Vultures Impressions

We got a quick peek at CDV's upcoming Xbox 3D beat-'em-up, Vultures, at E3 2003. In the game, you'll assume the role of a gladiator, fighting for your life in brutal arena combat. Various medieval-style weapons are at your disposal, ranging from swords and maces to polearms and axes. Some ranged weapons will also be included in the game, but these were not demonstrated to us at the show.

Vultures' detailed character models are a testament to the game's impressive graphics. On models with bare skin, you'll see sinewy muscles appearing to bulge and flex underneath the characters' skin. The game's advanced engine allows for normal mapping and bump mapping on the character models, giving metal armor a shine in the light and bare skin the appearance of being covered in sweat. The frame rate was a little bit choppy, so the animation was difficult to judge, but there's still some time left in the development of Vultures for optimization.

At a glance, the hand-to-hand combat in the game is very reminiscent of previous games such as Rune for the PC or The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers on consoles. However, Vultures' gameplay promises to have more depth than those games, as it will include 16 different playable characters (with another eight characters waiting to be unlocked), each with his or her own strengths and weaknesses in attributes like stamina and speed. You'll also be able to use the controller to decide the direction of your swing, or even execute an overhead blow. This can figure strategically in the gameplay, as it will be possible to amputate the limbs of your foes if you can score a well-aimed blow on your enemy. The developers promised that Vultures' combat engine will actually calculate collisions precisely on character models' bodies and show damage at that spot or cut off the limb at the point of contact, and not at generic tear-off points. However, it's worth noting that this feature wasn't demonstrated to us at the show. Some combination moves are planned but had not been implemented in the build shown off at E3.

Vultures will feature two-player competitive and cooperative play modes using the same Xbox, and it will also be enabled for Xbox Live online play. The game is slated for release in the fall of this year, but there still appears to be a good deal of work left to be done. We'll have more info on Vultures as it becomes available.