SAN DIEGO, CA—Cliff Bleszinski, design director at Epic Games, was the featured speaker on the Comic-Con International “Xbox 360 Gears of War Showcase” panel, over the weekend. Sitting alongside was comic book writer Josh Ortega, who worked with him on the Gears of War 2 story, and New York Times best-selling author Karen Traviss (Star Wars: Republic Commando), whose first of three planned Del Rey novels, Gears of War: The Battle of Aspho Fields, hits store shelves October 28.

Travis received an e-mail from her Del Rey Editor, Keith Clayton, asking if she could do a fast turnaround on a military game tie-in. After asking around and being told that Gears of War was “Traviss town” material, she acquiesced.

“If I don’t like something, but I’ve taken the money, I maintain a tactful British silence if asked for my opinion on it,” said Traviss. “I certainly won’t lie and gush over it, but I won’t talk it down either. So if I say I love something, I love it. And I bloody well love Gears.”

Travis, who began her writing career as a journalist, said Gears is the best-looking game that she’s ever seen.

“The art matters a lot to me,” said Traviss. “I’m a visual person and I cue mainly off the images. I’m not joking when I say much of the art is pure Carvaggio – it’s all such perfect lighting. Everything about it, from the concept art to the execution to the animation, is utterly spot on.”

As a writer, Travis never approaches a job as a pre-existing fan. She said if she’s already a consumer of a property, it kills the thing as a pleasurable experience for her because the working process involves dissecting it and having to look at the strings.

“If you come to a universe cold, not as a fan or even as someone who knows anything about it at all, you tend to see a very different world,” said Travis. “I knew bugger all about Star Wars when I was asked to write it, and the first thing that struck me was that the Jedi were pretty despicable on the ethics front, and had I been interviewing them I’d have had some hardball questions to ask. So that was the emotional spark I grabbed hold of and used. From that one moment of ‘God, what a bunch of master-race hypocrites...’ came a whole series. I treated it as a real scenario, not a kids’ science fantasy with wizards, and examined it just as I would have done had I still been a reporter. I don’t know how else to tell a story, actually. It’s much more about posing questions than giving answers.”

In addition to working on tie-in novels, Traviss has established herself within the literary community with her six-part Wess’har series. Although she doesn’t play videogames, she loves the way they tell stories.

“That’s why I’d love to write for games,” said Traviss. “That will horrify my more high-minded readers who are still in shock that a ‘literary’ novelist like me has sullied herself with tie-ins at all, but I really do see games (and comics, of course) as the ultimate form of storytelling, because they engage you on more levels. Novels are fine, they’re my living, and I don’t think I do too badly at them, but they are, by their very nature, limited. Pushing those limits – creating a vivid sense of a visual or physical experience just from words on a page – is a genuine test of skill, but add sound, images, variable outcomes, and even tactile/ kinetic effects these days, and it’s the difference between the two-dimensional inhabitants of Flatland and the 3D world we live in. It’s a bigger test, a more complex puzzle. And I love exploring things like that.”

Working with Epic Games and Cligg Bleszinski on this project has opened Traviss’ eyes to the world of videogames. She said one of the things she loves about tie-ins is the collaboration with people who do a very different job than she does — artists, composers, software designers, audio producers, etc.

“The buzz of working with people who can strike sparks off you really raises your game,” said Traviss. “I’m not an imaginative, wildly creative person – I’m analytical, a question-asker, and my fiction comes from deconstruction and observation – so the really creative types are a good foil for me. I need to surface from the isolation of writing my own books and get a ‘fix’ of working with other people for a while, or else I’d go nuts. Or I’d be nuttier than I am now, anyway.”

Traviss said working with Epic has been a great experience, especially given the quick turnaround time she was given for this first project. And the relationship was pretty open, although there were some rules.

“The one constraint from Epic that I thought would stuff me was that I couldn’t use Marcus as a point-of-view character,” said Traviss. “I write very tight third person POV, no authorial intrusion, and that’s how I navigate the story, so I felt that my right arm had been cut off. I griped about it, believe me. But I’m glad now that it had to be that way. It forced me to show Marcus wholly through the reactions and thoughts of those around him. It created a whole new avenue for me. So much about the Gears world is buried, emergent, unknown, glimpsed in shadows. He’s almost a microcosm of that.”

Traviss discovered through her work on the Gears of War novel that game technique actually mirrors how she writes fiction. She sets up the characters thoroughly, with a psych profile, and then lets them loose in a scenario to see what they do, very much like a computer model.

