That's the really interesting thing about the whole presentation of the game: it comes off as avant-garde in graphics while going for your most base animal instincts in gameplay. And the coarseness also bleeds into the dialogue, as the whole level we played was commentated like a televised sports event, only the announcers reveled in the hideous acts of violence. They also shocked us with really, really explicit dialogue between the two guys. By the way, we’re 99.99999% sure we know the voices of the profanely funny announcers, one of which was Jon Dimagio, the voice of Bender (Futurama) and Marcus Fenix (Gears).
And though we had a great time during our 20-minute demo, we had minor concerns that all this violence could get a little old after awhile – even throwing people into a bus covered in two-foot spikes gets tiresome eventually. Seemingly in place to combat this, we found two extra challenges in the level. The first was Death Press, where we tried to heave as many guys underneath a spike covered ceiling that fell every ten seconds or so. How many points we got depended on how many poor souls we got under that thing in the time limit.
The second one, and our favorite, was Man Darts. With a giant dart board in front of you and a baseball bat in your hands, a bunch of disposable assassins stand between you and the board. Then it's time to swing away, sending man after man hurtling through the air until they smash into the board at a bone-crushing speed. How many points you score is based on wherever they hit, like a normal, non-sociopath version of darts, and by the end of it our bat was completely drenched in red.
That's about when our time with it came to an end, which was too bad. We were getting pretty interested in seeing as many different slow motion kills as possible, and they don't look to be in short supply. We do wonder about the length of the game - which we were told had at least 10 different areas – but this really stands head and shoulders above the Wii crowd, though that might be due to it decapitating the rest of that crowd. March is when we get hope see this promise fulfilled.
Jan 16, 2009
