Aconcagua Preview

If the Resident Evil, Parasite Eve, and Dino Crisis franchises are any indication, the survival-horror genre is a surefire hot ticket to success. Not a company known for letting the competition eat an entire pie, Sony has its own survival-horror title in the works, Aconcagua. Instead of monsters and mutants though, your enemies are all human, terrorists that is.

It seems a fight for independence has broken out in northern Argentina, splitting the country in half. As you can imagine, this has made for a great deal of unrest in the newly formed state of Meruza. To drum up support in the rest of the South American continent, Meruza's 33-year-old voice of freedom, Pachamama, embarks on a whirlwind political tour. Above the Andes peak of Mount Aconcagua though, tragedy strikes. A terrorist bomb explodes, sending Flight 203 and all aboard crashing into the mountain. Trapped on a snowcapped peak 22,834 feet above sea level, only five people survive, including Pachamama and Kato, the journalist accompanying her on the tour.

Your goal in Aconcagua is to descend the mountain to safety. For the most part, you'll witness the story through Kato's eyes, with Pachamama as the main focus of his attention. Of course, since this is a survival-horror title, it needs a few enemies. Somehow, the terrorists know their plot failed, so helicopter-loads of them will intercept you at every turn. To make matters worse, you'll also have to deal with the possibility that someone in your party is a terrorist sympathizer. In gameplay reminiscent of Chase the Express or Dino Crisis, you'll have to root out the traitor, exercise MacGyver-like survival skills, and stunt the enemy's attempts to lay everyone to rest on Aconcagua's unforgiving slopes.

To bring across Aconcagua's suspenseful plot and complex character interaction, the game will have a number of key features. First, over 80-minutes of game-rendered cinemas will serve to advance the plot and assault your senses. Secondly, there's the music. Sony has tapped some of its best audio talent for Aconcagua and promises tunes that will both fit the mood and bring out a distinctly South American feel. From the few sample tracks that are out there, it's obvious Sony means business. Finally, and easily most important, the game isn't simply a linear telling of events. Depending on how you act and the moves you make, a variety of possible outcomes will be initiated. You could accidentally kill the terrorist sympathizer for example, or worse, you could lose Pachamama to the terrorists and have to spend a great deal of time getting her back, freezing your tail off in the process. Along the way, you'll have to make use of items left behind from Flight 203 and what you can salvage from enemy skirmishes. Weapons, makeshift tents, ropes, and camp fires - it's an interesting take on the genre.

The game was recently released in Japan and lacks a firm US date. Considering the success of the survival-horror genre as a whole and the revitalization of PS1 game sales that'll no doubt occur when the PS2 is released here, it's quite likely that Aconcagua will see a late-fall or early-winter release. With a storyline Westerners can relate to, coupled with the PS2's texture-enhancement capabilities, a little bit of optimism isn't such a bad idea.