E3 2008 Preview
Can real-time strategy games be easy
enough for anyone to play, and deep enough to hold our interest when we’re
several hours into them? Capcom hopes the answer is yes for its new online
strategy title, Age of Booty. Featuring a simple point-and-click interface,
players control one ship in battles of two versus two and four versus four. That
lineup is what you get out of the box. Or rather, out of the download acquired
from XBLA or PSN. There’s a PC version as well, and all are due this fall.
Ship controls are simple: push the
cursor at any point on the screen and tap the A button to make the ship sail in
that direction. The game uses a hexagonal layout that divides the environment by
hexagons. This makes it easy to command your ship from the map screen, which
provides the most basic view in the game. From there you will only see your own
ship and the location of each base — you will not, however, be able to see any
of the allied ships.
Developed by Certain Affinity (a
studio launched by one of Halo’s lead designers), Age of Booty is being built
with a massive online infrastructure. The idea is to get many people playing it
together, since this is primarily a competitive game. There will be a
single-player mode with specific missions. But you won’t get much out of it by
staying offline.
One of the cooler, unexpected
announcements was the way in which Age of Booty will release new content. Forget
about the days of downloads: during the course of development, it was discovered
that you can switch existing content on and off with the release of a new Xbox
Live update. This means that Age of Booty can have the majority of its content
already inside when the game is released, and the developer gets to choose when
you get to play it.
Now most gamers are probably
thinking: "They’re holding back content? What a gyp!" But they have a reason for
it. They’re not selling you these extra goodies, but instead have decided to
make you wait to increase the game’s playability and popularity. The developers
believe that if you offer too many game modes at once, players will be dispersed
in their choices. They would rather see gamers flock to one or two modes (two
are being offered at launch) and keep things entertaining instead of having a
smaller number of people across many game modes. Over time, when gamers have
played the initial modes for a while, additional content will be automatically
unlocked with a system update.
