘X’ key to issue a command.
Together it’s shaping up what will be an interesting looking game from
Nintendo.
Meteos (DS) 
I’m not 100% sure what the hell Meteos is about. In fact I’m not 100% sure how
to play the game either. What I do know is that it’s a puzzle game where blocks
drop down from the top. A block can look like a red block with a fire symbol, a
blue block with a water droplet, etc. I don’t know if those represent some
higher elemental meaning, but I do know that when you use the stylus to line up
three of the blocks horizontally or vertically you can cause them to turn into
rockets that blast upwards. When the
rockets blast upwards, blocks on top turn into bullets that swarm and destroy a
planet.
[ << Previous: (Stargate SG-1: The Alliance and Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure) 1 | 2 | 3 | ]
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