E3 06: Eight Days First Look

LOS ANGELES--During Sony's E3 2006 press conference, a new action game from the company's London studio was displayed for the first time. Titled Eight Days, this game looks to be a hybrid of third-person shooting and driving action that actually looked slightly reminiscent of the recent PSP title, Pursuit Force--though obviously jacked up for the PlayStation 3.

The trailer shown at the conference began with a pair of guys, somewhat shady looking, staring at guns inside the trunk of the car. Cut to a completely different group of seedy-looking dudes standing around in the Arizona desert and generally looking...seedy. Suddenly, a pair of high-performance sports cars come shooting down a desert road. Literally. Passengers in both cars are shooting at each other like mad, kicking up tons of dust and sending bullets all over the place. At one point, the video shifts to what looks like an in-game shot of the two cars bumping into one another, grinding at high speeds in an almost Burnout-like fashion. One car finally lands the fatal shot on the other, and it flips over, destroyed.

Back where the seedy guys were hanging out, the surviving car arrives with a bang. The two action hero-looking guys from the first shot jump out and get into an immediate gun battle with the thugs. This sequence goes back and forth between what looks like in-game and CG--how indicative of the real game that will be, we don't know. All we know is that it looked really, really good. The gun fight was extremely well animated, with plenty of cool dodge moves, including one spot where one character reloads and tosses a gun to the other, and another spot where one character ducks for cover by running straight into a window of a nearby diner. Of course, he's immediately pelted by bullets as he ducks under the front counter. The hail of gunfire here looks simply awesome, with glass breaking and wood splinters everywhere. Total chaos.

It sort of goes on like this for a while--mad amounts of gunfire, all looking really nice. Finally, we see the two heroes run off as a gigantic tanker truck comes barreling through, skidding along and finally crashing right into the diner in a huge destructive mass. After this, the trailer cuts to the logo for the game. Then comes more footage of one of the guys picking up a lighter off of one of the fallen bad guys; he flicks it open amid the chaos and spilling gasoline from the tanker. He drops the lighter and walks off. Just in case you're not good at predicting situations, yes, everything blows up real, real good.

Again, it's tough to gauge how much of the Eight Days trailer was gameplay and how much was prerendered. Certain sequences included a full HUD, but even then, is it too good to be true? One way or the other, Eight Days was easily one of the best surprises of the conference demos, and we can't wait to know more about the game. We'll bring you more on Eight Days as soon as it becomes available.