“It’s why my books often catch me out and don’t end where I first expected them to when I started writing them,” said Traviss. “I suspect this is why I have such an affinity for game tie-ins. I can see much more potential in games than ‘reader’ writers can, perhaps. It’s a radically different way of writing. I’m not holding the steering wheel. I just identify it or build it, and then the characters take the keys and I’m left watching as they roar up and down the road.”

Traviss relied on Gears’ cinematics and the story bible as her reference points, and just filled in the rest. She said there was a huge amount of scope to fill gaps.

“Actually, everything I needed to know about the characters – and characters are the story, as far as I’m concerned - was in a couple of the cinematics in some magnificent brush-strokes of characterization,” said Traviss. “That’s how brilliant the game is. For example, the cinematic in the Raven after Dom rescues Marcus sets up the whole character dynamic of those two in a couple of dialogue lines and gestures. I knew those blokes right away, just from that.”

Traviss really got into the world of Gears, going into some minute details that not even gamers might have thought about.

“I really love the whole idea of chainsaw bayonets,” said Traviss. “Being a boring pragmatic type, though, my first thought was how much cleaning and maintenance you’d have to do on a real Lancer for every grub you carved up. (And the power supply - how long does a charge last? But I digress.) I was talking it through with a buddy who’s serving in Afghanistan, and we decided it would be a long, messy job. Think about it; ever cleaned something simple like a meat mincer? And that’s usually just lean meat, not bones, fat, and connective tissue too. All I could think of was stripping down a Lancer and trying to get all the crap and gristle out of the chain. Lovely. And what’s the best way to apply the chainsaw? How much weight, what angle, how far before you have trouble pulling the blades clear? What happens to all that debris flung out from the wound? That’s the kind of stuff a novelist has to think about. You really need to be curious about it, because it tells you what your characters will be doing for a big chunk of their day...anyway, more of that in the book itself. I promise. Messy as hell!”

Having already discussed the previous take on Mortal Kombat 8 at length — with Boon telling me that it had been scrapped in favor of MK vs. DCU and that the ninth proper entry in the series may take it back to its ultra-violent roots — I wondered how much sleep Boon and crew had lost over the decision to junk that, instead adding a bunch of out of place superheroes.

Given that MK vs. DCU has no plans to introduce any new Mortal Kombat characters to the mythos — Boon called the MK side a "greatest hits" line up — how did the team feel fans would react to the inclusion of DC's finest? (The other "Vs." option Boon told us about chilled us to the bone, by the way.)

"If you're asking me to put a number on it, from one to ten, I'd have thought [the reaction to MK vs. DCU's announcement] would have been a four," Boon said at Midway's reception last week. "Turns out it was more like a nine."

Even if you're still turned off by the notion of superheroes and supervillians crashing the Mortal Kombat party, take comfort in this. Some unnamed Midway employees had actually suggested Mortal Kombat vs. Blitz as a viable option for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 entry. Boon said this with a straight face, after I asked him about the possibility of another High Impact Football game in his future, so be thankful you're getting what you're getting.

Boon didn't have to do much convincing to spark our interest in the game. We'd already been enjoying our hands on time with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe for the better part of an hour when he sat down.

Updated impressions? Catwoman's got a fantastic ass.

That means it won't be coming home with console-exclusive fighters a la Yoda and Darth Vader (or Link, Spawn and Heihachi). Instead, each version is planned to include the same roster, the arcade line-up plus whatever new additions the SFIV team sees fit. We have a fairly good idea that Cammy is one of those new additions, but hope we'll get much more than just her.

Any requests?

During the Q&A session, a good portion of the panel, a fan asked "Is there going to be a Flood appearance in the Halo Wars campaign?"

"That's a very good question," a panelist responded. "We haven't talked about any other races. All I can say is that it's a complete Halo game." It has already been announced that players will get their hands on a playable Covenant.

We're not going to assume that's code for "Yes, you'll be playing the Flood" — they may just make an appearance — but won't be surprised when their inclusion is announced.

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Heads up, though. Unless you're willing to part with about $300 American for one of these mixed media ladies, you may not want to even look.

The Comic-Con demo takes place in the New York public library, the location featured at the beginning of the first Ghostbusters film. As the four Ghostbusters enter the library — Winston Zeddemore, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz and you, the new recruit — the cheers of New Yorkers can be heard in the distance.

