C.O.R.E preview

C.O.R.E preview

Story

The new trailer for a game called C.O.R.E is apparently about the adventure of Jason Craig. A special forces soldier sent to investigate. The background story goes a little like this... mysterious meteorite that lands some where in the Mojave desert. The resulting radiation explosion and radiation cause some weird effects such as a jungle growing in the crash site. So of coarse the government has to send in a group of researchers and scientist that surprise they must go underground to research. Something goes awry... yadda yadda long story short kill everything that breathes.

HEY LOOK I FOUND A TRAILER!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTCasFeRNQY

O wait I guess doom doesn't count. Damn

Gameplay

Even though the story screams doom. It's still acceptable, considering unless you have final fantasy or phantom hourglass you never really play ds games for their story.
Game PlayThe game play doesn't look that bad in actuality (well except for the same death animations. I like to point out in the trailer were a guy gets blasted by a shotgun and falls forward! What a tough bastard.)The array of weapons sounds impressive, from the standard shotgun, rockets, and assault rifle to something called the plasma gun, with eight total and alternate fire, it sounds like one beefed up hand held arsenal.I assume the game will control a lot like metriod prime hunters, which isn't bad at all. The way that works is by using the d pad as WASD or arrow keys on the computer and using the stylus as the mouse.

The levels look crowded, underground, and dark (cough doom cough), but it seems to have a maze like but a nonlinear feel to it, just meaning more then one path to take, but still essentially from point A to point B it might get repetitive after 14 levels. The website also hints at simple touch puzzle,s and vehicle driving, and turret gunning, if performed right it might give a fresh change of pace, but if done wrong may feel like a chore. Another interesting thing, the website mentions is 20 enemies, which I assume that to be an inflated by many enemies being different versions of each other. Like a scientist zombie vs. a guard zombie. So the game play looks to be a ok if not good experience.

Presentation

My expectations is that this game will excel in some graphic areas and fall flat in others. The character and environment models I believe will do very poorly. As seen in the trailer all characters look essentially the same and from the trailer you can see that every character has the same death animation, falling on their knees then their face, original. The environment and textures also looks extremely bland with nothing but dark, don't get me wrong, depressing and murky has been great for some hand held games like advanced wars days of ruin, but a 3D hand held game with murky and bland textures don't mix.On a more positive note I think the special effects will be excellent, with great particle effects, dynamic lighting (yes even with bland textures dynamic lighting can work miracles), weather effects, ricochets, bullet holes hell you name it.

Multiplayer

This is where i think core will stand out. Probably not as robust as wifi compared to other games (the studio hasn't it announced as feature yet, but hopefully it will be there.) But what really standout is 3 players using one card, which is an amazing feat considering all the options and guns available. (each player when starting out the weapons they choose) Along with team deathmatch and king of the hill finally a capture the flag mode for a hand held game. The potential is there, its just how they use it. Also letter boards and stat tracking are being added.

Conclusion

Core might be taking elements that have worked for other game and combining them on a hand held but that's ok, with mediocre graphics, but good effects and a promising multiplayer, this game might turn out great, or crap but its all on how its the elements are treated.