Dead Aggressor Hands-On

TOKYO--It's still looking pretty early in development, but Bandai is showing a 40-percent complete version of a new strategic mech combat game called Dead Aggressor at the 2004 Tokyo Game Show. The game appears to combine strategy-oriented map screens and readouts with action-oriented combat.

Though the strategy portion of the game was difficult to decipher due to the game's incomplete state, the action seems pretty standard. You'll pilot a graceful-looking mech, which hovers above the land and sea. The mech in the demo was armed with two different attacks that you can toggle between at will. The first is a standard machine-gun-like attack, and the second is a rather clunky-looking punch. To speed up your movement, you can activate a turbo boost, which drains a boost meter, but the meter refills if you let off.

The movement in Dead Aggressor is quite slow at the moment, though this seemed more like a factor of the game's incomplete state than a design decision. With 60 percent of the game left to develop and no announced release date, there's still a lot of work to be done and quite a lot of time left to do it.

For more updates, be sure to check GameSpot's coverage of Tokyo Game Show 2004.