The Italian Job Preview

Not many projects are being developed solely for the PlayStation these days, so it comes as a surprise that SCi and Pixelogic have teamed up to bring a classic movie, The Italian Job, to the PlayStation audience. The film was originally released in 1969 and starred Michael Caine as Charlie Croker--a criminal who had just been released from jail, planning his next big score. His plan: attempt to steal 4 million dollars' worth of gold from the mafia and the Italian police.

The game follows exactly the same plot as the 1969 movie, which has become a cult favorite of fans of high-speed chases and spectacular car crashes. You take the role of Charlie Croker, who has to put together a team of criminals to help him realize his crazy plan. Other characters include Mr. Bridger (the gangland boss), "Camp" Freddie (Bridger's right hand), Professor Simon Peach (a computer genius with a fetish for very big women), Roger Beckerman (the Italian criminal who originally came up with the plan), and, last but not least, Lorna, Charlie's girlfriend. Of course, Charlie needs backing for his plan, so he contacts crime boss Mr. Bridger, who at first is not so fond of the plan. However, when Charlie reveals that the Italian government is planning to establish a new car factory in China, Mr. Bridger begins to believe him. In return for establishing a new car factory, China will pay the Italian government the aforementioned $4 million. The Italian Job for the PlayStation is a third-person, mission-based driving game in which you need to complete certain tasks.

The Italian Job mode forms the heart of the game. By completing each of the missions, which begin in England, you'll recruit more and more team members for the heist in Italy. The missions range from test-driving sections and mock-up robberies to ferrying explosives and needed materials for the execution of the plan. Charlie's DB4 will be the first vehicle you drive, while the Mini Coopers and Land Rovers (which have become a trademark of the movie) appear later in the game. At the end of each chapter, you'll be rewarded with new vehicles, access to new chapters, and in-game cutscenes, all of which develop the game's plot. As you can imagine, much of the game has you avoiding being caught by the police. The developers came up with an interesting system: each second the police are in your range, they will be able to identify one letter or number on your license plate. If they can figure out your whole plate, you'll get busted. In total, there are 16 missions, the first of which starts out in London. The missions later on take you to Turin, Italy before ending in the Swiss Alps.

The free ride mode lets you take control of any of the vehicles you've unlocked in the Italian Job mode. You can then drive freely around in the main locations of London and Turin. It's a good mode for finding new shortcuts, hidden areas, and escape routes. In the challenge mode, conversely, you can optimize your driving skills. Ten challenges await you in five environments, which consist of some of the tasks from the main game, including chases, timed laps, jumps, and racing. In destructor mode, you have to knock down cones in a total of 20 levels spread across London and Turin. The same goes for the checkpoint races, which demand you to race to certain points in town. And finally, there's a party play mode for multiplayer support of up to eight players. This mode includes races in destructor, challenge, and checkpoint mode.

When asked about his favorite part of the movie and how his team transferred it to the game, Bryan Reynolds, studio manager at Pixelogic, responds, "My favorite bit is the escape at the end of the film. This really sums up The Italian Job for me. It manages to make characters out of the three Minis as they jump, swerve, and speed their way out of Turin." He continues, "The artists and programmers have done something special with this section that has never been seen before. The whole of the escape route from the film is included for the player to drive through, following the other two Minis. This isn't some trick with 'blackout tunnels' either; using the loading system we have developed, the player starts at the Piazza in Turin and drives through the museum, down back streets, through a shopping mall, down the subway, down the church steps, up onto the dome, into the car dealership, onto a racetrack, across the rooftops, across the weir, and through the tunnels to freedom.

This route alone takes about six minutes to drive and is seriously ambitious, particularly when you consider that the route doesn't actually exist in real life but was cut together by a film director! You simply can't do this kind of thing with a tile-based system." This scene alone very much sums up how gameplay in Italian Job takes place. To successfully deal with the amount of data, the team had to come up with a new way to stream information from the CD, which it called COSS (Continuous Ordered Scenery Streaming). Reynolds explains, "As usual, the technology for the game is always tough. The COSS system was very difficult to implement on a PlayStation with such limited RAM, but Chris Butler [lead programmer of the project] stuck to his guns, and we now have a great system that allows us to create levels that are too big to fit on the CD! This has real implications for games where you travel long distances and is certainly something we're keen to develop for next-generation machines that suffer from the same RAM deficiency. The rigid body physics was also a tough one on PlayStation, but again, this works really well also."

In total, there are 14 vehicles, including three Austin Mini Coopers and 11 other cars, ranging from 4x4s to a bus. The handling of the cars was something the developers had an eye on. "We approached the handling from the point of view that we wanted the Minis to handle how people expected them to handle, rather than how they actually do," says Reynolds. "We have actually been complimented on the handling of the Minis by the owners club, so we must be doing something right. As for the other cars, they all have their own quirks, plusses, and minuses. We have about 20 variables to alter for the cars, which include everything from hand braking to tire friction and traction on differing surfaces. They are tweaked for each mission depending on the demands put on the player. We're hoping each presents its own learning curve [for the player] to get the best out of it."

Currently, the game is slated for release on October 5 in Europe, but publisher SCi confirmed to us today that it's definitely planning to bring it to the US as well. The company is currently looking for the best possible distributor to guarantee that the title gets the attention it deserves. It definitely looks like a game for all those who loved Reflections' Driver series; the game definitely aims to reproduce that sort of action. Whether it will even surpass its idol remains to be seen. We'll surely tell you as soon as it hits the US.