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IGN Preview of Clash of the Titans
You remember Brash entertainment, right? A game developer started by Hollywood execs to develop film properties into games, Brash began development on a number of titles prior to its messy demise at the end of 2008, from Alvin and the Chipmunks to Saw. Their most anticipated title was codenamed 2010, which turned out to be a tie-in title to last April's Clash of the Titans remake.
Developed by Game Republic, the developers of PS3 launch title Folklore, Clash of the Titans has since missed the theatrical release of its tepidly received cinematic companion, leaving Namco/Bandai and Game Republic in an odd position. Rather than talk about the title's winding development history and issues of release timing, Namco/Bandai seemed content largely to let the game speak for itself at its pre-E3 event last week in Santa Monica. So, how did things appear?
I expected worse, honestly. Brash wasn't known for quality during its short lifespan and bouncing from publisher to publisher can often result in disconnected messes from even the best development studios, but Game Republic have something on their hands that feels at the very least like a competent action title. Clash of the Titans is direct about what it does; there's no platforming or puzzles to speak of, or at least, none that the representatives from Game Republic would tell me about, anyway. Instead, my demo focused entirely on combat.
Comparisons to God of War are inevitable, given not only the type of game but the type of content, as God of War was heavily influenced by the original Clash of the Titans film (Harry Hamlin, who starred as Perseus in the original Clash reprised his role in God of War II). Without speaking to the fairness of said comparisons, Clash of the Titans is a by-the-numbers character action game. Light and heavy attacks are mixed to perform combos, and the B or Circle button (depending on your console of choice) wielded one of four special weapons on display. Killing enemies rewards the player with points they can use to upgrade their weapons, each weapon is good in certain situations, and... well, I think we all get it by now.
There are a few things Clash of the Titans does a little differently. Special weapons use stamina (similarly to the way certain skills in the God of War series use mana), and stamina can only be restored through risky charge attacks, in which Perseus draws energy from his enemies but must remain completely still. The fights that Game Republic had to test my skills were boss battles, which featured a great deal of fodder in addition to at least one major enemy. At first, the fodder proved more an annoyance than anything, until the first time I ran out of stamina. At that point I realized that the fodder was there for a reason, making each major battle a situation where I had to juggle dealing damage to the main objective while taking out smaller enemies with charge attacks to maintain my stamina bar. It sounds simple, and it is, but it did add some additional strategy and thought to the combat, which is welcome.
Clash of the Titans also appears to focus more on location specific damage for bosses than other, similar titles. While the bosses I encountered would take some amount of damage wherever I hit them and whatever weapon I hit them with, certain weapons applied to specific parts of their anatomy which yielded better results. The giant scorpion encounter in particular rewarded clever tactics (or it would have, if the dev standing next to me hadn't told me about it before I could figure it out), as smashing its pincers apart with a giant hammer resulted in a much more manageable fight - to say nothing of chopping off its tail with a massive axe.
While I was playing the part of an amateur lobster connoisseur on my arthropodic target, one of several selectable AI companions ran around the battlefield and did... not a whole lot, actually. The dev giving the demo assured me that there are various companions in the game that give a leg up on some of the more intense fights, I didn't see much in the way of any tangible benefits to their presence.
At this point, I'm not quite sure where Clash of the Titans fits in the overall gaming landscape. A licensed title that missed its theatrical release in a genre that's seen several major releases this year, Titans has a rough road ahead of it, competent or not. It has a trick or two up its sleeve, but whether or not it can clear a path through other releases this year to find a place in gamers' PS3s or 360s remains to be seen.
©2010-05-24, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Developed by Game Republic, the developers of PS3 launch title Folklore, Clash of the Titans has since missed the theatrical release of its tepidly received cinematic companion, leaving Namco/Bandai and Game Republic in an odd position. Rather than talk about the title's winding development history and issues of release timing, Namco/Bandai seemed content largely to let the game speak for itself at its pre-E3 event last week in Santa Monica. So, how did things appear?
I expected worse, honestly. Brash wasn't known for quality during its short lifespan and bouncing from publisher to publisher can often result in disconnected messes from even the best development studios, but Game Republic have something on their hands that feels at the very least like a competent action title. Clash of the Titans is direct about what it does; there's no platforming or puzzles to speak of, or at least, none that the representatives from Game Republic would tell me about, anyway. Instead, my demo focused entirely on combat.
Comparisons to God of War are inevitable, given not only the type of game but the type of content, as God of War was heavily influenced by the original Clash of the Titans film (Harry Hamlin, who starred as Perseus in the original Clash reprised his role in God of War II). Without speaking to the fairness of said comparisons, Clash of the Titans is a by-the-numbers character action game. Light and heavy attacks are mixed to perform combos, and the B or Circle button (depending on your console of choice) wielded one of four special weapons on display. Killing enemies rewards the player with points they can use to upgrade their weapons, each weapon is good in certain situations, and... well, I think we all get it by now.
There are a few things Clash of the Titans does a little differently. Special weapons use stamina (similarly to the way certain skills in the God of War series use mana), and stamina can only be restored through risky charge attacks, in which Perseus draws energy from his enemies but must remain completely still. The fights that Game Republic had to test my skills were boss battles, which featured a great deal of fodder in addition to at least one major enemy. At first, the fodder proved more an annoyance than anything, until the first time I ran out of stamina. At that point I realized that the fodder was there for a reason, making each major battle a situation where I had to juggle dealing damage to the main objective while taking out smaller enemies with charge attacks to maintain my stamina bar. It sounds simple, and it is, but it did add some additional strategy and thought to the combat, which is welcome.
Clash of the Titans also appears to focus more on location specific damage for bosses than other, similar titles. While the bosses I encountered would take some amount of damage wherever I hit them and whatever weapon I hit them with, certain weapons applied to specific parts of their anatomy which yielded better results. The giant scorpion encounter in particular rewarded clever tactics (or it would have, if the dev standing next to me hadn't told me about it before I could figure it out), as smashing its pincers apart with a giant hammer resulted in a much more manageable fight - to say nothing of chopping off its tail with a massive axe.
While I was playing the part of an amateur lobster connoisseur on my arthropodic target, one of several selectable AI companions ran around the battlefield and did... not a whole lot, actually. The dev giving the demo assured me that there are various companions in the game that give a leg up on some of the more intense fights, I didn't see much in the way of any tangible benefits to their presence.
At this point, I'm not quite sure where Clash of the Titans fits in the overall gaming landscape. A licensed title that missed its theatrical release in a genre that's seen several major releases this year, Titans has a rough road ahead of it, competent or not. It has a trick or two up its sleeve, but whether or not it can clear a path through other releases this year to find a place in gamers' PS3s or 360s remains to be seen.
©2010-05-24, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved