The Agency
Announced earlier this year, Sony Online Entertainment’s The Agency is taking the world of MMOs to both consoles and PCs. This game breathes some fresh air into a genre monopolized by high fantasy and sci-fi, as players join one of two spy agencies and work their way up from a lowly grunt to the head of their own agency. The Agency, from what has been shown so far, is including your typical MMO faire with shooter elements and ways to play outside of the game itself (SOE mentioned that they wanted to use text messages to communicate updates to players). It’s still marked at "TBA 2008," but you should keep an eye out for this title.
Haze
Sick of seeing new shooters? Me, too. They are all either another alien invasion or some terrorist group, set in either World War II or in the very near future. Enter Haze, brain child of Free Radical: while the plot built for the game sounds interesting enough to hold interest through the campaign (which supports up to four players in cooperative play), it’s the asymmetric gameplay that sounds the most fun. Two opposing factions, the army-for-hire group Mantel and the scrappy Rebels, use very different tactics to overwhelm their enemies. Mantel uses a drug called Nectar, which sharpens their skills and gives the player a number of boosts the efficiency, while the Rebels capitalize on the ability for Mantel soldiers to overdose on the superdrug, causing them to lose control of themselves and either kill fellow soldiers of themselves. It looks good, plays well, and should be in stores early ’08.
White Knight Story
The Playstation 2 has held the RPG crown for many years, but its big brother is still waiting for developers to move onward and upward. Level 5 has done just that with their forthcoming RPG White Knight Story, which combines standard RPG storytelling with a battle system that successfully spans the gap between menu-based and real-time combat. Chaining attacks together is as simple as creating a "palette" in the game menu, where each attack type controls which types come next, and then executing the chain in-game. If your puny human form is too weak for the larger creatures you’ll undoubtedly come across, you can transform into the White Knight, a gargantuan creature of old. Japan is getting this title soon, while the rest of the world must wait expectantly until 2008.
LittleBigPlanet
You’ve heard of this game, right? Cute little creatures hopping through settings straight out of your little sister’s latest puppet show, collecting sponges and jumping oversized skateboards off ramps should ring a bell. Accepted warmly by those at the 2007 GDC, Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet aims to take user-generated content to a new place, through intuitive menus, a promising community network, and charming art direction. Don’t be fooled by its adorable facade, hardcore gamers: you’ll find that with enough time and creativity, you’ll be running through a Quake-themed level or a red light district. Delays have already pushed this title back from a demo release in late 2007, but look expectantly to the latter part of 2008 for the full title.
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