PAX Hands-On: Gamecock

Gamecock has made a name for themselves with both their wacky antics and for supporting indie developers with cool game ideas. Both of these were pretty obvious at PAX. They had a guy in a freaky costume insisting that mushrooms could talk, and the PR rep that I met with was wearing a giant golden cape. Hell, they made a book of fanfiction based on the unreleased Mushroom Men to give away at their booth. I suppose, from what I hear, that I should be amazed that they were all wearing pants.

Wackiness aside, the second reason for Gamecock’s awesomeness was reiterated in the titles that they were showing off, all pretty interesting in their own ways.

Legendary

Legendary was, without a doubt, one of the biggest surprises at PAX. I knew almost nothing about this supernatural first-person shooter before hitting the booth, and after I left, I really just wanted to go back in and play some more. The backstory of Legendary involves a thief named Deckard, who has been hired to break into a museum and crack open a locked box. As it turns out, that box was the legendary Pandora’s Box. When he opens it, all sorts of monstrous creatures are released into the world. Naturally, you have to grab a gun and kill the hell out of them.

Up to this point, Legendary probably sounds like another generic FPS with werewolves instead of aliens. I’ll admit, that’s what I thought when I first heard about the game. Legendary sets itself apart by creating a genuine feeling of tension and anxiety. For starters, the game takes place in recognizable sections of New York and London. Setting the title in a familiar location is a great way to set up the general mood. Watching Times Square get ripped apart by a monster the size of a skyscraper definitely evokes different emotions than watching some generic city fall apart. The monsters will fully use the environment to their advantage, attacking from the floor or the ceiling, or ducking behind debris to heal. Werewolves will sneak up behind you or drop from ceilings, and if you don’t destroy their head, they will get right back up to keep attacking you. Incorporeal demon fairies shift into being right in front of your face or will crush you with possessed cars. Remember that giant monster I mentioned? Yeah, it wants you dead. Another interesting facet of the monster AI is that they don’t just focus on the player. With the right amount of manipulation, you can get the monsters to maul each other.

Legendary went from a non-entity to one of my favorite games at the show in just a few minutes, which is a pretty decent feat. I can’t wait to see if the developers can sustain that level of tension and excitement over the entire game. We’ll find out when the game hits stores on September 30th.

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars

Mushroom Men is a.. strange franchise. The story revolves around a civil war between several tribes of mushrooms who have gained sentience after being bathed in the dust of a comet. Not that weird yet. The game’s soundtrack has been composed by Les Claypool, which is awesome but not that strange. No, the weird comes in when you combine the story and the music with the art style, which has this cool 50′s Sci-Fi feel to it. The story and art feel like they have been ripped straight from one of the old pulps. This style carries over pretty well to the game itself, creating a neat visual look.

Spore Wars is a 3D action platformer that plays a lot like Twilight Princess. Combat is pretty simple; shake the Wii remote to attack, use Z to block and dodge with C. As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock all sorts of weapons to more effectively decapitate your foes. Apparently, these weapons are cobbled together from objects in your environment, such as an axe made of a popsicle stick and a corncob. To climb tall objects, you’ll have a “sticky hand” that works just like a grappling hook. The level that I played had be making my way through someone’s house. That sticky hand saved my ass when a cat was about to maul me.

Mushroom Men seems like it will be a fun game, especially for those craving another Twilight Princess, and I really dig the pulpy Sci-Fi aesthetic. We’ll be sure to bring you more info on this title and its DS prequel (Rise of the Fungi) as it nears its November release date.

Velvet Assassin

In Replay’s upcoming stealth action game, you play as Violette Summer, an M16 spy in enemy territory during World War 2. Somehow, Violette has ended up in a hospital, having been mortally wounded. As you play through her memories, you’ll slowly unravel the reason why she ended up in her wounded state.

You are almost certainly sick of playing games set during World War 2. It’s not hard, there are dozens of games released every year chronicling the war. The developers at Replay intend to set their game apart from the others by focusing on espionage, more Splinter Cell than Call of Duty. Instead of storming the beach at Normandy, Violette will typically crawl through factories and seduce weak-willed Luftwaffe. The developers have aimed for a certain amount of realism in the game, even basing their character on real-life spy Violette Szabo. This realism appears in the little details, like in the weapons and tools that the assassin uses. Weapons are appropriate for the time period, and instead of poisoning enemies with mysterious syringes, you might stun them with a morphine injection. In one scene in the demo, Violette found a canister of gas that could be used to distract the guards. However, before she could use it, the player also had to track down a gas mask.

While I didn’t get to actually play Velvet Assassin, the level demoed by one of the developers gave me a nice look at what to expect. The graphics are pretty standard fair, but the way they make use of color is really cool. The levels actually make use of a very limited color palette reminiscent of old movies. It’s almost as if the memories that you are playing through are films in her head. At times, time will stop temporarily and you’ll enter a colorful dream-like state. Players will be able to use these temporary breaks to get the drop on enemies, as they remain frozen in place. When you sneak up behind enemies, you’ll get a couple of assassination options. One example was the choice to stealthily stab the guard or to pull the pin on their grenade. The player pulled the pin as the guard walked by. The poor unaware Nazi exploded a few seconds later, causing a nice distraction.

Velvet Assassin looks like it will be a interesting and fairly stylish take on the tired World War 2 subgenre. The developer demo piqued my interest, and I just might have to give it a try when it comes out this October for PC and 360.