Frame City Killer Preview (XB360)

Microsoft's done some serious wooing to get Japanese developers on board for the Xbox 360, but I have a feeling that Namco wasn't difficult to convince. The publisher is planning to drop Ridge Racer 6 within the next couple of months, and while I'm sure that game will retain the aura of quality the legendary series is known for, I'm a lot more interested in the third person action adventure, Frame City Killer. It's tentatively scheduled for a February 7 release, but the three month waiting period wasn't enough to keep me from reading up on this anticipated and intriguing title.

The game takes place in the year 2047 and in the futuristic Frame City, an urban sprawl located in East Asia. You play as Crow, an agent turned assassin whose job is to eliminate Khan, the city's most nefarious drug dealer, and eliminate the waves of scum bags that are going to get in your way.

Like any free roaming action game there's a wide assortment of weapons to fire as well as vehicles to drive, and when Crow is being attacked by multiple opponents he can kill them all at once because of the Sequential Kill System, a special feature within the fighting mechanic that allows you to unleash a wave of maneuvers that'll take out multiple opponents simultaneously.

But that doesn't seem to be this game's hook, its reason for standing out on a store shelf. Rather, it's all about assassinating specific targets. The object isn't to just run up to them and pop them in the chest, though I'm sure that's possible, but to select the right weapon for the job and actually go on stakeouts, watching your prey's every move and striking at the right moment. However, how and when you murder them is entirely up to you. So maybe you can just jog beside them and blow their brains out, but you can also stalk them using a sniper rifle and hit them from afar. This gives Frame City Killer a different type of feel than Namco's straight forward Dead to Rights series. It's what will ultimately separate it from its competition, providing its developers are working hard to ensure that the mechanics work.

Frame City is being built using the Unreal Engine 3. The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear about that engine is an unprecedented visual experience, yet Namco's game isn't particularly striking, at least not at this stage. It's certainly not without detail, as the city is bathed in neon lights, but the character models aren't bursting with life like qualities. They actually resemble typical bad guys that you'd see in Time Crisis but without the jaggies and with more realistic textures, but I'm not talking about Gears of War realistic. It's certainly not an ugly game (on the contrary). In fact, its artistic style, which screams Namco, is simple yet elegant. It's a clean looking game that's full of mostly subtle next generation effects that you'll notice when you sit down and become fully immersed, rather than simply passing by a kiosk or downloading a 20 second trailer.

Everything about Frame City Killer looks and sounds fantastic, but I'm a bit worried about it. Namco's forays in the action adventure category, its Dead to Rights series as well as the abominations Death by Degrees and Urban Reign, aren't exactly the epitome of quality game design, so I'm hoping that this latest project was cut from a different mold. I'll have more on this exciting blast fest in the near future, and I promise it won't be in the year 2047.