With so many companies releasing me-too first person shooters on the Xbox, it's nice to see that Sammy's taken a different route with its upcoming multiplayer title, Iron Phoenix. A 16-player third person fighting game, Iron Phoenix lets you hack-and-slash your way through enemies across the world, and while the game has some slight frame rate issues, it's an extremely fun-to-play action adventure title that will be a breath of fresh air on a console filled with similar games.

Unlike the marathon blast fests on Xbox Live, Iron Phoenix is all about sword play and energy attacks. You select a character (the game features more than ten), and you enter various arenas with up to 15 other players and decimate one another. There are no guns (though you can fire stationary cannons) or rocket launchers to be found. Rather, there are swords, daggers, and spears lying about (each weapon has over 20 different moves associated with it), and you're free to carry and wield up to two of them. These include such deadly items as the Ember Sword (my personal favorite), and the Ashblade. The fighters can perform all sorts of moves, such as picking up enemies and tossing them off cliffs, grinding and throwing their bodies into spikes, and climbing up and running along walls. The action is frantic and intense, as several players often get together and have an all-out slash fest, but there's more to the game than just melee weapons. By building up your chi, you can execute powerful chi attacks that'll cause your fighter to radiate energy and unleash a myriad of high-speed moves upon your foes. There's even a defensive chi attack to get enemies off of you. Also, there are various power ups to snatch, allowing you to throw poison darts at your opponents, build up your chi meter, regain health, do double the damage, and run faster.

Sammy hasn't revealed too many details about the single player (or let me play it, for that matter), but there are a few details worth mentioning, in particular, the story. Iron Phoenix is about the struggle to control nine weapons that were forged by a meteor. Said to imbue the wielder of all nine with unimaginable power, the greatest warriors in the world (the playable characters), battle one another to become the sole warrior king. After centuries of war and countless lost lives, mythical China will host the final battles.

The single player game is supposedly very story-driven and features over 40 minutes of cut scenes. However, that's all we know about it. It's entirely possible that Sammy will just force the player to engage in various arena battles (similar to Iron Phoenix's multiplayer component), but that remains to be seen.

Single player is all well and good, but the heart of Iron Phoenix is in its multiplayer, and Sammy's done a great job beefing it up. There are six modes of play, though Sammy would only let me play Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Giant Kill. Giant Kill pits players against one to two other players who are these humongous and super strong monsters. It requires a lot of teamwork to take them down, as a couple of well-placed strikes can kill you in a hot second.

In addition to those modes, there's VIP, Ring Challenge, and Challenge Ring, though as of this time we're unsure what those are and how they're different from one another. Also, the game will make use of Xbox Live 3.0, which will allow you to do voice messaging, organize and host team tournaments, and form clans.

Graphically, Iron Phoenix is very pretty. The characters as well as the environments are extremely well-detailed and show off the Xbox's power. There are over ten warriors, each with a distinct look. There's the pale and fair skinned warrior DeRais, the beautiful but deadly Mia, and Qi-Go, the old man who wears simple clothing yet carries a powerful punch. Those are but a few of the characters you can select from, and each can wield the game's myriad of different weapons.

As for the environments, I'm pleased to know that they're huge. These spacious outdoor locales have numerous nooks and crannies to hide in as well as wide open areas to do battle in. For example, the first level I checked out, The Great Wall, was filled with walls to climb up and rooftops to jump onto. Another level had a giant stone dragon in the center, and there were holes in it so you could hide. These environmental features allow for quick escapes and impressive animation sequences, as it's cool to chase after someone by running up the wall after them.

As good as Iron Phoenix is, its frame rate is the only thing that can keep it from greatness. The game moves slowly to begin with (it sometimes takes forever to wind up your moves), but when several players get together it becomes an ugly mess, where the last man standing is the player who was frantically pressing the most buttons and was in the right place. The game's not unplayable when this happens, but it took me out of the experience. If combined with online lag (if there is any), Iron Phoenix may turn out to be a jumble.

Sammy's done a lot of hard work making sure Iron Phoenix looks pretty and is jam-packed with tons of features, but they seriously need to fix the game's choppy frame rate. If the game runs poorly in system link, I can only imagine how lag on Xbox Live may utterly ruin the experience, which would be a great shame since Iron Phoenix is really good. Since the game releases in February 2005, the developers have some time to fix the issue. Till then, I'm going to memorize the controls and prepare for battle.