T-Rex Hunter: Forgotten World Hands-On

Judging from what we've seen at this year's CES, developer MachineWorks Northwest is quickly positioning itself toward the head of the pack in terms of 3D mobile gaming. The studio is swiftly moving toward releasing what could be a revolutionary new mobile first-person shooter, Duke Nukem 3D, and it has also created a more-generalized software engine for generating 3D environments and terrain. The first market-ready manifestation of this new toolset will be called T-Rex Hunter: Forgotten World, and the version that we tried out, which was described as "98 percent complete," turned out to be a real eye-opener.

T-Rex Hunter will plop you down in the middle of a large hunting environment to hunt a number of different dinos to your heart's content. In effect, the game plays something like a slow-paced first-person shooter. Although the draw distance wasn't spectacular on the LG VX7000 we played on, we were very impressed with its fully realized terrain engine, which generated great-looking hills and valleys to hunt in and around. There was also some sprite-based foliage for dinos to hide behind, although its distribution seemed pretty sparse. The 3D dino models, on the other hand, were very well done and appeared to move realistically--or at least, realistically when compared to the computer-generated thunder lizards of the Jurassic Park movies.

Even though its gameplay is more shooter than stalker, T-Rex Hunter will incorporate several hunting game features to satisfy fans of that genre, as well. For instance, you can't just blaze away with your rifle and expect to call yourself a "big game" hunter; you have to manage your equipment efficiently to bag the biggest dinos, which can range from switching weapons to utilizing your dino call, which looks like the seismic "thumper" device in the movie Dune. In addition, T-Rex Hunter will let you put your worst specimens on display in a gallery, so you can show them off to admiring members of the opposite sex--and, apparently, successful hunters will even be able to buy new equipment through the course of a season.

Although T-Rex Hunter is on the verge of completion, it hasn't officially found a publisher yet, so its release date is unclear. We'll have more information on this game as it becomes available.