GT Interactive Plays Dead

GT Interactive is publishing (and Rage Software is developing) a new PlayStation title that combines the spectator sports and popular video game themes of hockey, football, and soccer, with a storyline and environment that is curiously science fiction in nature.

Dead Ball Zone is perhaps the first to make sense of the joke "where do they bury the survivors," as the game is touted as an arcade/sports title that will take place at a time in the future when the planet has been all but destroyed and the living exist only in geospheres.

Players will battle the computer or another human opponent in a race to have their team of eight rise through the ranks and dominate the other classes in the geospherical-global challenge of Dead Ball Zone.

What's Dead Ball Zone? It sounds like soccer, basically. Within geospheres in San Francisco, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, India, London, Los Angeles, and more, you'll instruct your team to send the ball by way of your opponent's goal. Your objective is not to just "score," but rather to win reward money through tournament play - hence earning the ability to enhance your player's health and skills through training and eventually end up with the most powerful team.

Players will be able to train their team members to improve their throwing, shooting, jumping, tackling, and even taunting skills, progressively, by saving each consecutive match to a memory card. Power-ups will be available in the game, and you'll probably need them, since chain saws will be available as well.

Videogames.com will get a chance to see Dead Ball Zone in the flesh next month at E3, and the game will reportedly be released sometime this summer.