E3 09 GayGamer Exclusive: LetsBRead - The Apocalypse You'll Never Play
There's one game you won't hear about anywhere else on the internet, and it's bigger than Halo ODST, God of War III and The Beatles: Rock Band put together. It's a survival horror game in the tradition of Left4Dead, but with a serious twist: E3 blogging.
LetsBRead puts you in the pants of one of four of today's hottest video game bloggers, each with his own strengths and weaknesses. Each character has his own storyline that interweaves with the others, making LetsBRead as fun to play for a second, third or fourth time as it was the first go-round.
If you choose to play as one of the two rookies, you'll be down in the trenches pushing through legions of mindless public attendees whose sole purpose is to prevent you from seeing your appointed game and making your next appointment - the clock is ticking!
As PixelPoet, your willowy hips and level-headed intelligence gives you a double advantage: slipping through spaces in the crowd otherwise too small to traffic and an insanity meter that rises at only half the normal rate.
Play as Wootini to experience your first-ever E3 through starry eyes that capture information twice as fast as your compatriots (although you'll experience double downtime as you scribe your more detail-rich experiences) - you'll also reap points from Wootini's Wii Fit-improved acrobatic skills as he dashes from appointment to appointment.
Or maybe you'd like to play as one of the two veteran Editors? As Fruit Brute you'll have access to areas the other players might have to bash their way through, but your distinctive tattoos, mutton chops, and gregarious attitude means you'll travel through the labyrinthine convention center at only a fraction of the pace: not only will you be stopped regularly by industry luminaries who recognize you, but the additional "video footage" minigame means the hallways aren't just for traveling - they're for work, too. Then again, the video bonus points might be worth it...
Or take on the role of Tiny Dancer, the bearish blogger who'll wade through crowds with as little respect for human dignity as if they were real zombies. His competitive advantage comes from an utter lack of personal integrity and the fact that he made the schedule: Tiny's master index on Google Calendar means that none of the other players can survive without him - but they must also keep a certain distance or risk being pulled into his complex web of humor and procrastination.
The gameplay lives on beyond your choice of character: in any scenario, your missions will be multifold: can you make it to your Jon & Kate Plus 8 iPhone game meeting, and if so, can you keep a straight face? Choose to write up the game and risk alienating your readers or ignore it and risk alienating the PR sub-bosses (all disguised as lovely women or handsome young men) who enabled your frantic adventure in the first place.
Hidden power ups - food - may be located at each event, but you'll have to find them. And when you do, you may have to fight your way through to the canapes or bluff and pass yourself off as a reporter from a bigger site. Other locations may provide water, which you'll need regularly to survive each hour, but beware: if the game you're demoing is too intense (or too awful), your calorie-starved blogger body may spaz out and spill the precious liquid all over the demo machinery. Oops! If all else fails, head to Sony Online Entertainment for a tin of mints that will, like Elven Lembas bread, sustain you far longer than they ought to? (I have a three year old tin that still gets me through bad days.)
Then there are the other journalists to contend with: will you buddy up with Destructoid and the whopping 17 bloggers they brought to cover the event, or will you wage a one-man war against all other internet outlets? Work together with industry pals or burn your bridges and go it alone - the choice, my friends, is yours.
Not all missions are strictly work-related. Can you survive Bethesda's amazing annual party? Will you drink just enough to get in good with industry cronies, or will you end up singing 9 to 5 at the karaoke station, riding the mechanical bull and spraining your space-bar thumb, or spill beer all over the embroidered blazer of a certain uberpopular metrosexual head of PR? These dangers are all too real (I did all three in about fifteen minutes). Alternatively, hang out with your peers and mock CliffyB when he shows up in a white leisure suit with a hooker on each arm (also happened). The action never slows down.
And finally, will you be too hungover to return to the public-jumping, appointment-making mayhem of the next day's E3 slog? How will you fare in boss fights? Will you get Nintendo's Denise Kaigler to say anything that isn't already in the press release? Will you coerce Eliza Dushku, voice of Wet, into signing an autograph on your chest? Can you sit through the Bayonetta demo without questioning her Tina Fey glasses?
Look for LetsBRead when it comes out for PS3, 360, PC, Wii, DS, PS2, PSP, Mac, iPhone, digital watch, abacus, and solar calculator sometime in 2022. Developed and published by TinyCorp.
tiny dancer
Posted to E3, Hot Stuff, Video Games on 8 June 2009
· Comments (5)
Other stuff like this: blogger, e3, e3 09, e3 game, exclusive, gaygamer, humor, letsbread, satire, spoof
I'm waiting for the sequel to LetsBRead that gets announced to much fanboy whining less than a year after its initially released. I've heard a rumor that the surviving cast members (spoiler?) find themselves in a magical kingdom called Seattle, a domain in the middle of a civil war between Web Comic fans, Table Top gamers, and LARPers!
Seriously though, if I wasn't jealous enough of the adventures you guys had at E3 I certainly am now. Bravo!
*Thumbs Up*
would read again
I have two words to say to this entry: Soooo jealous!
Hey isn't that CheapyD in the background?
I love how the more juicy details of what Tiny did on the trip at near the end of the blog post... for the survivors of the wall of text at the beginning.
I really wish we had taken a picture of all 4 of us there too, to immortalize the event in some other way than just the way those hotel bed sheets looked once the 4 days were over.
You also forgot to mention the FroYo night bonus and the energy sapping beds that you and Fruit fell victim too.