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In meeting rooms at this year's Tokyo Game Show, Microsoft is showing off Project Draco, the game everyone at 1UP made fun of Matt for liking last year but will now turn around and be in love with. Matt and Scooter just saw it, and both wanted to force their opinions on you. Matt: I'm just glad it's here, first off, since we haven't seen or heard anything about the game in the past year. First impression is it's super colorful, with some interesting virtual pet features, three-player online co-op, and controls that are really similar to Child of Eden's. The whole interface brings back Child of Eden memories, actually, from the right hand lock-on attacks to the left hand more powerful attacks, to throwing both hands in the air for bombs. But the developers tell us there will be a lot more variety for those kinds of things though different dragons, upgrades, etc.
Scooter: Before today, I knew nothing about this game other than it was a Kinect title, so it was a damn pleasant surprise to see that this is basically Panzer Dragoon Kinect. And while the aiming-and-firing mechanics are like Child of Eden, one area that Draco differs is movement. You shift your body weight around to steer the dragon left-right and high-low (the latter feels somewhat like a plane, in that you bend backwards in order to "pull up"). As for your last point, they didn't go into great detail, but you feed your dragons food (rewards for completing missions) to develop general stats and specific skills/weapons.
Matt: Yeah, the virtual pet stuff sounds kind of weird, but could be cool. After you finish a mission, you earn food for your dragon that leads to upgrades, and? well that's just kind of adorable. I love that you can unlock and customize different dragons and take yours to play online -- reminds me of Derby Owners Club.
But yeah, I guess I skipped ahead too fast on the details. This is totally Panzer Dragoon Kinect. Yukio Futatsugi, who you may remember from Phantom Dust and Panzer Dragoon, is heading up a new team called Grounding Inc., and has brought together various team leads from the former Team Andromeda for this one. That, more than anything, is why I was so excited a year ago.
Scooter: What's interesting is that it looks better, due to the way the colors pop and the lighting effects over the different areas (like an ice-filled ocean and a weird alien jungle), than what you saw last year. It looks pretty darn snazzy for a downloadable Kinect-only Xbox Live Arcade title. The overall production values seem a bit higher than you'd expect for a downloadable rail shooter. Since it's not coming out until 2012, it will likely look even snazzier once it's actually done. But this and other titles I've seen at the show lately, like Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor and Diabolical Pitch, indicate that Japanese developers are trying to make real games with Kinect.
Matt: It didn't occur to me until just now, but the look reminds me a lot of After Burner Climax in that it relies on very shiny backgrounds that probably wouldn't look great if you slowed down time and zoomed-in, but look fantastic as you fly by.
You mentioned the only thing that really worries me right now, though: "Kinect-only." I haven't seen anything so far that you couldn't replicate on a controller, so maybe there's something I'm missing that'll make me want to play it standing up, but I'm a little worried there.
Scooter: Hey, maybe someone thinks that other games that support controllers (like Child of Eden) were too eager to compromise, rather than fully commit to the Kinect experience. Maybe it just means that Futatsugi is willing to go all-in for the Kinect while others balk.
Nah, I don't really hold such disparaging beliefs for games that support both control options, nor do I speak for the developers. But I'm not worried about how this is Kinect-only. I guess motion control systems like Wii and PlayStation Move have gotten me used to "you have to use your body without using the regular controller for this experience."
Overall, I went from not knowing a thing about this game (besides its title, and that you like it) to thinking it looks pretty snazzy. Plus, I appreciate the elegant simplicity of its premise: "you're fighting on a dragon using Kinect."
- The story takes place 150-200 years in the future. After humanity migrates to another planet, some incident eventually causes the destruction of that world. The survivors of the incident create a new form of society where they modify dragons into means of transport and become dragon riders.
- The game is a rail shooter where you control dragons for combat. There are various different types of dragons to choose from, and in the demo session they showed off the first dragon you can use in the game - the Bloodskin.
- The game is directed by Yukio Futatsugi at Grounding, but the dragons are designed by Manabu Kusunoki who is currently at Land Ho. Both creators originally made the Panzer Dragoon games.
- In the demo they showed off the controls of the game for the first time. Reaching out with your right hand, you lock-on to multiple targets for the Homing Laser attack. With your left hand, you can trigger the manual Fire Breath single target attack. Swinging down both arms together will unleash the strong Eclipse Ray attack.
- But the game isn't just limited to these three attacks, there is an indepth system where you can develop and advance your dragon, including adding more attacks and options for combat.
- After completing a stage, you get food for your dragon. By feeding the dragon you unlock skills which expand what the dragon can do. These skills include being able to lock on to more targets, doing more damage, etc. There are 150 different types of skill to explore.
- Originally when they showed off the game, they showed that you can control the dragon using your hands on the Kinect. This was a mistake. It turned out to be a bad idea so now this game is a traditional rail shooter where the dragon moves on its own. Also, it is tiring if you move your hands around too much, so the ideal pace for a Kinect game is about 5 minutes for a single quest.
- Project Draco has been in development for about a year or so now. It is due for release in early 2012 on XBLA. The director hopes that it will be a new benchmark not just for Kinect-only titles (lol) but also for the quality and standard of XBLA games.
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