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Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Release Date: May 27, 2008
System: Xbox 360
ESRB Rating: T
Official Web site
0:00 I played at early demo of this game way back at
X06 in Barcelona. I was on about two hours of sleep at the time, though, so I don't really remember much of it.
0:01 I'm a bit annoyed that I have to download an update for the game, but most of that annoyance melts away when I see the download complete in roughly 10 seconds. Now that's how you do an update!
0:02 No intro cut scene, just cut straight to a title menu on a black background. Gentle strings in the background give way to a thumping, drum-heavy beat in the options screen.
0:03 New game, normal difficulty. The game warns me that "the game will begin with this difficulty." Well, duh!
0:04 A big metal walker trudges through a frozen cityscape along with some supporting troops. Orange lightening in the distance. "It was T.C. minus 80, 80 years before the trial century. Humanity left a quiet world for the snow-covered E.D.N.3" (pronounced "Eden-3"). Why, exactly?
0:06 Cut to a shot of gas-masked, jack-booted soldiers in a corridor. There's some rumbling from outside, and then a giant brownish-orange thing rolls in like an armadillo, knocking the soldiers about. It unrolls itself to show a body resembling a scorpion and lets out a huge scream. Back to Mr. Narrator: "With the expansion of the colony, humanity encountered a new alien life form known as the Akrid." You don't say!
0:07 Cut back to the battle -- these things can take a lot of lead! Mr. Narrator says that humankind was ready to flee E.D.N.3, until they realized the Akrid had internal stores of thermal energy. "Suddenly humankind was determined to fight." So defending our colony wasn't enough motivation? We needed a new energy source to convince us to fight? Man, we are lazy, greedy bastards, aren't we?
0:08 Humans developed the Vital Suit to repel the Akrid. To show how this works, the walker from outside (which is a Vital Suit, it seems) comes in and saves everyone's bacon. Another one comes in and unloads a Gatling gun. "Fall back! This is no time to be a hero," says Vital Suit Guy 1 to Vital Suit Guy 2. "Sigh... understood," replies the younger Gatling gunner.
0:09 All of a sudden we've jumped into the game. I think I'm the young Gatling gunner, but I'm not in the Vital Suit anymore, for some reason. Some guy says "follow me" and I decide to listen. Not like I have much choice.
0:10 A quick tap of the B button brings up a grappling hook that can get me to higher ledges. Pretty cool; reminds me of
Bionic Commando.
0:11 An Akrid rolls in to the airplane hangar we've ended up in. He's quickly dispatched by me and my teammates. The glowing orange thermal energy it drops gets added to my "hip pod." This energy can fill my life gauge if/when I get hurt. Hey, it makes more sense than the automatic regeneration in a lot of other games.