As a tie-in to the upcoming alien invasion film Men in Black III, Men in Black: Alien Crisis will hit shelves this week. Luckily, the game does not star Agent J or K. The plot follows a new recruit who came on-board just before the events of the film, and whose adventure runs parallel to that one. As a former master thief, the protagonist’s skills are particularly suited to the stealthy missions required to stop a time-manipulating alien race from taking over earth. While Agent J has gone back in time to save Agent K, Agent Delacoeur—he’s still in training, so no code-letter yet—uses his expertise to survey, intercept, and sabotage the invaders. Gameplay will be mixed genre style, as the player completes a variety of missions. I don’t dismiss this tie-in out of hand only because it doesn’t follow the plot of the film, but I still wouldn’t expect too much in the way of production values.
Sorcery is an adventure game along the lines of the Harry Potter franchise. Play the part of a young wizard who has to save his friends (and the world) from a terrible sorcerer. The gameplay consists of exploring the game-world to discover new powers, and learning to use them in a series of linear dungeons and adventure locales. The character is controlled with the Move controller, which the player will use, seemingly in very Skyward Sword-esque fasion, to cast spells and use items, solving puzzles and defeating enemies. The combat is a little rails-ey, but is actually only a small part of the game. If you like waving your arms, give this one a look.
The Icrontic Spotlight shines from the gaping chest wound of Dragon’s Dogma. A young person has their heart ripped out by a dragon, and yet survives the terrible attack. They are the chosen one of prophesy, and to save the world, they’ll need to get their heart back. This is an action/RPG, which, on the surface, just looks like another dungeon crawler/hack-and-slash/button masher, which have been popular the last few years—not that they’re all bad, of course. Instead, we find this game has some depth to it, with an open world that is being compared to the freedom available in the popular Elder Scrolls games, but with more dynamic play mechanics. Players customize their avatar with nine potential classes, and a bevy of personalizations typical to modern open character construction. The class doesn’t just affect the look and style of the player’s attacks, but actually modify the way the game plays at a fundamental level. There are the obvious examples of the fighter class that runs up and button mashes the enemies and the mage class which bombarded the enemy with tactical spells, and the ranger class for which aiming is very important, but then there are other, fundamentally different classes like the ‘Strider’ who specializes in climbing all over the bigger enemies Shadow of Colossus style, or a commander class, which specializes in training up NPC fighters to do the combat for them. In addition to the varied play styles will be a complex NPC party system. By this system, each player gets to have one NPC they they create and advance, but they can also recruit two more NPCs for their party from among the NPCs of their Xbox Live or PSN friends who also play the game. The system will have additional social elements, which have not yet been clearly detailed.
The point here was to create a game which would be playable by many different types of players who hail from many different play styles, and allow them all to enjoy the story in their own way. My gut tells me that this kind of broadening would thin out the experience, that there is a reason games aren’t made this way. However, my heart tells me that they should be, and that if they can pull it off, it will be something amazing.
Following is a full list of this week’s announced North American releases:
Windows
- Iron Front – Liberation 1944
Wii
- Men in Black: Alien Crisis
- Monster World IV (VC)
3DS
- Mario Tennis Open
- Men in Black: Alien Crisis
Xbox 360
- Dragon’s Dogma
- Men in Black: Alien Crisis
PS3
- Dragon’s Dogma
- Men in Black: Alien Crisis
- Sorcery
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