Eidos held a press event at which developer Core Design showed off three of its upcoming PS2 titles and dropped even more hints about the next Tomb Raider game. The three titles that were shown were the now familiar Project Eden, a sequel to the seminal arcade-style jetfighter game Warhawk from the PSOne and the astoundingly creative and ambitious Herdy Gerdy.
Project Eden: While details about Project Eden have been circulating for some time and we were even able to see an early version of the game a few months back, nothing prepared us for how far ahead of most PS2 games this action adventure title really is. Locked in at 60fps in single player mode, there is no sign of draw-in or aliasing anywhere in the absolutely enormous levels. Skyscrapers race hundreds of feet into the atmosphere, blocking the entire horizon and the sprawl of urban decay makes you really feel like you\'re in a futuristic city that\'s about to crumble. Project Eden\'s levels are as alive as Oni\'s are stale and it\'s amazing how much difference that makes.
Speaking of things missing from our third person action adventures to date, the multiplayer in Project Eden is coming along splendidly. With two or four people split screen, the frame rate is at 30fps right now but Core has yet to do any optimization and the belief is that they can get it up to 60 before the pushed back ship date of late summer. Multiplayer isn\'t just an added brawl ala The Bouncer, either. Up to four people can go all the way through the adventure, coming in and out whenever they want. So if one of your buddies takes off for the night and the rest of you want to continue on, the AI can simply take over.
When the AI takes over, you don\'t want to have to worry about babysitting, either. There is only one command you can give teammates: "Follow me." Beside that, they\'re also completely self motivated. Leave them alone for a while and they scope the area, watch for danger and both look for cover and defend themselves if threatened. Project Eden will be simultaneously released on PC and PS2 in late August or early September.
Thunderstrike III: The sequel to Warhawk on the PSOne is incredibly early (only four people are on the team and they\'ve only been going at it for six months) but is already quite impressive. The levels cover more than 30 square miles and take you all over the world including to Antarctica and the South Pacific. Like the original Warhawk, the game will be mission-based and arcadey rather than sim oriented. Thunderstrike will also have some strategic elements, as you can choose which kind of troops come in as support for your missions. Once they\'ve been chosen, you have no control over those troops, but it is a great idea to be flying above the battle that you yourself laid down. The enemies will also come in all sorts of forms, from tanks and jets to detailed ground troops. The engine is powerful enough already that you can zoom in and shoot the hat off of one of the infantry (there can be up to 200 on screen at once) while still at top speed. If you have a whole lot of skill that is.
Tomb Raider: The Next Generation, The next Tomb Raider game may not even be called Tomb Riader. What it will be, however, is different. Deciding once and for all that Lara is here to stay, Core has decided to ditch the stand-alone stories of the PSOne days and write out an episodic, far reaching plot line for Lara where each of the next gen games covers a certain amount of the chapters for the next five to ten years. Yep, that\'s far reaching. What\'s also far reaching is the game\'s ideas, which involve taking Lara away from her old environments making players learn a new way to play.
At the beginning of the new game, Lara is in Paris visiting a friend. Dressed like a civilian, she has no weapons and isn\'t thinking of anything but socializing. While there, however, she is framed for a crime of some sort and is forced to go into hiding. This will bring about an entire stealthy section of the game that culminates with Lara having to burglarize the Louvre. There will be plenty of action, a second playable character named Curtis and true-to-life environments where there are actually houses behind all those windows and people in the streets. Here\'s hoping Core pulls this one off because the old Tomb Raider way just isn\'t cutting it anymore.
Herdy Gerdy: This cartoon style adventure game defies all traditions and single handedly trumps almost everything we\'ve ever seen running on PS2 architecture. It\'s about a young boy on a mystical island who has to avenge his father blah blah blah... None of that\'s very important at this point. What\'s important is that it looks like a cartoon. Not quite Disney style, it reminds us strongly of The Iron Giant, with whimsical animation that is still detailed and emotion evoking. Running around huge 3D environments, you can see that every flower is it\'s own piece of art, every rock has different moss and around every corner is a new wonder. Herdy Gerdy takes up world building where Mario 64 left off.
Rather than make a gorgeous game about collecting things and jumping on people --although there is a bit of the former involved-- Core is creating a fairly non-violent game that\'s challenge comes from trying to manipulate creatures and learn their habits. The main character, Gerdy, is a herder and he must use those skills to solve problems. Populating the world are over 30 different types of creatures to interact with and each of them has very specific AI that tells them what they like, what they don\'t like, who they eat and who they fear. So for instance if Gerdy knows that a certain creature that is dangerous to him is afraid of another critter he can play them off against each other in order to make his way through a certain area. Without screenshots and quite a bit more gameplay we can\'t hope to do the game\'s beauty or originality justice but Core has promised playables soon, so stay tuned!:D