The 'Busters are tasked with taking out a few unwelcome guests holed up in the library, one being the librarian ghost seen in the first film. The demo introduces the player to the PKE meter, which senses ectoplasmic activity and scans spirits and ectoplasmic residue a la the visor in Metroid Prime.

Used in conjunction with the "paragoggles", you'll be able to hunt down evidence and find traces of ghosts. Hitting the Y button the Xbox 360 controller brought up the PKE meter and switched to first-person paragoggle mode.

After tracing one of the specters into the basement, we came across one of the game's mini-boss fights. As we entered a huge room in the library and met up with the other three Ghostbusters, a giant book golem, essentially a swirling mass of books with a reading lamp for a head, attacked.

While it wasn't clear what we had to do to defeat the thing after scanning it, Stantz just encourage us to cooperate and saturate the thing with proton pack beams.

Your proton pack has a very film accurate feel to it. It feels wildly out of control (in a good way) and has a few alternate modes of fire. You can do a "slam" move with the left trigger to drain a ghost of its energy, essentially firing a burst of extra proton pack power. The backpack can also overheat when used for long stretches, so you'll have to vent it if you don't want an interrupted proton stream.

After our book golem fight — which took far, far longer than we thought it would — we headed further into the depths of library, the location of the librarian ghost. Walking through the aisles of the library archives, we were attacked by flying books, moving book shelves and a occasionally, a ghost known as the Collector.

We met up with the Collector, who threw dozens of animated books and whatever library furniture was in the room at our character and Ray Stantz. This was our first attempt at using the ghost trap, which the player can toss on the floor with the X button. Positioning the ghost by manipulating it with your proton beam is no easy task, even with an AI controlled Stantz helping us out.

At one point, Stantz went down and we had to revive him with the A button, making our final push against the Collector a bit easier. After containing the flying specter with the beam, then slamming it against the walls and ceilings, we finally got the Collector into the containment unit, ending our demo.

We were pleasantly surprised at how well the game captured the mood of the first film, no doubt helped by the inclusion of voices of Ernie Hudson, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. None of Bill Murray's dialogue was featured in the demo level, sadly, but what we did hear of the other actors sounded great.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game has attention to detail — and fan service — in spades. The PKE meter model looks spot on and the menu selection screen, the Ghostbusters firehouse HQ, is a nice touch.

The game simply looks fantastic, with beautifully modeled characters and props. Our main complaint — a minor complaint — with the game's visuals were the overly glossy, over bloom-lighted graphics. Otherwise, the game looks brilliant.

One thing we hope is addressed are the cues that direct a player what to do next and how to use their ghost bustin' tools. We actually restarted the demo because we felt like we'd missed some sort of critical direction from the NPCs. Turns out we just hadn't scanned a display case (one that we didn't even see during a few minutes of poking around). We also suspect that our book golem fight took much longer than necessary because we weren't really familiar with the alternate firing modes of the proton pack. Hopefully, this issue can simply be chalked up to the limited available play time.

It may be Ghostbusters nostalgia taking over, but our brief taste of the game did feel like a return to form for the property. The whole experience captured the experience, or what we assume the experience, of being a part of the Ghostbuster team would be like. We're very, very excited to get our hands on the game again.

"Look, we know that video game movies have been pretty bad," Cliff admitted to the crowd, attempting to assuage their fears that the Gears flick will suck. "But just think how bad comic book movies were for such a long time. We hope [the Gears of War movie] will change that."

He noted that the Hollywood shot-callers are the same age as the average gamer — 35 years old — and have grown up playing and loving video games. "Hollywood gets it... and they dig games," Cliff said.

What may depress aficionados of Gears meaty, steroid overdosed look is that the feature film may not live up to the dream casting of certain fans. In lieu of filling out Delta Squad's armor with accurately voluminous meatheads, he's hoping they'll find some actors who can, you know, act.

"I know people have ideas where they want to see some wrestler, some huge buff guy," Bleszinski "The thing we care most about is charisma, someone you'd want to watch for two hours."

What a novel idea!

The first was that Steve Jablonsky, composer on films like Transformers and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, was working on the score for Gears of War 2. Jablonsky was said to have been at Skywalker Studios working on the final mix of the soundtrack.

Even more interesting was the announcement that Gears of War 2 would feature "linked Achievements." In short, goals reached in the original Gears of War will carry over to the sequel, giving the player bonuses. Cliff listed three examples of how linked Achievements will work.

