E3 2008: Brave: A Warrior's Tale Hands-On

Brave: A Warrior's Tale is an action platformer coming out for the Xbox 360, PSP, and Wii. You play as a young Native American who is actually named Brave. After your village is heartlessly attacked, you set off on an adventure to save your loved ones by becoming a shaman. The original Brave was released on the PlayStation 2 a few years ago, and this version contains the entire first game along with new sections. We sat down with a few levels of the Xbox 360 version today, and it looks like this could be a fun game for youngsters getting into the genre for the first time.

Your two main weapons in Brave are an axe and a bow and arrow. You have a limited number of arrows, so you'll spend most of your time hacking at enemies with melee attacks. You can also transform into animals during certain sections. We were told to expect around six for the entire game, but the only one we had a chance to control was a wily bear. Since you don't have any weapons in this form, we whacked enemies around with our paw and caused them to shake with a mighty roar. We could also swallow undead creatures whole, which sadly didn't turn us into a zombie bear.

Though we were told that most of the game would consist of jumping and combat, there are a few sections were you can ride atop an eagle as well. We played a small section where we soared through a string of green hoops in the sky, using boost and air brakes to guide the bird to the end. Once there, we could pick up enemies with our talons and drop them into a bottomless pit. There was also light puzzle-solving here--a cannon wouldn't stop shooting fire at us, so we had to grab a nearby boulder and smash it.

There are two more playable characters in the game, but they weren't in the E3 demo. There isn't any multiplayer planned, but the main quest should take more than 11 hours, half of which will contain all-new content. Look for the final version this fall on all three platforms.