What do you think of Galleon?
E3 2002: Galleon impressions
Confounding Factor's heavily promoted adventure game was playable at E3. Check out impressions now.
Quietly tucked away in Interplay's booth this year at E3 was none other than Galleon, the adventure game under development at Tomb Raider creator Toby Gard's studio, Confounding Factor. It's a fairly ambitious 3D adventure of the seafaring and swashbuckling sort, and it's had quite a stormy development cycle. The build on display at Interplay's booth this year seems discouragingly early, though it occasionally displayed flashes of greatness, albeit fleeting ones.
There was one area that we could reach on display at E3, and it consisted of twisty, subterranean caverns. A few enemy types populated it, including scantily clad men, both unarmed and sword-bearing, and vicious giant crabs. The environment itself was heavily platform-oriented, though all the geography was flowing and natural. From what we saw, the paths weren't exactly immediately evident, and they sometimes required some overly precise movement in order to traverse. For instance, one path requires that you tip-toe across several extremely thin layers of stalagmites, and one false move will send you careening down several levels right into the heart of backtrack land. We're hoping that what we saw isn't indicative of what the final game's level design will be like, as it seems as if the character's range of motion was the last thing on the level designers' minds when the environments were laid out.
Captain Rhama Sabrier is the game's protagonist, and his model looks and moves very well at this point. The smoothness of the controls, though, leave a bit to be desired. Rhama can jump, attack, and perform all sorts of acrobatics, as well as some more mundane actions, like climbing. He'll assume several different and highly stylized stances when he's using each of his weapons, which in the E3 demo included a sword, a pistol, and his fists. He can also perform some wall jumps, though the mechanics for these feel like they need to be fleshed out a bit. Basically, whenever you jump near enough to a wall, you'll automatically bounce off it. Climbing is a little simpler--you just press the appropriate button, and you automatically scale the surface you're up against. You can only climb on surfaces that you could more or less realistically reach, but it's a useful feature nonetheless.
The combat is pretty bare-bones, at this point. You can lock on to enemies, which allows you to circle them and also aims your attacks at them automatically. Your actual attacks depend on whether you're using a sword or your fists, but, for the most part, the attack sequences are canned. Their animations looked quite nice, though, and it definitely looks like the game has the potential for a cool combat system, if given enough time to germinate.
Frankly, we're at a loss as to what to think about Galleon. Much has been said about how great it will be, but it's been through some stormy times, it seems. We'll have more information on it as soon as it's available.
By Miguel Lopez, GameSpot VG [POSTED: 05/24/02]
Who's excited about this game? Vote and post your opinions here.
Reply With Quote
Galleon screenshots
Bookmarks