Keep in mind, some may be light spoilers.

- Complete Act One in Gears Of War, unlock a playable Anthony Carmine in Gears of War 2
- Find 10 COG tags in Gears Of War, unlock Minh Young Kim in Gears of War 2
- Kill Raam in Gears Of War, unlock a playable Raam in Gears of War 2

Bleszinski didn't expand much beyond those three linked Achievements, nor did he mention if those unlockables would be limited to either single-player or multiplayer portions of Gears 2. We're currently sitting in on the Xbox 360 creators panel hanging on Bleszinski's every word.

Pro Tip: Don't show up for the Resident Evil: Degeneration panel at Comic-Con less than 30 minutes prior to it happening or you won't get in. With the San Diego Con at capacity, getting into the Capcom helmed panel required serious Resident Evil dedication. We were covering Jordan Mechner's panel instead, but thanks to GameTrailers, we have the good stuff — the trailer itself. Enjoy!

The former, Mechner's first commercial game, an early 2D fighter published by Brøderbund and known for its fluid animation, is planned to get an update (of sorts). Details on the Karateka project weren't provided, but Mechner teased the crowd by saying "I can safely say it's not going to be the way that you expect." He did, however, say he would be directly "involved," a claim he didn't make about Ubisoft's recent Prince of Persia releases.

Mechner also let the crowd in on the particulars of a hilarious Easter egg in the original Karateka.

Asked by a fan about two of the game's quirks — that Karateka could be played with the screen flipped upside down if the floppy was inserted the wrong way and if the "volcano" in the background erupted randomly, killing both fighters instantly — Mechner cleared up both. No, the one-in-a-million eruption was just a rumor, he said, but the inverted floppy trick was certainly by design.

One of the Karateka programmers handling copy protection discovered a way to flip the screen with a simple change to the bit table. The was still playable, but "really hard."

"We thought it would be hilarious if we burned the flipped version of the game to the other side of the disk," he recounted, thinking that Brøderbund execs wouldn't go for it "because it would require an assembly line change to actually burn the game onto both sides of the disk, which adds however many cents." In the end, they did go for it.

Mechner said he envisioned that someone would put the disk in upside down, then call tech support and get the explanation "Well, sir, you put the disk in upside-down."

"That person would think, for the rest of their life, that that's how software works."

Anyway, IGN reports that at Comic-Con, Kevin Feige, Marvel Studios President of Production (wotta title), was asked if a new Marvel vs. Capcom game was possible someday. His reply: "Yes. And maybe sooner than you think."

IGN goes on to say that a Capcom under-production title, probably for Japan release only, could provide the guts for the game, allowing it to be turned around in a relatively short time.

New Marvel vs Capcom Game On the Way? [IGN, via Scrawl]

Check out the handmade efforts in our gallery below and vote on your choice for the winner. Sadly, we didn't get a proper, full view shot of the Alpha version of Chun-Li, because she totally nailed the thighs.

After a brief voiceover from character Ninja Ninja, voiced with super salty language by Samuel L. Jackson, Afro Samurai is set loose on a steady stream of sword wielding bad guys.

The attack system is rather straightforward, using the X and Y buttons for light hits and heavy hits respectively. Afro jumps with A and kicks with B. Blocking is performed with the right trigger, but it's the left trigger that makes the combat more interesting.

This puts Afro into in-focus mode, turning the game world black and white and slowing down the action. Instead of tapping the X and Y buttons to form strings of combos — we saw some quick combos pop up during loading screens — you'll hold down the X or Y button then release when you feel a rumble to perform a deadly horizontal or vertical slash. You'll see a gleaming white line streak across your target's body as you charge your slash. Connect, and you'll slice your target in half.

You'll get a rather grisly, yet comical view of your opponent's insides. There's no shortage of blood or gore, but it's implemented well.

At one point, we entered "Over Focus" mode, in which Afro sprinted from foe to foe, performing one-hit kills with far less effort. That particular sequence felt pre-scripted, as some two dozen bad guys descended from the rooftops just prior to our Over Focus attack.

Our demo ended soon after this batch was laid to waste. The end of the demo introduced us to Brother Six of The Empty Seven, giving Sam Jackson as Ninja Ninja another opportunity to drop some F-bombs.

