First Look at Picassio

Promethean Designs, developer of Interplay's Powerboat Racing and the soon-to-be-released racer Renegade Racers, has unveiled an impressive new title code-named Picassio.

Promethean Designs just unveiled this title for the PC, Dreamcast, and PlayStation, and although it is still in the early development phase, it looks as though this is going to be one of the bigger hits of 2000. The current screenshots and the movie are taken from the PC version. Publishers take note, because this title is still available for publishing.

The gameplay is fairly simple: You're Picassio, a hired thief specializing in stealing art. The mission is simple: Enter the building and steal pieces of art without being caught. The most challenging part is how missions are handled. It's basically up to you as to how you'd like to go through the mission. You can either go in and attack everyone, hoping you will be out by the time people regain consciousness, or you can plan your theft carefully, coming through the basement and setting up traps, cameras, etc. You will also be able to set up a whole row of traps. You might even just want to hide and see what happens to the guards then. Also important is the control room of the museum, which you can find in every mission. Once you found that, you get a quick overview of who is in which room, etc. This will help you save time and let you plan a way to move forward more carefully.

You have several weapons (like darts and traps) and items (like cameras), which you can use to keep an eye on rooms. Place cameras where you feel a guard might come by, and you can see when you should sneak out of a room or hide around a corner. You can interact with all the items in the game, and if you knock over one of the items, the guards will hear the noise. If you sneak around the museum, you will also hear guards walking around and will be able to tell how close they are by to the volume of the noise. Unpack your chloroform, knock them out for a time, and you'll be able to pass.

Technically, Picassio is using everything that is state-of-the art, such as dynamic lighting, skeletal animation, and volumetric fog. You can be assured we'll have lots more on the game soon.