Paramount Entertainment surprised us at E3 with two game demos from big name movie franchise, Star Trek and War of The Worlds. War of the Worlds is a 2D side scroller that will be available via the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Store. The team behind the game wanted to create an old school 2D gayme that harnessed the power of the current generation of video game consoles. Using rotoscoping and traditional animation styled layers they achieved a unique looking HD experience.
War of the Worlds gameplay is also quite different then many games today. The game is a puzzle based game which sees you making your way across boards that are crawling with various alien invaders searching for humans. The team also wanted to stick to the story of War of the Worlds where a normal guy is trying to escape the alien onslaught, so you will never be able to arm yourself and will need to use various environmental paths to safely move across the level. At times youll also find yourself using other humans as shields and/decoys and you’ll also be able to activate timed mines which can cause the aliens to turn into fireballs.
To further the experience the entire game carries a narrative voiceover from Patrick Stewart. As a survivor of the Martian attack, voiceover from the player’s character tells the tale of how he survived mankind’s near-extinction event. The voiceover also give gamers clues to how they should cross the levels.
War of the Worlds is a neat little gem. The choice to go old school with the look of the game makes it very unique, and the use of current system horsepower the 40 layers of 2D graphics actually pop and son’t seem flat. War of the Worlds is due out later this year.
