Microsoft Shows Off New Titles

Late yesterday afternoon, Microsoft traveled to the GameSpot offices to show off two of its upcoming games, Outwars and Urban Assault (formerly Total Anarchy).

Outwars, currently slated for an April release, thrusts you into battle with bug-like aliens. They're attacking and you're fighting back, one planet at a time. It's a mission-based mech game designed to have at least 50 percent of all action and combat in the air, so economical management of your "jumpjet" fuel is as critical to completing your mission as killing the bad guys. Mission objectives range from clearing out the aliens in a station (every one you don't kill as you make your way through the mission will appear at the very end of it) to putting on your gliders (wings) and battling bad guys in what is essentially a dogfight. You'll have AI-controlled teammates in most single-player missions, and you can have real teammates in cooperative multiplayer. Run with a series of proprietary engines, Outwars doesn't require much in the way of hardware, but it does support MMX, AGP, and Direct 3D.

Mixing real-time strategy with action, Urban Assault puts you in command of a fleet of vehicles - each of which you can teleport your mind into at any point during the game. Your physical self remains in your station; it's just your mind that ports into the vehicles. Consequently, you only die when your station is blown up, though vehicles you're in may be destroyed. And there's a great deal of blowing up that goes on - German developer Terratools set out to create a game where the entire world was destructible, and it appears to have succeeded admirably. An overhead transparent map guides your movements as you command units and lead attacks from any of 50 different vehicles from zeppelins to tanks. Watch for GameSpot's exclusive featured preview on it in the coming weeks and for the game itself this summer.