Sleeping Dogs is played over-the-shoulder, and involves lots of running, shooting, and driving stolen vehicles—making it very much like Rockstar’s GTA franchise, especially in gameplay. The plot isn’t too far off either, dealing quite a bit with the criminal underworld of a major city. A San Francisco Police officer goes undercover in the Hong Kong crime world in order to infiltrate the Triads, and bring down the organization from the inside. The story will center around the detective’s choices as he struggles not to be sucked into the criminal life. As he completes missions for the Triads, especially the many murders and assassinations, it will take him further and further from the police life he knows—and being so far from his American home won’t help him cope. Originally intended to be part of Activision’s True Crime series, and titled True Crime: Hong Kong, the game was canceled in its original form. Square Enix picked up development and changed the name.
If you’re a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise who is disappointed with the way the old formula has been brought into the current generation of consoles, you will want to take a look at The Last Story. Unfortunately, the trailer we have is only a story trailer, and shows nothing about the gameplay. The game has been designed with a few former Final Fantasy staffers on board, and one can tell from the title and art that it is intended to be a sort of ‘spiritual franchise entry’ into that storied series of games. It has the basic formula: Open exploration of a fantasy world during a over-dramatic semi-political plot line, punctuated by bouts of combat and focused on leveling and developing a party of characters. Where the latest Final Fantasy games have been getting progressively more brainless, this game has a robust combat engine. Each battle turns into a small tactical engagement, where timing and battlefield placement are important to success. The player only directly controls the swordsman of the party—also the protagonist of the plot—in the real-time combat, which consists of moving, choosing targets, and toggling between attack and defense mode. To control the battlefield, the player can activate ‘Gathering’ which draws the attention of all of the enemies on the field. This makes the combat more dangerous for the swordsman, but gives his party members the time they need to cast important spells and gain the upper hand. In addition, the player can pause the combat at anytime, and give more detailed commands to the party from an overhead perspective. Thus the combat seems like a cross between Final Fantasy XII and Dragon Age, an exciting prospect. Few details have been released about the character progression system, so that’s one place the game could still fall on its face, but if they put this much effort into creating a unique tactical real-time combat engine, one should hope they put the time in everywhere. Unfortunately, it’s a Wii exclusive, so fans of pretty graphics need not apply.
Papo & Yo is an adventure puzzle game which places the player in the middle of a neighborhood of Central American favelas (shanties and makeshift homes). In most video games, these type of locations would be scenes of intense violence or destruction as American soldier-heroes bear down on a warlord or somehting, but in Papo & Yo, they are bright and airy and almost cheerful, as the harangued protagonist, Quico, attempts to escape a life of confused abuse. The character has the ability to see the favelas in ways that no one else can, allowing him to manipulate them in fantastic ways to allow his further passage by jumping around, climbing across, and generally navigating the maze of homes. Along the way, he’ll make use of several tools that change the nature of the puzzles, like jetpacks and ladders, and he’ll be accompanied some of the way by his best friend, a large pink monster who will help most of the time, but upon consumption of a poisoned frog, will become the player’s enemy instead, only to change back when the effect wears off. Full of the kind of symbolism and depth only possible in an indie game, but with the production values afforded by a veteran production team, Papo & Yo is one not to miss for anyone interested in video games as a literary art.
The Icrontic spotlight this week bears down on the parade of Tower Wars. This game looks like one of the first compelling attempts at the ‘versus tower defense’ genre. Built from the ground up to be a versus game, it doesn’t suffer the same weaknesses as many defense games which have been adapted to versus from a single-player game, and it uses real-time strategy elements to build interest into a genre which is usually a bit slow and repetitive. Combined with a humor and sensibility reminiscent of Dungeon Defenders, Tower Wars looks like it might be the first versus tower defense to have done it right. Also—and this is, frankly, what earned it the spotlight—it’s played on a hexagonal grid, which is far superior to a square grid for tactical games. Other features include games of up to six players (3v3), specialization trees, and Steamworks integration.
Following is a full list of this week’s announced North American releases:
Windows
- Darksiders II
- Sleeping Dogs
- Tower Wars
Wii
- The Last Story
DS
- Hotel Transylvania
3DS
- Crazy Chicken: Pirates 3D
Xbox 360
- Darksiders II
- Dust: An Elysian Tail
- Sleeping Dogs
PS3
- Darksiders II
- Papo & Yo
- Sleeping Dogs
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