Afro Samurai does action rather well, at least in the small taste we had. What it doesn't do as well is offer a perfect camera. We lost track of evil swordsmen and ninja, clicking the right analog stick to recenter, more than a few times. It may have been due to the tight surroundings, but could have a big impact on how swordplay works out in the end.

The game's graphics are just stunning, capturing the look of the manga accurately, giving it a softer, pencil-sketch look that impresses on many levels. It may be worth the price of admission to see it in action, because it looks simply fantastic. The eye candy, which extends to the glorious killing of many enemies, will be a big draw for those unfamiliar with the property.

Mechner said that in writing the script for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, that he essentially had to start from scratch, re-imagining the events of the time-bending video game of the same name. Expect carefully hidden allusions to past games in the series in both the movie and the graphic novel.

When asked about the casting of the film, Mechner told audience members, "I'm delighted with the casting of the movie." Listing off the core actors — Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina — Mechner then went on to express his faith in Newell as the film's director, calling him "an actor's director" and sounding very confident that even bit parts would be cast faithfully.

An audience member asked why the Prince, Dartan, wasn't... you know, Persian.

Mechner responded democratically to questions whether they'd looked at anyone of Persian descent.

"Yeah, they looked at a huge range of actors," he said. "There are hundreds of great actors that could've done the job, but you end up picking one."

He was less glowing about one of the more reviled entries in the series, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, about which he's been quoted in the past as saying "I'm not a fan."

"I don't like to criticize a particular game, basically what I meant to say was that the style wasn't my style. It wasn't what I would've done, but it is what it is," he said, addressing previous statements. "I'd rather focus on the positive and hope that the [new Prince of Persia game] is really awesome."

We also got a look at some new environments, including the Fortress of Solitude, and a look at Captain Marvel's in-game model.

Boon also announced that an MK vs. DC comic book would included in the limited edition of the game, illustrated by John Tobias, co-creator of the Mortal Kombat series. The game's final boss and a the remaining line-up of fighters was promised to be announced over the next few months.

Peter Parker has been infected by the alien symbiote, too, but has total control over its abilities, allowing him to switch from the more nimble red and blue suit to a more destructive black and white suit on the fly. Both suits have their advantages and disadvantages, as the black suit lets Spidey whip foes with symbiotic tentacles and carries a heftier punch, but can result in more collateral damage to the city.

That trade-off comes into play in how the citizens of New York, as well as your superpowered allies and enemies perceive you later in the game. With a cast of "Marvel Team Up" regulars, folks like Wolverine and Luke Cage, you'll need to make sure the good guys are on your good side.

Shaba Games, developer of Web of Shadows, looks to have gone to great lengths to capture that Spider-Man feel. All the stock Spidey moves are in there — wall-climbing, web-swinging, spider-sensing — with cinematic camera angles complimenting each. The camera will pan out and strafe when Spider-Man is leaping through the air, attaching himself to foes with a carefully placed web shot, making it look easy to string together combos.

In the Vulture fight we watched, Spider-Man had to get more altitude than he would normally be capable of. With a flock of Vulture minions sporting Green Goblin style gliders floating about, the producer in charge of controlling our hero leaped from minion to minion, until the Vulture was in range. He then knocked the crap out of him with a flurry of punches, kicks and webbing.

We also got to see a epic battle between Spidey and Venom, with a dozen Venomites scrambling around a back alley hive. After dealing with the symbiote infected mob, Spider-Man's next task was to eliminate Venom and his symbiote hive. Looks like Shaba is adding some nice variety to the boss battles in Web of Shadows and we look forward to taking some of this on ourselves.

What we saw of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows looked very early, as the game was still in alpha build stages. There's clearly plenty of work to be done on the title, as frame rate and camera performance needed some serious tweaking — our biggest concerns for the title's ultimate success. Visually, though, the game looks quite nice, and the glossy look of the symbiotes fits in well with the character's art style.

Activision was showing off the Xbox 360 version of the game, but it plans to ship on just about everything under the sun later this fall.

While that grittier, darker version of MK didn't make it far beyond the technology development stages — Boon told us there was little in the way of concept art for the grimier spin on the series — the next next Mortal Kombat may strive for more blood, more violence, more of everything that warrants an M-rating.

The artistic vision of a less saturated, less Superman filled fighter is still swimming around Boon's head, a title that may rest on the success of MK vs. DC. We spent more time with the crossover fighter tonight and talked with Boon about plenty of other MK-related topics. Tune in tomorrow for the rest of our conversation.